The Ship Model Forum

[quote="Big Jim"]Did this project ever get finished?[/quote]

No, but it did get restarted last week! Work's been really busy so I'm not sure when I'll have enough progress to warrant another post and photos, but I'll try and err on the early side.

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Did this project ever get finished?

Work did not cooperate with my desire to get back on the PT this week and I merely did little things here and there. However, I did make enough progress on one aspect to at least show photos of it. the Boats of PT Squadron NINE (Ron 9 from here on out) had the aft cockpit wall removed. I had noticed in [url=http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/download/file.php?id=79607&mode=view]the original PT-157[/url] photo that I posted that one of the sailors in the cockpit was significantly taller than the others, and then that Cdr. Kelley was towering over PT-156/8/9's captiain [url=http://historylink101.com/ww2_navy/archive/NavalArchivePictures125012/1279.html]here[/url] and [url=http://historylink101.com/ww2_navy/archive/NavalArchivePictures125012/1280.html]here[/url].

I reached out to Bridgeman Carney of [url=http://www.pt-157.com/]PT-157[/url] who has literally written not just "the" book on PT-157, but [url=http://www.pt-157.com/products.htm]two of them[/url]! What he said was that there was a fold-up step/platform in the cockpit, and I figured that this would be a fun little feature to help add some more life to the build.

First up was filling the alignment holes and slots for the aft cockpit wall that I wasn't using; I used some strip styrene to make this a little quicker and to avoid shrinking filler:

[attachment=2]AcesNEights10.jpg[/attachment]

Next were the two pieces I chose to do. There are a couple of supports underneath that aren't very visible and I chose to forgo them. The most complex of the two is the vertical support, which has a wasp waist shape and hole in the center. The top horizontal piece was a fixed portion about 4" wide before the hinge, and then the step. I did this as one piece with the joint between the two scribed in. Dimensions in 48th scale are:

Step length - 9.789mm
step fixed platform - 3.571mm
Step folding platform - 5.953mm
Step supportt Height - 10.583mm
Step support length - 8.202mm
Step lightening Hole - 2.645mm
Step Angle support - 3.968mm (this is one of the pieces I didn't do, but I include it in case others desire to)

Here we have the pieces cut out and the lightning hole drilled with a #36 or 37 drill bit (I think the former but don't have it with me):

[attachment=1]AcesNEights11.jpg[/attachment]

What's not really clear in the above photo is that I had split the vertical piece n the right when drilling it and trying to clean the leftover parts. I glued it back together, clamped between these two metal rulers to keep it straight, and then cleaned up the hole wit ha file instead and filled the little seam that remained. Finished product:

[attachment=0]AcesNEights12.jpg[/attachment]

Dark paint is just to adequately "shadow" the areas I can't get paint on when doing the true color. Yet uninstalled in this photo is a narrow step that ran to the front of the cockpit on the bulkhead. Getting closer!

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OK, so I had noticed when I put a set of the torpedo halves together that they were smaller than the inner diameter of the tubes. TO a certain extent it's understandable as you couldn't have perfectly scaled torpedoes fitted inside the torpedo tubes unless they were overscale. But, the slop seemed excessive so I decided to measure things out to see how they scale out.

There is a possibility my math is off here, so I wouldn't mind a double check and corrections if I did make an error.

The early PT boats used 21" diameter tubes, which scales out to .4375" in 1/48. The actual diameter measured with a digital micrometer was .333" which is about 76% of what the diameter should be.

How about length? According to [url=http://www.pt103.com/PT_Boat_Armament.html]PT-103.com[/url] and
[url=http://archive.hnsa.org/doc/jolie/part1.htm]A Brief History of U.S. Navy Torpedo Development[/url] we're looking at lengths of 246", 256.3", or 288" depending on the Mk or torpedo loaded into the launcher. Length as measured with the props on was 4.335", which is 86%, 81%, and 72% the size it should scale out to, depending on which Mark of torpedo they are trying to represent (I haven't tried to determine this yet).

