1/200 USS Iowa 1943

[Channell]

I did think briefly about doing a resin stern casting and peddling it on ebay, but then I'd be robbing folks of the chance to take their first tentative steps into scratchbuilding.

In all honesty though, I can count all the finished 1/200 battleships I've seen with my fingers, and I might only need my right hand if I don't count the Arizonas. Just finishing a "stock" Iowa/Missouri is an achievement in and of itself, so don't y'all get too hung up on the kit's stern. Only the very obsessive will ever notice and I'm kinda on the crazy side anyway!

[Fliger747]

Jason:

Glad one of your ideas worked out. Sometimes a few tires get done along the road to success. Scratch building is often like that, some experiments and later improved ideas, once past the first cut things get easier.

Let us know what you come up with for plating ideas. The nice thing about using a heavy build such as a primer is you can sand it off if you don't like the result. I think gluing stuff to the hull is a more radical method and possibly a disaster in the making. That route experiment might be worthwhile on some variously curved surfaces such as old hull sections or some such.

Keep up the good work! T

[Channell]

Jason:

Glad one of your ideas worked out. Sometimes a few tires get done along the road to success. Scratch building is often like that, some experiments and later improved ideas, once past the first cut things get easier.

Let us know what you come up with for plating ideas. The nice thing about using a heavy build such as a primer is you can sand it off if you don't like the result. I think gluing stuff to the hull is a more radical method and possibly a disaster in the making. That route experiment might be worthwhile on some variously curved surfaces such as old hull sections or some such.

Keep up the good work! T

I appreciate the encouragement!

I'm thinking I'm gonna try .010 by .030 strips along the plate lines with squadron putty on one side to blend it into the hull. This will allow me to have perfect curved lines that will be firm and strong and can also be sanded even thinner... kinda the best of both worlds between primer/tape lines and actual styrene plates.

[BB62vet]

Jason,

I'm watching all this progress...taking notes, as it were for future reference....

[Fliger747]

Jason:

I used that method for the above WL plate lines on the bow, not as easy to sand as one might think when more than one plate is close by. Certainly one way to do it! That you are attaching plastic to plastic is an advantage however... well I'll take that back as you have a lot of scratch hull now!

In some places the plates alternate top and bottom rather than one edge overlap, which might work better with a full strip if you can conform it to the hull?

Cheers: Tom

[Channell]

Merry Christmas to all and here's this weeks update!

Of course, reshaping the lower stern area is only the background for the parts that made her rock and roll past 30 knots, and that has been the subject of my attention for the past few days. it wasn't easy as I had to pretty much scratchbuld (and heavily modify kit pats) to get it all. Here's what I've got so far (it's not permanently attached yet, BTW).





[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/6zEz923.jpg)



Please judge and advise me... does it look right to you?

[Strategos Augustus]

It looks marvelous. A pretty dramatic improvement indeed. I am impressed.

I would love to pick one of these kits up some time.

Konstantin

[Channell]

The holidays are great for lots of reasons but for me they've given lots of time to push this project forward. With the stern pretty much done I turn my attention to the deck...

First, I got my holes in for the bar steps on the stern. Rather than drill them I just inleted the pontos PE guide right on:





I like doing it this way when I can because it's quick, saves on broken tiny drill bits and I get perfect holes every time. After a little bit of cleanup the brass will blend in perfectly too.

I also decided to not tempt fate and leave well enough alone on the bow; my plans say there should be more material on the bulbous bow and along the bottom of the hull but I think it looks great after just sanding some more curve into the bow so that's more or less gonna be the final shape of the hull.



Next I went to work on smoothing the top of the hull where it meets the deck. The kit does provide a little lip above the deck but it is woefully inadequate and inaccurate for me. Another problem I had to deal with was caused by lowering the sweep of the stern; it left a hogback in the deck line and required lots of sanding to get rid of. An unintended positive consequence of that was that I was able to sand a very slight camber into the deck surface, so it all worked out well in the end.

After that I glued .010 X .030 styrene strip to the very edge of the hull, being careful to try to match the profile of the hull. This will make up 1/2 of my new hull lip; on top of that I'll glue some .020 brass rod after I blend the .030 strip into the hull.

Here's some in-progress photos:









Finally, I decided to ditch the KA deck and go with Pontos instead as it's a much better deck accuracy-wise and is designed to incorporate the deck "gutters". Luckily, Pontos offers decks by themselves and Freetime Hobbies sent me one incredibly fast, only a couple days after I ordered it. Thanks guys!



Another nice thing about the Pontos deck is that it comes with all the brass plates and waterways... that bow plate was pretty muck the only part I'd already used on the Missouri set so I'm glad to get another!





Forgoing the Pontos brass gutters leaves a nearly perfect scale waterway between the new hull lip and wooden deck, just don't forget to smooth out the molded planks and seam line before putting the deck down permanently:



More to come!

[Fliger747]

My hull had no bulb fwd at all as I originally built it 50 years ago. The bulbous bow is fairly easy to add compared to the work you did on the stern. Bondo would work but I used a mixture of epoxy and micro balloons for some reason, sands very easily!

Looks good! T

[BB62vet]

Jason,

Wow! Your IOWA is really coming along - impressive, to say the least!

