1/350 USS Enterprise CV-6

[mconnelley]

Hello:

Here's a small amount of actual progress: I glued on the bow gun tub. The ladder is a piece I stole from the kit's PE sheet. The gun mount is just dry fit in there for now. But one small step closer to getting the flight deck installed.

Mike

[MartinJQuinn]

The problem I realized is that the hangar deck walls weren't white. They are on carriers today, but not back then apparently. I was looking at this picture of the hangar deck and noticed that, while yes the wall aren't as dark as the deck, the walls are darker than the sailors' hats. The walls are about as dark are their shirts. I'm not saying the walls were blue, just that they're about the same darkness. Maybe some sort of light or medium gray.

They were most likely silver or aluminum (can't remember which). Tracy White posted about this. If I find the post I'll link it here.

[mconnelley]

Hello:

He has a post from Sept 11, 2021 on this topic:

viewtopic.php?f=46&t=12986&p=957560&hil ... er#p957444

It'd be awfully helpful to have a color photo or film from back then showing this, on any ship. They filmed 'Dive Bomber' on the Enterprise, but do they show anything of the hangar deck?

Mike

[TOMLABEL]

I've seen this same silver color on the interior wall of USS Alabama's (BB60) armored conning tower.
Kelley

[TOMLABEL]

The silver paint was also in the barbette's lower sections as well as the one engine room they had open. I did not get any specific pictures of the paint in the engine room as I was too busy checking out the Westinghouse turbines.

[mconnelley]

Hello:

While I procrastinate on repainting the hangar deck, I got some work done on the airwing. I'm declaring the F4Fs to be finished. All of the decals are on (including each plane number...hard to see behind the folded wings but they're there), and the wings are on as well. Nothing really special to report, just a lot of work to do. 200 decals, 50 wings to glue on, etc.

Now I need to figure out what I want to do with the SBDs. Most photos show them on deck with the canopies open, which would involve a lot of cutting the kit parts and needing to glue on lots of tiny clear parts. I'll probably do one as a prototype to see how that goes, then make a decision.

Mike

[mconnelley]

Hello:

It's been over a month since I posted anything. I've been trying to finish an F-4 that was lingering on the shelf of doom for many years. But some work has happened on the Big E that's worth sharing.

When we last left off, the topic was the silver color used on the inside (in the case of the Big E, in the hangar deck). I've been painting the hangar deck walls a silvery color. Since metallic colors aren't that opaque, I did a base coat of light gray, and then an overcoat of the silver. Here's what it looks like. I put a small piece of white paper in the hangar deck as a reference. I think it's a little darker than I thought it'd be, but overall the look is ok. Also, being in the hangar deck, not a lot will be noticed in there so I don't worry too much.

Mike

[mconnelley]

Hello:

So it's been while since I posted anything. I've been taking a break on the Enteprise to finish off a Tamiya 1/32 F-4J that was on the shelf-of-doom for a number of years. Now that that's done, your regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly.

Mike

[mconnelley]

Hello:

One thing I've been putting off is dealing with the canopies of the SBDs. Photos show that their canopies were often open while on the deck, so I wanted to depict them that way. However, I was reluctant to start chopping apart tiny canopies for fear that parts to fly off into the distance or I couldn't glue them down. I gave one a try, and just took off the rear canopy, and that was ok. So then I tried another, and 'opened' both canopies, and to my surprise that worked quite well.

The picture shows the progression from back to front. The one in the back doesn't have a canopy yet. The next closer one has only the rear canopy opened. The three closest to the camera have both canopies open.

The props are also sort-of-in-place. The prop shaft from the Pontos set is much smaller than the kit plastic part, so the hole in the kit 'engine' is too big for the Pontos shaft. So, I filled the hole in the engine with putty and pressed the shaft into place, sort of making my own hole that's the right size. I'll pop out the props and glue them in properly once the putty has set. Also, not all of the decals are on all of the planes yet.

Mike

[mconnelley]

Hello:

I think I'm declaring victory on the SBDs. I managed to all of the canopies on (and open) without losing any parts, which I consider a minor miracle. I was hoping to put the numbers on each plane, but those decals just wouldn't come off the paper without getting munched into a tiny ball. So unless I am overtaken by madness, I'll leave the numbers off.