So, in summary, the torpedoes are undersized. This will not be a factor if you close up the torpedo tubes. It might be worth noting for aftermarket companies that want to release a torpedo loading crew type of set - a replacement torpedo might be beneficial.

Managed to surface from work a bit last night and this morning. Working on an aspect that will be a separate post, but I have some useful information at least for today.

As I alluded to earlier, the kit comes with two sets of deck mounts for the torpedo tubes. Only one set is shown on the instructions, and this is the set that allows the builder to display the tubes either stowed in or swung out for launching. The "D" trees with the torpedoes have parts that replace the swivel and skid plates (two parts each) with a single piece. If you want to go the single-piece route, substitute parts as follow:

[i][u]Port side[/u][/i]
Swivel plate: M7/M19 - D8
Skid plate: M9/M4 - D4

[i][u]Starboard side[/u][/i]
Swivel plate: M17/M20 - D23
Skid plate: M10/M3 - D9

Below is the different port side pieces next to each other for comparison:

[attachment=0]Aces&Eights09.jpg[/attachment]

A busy work schedule has killed my progress this week - I'm posting this in-between client calls. :censored_2: :eyes_spinning:

Stock kit has the day cabin hatch opening from inboard hinges whereas PT-157's hinged aft. It's a square hatch, so all it took was a quick shave of the old hinges, rotating the hatch 90 degrees, and then using some [url=http://www.evergreenscalemodels.com/]Evergreen[/url] .040" half-round cut into 1mm segments and glued around the hatch after it was in place. Look good, last long time!

[attachment=0]AcesNEights08.jpg[/attachment]

In progress, but not well enough along to post, is the replacement fold-out bench in the cockpit.

That's a good tip. In this case, there's no reason to get the deck on earlier other than my desire to have it together, so I'll skip the extra work that would cause and just focus on gluing them down. I have two modifications to make to the hatches as well I'll cover in my next post.

Looking good.

One trick I learned for avoiding the "dropped the hatch, need to curse it out of the hull" trick is to back the opening on the inside with styrene. If you're closing the hatch, you won't see it anyway.

OK, more progress. The major deck pieces are down:

[attachment=1]AcesNEights06.jpg[/attachment]

Not much to say at this point. Everything fit fairly well. The one exception was the forward gun tub. In order to make sure good fit to both the charthouse and main deck, I did not glue it to the charthouse and then the assembly to the deck as the instructions have you do, but rather held the charthouse to the deck, placed the tub down, and tacked it to the chart house. This left it sitting on the deck perfectly, but with a small gap on the sides that widened as it got closer to the deck. It was fairly easy to fill it with Mr Surfacer at that point since I had access to both the front and back of the gaps (meaning I could fill it in such a way so as to have less chance of bubbles) and simply clean up the excess with Mr Color Thinner and a Q-tip. Didn't think to get photos of that, but I'll try to this weekend.

I'm going to wait until I have all of the hatches glued down before I glue the deck to the hull so that if I drop one through I don't have to turn the air blue getting it back out.

As you can see, I started the torpedo tube mounts and I have two comments about this. First, the kit would have you build "posable" mounts that can be positioned either stowed or ready to launch (swung outboard) but the trees come with alternate parts to have them fixed inboard. These later parts are much simpler and one again I'll try and get a photo of them this weekend and provide a "conversion chart" for those wanting to use these parts.

Second is that both the forward plate that the tubes slid outboard on rendered incorrectly. They should taper as the move inboard so that they're more or less parallel to the water. Instead, the Merit kit has them as a fixed thickness, so the top is parallel to the deck with its camber, the same as the aft plate that was the pivot point, which was a fixed thickness. I didn't feel like sanding all of them down to match this on what I'm hoping to be a somewhat quick build, so I just popped them on deck and will live with it.

