The Ship Model Forum

I finished painting the hull, but it took some time to get it right. I airbrushed white paint first and liked how it was looking. After airbrushing the red on to the hull and letting it dry, I was confused why my hull had this gritty feel to it. I knew this isn’t the correct result. After doing some research, it was a combination of different things. I found out my airbrush has a fine needle, and I was spraying too far. The paint just dries up once it hits the surface. More practice with the airbrush is needed. I bought a medium needle to see if that will help give me the desired results when I work on other parts of the Oregon.

I ended up sanding some of the red paint off and spray painted it a second time and I’m much happier with the result.
I started dry fitting the wooden deck to the hull.

I got the wooden deck from scaledecks.com, so putting down a deck is a new thing for me. I found out by dry fitting, the product doesn’t quite line up perfectly due to areas that are a little tighter then anticipated. I don't think it's a product issue, but more of the way the Oregon was molded. So I might have to cut some portions and modify it to make it fit before gluing…so this should be interesting.

So far so good...

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Doing a terrible job of building model boats since 1988...

Current Build
USS Oregon
USS Iowa (mothballed)

Planned builds
USS Wisconsin
USS New Jersey
USS Alaska

So the last few weeks I was able to glue the wooden deck to the Oregon with no issues and work on the superstructure.

When I cut off the phantom deck, I managed to make some gouges where the 8 inch guns would be at. Knowing this, I decided to kick that issue down the road. Well, now I have to work on it. I couldn't leave the gouges as is as it would look terrible so after doing some thinking, and ponder if I wanted to putty it over or just cover it. I decided to cover it up. So I got some washers and did a rough drawing of what I wanted to cover up, and then traced it on some plastic and cut it to size. Eventually I got the areas I wanted to cover, covered. I cut a hole of the turret to sit in, but then thinking, I want to avoid using the putty as much as possible, so I made the hole big enough to go around the ridges where the 8 inch turrets would sit.

To make sure my hole just surrounds the ridges, I painted the ridges and placed the plastic pieces on top and it gave me an outline of where I need to make my cuts. So now I don't need to worry about the hole too big that the turret won't be able to cover it. It looks a lot better now. I know I need to putty some areas, but it won't be as much as before.

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Doing a terrible job of building model boats since 1988...

Current Build
USS Oregon
USS Iowa (mothballed)

Planned builds
USS Wisconsin
USS New Jersey
USS Alaska

It's been awhile since I posted on this. Been busy with life, travels and chasing my kid around. I've been working on the Oregon little by little but making slow progress but admit, this project has been a bit cumbersome and eventually I was burned out, so I took a break. Now I’m back working at it again.

Originally, the vents were made to be attached to the phantom deck, which isn’t there anymore. I had to get some styrene tubing and extend the vent. Originally, I wanted to angle them like I saw on some of the pictures on Navsource, but I didn’t have the tools, skills or patience to make all those angle cuts. So I just did them straight up and I’m happy with how they turned out.

I painted the turrets, funnels and the conning in the buff color, so far so good. I’ll need to do some touch up work as there are some areas are a bit lighter than others. I did a dry fit on the Oregon, so far it’s looking good…

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Doing a terrible job of building model boats since 1988...

Current Build
USS Oregon
USS Iowa (mothballed)

Planned builds
USS Wisconsin
USS New Jersey
USS Alaska

Here is the latest update...not a whole lot done the past couple months. My family decided to move to a different house, so the Oregon and all my modeling stuff is going into storage for the time being. I painted the smokestack tip, and the barrels black. As of now, the Oregon is dry fitted on the pictures. Until next time!

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Doing a terrible job of building model boats since 1988...

Current Build
USS Oregon
USS Iowa (mothballed)

Planned builds
USS Wisconsin
USS New Jersey
USS Alaska

I have been following along since your start and want you to know your doing great on this OLD model.
Sorry to hear about your "...gouges where the 8 inch guns would be..." But you fixed that with some great ingenuity.

The major failing of the kit is the re-work required to fix what you called the the phantom deck. You may have had a few Gouges along the way but the the end result, (Accuracy!), will make it all worthwhile.

Keep up the great work. Thanks for starting this WIP and I hope the Move to the new family home goes well. It's a tough time to relocate.

Stay safe. Be Well.

Nino.

Say what? It's been 9 months since I last posted?

Well, I'm back working on the Oregon model and put the Iowa on hold. I finally got the super structure painted. I glued down the decking and it's looking pretty good (opinions my differ). Since I removed the faux deck, and replaced it with a somewhat not quite accurate gangway deck, I didn't want to glue down the deck and thought it would be fine painted with the buff color. After thinking about it, I thought "well, it's going to look like crap if I keep this gangway in the buff color." So I decided if I wanted to make it look less crappy, might as well glue a deck.

Luckily, I Scaledecks had some extra wood I can cut out and just glue it. I made some templates in some of the hard to reach areas, so I just used scrap paper and just made rough cuts and trimmed a sliver of paper to make it fit right.

I admit, it's not pretty, but it looks a little better.

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Doing a terrible job of building model boats since 1988...

Current Build
USS Oregon
USS Iowa (mothballed)

Planned builds
USS Wisconsin
USS New Jersey
USS Alaska

This is looking great! I am enjoying watching your build, thanks for sharing. If I ever get around to build my kit, this will be an invaluable reference.

Regards,
Timothy

Thanks Timothy! Hopefully the reference will help you and anyone who works on this. Heck, I expect them to be better than mine!

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Doing a terrible job of building model boats since 1988...

