1:200 USS NEW JERSEY (BB-62) 68-69 (Trumpeter MISSOURI kit)

[Fliger747]

Hank:

The progress so far is quite impressive, with the usual bumps and false starts associated with both research and scratch building. Even if not intentional progress always slows during the Summer months, a good snowstorm always being good for active modeling. Perhaps besides being a construct of your ship at your time aboard, you are fortunate to not run aground upon the light AA barrier as it appears several extremely competent projects have for the time being. Having compared your ongoing project to some of the more standard builds it is actually impressive as to the amount of modification necessary. I though that re-doing my 1:192 to the modern configuration would be simple and straightforward. Boy was I wrong. Almost every real ship has so many fittings per square meter of bulkhead, no matter what era and these are big ships!

Looking forward to your further progress (as I am not making ANY for the Summer).

Regards: Tom

[BB62vet]

Tom,

Thanks for the support - always appreciate it. I tend to agree with your summer assessment of the modeling progress on the 1:200 IOWAs front - many started, but not a lot of summer progress reports.

I am lacking in an update of my intended test of ebony dye on the anchor chain (have somehow misplaced my small container of TransTint Dye) but intend to do that this week if possible.

Received my container of Micro-Mark rubber mold material as well as a more accurate scale from American Weigh (not American manufacture, however). Will try the scale out later during tonight's pour when I get back to my shop. I still have roughly 20 raft packs to mold.

One other item of news - Capt. Robert C. Peniston who c.o.'d NEW JERSEY during her 1969 decommission died at age 91 on 02 Aug - sad that the last of my two NJ captains are now gone.

Headed east now for the week.

Later,

Hank

[BB62vet]

Edited Monday Morning - 11 Aug 14

Well, last night's raft pack pour went better - the new scale is consistant and will work fine from here on out. I got a good set of items to use and will continue with the molding tonight.

Still haven't located the black (ebony) dye so I may have to bite the bullet and ordere another 2 oz. bottle - a little goes a long way. I want to see if it will work with the Matthew's anchor chain/stopper assembly plastic.

Also worked on the remaining Mk. 37 Fire Control Directors last night - should have them finished early this week. I've noticed and am constructing additional panel boxes and other items on the base foundation for the after fire control that are not molded in the kit. From photo images of NEW JERSEY's refit/decommission I can verify that this equipment was (obviously) in place. It's much easier to locate these itmes prior to placing the after Main Battrery Fire Control Tower so I'm going to have all the After Air Defense Station complete prior to putting the tower in place.

Hank

[Fliger747]

As the young sailors are no longer young, the old ones are passing.

When one begins finding all the misc. gear and equipment adorning a large ship, a festival of fine detail begins to present itself. For one with scratch skills this presents an almost endless opportunity. A lot of photos presents an opportunity, though some times an embarrassment of riches...

The resin casting is going well now, rolling the bottles to mix each contents, then pouring a capful of each into a plastic cup ant then swirling the fluid and running it up and down the sides for a bit. Seems to work better than stirring.

Sounds as if you are making good progress.

Regards. Tom

[Channell]

Hank:

The progress so far is quite impressive, with the usual bumps and false starts associated with both research and scratch building. Even if not intentional progress always slows during the Summer months, a good snowstorm always being good for active modeling. Perhaps besides being a construct of your ship at your time aboard, you are fortunate to not run aground upon the light AA barrier as it appears several extremely competent projects have for the time being. Having compared your ongoing project to some of the more standard builds it is actually impressive as to the amount of modification necessary. I though that re-doing my 1:192 to the modern configuration would be simple and straightforward. Boy was I wrong. Almost every real ship has so many fittings per square meter of bulkhead, no matter what era and these are big ships!

Looking forward to your further progress (as I am not making ANY for the Summer).

Regards: Tom

I guess I fall in that category. The AA hasn't stalled my build (I'm actually almost finished with 'em, only have 4 40MM quads left and the MK 14's for the 20mms). What's getting me is trying to do realistic water for my waterlined 'Mo... I don't have much experience doing water and I just can't pull off the look I want.

I wish I didn't waterline my 'Mo now and it's cost me my mojo... I've switched to another project until it returns. Still enjoying your build though, Hank!

