1/350 CVL-23 USS Princeton

[steinerman]

Looking really sharp!! Keep up the good work!

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Steinerman! I continue right away.





I adapted some standard WEM railings to get 27 short sections fitting to the double 40mm Bofors gun platforms.



I cleaned them up as good as possible.



After a few hours' work, all of them were sitting straight.



The quadruple pieces got some nearly identical railing parts. Now I hope I hereby concluded the railing business.

[StevenVD]

Now the guns are also primered grey.











The extra catwalk between the smoke stacks and the aerial torpedoes are also painted.

[StevenVD]

The Measure 33B-scheme demands that the zones under the catwalks are painted flat white. I used Tamiya paint for this.

[StevenVD]

The next two colors are Pale Grey and Ocean Grey.





I hope overspray wil be minimal, but it is hard to mask off all details.

[StevenVD]

The Navy Blue was added last, but the airbrush had some issues that were corrected after a visit to my LHS. Because of this, the paint had seeped through some tape cracks. And there was a lot of tape at the end:









The errors could be pointed out after I removed the tape. Especially the island had suffered some leakage. Also the painting of the galleries had resulted in some overspray on the hull.















All this could be corrected with the repaired airbrush. Painting is not done yet, the upper planes all need to look Deck Blue from above. Princeton has finally got the look. You can also understand the deforming effect of the different color patterns on the hull.

[StevenVD]

Some reasons why you should replace this apparently fine Dragon deck with the Pontos set.



The planking in the Dragon deck is 15 planks per transverse girder. They count 5 girders per plane elevator length. In the Pontos set, this amounts to 11 planks per girder, which is correct according to the Independence pictures. There are about seven girders per elevator, also exactly like the pictures.



The munitions lift in front of the airplane elevator should be along the foamite station entrance. Pontos locates this correctly, while Dragon places this near the AA installation. The foremost lift in the Pontos set is twice the size of that on the Dragon deck, and should be so.



The only setback is the definition of the girders, which is very intricate in the Dragon deck, while it's just a row of little holes in the wooden one. I though about replacing these planks with Evergeen strips, but I doubt it would be easy to make them flush with the deck.

[Timmy C]

The only setback is the definition of the girders, which is very intricate in the Dragon deck, while it's just a row of little holes in the wooden one. I though about replacing these planks with Evergeen strips, but I doubt it would be easy to make them flush with the deck.

Sounds like an alternative interpretation would be living with clearly-identifiable but mis-located/mis-counted girders, versus accurately-placed girders that don't actually look like you'd expect girders to look (or that you can actually see - they barely show up in the first two photos, for instance).

[StevenVD]

They are hard to see in some places. I now bought the smallest Evergreen strips in case I decided to try and replace the wooden girders, but I should do a test first with the extreme planks of the after Pontos deck. These are not used, so I can try out if the girders would fit.

[marijn van gils]

Excellent progress Steven!

Regarding the flight deck, I would prefer the plastic deck with less planks but better defined girders over the wooden deck. The general feel will be better, which I think is more important to a model than a detail like the exact number of planks.
But then again, I'm in the camp that feels the texture and grain of wooden decks in this scale don't look as realistic as a well-painted plastic deck. Especially for painted decks, and really large decks like a carrier flight deck. And remember: weathering a wooden deck will be harder than a plastic one, as it will soak up any paint (washes, filters).
Just IMHO of course...

[StevenVD]

It will eventually be the Pontos deck, Marijn. The individual planks look better because they had not to be engraved with a panel line. There are some wood cracks in it for sure, but I find a difference of about 1/3 the amount of girders needed a bit too much. The weathering is not the greatest problem, my ship's number not completely present in the dry-decals will be. This means I probably can't use them at all and have to mask and paint them myself.





I've been busy fo two days of about four hours of painting each, to get the catwalks and deck parts painted Lifecolor Deck Blue. I reused the tape, so it wouldn't be too sticky and snap off the PE. Every 3 cm had to be masked twice for both painting directions. Because of the difficult lighting manoeuvres, the ship once got an uppercut from the lamp and almost capsized, only saved by a quick reaction. the damage could soon be repaired and I think the results are pleasing. The only parts that could not be reached are those under the deck edges, like the blisters and the paravane platforms, and the top mast platform because it is already railed.



















