The Ship Model Forum

Hank:

Thank you! I did get some model work done yesterday, but trying to feed rigging when one is foggy and has the occasional shakes from chills is slow going. For the booms I used your excellent triple blocks. The rigging is done with a slightly stretchy thread used in stitching for such items as Spandex Sports Bras, available at the local yard goods emporium. As I mentioned before, after various experiments, I stiffened the last CM of the thread with CA and cut off a sharp point to ease threading through the small apertures in the blocks and pulleys.

Tom

Feeling somewhat better, some energy but small endurance. Finished all the main deck lifeline stanchions except for the ones on the foredeck sheer. Those will have to be printed with the correct deck angle on the base to get them to stand vertical. Requires both lefties and righties. Have to re do the guy lines for the Starboard boom. Port boom doesn't seem to have any.

Tom

As I have mentioned I hate rigging, which includes lifelines. Procrastination is an important feature in continuing models. So I have been "peopling" the fwd Quad 40 mount with "non birthing persons" (Doncha love PC Talk!) which is a useful diversion from rigging the fwd lifelines. So far not bad. Painting the little buggers (1) repetitive (2) tedious, especially as all my micro brushes have gotten bad and need replacing. Painting with toothpicks and sprue not all that rewarding. I guess I have joined the pointillist school of figure decoration.

If this works out I'll do the aft mount and proceed to the Orlikons.

Tom

Stern Quad 40 crew drilling.

yes

K.T. F 's observation is " It's not easy being Green".

Nice to read you Tom, we wish you to get better and better in order to continue this excellent work.

I really like your sailors, it's a real plus on a model, there are too many ghost ships and what would become of a ship without a crew?

_________________
Pascal

•Battleship Bretagne 3D: https://vu.fr/FvCY
•SS Delphine 3D: https://vu.fr/NeuO
•SS Nomadic 3D: https://vu.fr/tAyL
•USS Nokomis 3D: https://vu.fr/kntC
•USS Pamanset 3D: https://vu.fr/jXGQ

Thank you Pascal!

It would be better to develop the crew and weapons at the same time to get them to fit together better. As it is I am having to adjust the size of the sailors to match the existing weapon positions. Certainly I would desire the ability and tools to create such figures as necessary, but alas this is not likely to transpire any time soon. The APA, with the same weapons suite can also benefit from this personnel recruitment. The bell bottom trousers (Navy issue, actually straight legged) and Chambrai shirts add a convincing color contrast to an otherwise grey scheme. So it was fun to find these figures and see about weaving them into the scene. I hope I can find some more!

Regards: Tom

Tom,

Your crew has certainly added a new dimension to the overall effect of the model - well done! Those small amounts of color really bring out some of the more interesting details that otherwise might be missed.

Hank

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HMS III
Mocksville, NC
BB62 vet 68-69

Builder's yard:
USS STODDARD (DD-566) 66-68 1:144, Various Lg Scale FC Directors
Finished:
USS NEW JERSEY (BB-62) 67-69 1:200
USN Sloop/Ship PEACOCK (1813) 1:48
ROYAL CAROLINE (1748) 1:47
AVS (1768) 1:48

What type of gray color is used on your ship and what year, Tom?

_________________
Pascal

•Battleship Bretagne 3D: https://vu.fr/FvCY
•SS Delphine 3D: https://vu.fr/NeuO
•SS Nomadic 3D: https://vu.fr/tAyL
•USS Nokomis 3D: https://vu.fr/kntC
•USS Pamanset 3D: https://vu.fr/jXGQ

Sometime, and I haven't found out exactly when, the ship was repainted from the green amphibious camo scheme to the grays. I believe this was perhaps in July 1945 at Hagusha Beach or Kerama Reto. It is the same color I used for Randall, self mixed from Golden Fluid Acrylics, White/black/Pthalo Blue/purple to match a 21% reflectance as reference to Kodak 18% grey card for density (measured with Minolta Spotmeter F and Gossen Luna Pro). Color balance eyeballed under varying light conditions for the original batch in comparison to Snider & Shorts color chips. Unfortunately the Chips are misplaced currently. Photos generally taken under studio strobes with a Canon 5D sR. I notice some color shift in the photos between JPEG and Raw images. Generally I use photo stacking to increase depth of field from raw images. Then 95% of the image info is tossed out in conversion to small JPEG's for posting.

I did have access to the green camo scheme for this particular ship but no access to suitable greens for mixing and no experience with working with them.

It's not perfect. The photo above is slightly over exposed with shadows brought up in the raw file in photoshop to keep from loosing crew details in the shadows.

Tom

Today painting and installing weather decks crew members. So far no adult supervision, Chiefs and (maybe) junior officers. On deck crews for the 40's on the APA and ARL are complete, lacking a few second loaders. I have been able to take a sitting pointer/trainer figure and slip it into the sky lookouts. Lots of those. Added a couple of Quartermasters on the bridge wings taking Pelorus bearings on both ships. I need (a lot) of Orlikon loaders with drums. I think I may be able to merge a drum and figure in Chitubox to get an acceptable loader figure. Maybe... So printing more figures! No Pacific Officer colors onboard as yet.