Also "incorrect" about the forward plates is the omission of the gear that was used to actually move the tubes in and out - you can see it in this photo of PT-149:

[attachment=0]AcesNEights07-PT-149.jpg[/attachment]

Tim - it's just [url=http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/evg/evg120.htm].020" strip[/url] cut a little bit long and then laid down and glued. I did the top, curved piece first, gluing maybe a third to half at a time so that I could manage pushing it into the curve, but it's thin and pliable enough that as soon as the first segment was down I moved on to the next segment. All in all that top piece took maybe 10-15 seconds to work and get down. I had about 5-10mm of excess poking out at the rear and I just gave it a rough cut and then cleaned all of the excess up at once at the end. Second strip was the straight horizontal one and it was similar, albeit I think I was able to drop all of the Tamiya liquid cement down at once.

Vertical pieces were again, just eyeballed. I dropped a long strip about where I wanted it and pressed my knife blade a little bit long so that I left a groove that weakened it. It broke clean when I bent the strip (in other words I didn't cut through with the blade) and I then just sanded one end until it was short enough to fit perfectly.

The bigger sheet is actually supposed to be somewhat flush, but as I didn't have any drawings or good photos I decided to make it out of .010" sheet instead of .020 as the borders should still be visible and I wanted it to look it. I could have also used some .020" sheet and beveled the edges at an angle, but I had some scrap .010" and the decision was made....

Tracy,

Very nice work, good friend!

When I hear back from the guy who I'd like to get to build my kit, I'd like to have you show him how to do that framing on that starboard bulkhead. I think it looks good and gives the model more dimension.

Tim

Very nice work and information, Tracy.

Looking forward to this build as I passed on the late war, but have been on the fence with this release.

TOMLABEL

OK, got most of the fiddley bits done. Extra exhausts (I'll choose the best six out of 8) and 20mm ready service lockers (same deal but two out of four). PT-157 had a different arrangement than the kit-supplied cowl vents in that they were on top of perhaps foot-tall boxes as opposed to straight to the deck cover. I'll be miter sawing later.

[attachment=0]AcesNEights05.jpg[/attachment]

David - I checked and the day cabin trailing bulkhead is perpendicular to the deck. With the torpedoes in place I don't think it will be that noticeable.

Those are my fall back if I can't find the full gun, but I'm about 90% sure that those are what I'm going to be using.

[quote="Tracy White"]

Thanks, but I literally just need the gun as I need to scratch build the changes to the tub anyway.[/quote]

If you just need replacement barrels there is this from RB: http://www.track48.com/shop/product.php?productid=983&cat=1&page=1 :wave_1:

There's no question that Jeff is dedicated. I can be an :censored_2: and he was just starting to bring that out in me so I stopped going to the forum because that's not behavior I seek out. It is what it is, and I may go back to participate at some point.

Big storm last night and I'm without power (means that my laptop can get internet through my phone, but I can't good light for a photo). I'll grab my 90-degree square and shoot a picture later today when I'm at the local hobby shop enjoying power.

Tracy,
I know you haven't gotten this far yet but I'm wondering if the Day Cabin bow and stern facing walls are 90 degrees to the waterline or if they were slightly raked back towards the stern as Italeri mistakenly did it?

I know you and Jeff got off on the wrong foot but for everyone interested in adding detail to their boat you can't beat the research and CAD work Jeff has done on his web site. I would also encourage everyone to look at Stuart Hurley's PT-109 build. Stu did a wonderful job of pulling the detail out of his build also found on that web site. Now he's working on a second boat!

http://www.pt103.com/Italeri_PT109_Kit.html
Dave

Charthouse and Cockpit assembly major components complete. There was some detail on the starboard cockpit bulkhead of the earlier boats that was missing and I felt quick and easy enough to add that would give some character.

[attachment=1]AcesNEights03.jpg[/attachment]

It's all just done by eyeball and not exact. Based on the below photo and [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqCkBy30JI4]this video[/url] at the [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqCkBy30JI4&feature=youtu.be&t=7m50s]7:50[/url] mark.

[attachment=0]AcesNEights04.jpg[/attachment]