The Ship Model Forum

I'm building the USS Intrepid for the "Spring aircraft carrier group build" and for the 2009 "Seattle Spring Show" next April.

I will be useing the parts left over from my USS Boxer build. I had ordered Dragon's USS Randolph CV-15 kit and their USS Bon Homme Richard kit for that build. The Randoph kit was perfect. The BHR kit sucked. The hull and hangar deck were warped.
I e-mailed Dragon about replacement parts.
Dragon wanted pictures.
I sent pictures.
They sent replacement parts. These parts were warped worse than the original parts.
I e-mailed Dragon again with pictures of original and replacement parts side by side at different angles.
Dragon e-mailed me back and said they would replace the replacements. They were not happy with my request. Their e-mail said that "if the replacement replacements were were bad then maybe I should" That's how the e-mail ended. I guess they wanted me to get some exercise. I figured they wanted me to take a hike or maybe they want me to buy Trumpeter kits.
I used the original parts.
Here's some pictures of the reinforcement I used to straighten out warped hangar deck. I used Evergreen strip .125x.250 to reinforce the hangar deck. I would glue about two inches at a time and clamp down with clothespins. When the glue set, I would do another two inches and so it went on until I was done. There's only one bad spot on the port side I couldn't fix. The forcastle and thwe same problem.

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid

With the hangar deck installed, it's time to go to the outside of the hull. Work begins on the port side forward 40mm sponson.

The small platform aft of the sponson are .015x.060 plastic strips.

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid

more port side sponson pics.

Starboard side 40mm sponsons and cat walks.

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid

Super work, as always, Gordon. Looking forward to seeing this build progress.

_________________
Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

Ship Model Gallery

Dragon's Essex class carriers have their fit problems. This is the most obvious one to me. I have sanded and cut the side of the ship to conform with the cut out on the flight deck. I then cut a piece of .030x.080 plastic strip to fit the hole behind the quad 40mm platform.


The flight deck is next.

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid

The top of Dragon's flight deck is nicely detailed but the bottom is just bare flat plastic. I added some generic detail to the bottom of the flight deck using .010x.030 plastic strip. The ship will be mounted to a base and that will make seeing any detail under the flight deck very hard. The same generic detail will be done to the hangar deck. You know someone at the show will break out their mini-mag flashlight and look into the hangar deck. That's why I try to put plane by every opening just to block their view.

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid

More flight deck work.

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid

20mm galleries for the outer edge of the flight. I knew that I needed to scratch build a couple of 20mm galleries when I started this build. The two kits had different types of galleries. Some of these had square corners and the others had rounded corners. I decided to scratch build all of the galleries. I needed to build the following for the catwalk galleries along the flight deck. The bases were made from .030x.060 plastic strip and the shields were made from .010x.080 strip.
1- 10 gun placement
1- 7 gun placement
3- 6 gun placement
1- 5 gun placement
3- 2 gun placement

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid

Ciao
Luciano

_________________
Best Regard from Italy
http://www.navymodeling.com/

The island. The rear 20mm gallery was modified by cutting the shield off and replacing it with .030x.080 plastic strip. The forward one was made with .030x.125 strip for the base and again .010x.080 sor the shield.

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid

The Island.

The last picture shows all progess todate. Intrepid is today.

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid

Some progress on the island details.The doors and hatches are from GMM"s Watertight door set #700-22. The vents and piping are .030,.025,.020,.015 and .010 plastic rod.

No modeling tomorrow. I have to go and spend the day up north in Everson.

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid

The road trip is over so now I can get back to modeling. I got a little more work done on the island. The doors, hatches, vents, piping and wind deflectors are on. The deflectors look a little big but if it was any smaller, I would not be able to see it.
The deflectors are are made from .010x.020 plastic strip. The supports are .010x.010 plastic strip. I used a chiesel blade to cut off the excess plastic. I used the smoothest side for the bottom and the rough side for the top. Once the deflectors were glued on and set, I lightly sanded the upper portion smooth. I cut a piece of tape to the size that the deflector need to be and used that to determine the lenght of the deflector. It was the cut to the lenght of the tape.

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid

6-1 update continued

I will add the platfroms to the stack after I paint the island. Next id s the tripod and masts for the radar.

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid

Beautiful Gordon!! fantastic progress...... it makes me think I build to slow.

_________________
Dan
Field Artillery, King of Battle
Please check out the Secret Society of Model Builders on facebook.

Masts and radar update.

I ordered Tom's #757 Essex class carriers pe for this build. This set is very delicate and bends very easy. This set doesn't come with a yardarm. I should have remembered that from my Lexington CV-16 build. The set seems to have everything else one needs to do an Essex class carrier. The SG radar seems to be a little to large in my opinion. For this build I need an SK,SG (2),YE,SC-2,SM and Mk 4 radars. I found it hard to work with this set because it was to delicate for me, others will probably have no trouble working with it. I used some parts out of the spares box.

The other pe sets I used pieces from are as follows.

Tom's #705 misc. US radar set. SK,YE and Mk4 radar.

Gold Medal Models' #700-1 Naval ship set. SG (1) This set comes with four SG radars but I had used three of them on other builds. The second SG radar on the main mast is the support for a TDY Radar. It's small like the GMM SG radar and when painted it will be hard to tell the difference.

I will order GMM's #700-7 to get a yardarm. This set dosen't come with an SG radar.

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid

A little more progress. I primed everything with Tamiya's spay primer.

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid

Looking good Gordon! Do you have any info or references on Antietam? I'm getting nowhere looking for pics or info.

Hi Gordon

Thanks for the detailed build with photos, especially the PE recommendations, a great help to those of us starting a DML Essex Class.

Richard

It's been a while since the last update so here is where I'm at now on Intrepid. The hangar deck and flight deck have been primed and painted. It is now time to stripe the flight deck. I use paper, Tamiya tape ( I find that it sticks more to it's self and my fingers than it does to painted plastic.), straight edge and a hobby knife for this.

I first make sure my fingernails are cut before I start laying tape. I have learned from experience that they will mar a painted finish and not care at all about doing so.

In this case I'm using paper and tape fo a straight edge. I don't want to use a plastic or metal straight that might mar the paint.


Next I added the small tape strips that have been cut to the width I want the stripes.

_________________
Gordon


"Then there was one patched-up carrier...."
Vice Admiral Thomas A. Kinkaid