1/200 Arizona finally DONE!

[Jeff Sharp]

I realized that I made the square vents too small so I made a couple more that are bigger. As suspected, I had to manipulate a couple of the boat rack legs to accommodate the vents.



I also added a mushroom vent on top of the port side square vent. This is my personal interpretation of the plans and may or may not be right.

[LE BOSCO]

Jeff

I appreciate really your work it's always nice to see your progress
cheers
Nicolas

[MuseumGeek]

My take is that the plans show an internal vent within the vent. I have a feeling that there was a round trunk inside there that ended under the exisiting square vent. You already have a covered vent. There is no real reason to add another vent that projects out of the top. See what I'm saying? It seems redundant.

[Tracy White]

There might be if they needed separate air flows - I'm not an airflow dynamics guy, but it would seem to me that if you had a vent intake within a vent intake, the vacuum caused by the big one might actually draw from the second, smaller one, and cause back flow.

[Jeff Sharp]

Good thing this is a easy fix if it someday proves to be wrong But I think I'll stick with it for now.

I am finally at the critical point of deciding what color to paint those damn steel decks!! Maybe I'll just start photographing everything in B&W and not worry about it.

But in the meantime, the next two things on my growing list of things to improve upon are these 5" R.S.lockers and the incinerator.


Unfortunately they weren't cubed shape. They actually had a sloped roof probably to keep water from pooling on them. Plus, they were up off the deck on legs.
They should all look a little more like this.


I also have to check the proper orientation and placement of each one. Stillwell's book has one pic that shows the locker in the above pic at the end of the boat rack just as I have it. But look at this shot from the film. The crew is running to battle stations. Here is the end of the boat rack but no locker in sight. They must have been movable?


As far as the incinerator goes, finding a decent pic has been a challenge.


The plans indicate that there was an incline ladder on the back side but I can't find any pics of it. One thing that I did discover was that the face of the incinerator was black for some reason.

[Leftie]

Jeff. What 'Critical Past' search tag did you enter to get that last photo? I'd love to follow that. Great job with the research. Its still a little foggy to me but what you're doing is going to help modelers for years to come. I wish you did this two years ago.

[Jeff Sharp]

Jeff. What 'Critical Past' search tag did you enter to get that last photo? I'd love to follow that. Great job with the research. Its still a little foggy to me but what you're doing is going to help modelers for years to come. I wish you did this two years ago.

Thanks Leftie. I appreciate the kind words. Here is the link to the critical past video:

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675 ... SS-Arizona

[Jeff Sharp]

I've completed fixing all the lockers on the boat deck. I have been working on the incinerator and the stack. I've been searching high and low for any pic that will give me any detail on the incinerator. I've discovered that there was some sort of piping on top of the incinerator. My version of it is not quite right yet, it appears it was fatter in the middle but this gives you an idea of what I'm trying to accomplish.



Also, the exhaust pipe that goes from the incinerator over to the stack and up the back of the stack was painted all black during the mid 1930's....



...but by 1941 most of this exhaust pipe was painted standard navy gray.



However, it appears that the portion of the pipe that went from the incinerator to the stack remained black.



Also, I squared off the back corner of the incinerator as seen here to accommodate an incline ladder.





As far as the stack goes, I'm pretty happy with it. Trumpeter did a decent job with it. I added just a couple of extra ladders on each side and a whistle. Can't believe they forgot the whistle!





I'm not so sure about those lockers that were inside the splinter shields with the MG's that are on the stack. It doesn't leave any room to maneuver the gun around. I may take those lockers out.

[MuseumGeek]

Jeff,
I am about ready to apply the KA wood deck. Any pointers? It seems a bit daunting.

[Jeff Sharp]

Jeff,
I am about ready to apply the KA wood deck. Any pointers? It seems a bit daunting.

Laying the deck is pretty easy. The barbettes help out a great deal to line things up. Just make sure things are very clean underneath.
My biggest issue with these decks besides the unrealistic end joints and the sinking of the small deck detail it creates is the fact that if you want to move deck detail around like I have extensively with this build, it's pretty unforgiving and tough to hide the exposed tab holes.

