1/700 USS Astoria CA-34 at Savo/Trumpeter+Vladi+FiveStar

[marijn van gils]

Beautiful! Great design work and assembly!

[Vladi]

Thank you so much, Dan and Marijn!

I�ve been busy to complete testing the important parts of my PE sheet. Most of them worked fine, some minor adjustments would be needed before sharing them with anyone eventually, but no major problem occurred and I will be able to use most of what you saw here to finalize this build. I am really happy about the searchlight tower, I think this is a big improvement over anything else available.

The overlay on forecastle sides, hangar and well deck sides and the lower director platform under Battle 2 are FiveStar parts.

There will be a lull in the action here for some time as I need to work on my other projects, too. But I�ll be back

[MartinJQuinn]

There will be a lull in the action here for some time as I need to work on my other projects.

I'm sorry, that is unacceptable! Who approved that?

Looks good. But I wonder why 5Star makes the PE with openings at the corners? Seems like it just adds more work for the modeler, as those will have to be filled.

[Vladi]

Looks good. But I wonder why 5Star makes the PE with openings at the corners? Seems like it just adds more work for the modeler, as those will have to be filled.

Hi Martin, exactly my point, I might have already mentioned it somewhere above. It�s because they try to make it all nicer and easier to assemble by relief etching, but then they have to make the edges like this. Annoying and unnecessary...

[Dan K]

Beautiful searchlight tower, Vladi.

[Tomek K]

Amazing! Makes you want to go in it

[Vladi]

Hi there, I�ve been out for quite some time, no �real� work done on the build in the meantime. But I�ve completed some background work, most importantly on pinpointing the differences between ships of the New Orleans (or originally Astoria class) of cruisers that I finally published here. I also made some adjustments on my PE design and added new parts for this and other builds. But here it comes again while I�m waiting for the PE to be etched.

One of the important issues that surfaced while comparing the units of the class was the difference in the length of the external armour belt � but not only between the original and the later batches of cruisers as detailed in the table, but also between the reality and its rendering by Trumpeter. Unfortunately (but quite as usual ), they�ve got it wrong for any ship. The first batch including Astoria had the forward end of the belt approximately even with the foremast (it continued futher forward internally) so some 26mm (1/700) shorter than the kit. To the contrary, it should extend some 23mm forward for the Quincy and Vincennes that had no internal belt and their external belt ended foward of #1 barbette. I�ll deal with this in more detail when it comes Vincennes time.

For the Astoria kit this meant an unpleasant surgery, even more unpleasant considering the quite advanced stage of my build. To my surprise, my first attempt on the port side went quite easy and fast. But starboard gave me really hard times, it ended up uneven with deep scars in the hull. So it came to sanding, Tamiya Putty, more sanding, Mr. Dissolved Putty and more sanding. Hope it will all look fine after spraying.

[maccrage]

Excellent work! Using this as inspiration for my upcoming 1/350 Astoria.

[Vladi]

Hi guys, it�s been almost two years since my last posts here, unbelievable how fast time is passing by. Anyway, I am back at the Astoria and hope to resume moving forward faster than in the past

First of all there is some destruction to show that happenned already a while ago:

I decided to get rid of (most of) the Five Star PE, especially that on the forecastle, hangar and catapult towers. Apart from inaccuracies I really disliked the way it was designed, with relief etching showing relief where there was none (for the sake of showing brims above portholes), with visible dashes on bending lines and so on. So I created another version of my own PE that included these parts - and many others.

So this is how she looks right now in her new clothes on the forecastle, hangar and catapult towers. I also formed and placed all the 5in splinter shields, splinter shields on the hangar roof and started adding some additional details like paravane booms and various hose reels.

The avgas draining pipe was added to starboard

Note the large fireroom blower under the searchlight tower here. The shape of this vent in the Trumpeter kit is a clear misunderstanding caused likely by the supports of the searchlight tower. I tried to give it at least a bit of the mushroom-like shape to the lower part of this vent, but it won�t be much visible in the end because of those same supports.
The 5in and 1.1 in practice loaders on top of the vent as well as 20 mm ammo lockers here and there are by blacman (Shelf Oddity). I�ll show more details of his awesome 3D printed weapons in my next post.

