1/144 Jorge Juan (ex USS McGowan)

[Willie]

Hi all again,

A last element for today was the radar set in the bridge gallery, a very nice element too. This one :

And this is what I was able to produce :

It does not have to be over detailed, as it is going to be partially hidden by the windows and the balcony around the bridge.

Best regards from Spain again,

Willie.[/size]

[Willie]

Hi all friend modellers again,

The next big action is the Flak battery, that in Jorge Juan was a US Navy standard 3in/50 Mk27 twin mount. They say that beauty is in the viewer�s eye, but this beast is definitely a beauty :

What the Revell kit offers is quite complete, if all one wants is to build OOB, but at this interesting 1/144 scale, the possibilities are also interesting. This is what you are given with the kit :[/size]

[/size]
Dry built, the results are good, as it can be observed :

[/size]
But 1/144 deserves a bit more of attention.

On to the next entry.

[Willie]

Hi all again:

The platforms measures are correct, and these pieces can be used without further problem, but the carriages have to be built from scratch. I used several Evergreen profiles and stretched sprue. Not difficult, but the cuts of the bigger pieces have to be very precise, so that the elements are all identical :

Then some other elements on the stands were built :

Then, the stands themselves were detailed, using drills and files :

The basic elements are now like this, waiting for further improving and detailing :

And the the guns themselves. What the kit offers is not much, and not too correct: the barrels have got the correct caliber, but the recoil springs are too thin, so I had to carve new barrels with an X-acto blade, refining with sandpaper, and the springs were made heating Evergreen 0.5 mm. rod into shape on a drill. The results are quite convincing, and I am modestly satisfied with them :

I hope you like it as for now, and very best regards from the North Atlantic,

Willie.[/size]

[prowannab]

WOW! That is some amazing work!

[Goodwood]

Absolutely cracking work!

You should buy shares in Evergreen, as much stock you use from them!

[Willie]

Hi all again,

Thanks Prowannab and Goodwood for your remarks. I am glad you like the progress.

The last advance is once more in the 3"/50 battery. I have added the basic elements of the breech block and the craddle. This craddle has to have the exact width so that it does not get in place with pressure, but also that it doesn�t fit loose, so that, when completely finished, it can be set in position with a minimum of glue without ruining the paint job.

As for now, I think it is getting shape in the right way.

Best regards once more,

Willie.[/size]

[Willie]

Hi all once more.

The last advances were done on guns and stands.
The guns came out quite beautifully, although even in this 1/144 scale there are limits that I am not able to cross. Therefore I had to achieve a compromise between something that was detailed enough but making the whole equilibrated and recognizable as a gun, not merely a mass of pieces glued together in a block, something that would ruin the overall effect once the whole lot is painted ands set in place.
Every gun came out with a total of 51 pieces. I am modestly satisfied with the results, and I hope you experts like them too.

I attach some pictures:

Please feel more than free to make your criticism in whatever you think it is necessary.

Best regards from the North Atlantic,

Willie.[/size]

[Willie]

The same principles are applied to the carriages, that are quite more complicated to build than it seems to be at first.
With so many elements to be placed in such a tiny space, I had to omit the less obvious to again achieve something that had a resemblance with the originals.

Here you are the carriages, finished to a 80-85% :

With the gunlayer�s controls and seats, and the 3in/50 ready service magazines on their platforms, the stands are like this at the moment:

Every stand has for now a total of 206 pieces. Some elements as handrails, elevation rails and mount captain�s controls have to be added yet, so if we add the guns themselves, all three mounts are composed as for now by a grand total of 924 pieces, and will end up in ca. 1,000. My mother keeps saying that I am going to condemn my soul for wasting the time of my life in such a miserable way. Mothers are usually right, but I am in love with these mounts.

Again best regards from this side of the world,

Willie.[/size]

[Cezary]

It is going to be a meticulous and difficult job. I keep my fingers crossed and I cheer!

[steinerman]

Wow, Willie, what a beautiful job! I am seriously impressed. I can't wait to see these guns all finished. This ship is going to be a work of art!

[Willie]

Hi all folks,

And thanks Cezary and Steinerman for your very kind remarks.

To round up the construction of these beautiful A/A guns, I added some final details as the mount captain�s controls and the handrails on both sides of the stands.
These handrails were a kind of headache. I made them last week, but I didn�t like the results and erased all the work the following day; then I rebuilt the whole set of six, and very happy this time, only to realize after closer inspection that they are not simetrical... One will never be too careful when studying the pictures.

Here you are what I mean :

And the other side :

Anyhow, as I had done the "square" version in the first place, I could save half of the sets, and it could have been worse.

So this is what I was able to produce:

Now all the elements are complete, and the whole sets are ready to be painted and set in place. Here you are the whole lot of one of them:

IMHO he stands look excellent when everything is set in place:

So this is it for the moment. I will have to think what to build next, or if I should start painting.

Best regards from this side of the Atlantic,

Willie.[/size]

[marijn van gils]

Fantastic work!

[Joe Simon]

That is in incredible work you are doing!

