The Ship Model Forum

Hi Darren!!!
Awesome shot of USS "Reagan" you posted ( do you have more??? ),

Patrick:

I may have missed your answer, but...Which Carrier are you trying to build?

The phot of the Nimitz hull in drydock with the large protruding bulbous bow is how the hull design changed for the Reagan, the Bush has the same modified bow design and I believe that a few other of the Nimitz class will be modernized with this shipalt as well.
The original Nimitz bow did not go straight down from the waterline either, they have a slightly forward bulb on their underwatrer stem profile as well as a good size bulbous shape to it.

HI Charlestonguy boatman here i see you are intrested in carriers i have only been builing my carrier for a couple of yrs seel post above .Exscuse me for asking but are you building a model of sartoga ?

What about the Saratoga Class ships? Did they have a forward bulb as well and are all carriers painted the same below the waterline?
Thanks

The Forrestals have no bulbous bow. scratchbuilding a 1/350 Ranger waterline.

First:

Yes the Forresal class did have a bulbous bow, in profile the bow rakes back with the angle lessening as you get towards the waterline but once it reaches back to the FP it goes straight down to the forefoot. None of the conventionaly powered carriers had the forward protrusion below the waterline, only CVN-65 and 68 thru 75 had the lower bow go forward of the FP, and of course anyone following this thread have seen the large forward protruding bulbous bow on CVN-76 and 77.

A bulbous bow does not neccesarily always protrude forward of the FP.

The items that your pointing out on the photo above are 35' whip antennas in their down position, these are hinged as to get out of the way of flight ops.

The carriers had a 7 to 8 foot black boot top and then red below that. another note of interet is that the boot top could be 7 feet high at the bow but only 3 feet at the stern, the top line of the boot top is parallel with the base line but the bottom of the boot top angles upward along the entire length of the hull.

Hi Jimmy,

I wouldn't say that the model shown above is wrong. But I would say that the edges need to have more curve put into them.

I understand what you are saying, but I think it is matter of degree. Yes there are curves in the bow. But I don't see as much as you see. What I see is shown below.

In this pic of the Reagan, you can see a prominant weld line go across the front and some creasing from internal welding above it. To my eye, they go straight across for a large portion of the front. The red v outline is what I would call flat. The green circles are where I would use blocks/putty/sanding to make the sides curve into the front.



The following is a set of plans I got from Floating Drydock. They don't show the curves as much as I would like, but you can see that they are understated, rather than over stated.






Finally, even though I strive to make my models as accurate and detailed as I possible can, I don't expect others to. Modeling is supposed to be fun and relaxing so I usually make my responses lean toward that direction. If a model doesn't have quite the exact curve, so be it, hopefully someone had fun making it and is proud of it!

Cheers!
Darren