1/350 CVL-23 USS Princeton

[Joe Simon]

Your bridge looks great!

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Joe! I hope everything will go this smooth.

[marijn van gils]

Goe bezig Steven!

Groeten,

Marijn

[StevenVD]

Merciekes Marijn, hoe gaat het nog met de Rodney die je in putte gekocht had? Dat moment werd blijkbaar door iemand vereeuwigd op video zonder dat wij het doorhadden:


(If you look closely on this video, you see at 1:32 at the far left Marijn in his blue KMK shirt and me in a black coat shifting through some ship models at BSMC Putte last year. We were unaware of being spied on).

Some work has been done on the catwalks already. The plastic walkways have to be removed from the gun tub assemblies and replaced with perforated WEM PE-strips. Care has to be taken not to mix up the tubs when fixing them to the deck edge. Luckily it's a good fit even without the connecting walkways. An example of the job, about six times to beperformed:



After a while it looks like this.



In purple you see the catwalks, in green some with entire gun tubs to them. At the front I have a slight problem. Here some Princeton-specific parts do not match completely to how the Independence earlygun tub assembly looked. Because the largest tubs were included in the PE set individually as a later Independence addition I will be able to detail these, but the PE walkways in between have to be reconfigured. Some parts probably have to be cut and bent a bit but I should have enough of the original Independence parts not used in Princeton.

[StevenVD]

The front gun tub has some issues.



The plastic kit part is a lot bigger than the WEM metal one. Therefore the right position is debatable, should it be aligned to the window right or the door left? I find no late plans to compare to.

I also bought these Wolfcraft tools:



They can be jacked shut with the large handles or loosened with the small ones. Useful for clamping hulls.

[Tracy White]

We didn't have any super-detailed plans for the 3 x 20mm gallery, just a ducking plan that had the silhouette for placement. I'll see if I can find that tomorrow and post the relevant section.

[StevenVD]

@Tracy: The distance to the next gun tub can be estimated in this HD picture of San Jacinto, it's very short. I think the platform should be aligned with the right window, the WEM instructions seem to point in that direction. A plan could still help to decide if the kit part was overscale.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... 798%29.jpg

@David: that I will investigate, didn't know they were movable!

[Tracy White]

So, not the best plan, but this is what we worked off of.

[StevenVD]

Thanks for the plan, Tracy! It should be useful to compare distances, I presume it's measured in yards.

[Tracy White]

The numbers are frames, which can vary in length.

[StevenVD]

The assumptions for the gun tubs were right according to the plan. It was a bit fragmentary but it showed the deck front edge, so that was compared to the model, providing a factor of 2,2 to diminish the dimensions for the model. The "parking plate" is already primed on the inside, so it won't reflect through the perforations of the PE.



The left tub needs a section of the deck sidewall sliced away.



The undersides show a nice support structure.



The comparisons between deck edge (C, D), AA-platform (A, B) and distance to the next tub.



A dry-fit with the hull.



Both platforms fixed.



The parking plate prepared.

[ModelMonkey]

Looks excellent!

[StevenVD]

Thanks, ModelMonkey. I have followed with interest your postings of ship upgrades on Scalemates.

Almost all the catwalks are replaced with PE. Close to the new triple gun tubs a section of PE has to be shortened. Now for some rafts, railing and floater nets.



All that junk in these trays are rejected catwalk parts.

[StevenVD]

The airwing has got a little attention now. 6 out of 8 F6F and Avengers get a WEM upgrade. The Dauntless parts are useless for Princeton, though it always had a stash of dive bombs sitting idle in storage. The Hellcats get their cockpits upgraded with dials, a stick and a seat, necessistating a bit of drilling out.







After a while I had enough of that and went for some shopping. You're often in for a surprise find in the local used goods shop.



A nice book about one of the first ship modelling brands, Bassett-Lowke, supplying the RN with teaching material for the own fleet and also recognition of other nation's ships. Mostly 1/600 or 1/1200. The author's collection also contains lots of ocean steamers and merchants. Even a floating dry-dock.



Even starring the CVL's.



There is some attention for the boxing and production.

Another deviation yesterday was the repair of of a dislocated Hawkeye from an old Trumpeter Theodore Roosevelt model (1/700). It was mounted on a thread but it used to topple. I shortened that but moved the plane away from the ship.







At last the Princeton again: the railing is on the ship for the greatest part. Only the blisters at the hull sides still wait. The platform between the smoke stacks would probably interfere with the painting of the gallery, so that remains loose. I wonder if there is any evidence for the removal of the middle platform part on Princeton, as assumed in the manual. I've been looking for pictures. On the diagram with the crew positions when the bomb hit in "Carrier Down", there was personnel on that location, but is unclear if this man was in the tub , on the gallery or on a platform.