I finally got my Pontos decking today (12/26) after a 5 week trip from RoK - arrived intact with the replacement PE as well. I mention this since your construction is going to be helpful on my project, as well.

Are you planning on doing anything to finish your wood deck (as discussed in Main Forum/Using Wooden Decks) prior to installation? Just curious.

I may end up making templates as you have in order to correct the extreme bow bulb up forward and the lower hull fwd of turret 1; of course this will occur next month after return to my shop.

Your treatment of the stern grab rungs is a unique approach - I've broken 4 out of 5 .03 mm bits so far on this kit. It's a bit killer, for sure. I'll be interested to see the final photos of the installed rungs.

Keep up the grand job here - it's turning out really nice!

Hank

[Channell]

Thank for the encouragement! Good to hear you finally got that deck; I'd be interested to see what it looks like.

I've been studying pics and having second thoughts on leaving the bow as-is... I've gone this far so why not?

[Fliger747]

Easy for us to say... "Go for the Zeitgeist".

T

[Channell]

Well I took the plunge yesterday... I built up the bow with various sizes of styrene strip and almost a whole tube of squadron putty. So far, so good...

[Fliger747]

As long as you are adding, nothing you can't fix with a belt sander....

Cheers. T

[Channell]

Here's some in-progress photos of my bow work to show there's madness to my method...











...So that's more or less "to specs" (minus some obvious need for final shaping and smoothing out) according to the Floating Drydock plans. This video also show some good angles of the New Jersey in drydock for comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YIfR2vjg7E though mine still looks a bit too chunky for my eyes in model form so I might thin it down some more for the sake of art.

The good news is that past "lucky 13" the kit hull matches up nearly perfect with the plans, so Operation FUTURE (Fix Up Trumpeter's Unabashedly Retarded Engineering) is nearly a success.

Thoughts/opinions/advice welcome!

[BB62vet]

Jason,

Well, your pix confirms that you were doing what I had envisioned you were doing (from your earlier post). I'll tuck this info away for near-future reference.

The U-Tube video was very interesting; it answered a couple questions that have arisen on the several forums re. IOWA BB's and models of them. I need to make a Favorites category with these videos all listed in one place.

Getting back to the bow issue:

I'll need to create the templates as you have done; your modification confirms the "bad hull" Trumpeter has provided us. I would make one comment regarding the padeye on the bullnose of the hull - it is parallel with the hull, not perpendicular. It is actually a straight extension of the rounded hull form in both vert and horiz. only flattened with a hole in it. NEW JERSEY had hers removed in the late '80s due to leakage into the fwd peak tank. There is actually a 6" dia. pipe that runs vertically inside the hull that had to be welded over, etc. (This is a simplified description of the removal, etc.) I have pictures of the padeye as built, but not here at home. You can probably go to NavSource and find reference photos.

Keep up the good work and pictures!

Hank

[Fliger747]

I believe that was for streaming paravanes originally? My only comment about your bow modifications is the shape of the upper portion of the forefoot, which looks as if it flares outward toward the bottom. Looking at the many launching photos this is a more straight line sloping outboard from about the waterline to the curve at the bottom?

Great improvement! Tom

[BB62vet]

The hole in the lower bow plate was indeed for streaming paravanes. NEW JERSEY had hers removed and THEN the brass wanted to know if her paravane capabilities were intact for an upcoming mission in the Persian Gulf. Needless to say, cart before horse!

Hank

[JimVarnellABH2USN]

Jason,
As always I am very impressed with your work, I honestly could say cutting up a kit soooo expensive would and does scare me to death, but you seem to have a handle on it and I look forward to seeing more progress on this monster as you proceed, best of luck to you.

Jim

[Channell]

@Tom:
Yea, you're right about the bow, shouldn't be hard to fix that.

@Hank:
Yea, the kit's hull accuracy absolutely sucks... and it's probably the most accurate hull they've put out! I'd voice my complaints to them directly, but I assume the reply would be something like this after translation:

Thank you for your concern random hairy barbarian of the periphery, but as the glorious Republic of China holds majority share of your poorly nourished lands desperately in need of tilling by our loving hands, WE shall determine the true and only shape of your antique military vessel hulls. Please report to camp C immediately for reeducation.
Sincerely, The Trumpeter Team

Naw, truth be told I'm really enjoying this. It's very rewarding to tease the Iowa's unusual shape out of the giant tanker hull that came in the box, even though by now I could probably put this build in the scratchbuilding section and feel good about it.

I plan on adding that padeye too, I thought i could pull it off with a appropriately sized piece of brass rod and careful puttying. Still not there yet, however... I want to get the hull shape finalized first.

I had another free day to putter around with the Iowa and managed to take a step forward and two steps back, though hopefully it's for the better.













I wasn't satisfied with my deck surface; despite by best efforts it ended up slightly wavy because I tried to sand around the molded hatch gutters. I ended up sacrificing them and my new hull rim and hit the decks with a new round of sanding; the rims aren't hard to do with styrene strips and I think I've got better lines in general now. Also, I've eliminated virtually all of the molded plank lines so the deck should stick really well! I also realized I forgot to reshape the deck around the extreme bow and did some hacking there; it's too thick and stubby in kit form and makes the bow gun tub look wrong...