Gearing to Sumner - USS Barton mid-1960s

[Russ2146]

For my return to modeling after many years, I have chosen to attempt to model the USS Barton, DD 722, as she was in the mid-1960s as a Selected Reserve ship out of Philadelphia.

I have taken Dragon's Gearing model and started by shortening the model hull by 12mm. As I am going to go with a full hull, that means cutting both the upper and lower sections. As has been mentioned on this Board (Is there really any other, I mean really?) the upper hull should be sectioned where the water line is parallel to the main deck. However, the lower hull must be sectioned amidship, where the Sumner design was actually lengthened, in order to have any hope of the retained sections to have any hope of lining up.

Due to the way Dragon molded the main deck with a recess for the superstructure deck house, cutting the main deck, bulkheads and 01 deck requires some consideration. This is what I arrived at, given the midship open passageway and various bump outs on the bulkheads which were also molded into the main deck.

Next I'll be completing the hull and cleaning up the main deck

[taskforce48]

Looks like and interesting conversion. I have been contemplating a similar conversion to get the USS Laffey in her 1945 fit to have to go with my Laffey DD-459. Keep the pictures coming!

Matt

[Russ2146]

Thanks for your interest.

I should note that blueprints of the non-FRAMed Sumners are not readily available. However, Floating Drydock does have starboard Profile and Plan View prints of the Joseph P. Kennedy, before she was FRAMed. It does show her with offset 3" 50 tubs rather than centrerline tubs that I need. However, it does show the pre-FRAM tripod mast and the 01 level deck house supporting the Mk 56 gun director, though the structure for the in-line configuration is or appears to be square.

The hull is now in one piece. The lower hull pices were connected by softening a thin evergreen strip and attaching it to the inside of one cut end of the hull piece with quick set CA so that it would overlap the other piece. Then, with a slow set CA on the protruding strip, The other hull piece was alligned and held firm until set. I'm sorry I didn't photo that. While the stablizers lined up, it was necessary to fill the seam and slightly buil up the after section by less the a mm.
The bow needs correction which you can really see when the upper and lower hulls are connected. Ive started to sand down the lower hull to match the upper as there is no curve in the staem as shown in the plans.

I connected the two halves of the main deck in the same manner as the hull. The eposed main deck still needs filling and sanding

[Russ2146]

At long last.
I have to clean up a lot of things. Its amazing what you don't notice that shows up in digital photos

This is a shot of what I have been upto. The hull is WEM colorcoat, brushed/flowed on with an artist flat brushheld at about 15 degrees to the surface. I have to clean up the boot topusing my newly acquired vinyl masking tape

The Tripod mast is my attempt to achieve what Christian has done on the Neu. That's 1.8 mm main and 1.2 mm legs. As to the superstructure, I'm working from Floating Drydock's JP Kennedy plans and photos. The photos because it seems they were all a little bit different.

The 3" 50 tubs were made from styrene strip. The director house is made from styrene rectangular tube and filler. The director is Veteran Models

The UNREP tripods are brass rod. The antenna platform on the stack is cobbled together from unused PE, brass rod and some shaped sprue. The antenna on the starboard side is not correct, nor is the platform, for that matter. I am also not satisfied with the scale of the whip antenna bases

All in all, I need to clean up a number of things and correct some others. My intoduction to the combination of PE and CA has been interesting, to say the least.

[NukeMM]

Coming right along, Russ!

"Easy on the CA glue!" are the words I hear in my head everytime I'm applying it. It took way too, long for me to realize that the tinyest drop of CA can hold a lot. And I still mess it up here and there. I may just start calling it my trademark.