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)
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20230217 Astoria hull 29.jpg [ 280.95 KiB | Viewed 1070 times ]
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20230217 Astoria hull 30a.jpg [ 323.46 KiB | Viewed 1070 times ]
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.
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20230217 Franklin life buoys.png [ 1.76 MiB | Viewed 1070 times ]
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
.
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20230217 Astoria hull 23.jpg [ 284.54 KiB | Viewed 1070 times ]
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20230217 Astoria hull 28.jpg [ 230.89 KiB | Viewed 1070 times ]
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20230217 Astoria hull 26.jpg [ 282.7 KiB | Viewed 1070 times ]
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20230217 Astoria hull 31.jpg [ 264.1 KiB | Viewed 1070 times ]
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.
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20230219 Astoria platform.png [ 1.71 MiB | Viewed 1070 times ]
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20230217 Astoria hull 25.jpg [ 294.17 KiB | Viewed 1070 times ]
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20230217 Astoria hull 24.jpg [ 282.23 KiB | Viewed 1070 times ]
I consider the hull assembly now ready for painting, so let´s focus on the other parts.
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FAQ
), 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.
A long time fan