[ModelMonkey]

[Willie]

Hi all again,

As the Flak battery is almost finished, I have decided not to paint, and go ahead with the stacks, something again very distinctive in these Fletcher-class ships.

For the aft stack I used as a general reference this excellent picture of USS Cassin Young:

The elements that the Revell kit offers are basically correct, and can be used as they are, after deleting all holes and drills. As this scale deserves some attention, I completed the exhausts, even though when covered and painted they are not going to be very visible.

After this preliminary work I made some small details and the torpedo fire director platform, something very easy to do, this one:

But after it was built and set in place I had the feeling that there was something very wrong with it. After comparison with the few pics that I have of Jorge Juan, I noticed that for some reason the platform was way too big.

I made all my measures again, and found them to be correct !!! So after much thinking I thought that maybe it was the picture that was wrong ??? I took the same pic and compared it with another one of the Velox, the Greek Fletcher moored at Piraeus, Athens. This is what I found.

Cassin Young :

Velox :

As it is clear that the Cassin Young platform is definitely much bigger, I compared it with some other pictures of the same ship, as the first pic could have been distorted by the camera, but it was not : For whatever reason, the Cassin Young platform is simply bigger, and period :

Well, I had to remove the first platform and make another one, that at this scale had to be 3.5 mm. shorter. Apparently not too much, but enough to ruin the overall effect.

Adding the beams was the easiest thing ever, and the effect is excellent :

Very best regards from this side,

Willie.[/size]

[Willie]

Hi all modeller friends again,

Then I made the reason of all this mess, the torpedo fire director itself, a MK27, this one, that as time went by suffered some minor alterations :

(222c).jpg (26.73 KiB) Viewed 1680 times

Even at this scale it is a very tiny thing, but I think that what I was able to make is more or less decent. It lacks the handwheel, but I am searching for a PE set, as these wheels will be used in some other parts of the ship :

Once together, the stack, platform and fire director look realistic, that is the only thing that is demanded here.

As a rest after the first step with the stacks I decided to build the peloruses on both sides of the bridge wings, something very easy.

This is the pelorus onboard USS The Sullivans :

And this is the one onboard USS Slater, clearly the very same thing :

The ones onboard Jorge Juan were the same, but apparently, for whatever reason, and as can be seen in this excellent picture, raised over the deck level using a further stand :

Whatever the level of the deck is, the pelorus is raised over it.

Making the pieces was no problem at all. I thought to make the balls first, and then attach them to stands, but as these things are so tiny, I considered easier to make the thing in one single Evergreen 2.50 mm. rod, carving and sanding the head first, and reducing the rest of the rod to a 2.00 caliber, using an X-acto blade. They were then completed using pieces of yogourth containers and stretched sprue. The raised stands were made with grey plastic from the model sprues. Very easy and funny to build.

Very best regards once more from the North Atlantic,

Willie.[/size]

[Silenoz]

Nice to see this one continue... beautiful work...

[steinerman]

I only have one word - WOW!!!

This is incredible!

[marijn van gils]

Great work!

[Willie]

And hi to all once again.

When enlisted in the Spanish Navy Jorge Juan was fitted with a Mk.15 torpedo tubes set, the regular equipment in the US Navy at the time, but in the mid 60�s she her armament was upgraded with a double set of Mk.32 torpedo tubes, on both sides of the aft structure, that for a time coexisted with the Mk.15 tubes, what means that this ship mounted the surprising number of 11 tubes !!!! :

As the pic is not too clear, I compared it with her sister ship Alcal� Galiano, to find the very same arrangement of tubes :

Even the ECM�s seem to be the same on both ships, as the Spanish Navy policy usually is, so we can definitely assume that both Jorge Juan and Alcal� Galiano had the same torpedo armament, before the Mk.15 tubes were removed in a later refit, probably at the beginning of the 1970�s.

Once this has been set, and for once, I found a very clear pic of these Mk.32 onboard Jorge Juan herself, a rarity, as the tubes used to be wrapped in a dark grey canvas for protection :

This pic allows the tubes to be identified as this specific version, as Mk.32 tubes were modified and upgraded as time went by :

The width of the tubes was a kind of a problem, as the relationship length/width is very clear, but the width measures I found referred only to the caliber of the torpedo itself. This useful pic allows to find the correct width of the tube, comparing the outer circle and the inner caliber, and after a few quick calculation it allows to use a 3.2 mm. Evergreen tube without further problem. Great !!!.

The breech chamber of this torpedo tubes is semispherical, and can be done very easily carving and filing a piece of 2.0 mm. Evergreen rod, that has to be rolled back and forth afterwards under the X-acto until it detaches itself :

Once the breech chambers and the reinforcement rings were set in place, making the tampions was a pure game. I had to widen the caliber of the tubes with a 2.0 mm. drill, and then cut pieces of 2.0 Evergreen rod; I glued small pieces of 0.25x0.5 Evergreen strip on them, and cut the excess :

Then I simply pressed the tampions into position, and done. The cuts are so exact that the pieces do not move at all, and no further glue is needed. The effect, even at this scale, is superb :

To be continued, but as for now I hope you like it.

Best regards from Spain,

Willie.[/size]