[Tracy White]

Just a note for everyone - I was in the College Park National Archives branch last week and spent a little bit of time on Arizona. No answer to the linoleum question yet.
I found a textual description of what was to be done for the degaussing cables that I will try and post in the next couple of days. Had to catch up on sleep and time with the wife yesterday.

[MuseumGeek]

Thanks, Tracy!

Jeff,
Do they fit better once the plastic backing is off? I tried a test fit with the backing on and it seemed to be off by just a tiny, tiny, tiny, bit. Just enough to make the deck want to bubble as I laid more of it down. Now, granted, this is with the backing on, but now I am a bit apprehensive to slap that sucker down and get into a situation where I have waves in the deck and no real way to fix them.

I think I may spray a bit of soapy water on the plastic so I can slide her around a bit if I need to then squeegee the water out. It's an old vinyl installers trick. With this I just have to be careful not to use TOO much water.

mrb

[Jeff Sharp]

I had the same issue with the backing still on. Once the backing is off it fits nicely. Someone else will have to comment on the water thing, to me it doesn't sound like a good thing but I have no idea.

[Timmy C]

If they are at all similar, Pontos recommends you apply some water to the plastic deck before you put the wooden deck on - the water helps to delay the glue from taking hold, allowing you to treat the wooden deck as though it's a stiff waterslide decal.

[MuseumGeek]

A lot of worry for nothing. Without the backing it fit well enough for me to not even cuss! No water needed. I just went slow and kept checking my placement. Now I can at least start adding detail to the quarter deck and feel like I am making some headway.

[Jeff Sharp]

Just a note for everyone - I was in the College Park National Archives branch last week and spent a little bit of time on Arizona. No answer to the linoleum question yet.

Well I guess a little guessing is in order then. Thanks for lookin! I'm sure you will find the answer some day.

I'll try to put a little logic behind my guessing as I go forward but determining color from B&W film is probably impossible.

Assuming I have two colors to choose from, Linoleum brown and deck gray, lets see if I can tell the two apart when photographing in B&W. The anchor plates will be a good reference for deck gray (I think!)

Knowing first of all that Linoleum was a heavy duty pre colored flooring that was put down over steel decks I would like to quote Mr. Wikipedia.

"The heavier gauges of linoleum are known as "battleship linoleum", and are mainly used in high-traffic situations like offices and public buildings. It was originally manufactured to meet the specifications of the U.S. Navy for warship deck covering on enclosed decks instead of wood, hence the name. Most U.S. Navy warships removed their linoleum deck coverings following the attack on Pearl Harbor, as they were considered too flammable. "
The part about the "enclosed decks" is what concerns me! But, we know for a fact that brown linoleum was used on the flag bridge of USS Idaho in 1940.

But deck gray is also present in this same shot.

We also know that the USS Marblehead had linoleum on her flag bridge in 1939 as seen here:


This film also shows her main deck in deck gray http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675 ... of-the-sip

We also know that if the US Navy used brown linoleum on all ships, it wasn't on all decks. This 1940 shot of USS Indianapolis shows the decks on the stack as deck gray:

http://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/6866277f19fb5c0d_large

So this info is my starting point for moving forward.

A B&W shot of Idaho's flag bridge was also taken as seen here:

http://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/a97dbdbed89ff463_large

So far it is impossible to tell the two colors apart when in B&W.

[Tracy White]

OK Jeff, here you go!

[Tracy White]

A B&W shot of Idaho's flag bridge was also taken as seen here:

Just as an aside, the B&W shot was probably originally shot in color, but processed on B&W paper.

[Jeff Sharp]

Playing around a little bit with B&W photography. Here's one with the flag deck and stack decks. Anyone want to venture a guess what colors they are here?

[Channell]

I'm sure you'd love to spend some more money Jeff... FYI Eduard just released some new PE sets for this kit. They redid the boat cradles with PE... they look spectacular.