I painted the guns in Tamiya Gun Metal, but I discovered that I will have to add 6 more guns. Luckily I provided the Aber parts for that.

[marijn van gils]

Ok Steven, I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the wooden deck!

The airbrushing looks great.
I guess you'll be doing some small touch-ups by brush still?

[StevenVD]

Busy on that, Marijn. For example, I just painted the ropes on the carley floats. Bu first, the paint will be sealed to be able to do some washes. On with the floater baskets, WEM has provided some splendid material.



Simply wrap them around a drill and ply the ends.



So easy I even forgot to glue them.



An extra six Oerlikons are produced to get to the numbers.



The jeeps on deck are embellished with a scratch windscreen out of the Dragon radar antenna.





That was first put into grey Tamiya paint.



One of the windscreens was lost again, but all was soon primed grey.



All floats and nets should be camouflaged, so this needed a checkup for the amounts of light, middle or dark colored parts. For this, I used Independence pictures.



Also, a gun ceckup has been performed, but it remains a dry-fit. Deck and hull must be sealed first.





The ropes are painted in 2 colors..



The jeeps are fun, but a little bit skewed.



It appeared that about 70 transverse girders were present in Dragon, with more dan 90 needed in reality. This experiment shows an Evergreen replacement, still 5/3 overscale.



A PE set with 0.30mm straight mesh would do the trick...

[Richard OMalley]

I have just read your post on the Princeton and found it very interesting . Post that tell the story of the ship being built are most interesting .
Hope you can post more photo's of your work .

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Richard, I won't let you down. Here a summary of the diorama base for Princeton.



Using some scrap pieces of styropor, I tailored a base for the bottom, that was not yet attached to the hull. If I lowered this into the base, it would create an easy attachment for the model. I was also planning to use Ammo from Mig's "Deep Ocean" acrylic water paste.



I saw in a demo that this would probably outperform my first waterbase methods.



The shape of the hull is cut out of the base. I leave enough freeboard to add half a centimeter of plaster covering the weak styropor, facilitating the modelling of bow-wave and wake.



To reinforce the split base, some traverse connections are added.



It is also roughened to take the plaster cover.





I fixed the hull with two pieces of sprue as anchors, to straighten the ship before the plaster is added.







I started pouring black pigmented plaster on the base and levelled this against the hull. After adding the wake I cleaned the plastic hull bottom to take the ship seamlessly. Here some pictures of a dry-fit. I think this will work out fine with the Mig product on top of it.

[StevenVD]

The "Deep Ocean" paint is added to the base with a spatula. It's quite thick and remains soft for at least half an hour.







After the first layer, I had to move inside. There I applied a second layer to saturate the blue and smooth out the area in front of the ship.





The first layer was still a bit vulnerable, but I managed to cover the whole surface.



Three hours later the blue color has darkened at the edges. I hope to find it still darker tomorrow morning.

[StevenVD]

After a second layer of "Deep Ocean", the color turns out as expected.

Before that, it looked like this, and it was not opaque enough. It showed color differences in the underlying plaster:





Next came a new helping of paint. The hardest part is the zone in front of the ship that has no wake.









The next step is ordering a glass cover for the diorama. If I add a spacing around the base, it won't damage the paint edges.







The ship has now got all it's AA guns fixed, but has temporarily lost it's mast and radar dish due to an accident. It could already be repaired with no visible consequences if I wished so, but I tought this might ease the fixing of the deck.

[StevenVD]

My LHS had a useful product for making wave foam.





I found a video of how to use it, but it seems you better spray some light blue first.



I have also started weathering the hull with some Humbrol grey enamel.



Then, after a thorough brushing, a sludgewash was applied to add oily grime.













Some pieces of railing loosened, these will be repaired after the wash. Also the main mast and the radar dish are put aside, they return when the ship sits on the water and the deck has been fixed.

[StevenVD]

Chipping in grey Vallejo acrylic paint and rust development in red and yellow enamels.

[Richard OMalley]

Fantastic work . I am working on a 1/96 plug to make fiberglass hulls of the CVL . I will highly recommend your post to those buying a hull to guide them building the ship . I am using plans of Belleau Wood from Floating Drydock