1/350 HMAS Melbourne R21 (1982)

[Fliger747]

When working with both wood and plastic plated hulls I have had really good luck working with auto body repair fillers, both the two part paste, which sands very nicely, and the glazing putty which is good for filling very minor imperfections. The paste sticks to wood quite nicely and I have had hulls with this sort of filler last many decades without issue.

Keep up the nice work! Regards: Tom

[Bonobo_Atho]

Winches and life rafts turned up!

[Fliger747]

Nice boats!

Tom

[Bonobo_Atho]

Yeah they are! Very detailed beautifully finished. I got them from https://www.shapeways.com/product/759LR ... arketplace.

It's almost tempting to see if someone at Shapeways is keen to convert a CAD model to a 3D print and then build the model that way

[Bonobo_Atho]

Managed to install the winches ans some ladders today. The detail on the winches is very nice and I highly recommend them. The ladders are nicely finished too! Although neither of these are authentic to the original ship I think they give a level of detail that will bring the ship to life.

[Fliger747]

Those look a lot like the small winches port and starboard on US Fletcher class destroyers. This same winch was used in the waist of the Alaska�s as well. The currently un plated upper hull mid ships, does some sort of sponson go here?

Cheers. Tom

[Bonobo_Atho]

Well according to the supplier those are WWII USN Destroyer winches. They were the closest thing I could find.
https://www.shapeways.com/product/R3WWY ... arketplace

As for the unplated midships section a sponson and boat go there. That will hopefully hide my poorly aligned ladder, unless it gets to me and I go back and fix it

[Fliger747]

Nice photo, operating a squadron of A-4's and an S2 sitting there. Because of the flat flight deck we are led to believe carrier models will be simple! Ummmm, possibly not! Song is doing a bang up job on his Nimitz, always a lot for the rest of us to learn watching his techniques.

Looking good so far!

Cheers: Tom

[Bonobo_Atho]

Ladders installed on the starboard side. And openings cut for starboard weather deck under the island. And yep I cut them too big to start off with so had to add some material back. Going to have fun hiding that!

[Bonobo_Atho]

Soooo, progress has been slow on the Melbourne lately. The work crew have found themselves unable to deny the call of better paid work. But after some hard negotiations they got back to work today and managed give the weather decks an undercoat of grey and then a coat of white. A second coat of white should follow tomorrow and then installation of the hull skin around the weather deck openings can begin.

[Bonobo_Atho]

I managed to convince the painters to stay on another day and finish the white on the weather decks. Only cost me a couple of beers

[QMG_Waz]

Hi Im not sure if you were aware the quaterdeck on Melbourne was wood?

Cheers

QMG_Waz

[Bonobo_Atho]

Yep! I've seen the photos. Due to my poor choice of construction sequencing painting the quarter deck a wood-like colour is going to be challenging.
Maybe I can hire tiny painters.

[Bonobo_Atho]

Tiny steel workers were hard at work this weekend installing the hull skin over most of the weather deck openings.

[Bonobo_Atho]

Sourcing the ships screws has been bothering me as I've not been able to find anything suitable from suppliers. Enter 3d printers

[Maarten Sch�nfeld]

Sourcing the ships screws has been bothering me as I've not been able to find anything suitable from suppliers. Enter 3d printers

Neat solution of the problem!

But: having dissimilar screws on a ship is NOT normal. Are you sure these were used on HMAS Melbourne for a good reason? To me it seems the three bladed port screw is standard, the four bladed starboard one seems to be a temporary replacement, maybe because of an accident.

Or: the dock image (which is certainly a good thing to have when modeling a full hull ship!) seems clear, but might show a moment halfway replacing both screws.

BTW: on my 1/350 ARA 25 the Mayo (a sister ship) I solved the propeller problem by using the Heller props: these were supposed to be 1/400 of course, but appeared so much over scale that they are perfect for 1/350 Also, they have the right amount of blade pitch (which is considerable!)
You can see also: I had created a master for the S-2A Tracker and cast these in resin. Also modifed these to S-2E and will re-cast these in the future. You might acquire some of these from me then.

[Fliger747]

Nice job on the tracker!

Cheers: Tom

[Bonobo_Atho]

In my research I found a site which related the story that in the early years of operation the propeller fell off and not wanting to wait for the casting of a new one the RAN opted to use an available one. I cannot find the website where I found this story however the HMAS Melbourne Wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS_Melbourne_%28R21%29) does say it had one 3 blade and one 4 blade propeller. Looking at the drawings for the Melbourne and her sister ship HMAS Sydney it looks like the 4 blade was as per design. As far as I'm aware the arrangement was never returned to design.

I'd love to know more about your S-2 casting experience Maarten as I am looking at doing the same for my air wing. I deliberately bought the Gallery Models 1/350 USS Intrepid so I could copy the A-4 and E-1 from that kit, modifying the E-1 to S-2 of course. I have been looking at 3D model files available online for printing but they all seem to lack the detail you find on an injection molded kit. I've even emailed Trumpeter and suggested they do a run of A-4's but never heard back Nice job on the Mayo by the way

I will be attempting the draw the island in CAD and then 3D print that. I think I have enough reference material to do an adequate job.

[Maarten Sch�nfeld]

Hi Bonobo-Atho,

Converting an S-2 into an E-1W is quite a challenge, look at: http://tailhooktopics.blogspot.com/2013 ... 2e-1b.html.
To do it the the other way 'round will be an even greater challenge, be sure! For a start, the Intrepid's E-1s have some serious flaws. I also made an update on those for my friend Walter Sonderman's build of that kit http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... /index.htm so these E-1s already look quite different from what the kit provides you with!

For the S-2 I started really from scratch from the basic drawings of the S-2A. And I like the result indeed.

[Fliger747]

The variations of the S2 are interesting. A fellow in town here had one, which unfortunately got crashed a couple of years ago. A friend of my dad was an S2 pilot and one of the first 8 aviators to transition to the jet powered S3. For may yeas I did flight dynamics for aircraft used in the Microsoft flight simulators and the Lockheed Martin version including a number of the S2-Willi Fudd series. Fun to land the on the carrier!

Not easy to model small scale aircraft, Song has done an impressive job recreating the whole air group for his 1:200 Nimitz.

Nice work and thanks for sharing. Tom