The Ship Model Forum

Added a few pissant items, SL and SA Radar, some vents and small rails on the O1 level. Starting to look like a ship! Amazing how different the ship was late WWII and in the mid 60's when I was aboard.

Tom

View today

Nice view!

Pascal:

Thank you, photos of real models always display every single issue and are our toughest critics.

Best regards: Tom

Whitehurst and Caine alongside. Both ships within a small dimension of equal length. Whitehurst still lacking cable spools, lifelines rigging and small errata. Probably not much accomplished over the next little bit due holy-daze and guests.

Cheers: Tom

Tom,
That is a very cool display!! Its an excellent side-by-side comparison; very well done.

Bravo Zulu Shipmate.

Any ideas for the next ship to add to the comparison?

Thank you Bruce! Caine still needs a more official base. Quite notable how much larger her props are to use all the additional horse power.

I just like to look at them even if not finished.

Cheers. Tom

Tom,

Well, very fine looking pair of tin cans side by side!!! Quite an interesting contrast between the two. You've done an outstanding job, as usual!!

Hank

Thank you Hank:

Caine was my first printed hull and the 144 scale was somewhat determined by what was a reasonable size for printing and a convenient model size. I did dither about maybe doing Whitehurst in 1:120, a scale I like as I can approach the excellent 100 and 96 scales in what I can do. However practicality won out and it's nice to have a pair. Actually they could be displayed in a single case? Our design program is not optimal at all for hulls, but it can be done with a few warts here and there. A little Zen and magic involved at the best. It is very good for most other ship parts: Anchors, weapons, chain, even masts and spars.

The Holy-Daze are not a good time to get much modeling done, guest, travel and general personal itercourse with family and friends.

Lifelines, spools and rigging, all on the watch list at the round tuit as well as the Christmas Mail Buoy.

Cheers: Tom

Troll go away. Not welcome here.

Tom,

I'll be curious to see the cable reel and equipment in place once you've got all that designed/printed. Quite an interesting small boy, to say the least. And Yes! this time of year can sort of deter from a lot of modeling, etc.

Hank

The duo of "cans" will relocate back to the studio as guests tend to toss hats, mittens and packages on the table with disaster an eventuality. The cost of shipping a completed case to Alaska runs in the hundreds of dollars so I may instead make one of the wooden framed one's which I have the skills, tools and materials to construct.

Cheers: Tom

Pulled Whitehurst off the table and did some measuring and head scratching for the grating around the 32 mount. Because of the great sheer, the 31 and 32 mounts had a grating to level out the working area for the mount crews. After looking at Hank's great "grates" for his directors it occurred to em I could do this and add the grate to Whitehurst via printing. The second edition looks good and is now curing. Rather than split the grate (1st edition) I found it more expeditious to pop the mount of fit's mount and consolidate the grates. I think it will work well. Going to try out some Trucolor 5N Deck blue on these.

I also printed a deck grate for the bridge, but not totally happy with this and will probably re design. Reading some of Douglas Reeman's WWII novels ov the RN, the USN DE's were largely inspired in design by the Brits and have the much "beloved?" open bridges.

Tom

Post Script: Starting to work on the midships cable spools!

Printed grating for the gun crew of the 32 mount on Whitehurst. Printed with water washable Frozen Rapid Black, which I like for its sharp detail. Originally (take 1) I printed this in two pieces to be able to slide in on either side of the 3" 50 mount. However it turned out it was easier to pop the gun off the model and print as one piece. There are advantages in not over glueing pieces and parts. Will try airbrushing this later with Trucolor 5N deck blue.

Tom

Open bridges suck!

My first ship was a small minesweeper with an open bridge and it was no fun standing a four hour watch in blowing gales with six inches of cold sea water sloshing back and forth on the deck. My feet were soaked and very cold!

The second ship was a modified Cleveland class cruiser. These ships originally had open bridges, but when they made the guided missile conversions someone came to his senses and enclosed the bridge. The heated dry bridge made watch standing much easier and greatly improved efficiency, morale and alertness.

Phil

Tom,
Your grating looks 'GRATE' -

While a bit tedious to create, these do add a lot of detail to otherwise plain pieces. Very nice work indeed!

Hank

I'm currently reading through yet another Douglas Reeman RN novel of WWII. Brits loved their open bridges, Sitff (frozen) upper lip and all. The DE's had a Britt open style bridge (They were involved in the design) which was good for sky view, an important scenario in air defense. Whiteherst might have been "White Hearse" after she lost 40 dead being hit in the Bridge by a Kamikaze. England (her shipyard twin) suffered a similar fate but was not ever repaired, due to the end of the war

I have been working on the cable spools, which she carried after her Pearl Harbor refit after the Kamikaze damage in early 1945. Being a Steam -Electric power plant she was easily converted for ability to be a floating power station. The steam electric propulsion was selected to avoid the necessity of using gear reduction boxes which were a production bottleneck. It did have some operational advantages in allowing very quick changes in thrust and direction and with the twin rudders, a great turning circle. All assets for anti-sub work of the day.

I had an issue with the domed SL Radar, which had split and would have been happy to leak resin down the mast. This was I think avoided as the model sits where she gets a little sunshine every day. So printed another one last night, presently cureing, fully hollow.

Version one of the cable spools sitting on deck, where the torpedo tubes were normally located. Portside in the middle of the spool arrangement there was a small platform with an inclined ladder leading up. Not sure what the purpose of that was. Forward of the spools was all the transformer equipment, connected to the engine room below. This equipment a little uncertain as no real dimensions except as scaled from photos and the allowed deck space for it. Even so it may be that the several DE installations were not identical.

Printed version two of the cable spools and the small platform midships on the spools port side. I beefed the electric framework up considerably which came out well. Frameworks if printed small often are quite rubbery which is not the desired result. Printed overnight but I haven't fetched and cleaned yet is the electrical panel located at the forward end of the spool setup.

In the printing it was necessary to have a number of drain holes because of the complex hollow of the cable drums. I already replaced the SL Radar dome, which worked out much better hollow. An advantage of printing is being able to replace parts or easily change the design. Hollowing the SL took only a few minutes.

Tom

The Cable Electrical panel just forward seemed to print fine. I didn't have too much goo data on this unit. It appears as if Whitehurst had some additional cabinet s added Portside later in her career. The starboard side appears to have some transformer insulators enclosed in a screened area. As an experiment I drafted the CAD file to effect a mesh with 0.5 mm openings on a 0.75 mm spacing. Surprisingly this printed perfectly and gives very much the screen effect, however it's very flexible and one of the three sides was not straight. I stiffened this up a little with paint and added a small reinforcement of PE at the top with success. If I was gong to re print this I would add a reinforcement rim at the top. Going to give it a repaint to airbrush the 20B top without using tape masking.

Tom