Current Build
USS Oregon
USS Iowa (mothballed)

Planned builds
USS Wisconsin
USS New Jersey
USS Alaska

I worked on the crane during the last couple of weeks. The instructions provided by Tom's Modelworks wasn't entirely clear so I did my best guess and used some photos from Navsource. I removed the plastic deck and hooks and replaced it per the instructions provided by Tom's Modelworks. In order to have the PE deck fit, you have to shave down a little bit of plastic so the PE deck would fit. Once I attached the PE deck, it was a bit tight and I wasn't able to complete the fold for the railing towards the crane, so I had to clip off some of the railing. It wasn't the best idea and after I finished it, I asked myself if the PE deck was too high or should I shaved a little more in the surrounding areas to make the railing fit better. In the end, it is what it is.

I'll need to sand the base a little so it's flat. Currently, if I glued it, it would look a bit wonky. Otherwise, it looks alright.

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Doing a terrible job of building model boats since 1988...

Current Build
USS Oregon
USS Iowa (mothballed)

Planned builds
USS Wisconsin
USS New Jersey
USS Alaska

Last couple of weeks I've been working on the hurricane decking. When I first started on this project, Tom's Modelworks has extensive and very detailed instructions. On the aft bridge (part 20) had to be sanded down due to make the railing flush. I tried to sand it down and even cut out the walls but in the end (see Oregon52, the orange used to be a wall), I just scratch built a new aft bridge using styrene that will make the deck flush with the existing hurricane deck from the model.

Now I am able to put the pieces together and it fits well. When I dry fitted the wooden deck, I was a little short on decking material (see Oregon54). The reason was the deck from scaledeck is intended to fit the Oregon with no modifications. Well, as you already know, this project has been modified a tad bit. So I had to cut out a small piece of decking and tried to match it with the wood as close as possible. The end result was okay, but it was better than having a deck coming up a tad short. The decking laid down pretty good along the hurricane deck. After some rough challenges, I think I'm starting to see the finish line...

At this rate, I think I could sell this model for...I don't know $2,000!

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Doing a terrible job of building model boats since 1988...

Current Build
USS Oregon
USS Iowa (mothballed)

Planned builds
USS Wisconsin
USS New Jersey
USS Alaska

I would never dream of tackling with kits of unorthodox scales for mutiple obvious reasons. But things seems to be getting very well and smooth on your fine model Keep up the great work!

Thanks USSCYCLOPS. It's going well...smoothly? Opinions may differ!

This past week, I've been working on the 8 inch guns. I got the barrels from B&D Barrels and they look good. Flash back to when this project first started, I sawed off the plastic barrels and glued the metal barrels on. Primed, painted and put it in a tin cup and kicked it down the road. When I posted pictures of the ship and dry fitted the 8 inch guns, I had some concerns. It didn't look right, I kept telling myself, these barrels look longer than it should (see Oregon56).

Late spring of 2020, a local member from my local modeling group sent me a copy of the USS Oregon blueprint. I looked at the blueprint and set it aside on my desk. Couple of weeks ago I rolled out the blueprint and needed to work on some calculations. The legend of the blueprint, 1/16 inch equals 1 foot. So doing some calculations, I calculated that the barrels length (depending where you measure) it's roughly 14 feet long. Multiple that by 12 (for inches) and divide by 225 (1/225 ratio), the barrel length should be roughly 3/4 inch on the model. If you were to just saw off the plastic barrel and replace it with the metal barrels from B&D, it is 7/8 inch long, 1/8 inch too long (Oregon58).

After facepalming and covering my face trying to figure out what to do, I decided I just had to somehow fix it. So I grabbed the tin can full of primed and painted barrels, and broke off the old plastic base (Oregon61) and chucked it. After fiddling around how to place the barrel, thinking do I create a new base, I just wanted to keep it simple. So I glued the barrel to the turret, adjusted and waited to dry. Measure, broke it off, adjusted and finally was close to the desired 3/4 inch. See Oregon60 for comparison.

Since I was working on the turret upside down, the left barrel was easy to do. The right barrel needed a some modification. I had to scrape some material so the right barrel will line up on par with the other barrel (see Oregon62). Eventually both barrels line up equally.

I finished up fixing all 8 barrels and dry fitted it on the ship. After all that work, it was well worth fixing it. 1/8 of an inch makes a huge difference.

Things are looking good...the old battle wagon is starting to take shape. My apologies for writing such a long post. I wanted to share my experience if anyone who wanted to work on the Oregon, at least there is a reference.

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Doing a terrible job of building model boats since 1988...

Current Build
USS Oregon
USS Iowa (mothballed)

Planned builds
USS Wisconsin
USS New Jersey
USS Alaska

You have done an outstanding job with the old girl.
My compliments
John

Although it's been a while, I hope to see some update on this one. Love ships of that shape/era. Great job

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The merchant shipyard

Thanks John for the complement!

Thanks Neptune! Here is an update that you seek!

Last time I worked on the Oregon was in April, after that just got busy with work, family and trips. I did managed to do some small things to the ship but nothing extensive. I had to redo the ventilators as they were too short. I also worked on the old directors and that's all I did. I do admit I'm a little burned out by this ship, but it's sitting on my desk waiting to be finished. I know I'm close to the end of it, but there are some challenges such as finding chains that will work for this ship. I also started a YouTube channel that is some what like a diary or journey of whatever model project I'm working on. If anyone is interested in the link, you can send me a message as I feel it might not be cool to post it on this forum.

Once I finish my current YouTube project, I'll get back to working on the Oregon. Here are few pics of what I did in April.

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Doing a terrible job of building model boats since 1988...

Current Build
USS Oregon
USS Iowa (mothballed)

Planned builds
USS Wisconsin
USS New Jersey
USS Alaska

Really nice job on your Oregon. I've heard that this is a pretty tough kit due to its age.

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Jim