[BB62vet]

Tom - Yea, the discovery of hidden items never ends

I think tonight I'll try the roll the bottle trick and see how that works with tonight's pour. Getting fairly close to finishing the Mk. 37 FC Directors (4) and will be able to move a bit forward to the conning tower area again.

Jasnon -Thanks for the compliments on the build. Being that my weeknights are usually self entertaining, I am able to accomplish work while others are involved with family/home/school etc. And that's 7/12/365, or there abouts. But, I'm NOT complaining!!!

On the water - When I was in college the last time ('70-72) I had an acquaintance who was an architect and built wonderful ship models. His forte' was weathering and water. He made his bases from styrofoam and then had a std. process for creating the "water" - He would mix a small amount of plaster of paris (enough to cover his base) as a thin mixture and then pour it onto the base which had temporary low walls to keep the mixture in place. The model, of course was located in it's carved out area (covered with Siryane Wrap to protect the hull) and with the plaster mixture self-leveliing, he would set up a variable speed fan to blow the "water" in the direction he wanted the waves to be set. This caused ripples to be created in the plaster and it would set up this way. Once hard, he would remove the model and proceed with painting. He started with either a dark green or dark blue as the under coat and work up to lighter tones. He would finish with flat white spray as the "white caps" by spraying directly across the tips of his waves (from the horizontal) thus giving him a really good "depth" for his water. I was awed by how simple (well, to him it was!!!) this process seemed to be. And there are a lot more ranges of spray available today than there were back in the '70's. NOTE - I think it was Plaster of Paris that he used, it may have been simply plaster, but mixed in somewhat thin consistency so that the fan on a med. speed would actually force the plaster to ripple.

Hope this helps.

Hank

[Keith Taylor]

Hank,

I've been following your thread from the start, and your modelling and scratch building ability is nothing but unbelievable! I've just recently started a WW2 1/200 USS Missouri, and I was wondering if you ended up doing the hull plating. I was also watching Jason Channell's Missouri build, and loved the way he had done the drain channels, so I'm currently doing the same, ( I hope it wasn't copyrighted)., and hoping he goes back to it after the u boat.
Having done 1/32 scale aircraft, I used to use drink can aluminium as different patches or strengthening plates on my models. It was always very convincing, easy to work with, near unlimited supply of parts, and paints, glues, etc as normal PE parts. So I was thinking of doing my hull plating that way, with the use of my wife's guillotine for straight cutting which she uses for scrap booking. And the print on drink cans comes off very quickly with wet and dry sandpaper.

[BB62vet]

Keith,

Thanks so much for the kind remarks. I'm glad that you're following my "drawn-out" build!!

I have not yet begun to do the hull - I have assembled it (without bilge keels/props/rudders) but nothing further. I'm sort of in a holding pattern on it as I follow RandyM's hull modification project. I'm also waiting on decking that is a modified version of the teak deck sets available. I did draw up the gusset plates (2 sizes) in 1:200 and 1:192 and can email you a .pdf of that drawing - you can print them out on card paper and adhere them to the hull. I believe I posted something about that on one of the other battleship threads (CASF - IOWA Class?). PM me with your email address.

As for the plating - I may try to scribe the horizontal plate lines on the bow as they gently curve aft into the main body of the hull and then locate the small eye bolts that are welded to the hull along those lines. Other than that (and the gusset plates) I had not planned to do anything other than the overboard discharges and the hand rungs at the stern. I don't really think that the individual plates are that visible in reality and therefore can't see overdetailing these on the model. I think this is a similar case with the old aircraft models that had all the rivets detailed when in reality they were flush with the fuseloge/wing surfaces and really weren't that noticable.

Good luck with your build!

Hank

[johndon]

I've just returned to the forum after a couple of years away and have thoroughly enjoyed looking at your work Hank.

I'd love to do the NJ in 1/200 as she was in the 80's but I reckon the surgery needed to do it with the Missouri kit would be bit too big of an undertaking I can only hope that Trumpy come along with a 80s version at some point...

John

[BB62vet]

John,

Thanks so much - and welcome back!!! I'm new to this forum as of late last year with this build, so I'm always finding something new with it.