Mike

[mconnelley]

Hello

...and that means that the air wing is "stick a fork in it" done. Somehow it doesn't quite look like it represents a ton of work, but it is. It takes a while to make 57 little planes. Every plane got assembled, putted, filed smooth, primed, painted, decaled, and detailed. Just the stars are 342 individual decals.

Mike

[NavyShooter]

Getting the Air Det done is a huge step!

Working on my Bonnie model, I found the same thing. One airplane model isn't much work...but making 28 aircraft...with paint, decals, putty, sanding, sealing coat, etc...a big effort.

I'll suggest you pat yourself on the back quite resoundingly for this progress.

They look great!!!!

[Dadeo911]

Congratulations! That's a huge accomplishment. And they look AMAZING!

Cheers,
Chris

[anyahajobuzi]

Hello!

Now you just have to paint each propeller tip yellow, and have some oil leaking from each cylinder on each aircraft!

That is some dedication to the airwing! Lots of great work! Can't imagine it didn't drive you crazy. I will be building 2 carriers (modern) in 1/700, but I won't even attempt the airwing on those.

Nice work so far!!!

Cheers: Laci

[mconnelley]

Hello:

Merry Christmas! Thanks for all of the kind words about the airwing. Attention now shifts to another major milestone: getting the hull painted. I primed the hull with Vallejo black primer, in part to look for flaws in the hull surface. There were a number of deep gauges left over from very early in the project when I was removing the hull plating detail. I knew some of that was there, but only when you get some paint on do you see what it'll look like. Also, the filler for the divots at the bow needed some more blending with the files.

One other thing I did was tap two 6-32 holes in the bottom of the hull to be able to secure the hull to it's eventual mounting plate, but the screws also make a nice handle when the whole hull is covered in wet paint.

The worst offenders were sanded out. I threw on some more primer at the bow, but not yet at the stern areas that were worked on. Once the hull is primed and looks ok, we'll move on to paint.

Mike

[mconnelley]

Happy New Year!

I *HAVE* been working on the Big E. I painted the black (actually very dark gray) got the boot stripe, but it looks about the same as before so not much new to show about that. I noticed that the 20 mm guns were less complete than I thought they were, so I've been working on finishing them off. This is my first try using white (PVA) glue on photo etch, and it seems to be working very well.

Here's picture of all 49 guns. The tiny hand cranks are the specks near the top. By now I've gotten most of them on...I think I have 19 to go. Then all of the AA will finally be done.

Mike

[MartinJQuinn]

One of the downside to USN WW2 ships - all those damned AA guns!!

[mconnelley]

Hello:

...and speaking of all of those AA guns, I sort of forgot that to be done, they need to get painted. I've painted the 5" and 40 mm guns by hand, which isn't too bad since there are only 8 and 4 of those, respectively. However, for the 49 20 mm guns, I really wanted a faster way.

Here's what I came up with. I stuck a number of guns into a log of blue tack, then airbrushed them en masse. This worked surprisingly well. None of them blew away, and I was able to quickly paint half of the lot.

In this photo, the first batch has already been primed, whereas the next batch is ready to be primed.

Mike

[mconnelley]

Hello:

Here are all of the 20 mm guns painted. Since they were all plugged into the blue tack, it was easy to give them a few coats with the airbrush. NOW the AA guns are all done (aside from a little detail painting, washes, dry brushing). Next step is painting the hull...unless I find a way to procrastinate on that some more.

Mike

[mconnelley]

Hello:

In the last month the focus has been on painting the hull. After painting the black for the boot stripe it was time to mark off the stripe and mask it. I glued a pencil to a pair of calipers, so that I could precisely set the height of the pencil and keep it level. I used that to mark the top and bottom edge of the stripe, which gets challenging near the stern as the slope of the hull makes those two lines gradually get farther apart.

The next challenge was that the curvature of the tape near the stern caused the tape to buckle. I put a piece of Tamiya tape over the tape strips, traced out the edge, then replaced the tape strips with the cut piece of Tamiya tape with the right curve in it.

Mike