Waveguides can be seen added under the secondary conning station

[Dan K]

Awesome work, Vladi. Good to see you back at Astoria.

[Kometa]

Good news to hear from you again. Great construction.

[SG1]

An excellent new start! Great restyling

[maxim]

Impressive work!

[Vladi]

Thanks to you all!
Continued over the weekend with secondary and AA weapons, searchlights, optical devices, compasses etc. Everything was designed and printed by blacman / Shelf Oddity and the quality is just awesome!

[SG1]

Everything was designed and printed by blacman / Shelf Oddity and the quality is just awesome!

I agree. Am a big fan of Shelf Oddity

[Vladi]

Love your site! http://www.3xblackcats.wordpress.com

[SG1]

Thank you, am flattered! . And I love your hi-res flicker albums AND Vladi's Navy on Fb!! A long time fan

[marijn van gils]

Welcome back Vladi!
Great to see you back at the bench!

[Vladi]

Thank you for encouraging me, Marijn, SG1 and all!

Continued on the hull in the past days. Many small details were added as can be noticed on the attached photos: fire hoses, life rings, hatch overlays, cleats near anchor windlasses, anchors, crane kingposts, masts and machinery, 20mm ammo boxes near cranes and propeller guards. I also added boat and accommodation ladder davits.
(Photos were taken all at the same time so details decribed below can be seen on them, too)

What I think came out particularly cute are the Franklin life buoys on their racks. Two have already been installed on splinter shields aft of the aircraft cranes. The other pair will go forward of #1 5in platforms at a later stage.

Deck railings came next. The advantage of making PE for a specific ship is that you don�t have to do generic parts but you can address details that are specific to the given ship. So I tried to copy as close as possible what can be seen on photos of Astoria incl. uneven distances between stanchions (especially noticeable aft of the hangar) and shortening of the height of railings allowing the #1 8in turret to rotate � another tiny detail that was different on each of the New Orleans class member. I regret I made a mistake and the forwardmost part of railing came out 2mm too short which I discovered too late � well, nobody�s perfect, so my Astoria won�t be either .

Astoria had both whale boat davits removed from port side and the place of the boat was taken by a makeshift platform as shown on photos taken off Hawaii in early July 1942. The purpose of that platform is unclear. I�ve seen no later photos of port side but it seems unlikely the platform would be removed and davits installed again, so I presume only the starboard 26ft motor whale boat was present on the well deck at the time of her loss. To my regret I had to remove the davit from the port catapult tower that I really liked how it came out � good that there is hard evidence that the starboard one was still present at Guadalcanal! The platform is now already in it�s place.

I consider the hull assembly now ready for painting, so let�s focus on the other parts.

[Vladi]

Funnels
My recent question in the CASF NO class thread did not bring any answers. To recap what was it about:

While trying to redo the piping on Astoria�s forward smokestack I spotted another minor difference between New Orleans class members. The leftmost photo below shows the pipe leading to the port whistle on Astoria �switching sides� from starboard to port side of the funnel below the whistle platform (let�s call it the �knot�).

I checked about her sisters and noticed that this pipe went straight on Minneapolis and San Francisco. New Orleans had no whistles/pipes there until her December 1944 refit. Later there was a �knot�, too, but different from Astoria. All cruisers of the second batch (Tuscaloosa, Quincy and Vincennes) had whistles on the aft funnel without any �knot�.

As the exact arrangement on Astoria remains unclear I decided to continue in the �logical way� � to lead the piping from the �knot� straight down along the other pipe on the starboard side. This is the result:

This is the aft funnel, I found no variations there:

Searchlight tower
Edit: The tower I showed here was actually incorrect for Astoria! Astoria had a design that I already got ready as can be seen above on this page. Will address this in some next post

What�s next?