Revell 1/240 Campbeltown as DD 301 USS Somers

[Goodwood]

Nice!

This thread is making me long for a nice 1/144 scale kit of a Wickes-class DD, so I could convert her into USS Walker (DD-163) from the Destroyermen series. Some of the refits she gets in the course of the events within are pretty interesting...such as port and starboard quad torpedo launchers, a seaplane catapult, and two dual 25mm AA gun mounts...

[Triumph68]

I imagine the detailing that can be done on a 1/144 scale....go for it...they where lovely looking ships

[Triumph68]

some detailing done...some stuff had to be re-done as I wasn't happy with result...etc
anyway....its been some time I did a dry-fit....

[Triumph68]

didn't put them on but ...again a way to use trow away material...its the frame of a 1/400 scale PE...cut to right size...then bend

[Triumph68]

painted....added the door...decided to put her half open, to give the impression somebody is just doing so lol
the other side I placed her in full open

[Triumph68]

I based my center walls on this picture showing those walls where very spare of objects

[Triumph68]

another detail scratch buiding...based on....

[Triumph68]

some more detailing on front did the stearings front and rear, don't like the prop protection of kit so making new ones in 0.6MM cupper wire....little by little things take form

[Willie]

Hi there Triumph and all friend modellers,

The defences are excellent, and if the copper is welded, the results are more than average.
The gun shield, on the other hand, is --in my opinion-- wrong in shape and size: It was more rounded, much smaller and much higher in relationship to deck.
Here you are a couple of pics that can be of interest :

As you can see, the shields look in all cases relatively small if compared with the size and length of the guns, just the opposite that actually happens with this PE shield.
Here you are the solution that I gave to the same problem, very easy to scratch-build:

I hope it has been of some help, and very best regards from this side,

Willie.

[Triumph68]

as always ..you put the bar high...I'm thinking of the shield......the guns are some of the last stuff I fix so....I got time to think it over
been trying to get the anker crane right..first try was too small....now...not sure if not too big ...pfff lol

[Triumph68]

btw...for captain bridge and stearing I use these 2 pics I found

[Willie]

Hi again, Triumph and all,

Sorry that I am the punishment for your sins in a previous life, buddy...
As I have some free time today, I have taken the liberty of downloading one of your pics to make an experiment in measures and scales.

Allowing mistakes with the perspective and the fact that I am not using Autocad but a picture processor, this is your ship at the moment, with relative distances and heights :

The top of your shield reaches the upper part of the bridge deflector, what was not the case.
Here USS Hatfield DD231, displaying low-end shield:

Another, almost perfect, shot of USS Hatfield, showing that her shield was changed for the high-end, no-side-opening model at one of her refits :

As it can be seen, the upper part of the shield reached the lower part of the deflector, what means that your shield is roughly a 30% overscaled, which is a too big mistake to let it go by without mending it.
This excellent picture of USS Somers herself shows what the correct measures were, showing a high-end, no-side-opening shield as well:

This very same solution in a big-scale, high-quality, professional model :

Incidentally, your problem with the anchor crane can be solved using these same pictures: when not folded out in navigation mode, the crane used to take a (+/-) 45� elevation, and as for length, reaching the lower part of the bridge deflector.
Furthermore, maybe that the contrast between the too big shield and the gun misleads the eye, but these guns seem to be too short. After studying the pictures, I find that the forecastle gun should be roughly 25% of the forecastle itself, and I would say this gun is not. Solving this problem is very easy, if you have some Evergreen tubing around, or if no Evergreen is at hand, a lolipop tube, filed and sanded would do it as well, as most of the mending will be covered by the shield.

After so much trouble as you have taken with the davits, and the brilliant results that you have achieved with them, this gun shield would be a great demerit to the overall effect.

But all this arouse serious suspicions about something else, so I did the same job on my own solution:

It shows that I made just the opposite mistake : shield slightly too low, and gun slightly too long... .
The punishment for my own sins in a previous life...

I hope all this is of some help for you. Had I had all these pictures at the time, my solutions would have been much better than they were. I will have to build a second flushdecker, I am afraid. My HMS Campbeltown was a delight to build, and since then I have gathered much more information, and some more ability.