Cheers: Tom

Printed a small squad of Orlikon loaders. Designed a single detached magazine and moved it in Chitubox into the open arms of one of the figures, such that it was resting in his hands. The figure and magazine, though two pieces print as one joined piece. However every single figure and mag must be hand joined, they do not copy as a unit. I got 8 good ones, enough for Poseidon but Randall (APA) will need many more. I can vary them a bit, mirror the figure, change the orientation of the magazine and whatnot.

Tom

Two steps forward, several steps back and at it again. Murphy's law says if there are two different types of resin on the bench, you will refresh with a slosh of the wrong one. As a test to see what might happen I went ahead and ran a batch anyway. Now't... Nutt'n. So the good news not a lot of resin. Emptying the vat revealed time to replace the FEP (Film) and re calibrate. So ran a batch of my various ) everyone different) 20 mm loaders. They cane out just fine though a couple were a little bow legged? So spent some time painting, grey primer overall, blue trousers, chambray shirts, flesh tones, black magazines and shoes, then a little grey touchup. So installed a couple on Poseidon though Randall will end up with a bunch more. The surprise was the cheapest possible detail brush was much mo-betta than the expensive one's I am won't to use.

A suitable brush makes life easier.

I think the sitting gunners can be shoehorned into the sky lookouts, that makes for 12 new crew for the APA! Poseidon only has 2. Randall gets 10-14 lookouts and who knows whatever number of searchlight jockeys, and on and on. I will avoid populating the decks with hundreds of assault troops?

My old girlfriend tossed out my dad's WWII Officers work coat, with thin pile lining. Wish I still had it, needed a new brass zipper.

Tom

Going through a lot of Orlikon loaders, Randall has 10 20 mm's so that makes for a lot of loaders. Each one of a batch is a different figure, the figure can be sized, mirrored and each magazine is hand merged with some mirrored etc. Made a CPO overseeing goings on with an evil eye from one of the officer figures. I think I can make a phone talker by merging a large helmet onto a figure. For Randall's 5" mount I can add carried items such as 5" shells or powder casings. Slowly getting better at painting these little "gentlemen". Variations in tone of chambray shirts and dungarees (and skin tone) helps create a miss cognition of greater diversity.

Tom

Question:

Who would recommend a Kakhi paint for figure uniforms? Crew populating Poseidon at the moment = 39

Thanks: Tom

Bow AA positions manned.

A little known and off the books project in preparation for Operation Coronet was a Kamikaze upgrade undertaken by Captain Flanagain, with the help of his experienced chiefs and enterprising repair officer. To lighten ship for voyages of damaged picket destroyers off Okinawa much top weight was removed. Having some stroke in the repair/salvage community seemed a waste to not upgrade the firepower before venturing into Japanese home waters. In the event the end of the war stopped completion of the upgrade.

Tom

Tom,

Interesting!

Adding the twin 5"/38 mount and the Mk 37 director was a lot more complicated than simply bolting them to the deck. They would need a fire control system linking the director and the mount. This consisted of a Mk 1 computer/rangekeeper and a lot of wiring. Since there was only one mount it could be wired through the computer directly to the director. Without the computer to calculate lead angles and burst times the probability of hitting an aerial target was essentially zero. Even with the entire fire control system the probability was pretty low. After the war it was calculated that 1000 rounds (of all types) were needed to score one kill. Even with the proximity fuze late in the war a shot from the 5"/38 still had a pretty low probability of destroying an airplane.

The gun required a handling room directly below the mount and magazines for powder and shells. The superstructure below the mount and director would have to be beefed up quite a bit. And adding all that mass topside would change the metacentric height and affect the stability of the ship. An amount of mass equal to (or greater than) the mount, handling room and director and the beefed up support would have to be removed first. That's a lot of surgery for the ship! Doing all of this at a forward base would be challenging.

Then there would be the problem of getting the Naval Supply System to provide ammunition. Larger combat ships would have priority. I don't know how it was during WWII, but when I was in the Navy if a part or supply wasn't on the allowed parts/supply list you couldn't get it from the supply system. Well, that was the theory, but we got a lot of stuff on the little minesweeper I was on by trading 5 pound cans of coffee and canned hams (COMSHAW)! But ammunition could be tricky.

Phil

_________________
A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

I had hoped that someone would respond to my little hoax. I am quite aware of the complexities of what the support systems require. The ship had plenty of volume for all this stuff. The various balasting capabilities allow for plenty of stability, after all a whole LCT could be carried on an LST as deck cargo. Perhaps the hardest issue would be the cam's for controlling the difference in position for the mount vrs. the director. The space below the mount was merely a little storage space and plenty easy to run supporting structure below that. Ammo, in plenty amongst the amphibious force, many of the members of the gator navy had 5" mounts, including the LSMR's which she acted as mother hen. These ships had one thing which most warships did't have, a lot of volume. She had decent light AA for a ship her size but not the longer range AA. If I were Captain Flanigan I'd want some more defense for the home Islands invasion. Small reduction in repair capability and a significant increase in defense!

It would never fly through BuShips...