[StevenVD]

Cought an annoying cold yesterday, only a matter of time with a lot of sick colleagues coughing away. This update concerns the paravane platforms. Looking like chained torpedoes, they actually serve mine clearing purposes. Some imagery on Wikipedia shows how that was done:





foto https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... _Texas.jpg, a paravane seen from close up on USS Texas. Perforated struts, hydrodynamic surfaces and cable cutter are provided in the WEm set:



They were located above the ship's stabilising blisters. The galleries are upgraded by WEM but there is a deviation, at first unexplainable.



Having first taken on the port gallery, the plied part compared to the kitpart and a conveniently scaled reference picture, the triangular ship ladder reinforcement has decreased in size, putting the entire gallery on the same level. I already removed the locator edge on the hull but was subjected to fitting problems with doors on both sides of the ladder. Both the kitpart and the PE executing the ramp as smooth, I first replaced the Pe ramp with a larger one, correcting the level issue.

At starboard the cause of the deviation became clear.



Here the mirrored part of the port gallery was included in the PE set. It had no locator holes for the heavy girders rising from the hull, cutting up the railing. I suppose they wanted to prevent a misalignment of the gallery with the island superstructure mounted later on. Lifting the gallery level suppresses this problem but in my opinion it doesn't weigh up against the door level fitting problems.



After mounting the correct part of the gallery, I marked the girder locations on the part.



Having studied more pictures, I was able to ascertain that the ramp on the back ladder was not smooth but stepped. I had spare steps from the unused front galleries and included these here. People building an early version CVL will be unable to solve it this way.



Cutting up the plank edge means you also have to divide the railing part. Luckily it had the stanchion locations just right. I added a third cut near the extension.





On the other side I removed the plastic walkway with a loose Airwaves sawblade. Ideal to saw hard-to-reach objects, but it's a bit tedious. Also painful if the fret connections are jagged...







De paravane aan stuurboordzijde is al gemonteerd.



De valreep aan een zijde is in de romp gegoten, dit is perfect weg te halen met een Airwaves-zaagje zonder de steel.

[StevenVD]

A set of ladders is also added, after the second paravane is added. But I believe I put it backwards...





The second ladder I plied to the wrong side. I dare not correct that, it could split in two.

[StevenVD]

Princeton has profited from my visit to IPMS Antwerp last weekend. I found Aber AA gun barrels, extra PE for the planes and some booklets with info about these. Not to mention the fine Trumpeter Rooikat kit.



These books will help me position the Avengers and Hellcats on the deck and to paint and decal them correctly. The paint for the hangar will at last be Lifecolor, because Navalmodels had no WEM blue 5N in stock. This being for internal parts it doens't bother me if it's a bit off.



Some say the Dragon barrels can't be improved. They surely look the part, but does the length compare to pictures?



On a picture from West Virginia in "Warships and Warship Modelling" (Wooley and Clarke) the thin part of the barrel makes up 1/4 of the total gun length.



In the Dragon 20mm guns this is 1/3. Aber also emphasizes the coil spring after the sleeve.



I found a plan with imperial dimensioning. A conversion programme and a division by 350 leads me to a required gun dimension of 0,67 cm. A slight increase in length would suit the guns.



Drilling a hole in the shortened barrels was futile, there is no space on a single barrel section. Therefore I decided to saw a locator cut, providing ample space for the Aber barrel to catch.



The created 1mm saw cut. Also featuring the ammo drum locator hole and a hook for the shoulder piece.



All 16 barrels replaced.



The Aber splinter shields are nice stuff, but I needed a lot of identical pieces and not the 3 different options they provide. So it was Dragon PE I used. I only missed the Aber riveting.





The finished 20mm's. Each one has 7 subparts. Now for the Bofors!

[Tracy White]

Nice work!

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Tracy! I'll pass immediatly to the quad 40mm Bofors. The plastic too compares well to the Aber barrels. I could find no dimension blueprints for this, so I only compared the relative subpart dimensions.



The Aber barrels are a bit shorter due to a smaller coil spring section.



This drawing from a book about Yorktown class carriers shows the gun from abroad. The spring section is almost 1/6 of the total length, corroborating Aber.



To make these 4 double installations, I just milled the pins on the metal barrels away and glued them flat against the breech. A lot faster than the drilling option provided.

[Tracy White]

Maritime.org's US Navy Documents is your friend, especially pages four through twelve of the Gun Mount & Turret Catalog.