The Ship Model Forum

Hello Folks

One year ago a friend and I started a mammoth project of designing and building the famous Mare Island Navy Yard as in 1944.
The scale : 1:700 (this was to "host" our numerous USN ships of the period, as we're both long time USN fans)
The model : we planned to use nearly 100% custom made photo etching

My friend Jean carefully designed and drew more than 12 sheets (25cm x 10cm) with hundreds of parts.
He used the huge NavSource collection of period pictures... and today's Google space views to get correct dimensions for the piers.

The whole set includes the three West side "finger piers" (piers + related buildings and equipment), four big cranes, a dozen barges (workshop, power, litter, dredge, LCVP), various equipment (floating scaffoldings, etc.) and a bunch of vehicles, from a tiny Harley to caterpillars and rail road stuff. Not to forget some working figures.

I helped him in designing the masters (from my own experience in photo etching), then I did the entire etching in .2mm brass and .1mm steel. Jean started to assemble the prototype in late October.

Below are some pics of the "prototype", i.e. the first assembly and painting

The piers (relief photo etched in brass : later models will be cast in resin from those masters to keep costs down)


A "finger pier" after painting with some equipment in place


To build the piers we were helped by a "micro" caterpillar


Here's a view of an almost finished pier with a Niko Model San Francisco hull


Now the four big cranes. 100% photo etching :



Then some buildings on each pier :



Now the rail road equipment :


One of the four tiny Harleys (3mm long, note the relief etching of the engine)


More equipment (Look Dad : no hands !):

Here an LCVP :


And there comes our master piece : the dredge USS Endicott





At last (for the moment)... sorry... we couldn't resist



More pics are to come, as Jean is completing the other sub assemblies.

Enjoy.
We wish you an Happy New Year

Jean (Toulouse, France)
Bruno (Bordeaux, France)

Pouh.....speechless ....

That has to be one of the most impressive things I've ever seen modeling-wise, and you haven't even put the ships in yet!

OMG! Amazing job, as said before, it already looks impressive and the ships arent even in it yet! Cant wait to see more pictures of this build!!

HOLY CRAP! Very impressive!!!!!!!!!

This is awesome work. Please keep us updated.

Holy...........that has got to be one of the most amazing things I have seen....ever....

Infinite thumbs up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!









Bob Pink.

That is OUTSTANDING!!

Fantastic idea and execution. One request if I may be so bold. A 1/700 figure has to be posted on top of one of the cranes with his CAMERA, shooting those marvelous Mare Island pics.

Jim

This is sooo ridicilously impressive. It must be one of the greatest 1:700 modelling projects I've ever seen.

I also think you'd get rather rich if you were to make those etched items commercially available.

Congratulations Bruno, looks fantastique!!!!
How many and which ships will go into this dio?

From what I see so-far, absolutely floors me. Going to be the diorama of the decade

Neptune wrote:How many and which ships will go into this dio?

Well : this should differ between both of us :
As the pictures show, Jean is building the dio as a whole. The port will "host" his 1:700 kits for a time when he finishes them. The ships will not be glued in place.
He opted for a mid-high tide level to have both visible hulls for DDs and not too much height for cruisers.

As for me (Bruno), I plan to built the whole too with extension to the East (right) to include the submarine slip, but as a modular diorama, i.e. with separate piers. My future dio(s) will be presented either separately or assembled as I lack room in my tiny flat.

From the early stage we designed the whole set to be modular, so, in case of commercialization, one could buy and build one pier only, two or the three, with optional barge set, rail road set, buildings set and so on. The whole stuff costed us about 200-250 euros ($290 to 360)

Generaly speaking we can have one cruiser moored on each pier side, making a maximum of seven. Of course, some of them can be replaced by two to four DDs each, making a maximum of 28 DD size vessels !
During the War, Mare Island was responsible for Cruisers, Destroyers, Auxiliaries and subs : this make a laaaarge choice.

Jean tried to place some of his kits to give an idea during the early stage of assembly :
Here you can see a Cleveland class CL, an Atlanta CL, a Baltimore CA hull and a Sumner DD.


Mare Island "finger piers" have a complex understructure. Here is one of them upside down to show the 50 pilotis below. This is the only major exception to our 100% photo etch project : Jean's is made of wood, mine is Evergreen (for the master) and resin (for production models):
(the barges on left come from Battlefleet models, that on the right is ours)


Another barge (a workshop barge) :


A floating crane barge :


Last view of our "beloved" Endicott dredge (lot of design work on this complex vessel):


Detail of a pier with Niko Model San Francisco hull and boat :


Stay tuned for future pics...

Bruno

Simply outstanding.

Amazing !!:big_eyes:

Simply Awesome Can't wait to see the finished product.

JimRussell wrote:One request if I may be so bold. A 1/700 figure has to be posted on top of one of the cranes with his CAMERA, shooting those marvellous Mare Island pics.

Jim

DONE !

STUNNING

John

Very inspiring!
Tahnk you for sharing!
Cheers,
Guido