YMW USS Canberra

[Stephen Allen]

Dave Hill

As promised here are some shots of my WIP USS Canberra CA-70, built from the YMW Baltimore kit. Please note that this is just a dry fit of all except the main forward and aft superstructure blocks.

regards

Steve


http://i30.tinypic.com/9zyo0n.jpg
http://i29.tinypic.com/sews5v.jpg
http://i32.tinypic.com/w06e0.jpg
http://i28.tinypic.com/29apidi.jpg

As discussed over on the 'Baltimore' thread, I have made a few mods to better represent Canberra and have used L'Arsenal 40mm gun tubs, with the forrard and stern tubs scratchbuilt to depict the 'double curve' to the top of each tub, with the peaks to the curves on the centreline. This is as far as it is going to get for few months until I have completed an ISW Sheffield.

http://i28.tinypic.com/309q444.jpg

[nick]

It looks very superb Stephen!

I especially like the weathering and the plating effect! It looks so real na suya na gud ko daan!

How did you make those ladders? And the plating effects too?

Thanks
Nick

[simon b]

Very nice. Whats the story with the hull plating? it looks very good.

[Timmy C]

Very nice! I'm especially heartened to see someone use Tinypic for picture hosting

I like how you did the waterline weathering - not many people do the algae there.


By the way, I'm putting all your pictures in the first post.

[Dave Rowe]

Excellent work Stephen
I also liked your HMS Victorious build too

[luke]

Very Nice.

Watching with interest.

[Stephen Allen]

Thanks all.

The hull plating is done using the good old masking tape and paint method to lay in the 'in' and 'out' strakes of plating longitudinally along the hull. Early welded hulls were not as featureless as you might think. The Baltimores (at least the early ones) had 'in' and 'out' strakes for much of their hull length just like a conventionally riveted ship (very clearly shown in diagrams and photos in the CA-70 Battle Damage report), and of course other classes had thicker hull plating for key strength areas, which can appear like 'in' and 'out' strakes.

The plate butt ends are simply scribed in with a scalpel blade but very gently - this leaves a very slightly raised line once covered with paint (unlike a scriber, which leaves a recess) - it's just enough to catch a little paint when drybrushing the hull - ditto for the edges of the strakes. One issue you will need to watch with this is that the scalpelled lines can become points of failure for the paint substrate, encouraging paint rip off when masked. I had a little of this occur when demasking, but mostly avoided it by using bits of paper under the masking tape to protect the paint

I can't claim that the plate layout, especially below the waterline, is precise as I didn't have access to a shell plate expansion plan, but I based as much of it as I could on photos.

The more vertical pattern of hull plating at the extreme bow is very noticeable in pictures of Canberra at launch. Some Baltimores also show very prominent butt plate reinforcement straps along the hull (complete with rivets), some don't - this may be a trick of lighting, later units might have been built that way, earlier units might have been reinforced at some point. For now I have left them off as they are not discernable to me in any photo I have of CA-70 in the period in question.

The ladder rungs are copper wire formed by winding around the edge of a steel ruler and then cut. These are then attached to the structure with clear varnish. Early Baltimores have lots of these individual rungs rather than separate ladders. This is a somewhat quicker method of producing these items than drilling holes and gluing rungs in for a true 3D effect. I did do this for the rungs on the hull near the fantail catapult mounts but I compromised on all the others for sanity's sake.

regards

Steve

[MartinJQuinn]

Holy Crap - that is magnificent!

[Devin]

Beautiful work. I especially like the weathering on the hull plating and the hand rungs on the gun tubs.