Best regards from this side,

Willie.[/size]

[Willie]

And Hi again, Triumph,

btw...for captain bridge and stearing I use these 2 pics I found

Thanks for these two pictures. I had no picture of the inside of the bridge when I built my HMS Campbeltown. I can see now a couple of blunders that I made, specially the one with the rudder wheel.

One will never stop learning...

Nice going, and best regards again,

Willie.

[Triumph68]

gonna check gun lenght...the 4 inch guns on Clemsom where 5,246m long so...they should be about 21.86 mm on my ship

[Triumph68]

damm....you where right...the guns are only 20mm long..10% short...
not easy to correct as I don't have such diametre ...on top...the barrel is slightly conic
not so happy...I bought these 3D guns hoping them to be correct....they look very need...but 10% out of scale isnt great...specialy as they are supposed to be made for these ships at this scale
they are scale 1/265...not 1/240

[Not_so_COB]

damm....you where right...the guns are only 20mm long..10% short...
not easy to correct as I don't have such diametre ...on top...the barrel is slightly conic
not so happy...I bought these 3D guns hoping them to be correct....they look very need...but 10% out of scale isnt great...specialy as they are supposed to be made for these ships at this scale
they are scale 1/265...not 1/240

I have made those guns for my own purpose too. They are scaled correctly... you might think they are a hair too large, but that is because they are offset in the setup file for Shapeways. They are the right length.

[Triumph68]

damm....you where right...the guns are only 20mm long..10% short...
not easy to correct as I don't have such diametre ...on top...the barrel is slightly conic
not so happy...I bought these 3D guns hoping them to be correct....they look very need...but 10% out of scale isnt great...specialy as they are supposed to be made for these ships at this scale
they are scale 1/265...not 1/240

I have made those guns for my own purpose too. They are scaled correctly... you might think they are a hair too large, but that is because they are offset in the setup file for Shapeways. They are the right length.

nope,they are 20 mm long...I took messure...they should be 21.858 mm...so 1.858 mm short
means the real life 4inch guns used on 4 stackers where 5.246 m long and scaled up these guns are 4.80 m long...scale is 240...

[Rick E Davis]

Gents,

Willie, I noticed something that may impact your dimension analysis on the shield of the forward gun. USS HATFIELD (DD-231) was one of the Flush-Deckers (units DD-231 through 235) that were armed with 5-in/51 guns, not the standard 4-in gun (however, all the classes that make up the Flush-Deckers, were reinforced to carry the 5-in/51 gun). Early in 1942 the 5-in guns were replaced with standard 4-in guns on the units with them, when they were configured to the ASW (4-in gun) mod. The shields were different for the 5-in gun likely explaining the height difference in your photos for USS HATFIELD.

[Triumph68]

true scale is 1/242.61822 not 1/240 as I just finished measuring my Ward model using my 64cm long mircometer. guns should actually be 21.597mm long not 21.85mm long

even if its 242.6 scale...I'm dissapointed shapeways makes a gun ...not correct for this ship by 7.95 %, they pretend basing themself on the original gun plans..ok, good...but then scale them out correctly it say on there catalogue 1/240 and its 1/260.32
They ask a reasonably high prices for it...so we request reasonalbly high quality
I do not question the lay out and detaillining of the guns...that's good, even excellent...but the quality of an article is according to its worst thing... as the scale-out is roughly done, I therefor consider a lesser quality of the finished product... in my view easely corrected by modifying the printing scale size in the computer.
now its up to shapeways (if they read this, and they should as we modelers are their clients) if they want to correct it and bring the quality up or not....
its reactions like this one that can make a company better in reacting and correcting, critics and complaints should not be seen as a pain but are there to help a company to evolve for the better.
some might think this 8% difference is hardly visible...and 99.999% of average peeps watching the once finished model will not see this at all, I'm aware of that.
But...not to me...a difference of 1-2...even 3% would be ok...8% is not ok for me.
for info ....its not even me who saw it in the first place....

[Triumph68]

I modified 1 gun as front gun....bottom gun is original with lenght of 20 mm, the top gun is just not 22mm...wanted to do 21.85..but miscalculated because of thickness of glue...twice...
now I'm afraid I'll have to modify the 3 others ...we'll see
some cleaning and finetuning to do but its looking not too bad
the little thing on the right goes on rear castle...next to stearing..added a pic I used as refference