1/350 USS Enterprise CV-6

[mconnelley]

Hello:

With the masking done, I painted the lower hull. Straight red looks too bright, but Vallejo hull red is a rather dark reddish-brown and looked way to dark to me. I used a photo of USS Pennsylvania in dry dock during the war to try to get the color right:

https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collec ... -2106.html

I mixed red with some dark green (maybe RLM black green?) to try to get a good match.

Mike

[MartinJQuinn]

Coming along nicely!

[mconnelley]

Hello:

Major milestone has been reached in that the hull is painted! Almost a shame to hide all of that brass under layers of paint, in the sense that helps to show the work that went into the model, and what was changed from the kit. The paint went on very quickly, and most of the time was spent masking the 'skirt' between the waterline and the wood plank.

The hull is bolted to the wood plank below it, which makes handing the model SO much easier. Unlike previous models, I don't need to actually handle the model at all, and the plank bumps into things rather than the model which saves a lot of damage.

Next steps: Fitting final stuff into the hangar deck, and fitting the flight deck.

Mike

[mconnelley]

Hello:

Here's what it looks like with the masking removed. The paint of the boot stripe came off in a few small patches, but overall things look reasonably good...no major issues with paint bleeding or large areas where the tape pulled off the paint. Also, the relative contrast between the blue, black, and red is about what I was shooting for.

The flight deck is just laid onto the hull in these pictures, so any twisting of the fight deck or gaps will be taken care of.

Mike

[mconnelley]

Hello:

It's been a month, so a good time for an update. I've been working on the ship's boats. Some photos from the time period don't show the boats being aboard, but I like the look of them being there, so I'm putting them on.

The boats that come with the kits are just totally the wrong shape, so I bought 3D printed ones. The only kit boat I'm using is the one that goes under the rear of the flight deck, where you can't see how off the shape is. But I am using the kit's boat cradles, but modified them so that the boats sit lower in the cradle and to clear the keel of the boats.

For some reason, the paint just doesn't seem to want to stick, even though I used a fair amount of primer. Maybe it has something to do with the 3D printed material, as the paint is sticking really well elsewhere on the model. Just means that after I do some handling, such as to paint the PE, I need to touch up the areas that rubbed off.

Overall, I think these are a vast improvement over the kit boats, and I like how they turned out.

Mike

[mconnelley]

Hello all:

It's been a long time since the last update. But I am very happy to say that the flight deck is glued down to the hull! It feels like this is a major milestone in the build...like closing the fuselage halves when building a plane. There are probably other things I could have done in the hangar deck, but I just threw caution to the winds and put the flight deck down.

A lot of things can be done now that were waiting for the flight deck to go on, and I look forwards to getting to those shortly.

Mike

[ModelMonkey]

Hi Mike,

I'm just seeing your last two posts now. She's looking amazing!

Regarding paint not sticking to the 3D-printed boats you have, that sometimes indicates that the resin is not fully cured. Uncured resin can interfere with paint sticking and paint hardening. If it's not too late or otherwise impractical, set the boats out in the sun for a half hour or so. The sun's UV light should cure all the resin and may solve the problem.

Hope this helps.

[Dadeo911]

Looks great! I had the same issues with the bootline on my Yorktown. I was going to ask if you had cleaned the resin boats with Isopropyl Alcohol and cured them in sunlight of a UV flashlight but Model Monkey kind of got there already.

Keep up the good work,

Chris

[mconnelley]

Hello:

Now that the deck is glued down, I've started to add the PE 'decorations' that the Pontos set provides. Instead of brass, these parts are steel, so they feel a bit thicker and a lot stiffer. Cleaning up the little nubs from the sprue takes a bit more work as the steel is quite a bit harder. I'm going from the aft end forwards, and I've gotten as far as the middle elevator.

I don't think I'll add many of the parts for the arrestor cables, as they're just too small to reasonably deal with.

Mike

[mconnelley]

... slowly but surely working my way forwards...

There are the steel stripes going across for the barriers and arresting cable, but also some brass ones that seem to go on top of those too. I'm not sure what the brass ones are for. After working with the steel parts for a while, the brass seems so soft and easy to work with.

Mike

[FFG-7]

the brass ones appear to be expansion joints but seem awfully wide. look at pg 6 which is the flight deck as shown there.
CV-5 USS Yorktown Booklet of General Plans (1940) https://archive.org/details/cv5bogp1940

[Edoardo81]

I'm very curious about the deck with all that PE. This ship is on my todo list.
What colour will you do? Blue or teak tone?

[mconnelley]

Hello:

The deck will be blue, like the rest of the ship. Hopefully the PE deck details better blend in with the rest of the deck once it's all painted.

Mike

[mconnelley]

Hello:

I've finished adding all of the detail parts that span across the flight deck. Overall it looks pretty good...hopefully the thickness of the parts won't be too noticeable once it's all painted.

I've started addling the multitude of small details, like lights and the cable reel thingies at the edge of the deck. The pencil line is my reference for placing the lights. The drawing in the Pontos instructions are right on 1/700 scale. Once I realized that, then figuring out where to place the details was much easier.

Mike

[mconnelley]

Somehow it's been about two months since the last update. The big news is that the flight deck is now painted. Unfortunately the flight deck is also covered in tape to paint the dashed lines, so there isn't a lot to see right now.

I've also been working on the boats. I had problems with paint adhesion, possibly because the 3D printed resin hadn't fully cured. Despite layers of primer and paint, after a while I noticed that the boats looked 'glittery'...like someone had glitter-bombed the boats on a tiny scale. I think this is something coming through the paint from the underlying plastic, as it didn't look this way before.

Since then, I've taken the other 3D printed boats from the same batch, left them out in the Sun for a few days, and painted them up. So far the paint is sticking ok, and I haven't seen any glitter showing up...yet.

Mike

[mconnelley]

Yesterday I painted the stripes on the deck. I used pale blue-gray rather than white, since I think white would look too strong. I got this gray to use on the fighting tops of US battleships in Measure 1.

[mconnelley]

And here's what it looks like with the tape removed. I was surprised to see no leaks under the tape, or much over spray or spray sneaking under the tape. This was the first time I used the Vallejo thinner, and it did spray quite nicely.

I couldn't help but have a bit of play time; I added the island and a bit of the airwing. These aren't glued on...just stacked in place.

But it's starting to look like a finished ship. Still a lot of little things to fix, then I think we're on the home stretch of adding the AA guns and maybe some weathering.

[Edoardo81]

Wow It came really good!!!
Well done! It seems to me close to the end!

[Dadeo911]

Looks fantastic!

Take care,

Chris

[NavyShooter]

That's awesome! I can't blame you for 'playing' a bit! I did the same today with my Bonnie model.