I would tend to agree that the current 1:200 MO/IOWA kit is a stretch to build into a modern version - however, one of the members is scratch/modifying an old Sterling 1:192 MO kit into the modern version and for him it's turning out very well in spite of the many changes that were necessary. I have seen those kits on sale online, but are a bit pricey now. Actually - http://www.oldmodelkits.com/index.php - and key in Sterling, Military ships - there is one available with the fittings set - $450.00. Just in case you're interested. I had that very kit back in the '70s/'80s and traded it for a Marlin 22 lever action carbine - it was about 1/2 completed. Wish I had it back!!!

Hank

[Fliger747]

The stirling kit should be considered a basis for a lot of scratch building, but being wood is fairly easy to work from. Main issues with the hull, but easier to correct than the Trumpy one is the stern needs the skegs added and the bow bulbous underwater shape added. I did these things which were not too difficult. The hull also needs a bit more round under at the bilge abeam the fwd turrets which I did not do.

It is easy to face the balsa with styrene on the superstructure and add necessary superstructure for the new upper works. One advantage is that it is fairly easy to get photos of most any portion of the current ship. I ended up scratch building new secondary battery mounts and all of the fire control directors via masters and resin casting as well as the ABL's etc. there does not seem to be some of the really excellent PE such as available for the 1:350 kits, so scratching is both a pleasure and necessity.

There are some photos of my ongoing effort in the scratch section under modern bb63 my build and under Luky's build thread, where I also posted some photos of my project. I originally built the ship straight from the kit in about 1964 and then began a conversion about 20 years about, then resumed the project a little over a year ago.

Good luck! Tom

[johndon]

I've bitten the bullet and bought the Iowa this morning, should keep me busy for a couple of years

John

[BB62vet]

John,

You mean the 1:200 Trumpeter IOWA, correct? There is another modeler on this forum - Steve Galacci (I hope I got that right) who is building the MO as the IOWA at her initial commissioning.

Good luck with your project - get a build log going so we can see your progress!

Hank

[johndon]

John,

You mean the 1:200 Trumpeter IOWA, correct? There is another modeler on this forum - Steve Galacci (I hope I got that right) who is building the MO as the IOWA at her initial commissioning.

Good luck with your project - get a build log going so we can see your progress!

Hank

That's the one, figured if I'm going to build another ship it might as well be a big one although I was tempted by the 1/200 Hornet as well.

Just need to get the Pontos set as well...

Having just unboxed it I think I'm going to need a bigger workbench as well!!!

John

[Fliger747]

Welcome John!

At least for quite a while sub assemblies can be produced on a quite small area! Are you still converting this to the modern ship? I expect as fall and winter approach several of the builds will resume. Though not exactly a builder of one of the Trumpy kits my project has been close enough to get involved here. A lot of mutual support and sharing of information which is of inestimable value.

Be sure to check out several of the builds if you have not already. Kelly Quirk is building a pretty straight build with all the addons, but to a very high standard. All these guys have a different take, and have a lot to learn from!

Cheers. Tom

[johndon]

Are you still converting this to the modern ship?

I'll build her as the WWII Iowa and hope that we get a modernised version from Trumpy at some point.

John

[Fliger747]

Great! Be terrific to have another project underway. At this point there is enough assessment of the issues with the kit that one could avoid some problems at an early stage should that be the desire!

Regards: Tom

[johndon]

Cheers Tom, I'm going to get my hands on the Pontos set and then make a start. I'll start a thread when I'm up and running and apologies to Hank for hijacking his

John

[BB62vet]

Time for a photo update on progress to this point -

I've been working on the After Air Defense Station/Fire Control Director/Main Battery Fire Control Tower/After Stack and the following photos show this work:

I have recently purchased the Eduard Hull Plates and Rails PE sheets and will decide whether they or the Pontos rails will be used. In the very least, this gives a backup for any major mess I make with the first attempts when it comes to the time to install the main deck rails. It is very nice of Eduard to provide a scaled gauge for the gusset plate locations.

As of last night I started work on the amidship 40mm triple tubs which will take quite a bit of scratchbuilding to modify to the Zuni Chaff Launcher batterys (4) and Mk. 56 FC platforms.

Hank

[Fliger747]

Hank

Coming along nicely! Thanks for the Eduard PDF instructions for those. They sort of imply that the spacing is even with templates, which it is not. However in large print above they do say to use the exact locations for your ship. The director radars came out well after all of your experimentation. Looking forward to your evaluation of the two types of rail.

Deck gray, which are you using?

Regards. Tom