The Ship Model Forum

I have decided to enter the fray of the 1/200 building of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay
2 September 1945 depicting the formal surrender of Japan. The kit will take some time
to build but the amount of figures will be a feat in itself.

As a base the Trumpeter 1/200 USS Missouri kit
Aftermarket will be:
Pontos Detail Up Set w/ blue wooden deck(23003F1)

Pontos Advanced Add-on Set

and

Trumpeter 1/200 WWII Navy Figures sets.

I'm going to use the wisdom of one of our fellow modelers and stick with just this one project.
Also I will probably be giving weekly updates to the build.

PH

To date here is what I have gotten done.

The hull is almost complete except for attaching the rudder assemblies and
doing some filling and sanding for the hull skegs.

Drilled out the portholes on the pieces that have them.

Started adding floor bracing and interior decking for where hatches will be open.
Thinned the walls for where hatches will be open. Began some passage layout with Evergreen,
sheet styrene will be glued on to form the bulkheads.

I have also started working on some of the PE

PH

PH,
Welcome to the jungle! I'll be looking forward to your build progress. There's a lot of great knowledge on this here board!
Randy

You know I'll be watching! Very cool and ambitious project! It will be awesome to watch her progress, just keep the build time under a decade for us.

Sticking with the model pretty much out of the box? There has been a tremendous amount of discussion on various forums here about various modifications of the kit accuracy wise. Without any mods people have built impressive models!

Good Luck!

T

BTW:

A small but obvious external item omitted from the kit, easy to construct is a set of external braces to the fire control tower which occupy the space between the flag bags and the tower and have an ovoid passage through. I posted a photo of this I believe on Hank's build thread.

Cheers: Tom

An ambitious project, good luck! Just an FYI, unless trumpeter changed their crew figures from the ones they included with the Arizona kit, then they are grossly overscale, and will look silly next to the AAA guns or any hatches. Northstar make beautiful and accurately sized crew figures that might be a better option.

Hey all,

I am hoping to keep it between 2- 2 1/2 year project without many mods. Not going to go to overboard.
Mainly opening hatches with some internals, fixing some of the door locations, small additions like the braces,
those kind of small things. So thank you for the help over on the Calling all Iowa Class forum section.

Sgtryan13,

Thanks for the heads up about the figures. I dug the ones from the USS Arizona out and the Trumpeter package
ones are indeed smaller. I have attached a pic of both side by side.

While I'm on, I did a test run of soldering together one of the 20mm. It seems there will be no way around them
being a pain in the ash-can. I am considering removing the platform on the wiring piece as it seems a little big
for the electronic site housing.

sgtryan13 wrote:An ambitious project, good luck! Just an FYI, unless trumpeter changed their crew figures from the ones they included with the Arizona kit, then they are grossly overscale, and will look silly next to the AAA guns or any hatches. Northstar make beautiful and accurately sized crew figures that might be a better option.

They are great figures(Northstar), but only if Hitler is coming to visit... I've been bugging them to make some USN figures in 1/200..

Happy Holidays Model Warships community

Its been a long week between work, sleep, and holiday shopping I really haven't
had the time to get a lot done on the mighty massive Mo' model. It can sometimes
be a little difficult to come home from construction work and jump right into model
construction, but I have gotten small gains over the week.

I've gotten most of the 20mm PE off the fret and removed any remnants of the attachment
points. Have soldered up half of the pedestals with their pieces. Folded half of the receivers
and started the bends for the shields.

Finished thinning all the portholes. Thinned all the walls on the 01 superstructure piece where
I am opening the hatches and started removing details on the bulkheads. Finished the Evergreen
strips that the passage way bulkheads will be attached to. Almost finished on the support braces
on the front deck piece for the floor of the main deck.

It's only a little progress, but I am happy because it is progress.

Happy Holidays!!

PH

Hi PH,
Here's a very little known fact about Missouri at Tokyo bay. Her forward decks were still blue, but her aft decks were stripped of the blue and was natural teak color.
You can see what I'm talking about at the end of this video..
http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675 ... C-aircraft

...and in this video.
http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675 ... -destroyer

Something worth considering on your kit. I think you would be the first to ever model her this way if you did it.
Jeff

Great project. I am working on a similar kit with similar PE set, so I'll follow along to see who you tackle this monster. So far, it's real nice

OK, so it's time for an update.
Weekly updates was wishful thinking.
The CIC and I have decided to purchase our first home so that is making modeling time a premium.
I get about 10-15 hours a week if I'm lucky, but some(call it small) progress has been made.
I also wish I had done more research and notes before I started the build. Plus I like to see what's
happening here on the forum and seeing others wonderful builds.

So, in the pics I have the aft funnel which I have added some boxes for the grill work, pieces at the director tubs, and
what I'm calling a rain skirt at the top.

In the foreground left the funnel dome to which I added a piece of .02 rod around the top. Sow it in a picture on Navsourse.

In the foreground right is the funnel cap. I added a disk to widen the diameter and started puttying and sanding in the slop.
Navsoures shows that the cap had a slight overhang to the funnel dome.
[img][/img]

Here I'm scratch building some items into the 5" gun mounts so they don't look so 'look inish' from the front. The right side
doesn't have the bottom angled piece as of yet. Here, just some passage openings I've made.

Looking very good so far!

This should be quite spectacular - I'll enjoy watching progress.

A note on the 5" twin mounts, the ones in the kit are an incorrect model, one used on cruisers and carriers. The difference is the height of the front vertical plate and the "glacis". Also, though there is some bolting/riveting in these mounts it is only discernible by running your hands over the mounts and feeling a very slight irregularity.

For mount models and dimensions, check out the "Turret and Mount Catalog" at HNSA.

Cheers: Tom

Fliger747 wrote:A note on the 5" twin mounts, the ones in the kit are an incorrect model, one used on cruisers and carriers. The difference is the height of the front vertical plate and the "glacis". Also, though there is some bolting/riveting in these mounts it is only discernible by running your hands over the mounts and feeling a very slight irregularity.

For mount models and dimensions, check out the "Turret and Mount Catalog" at HNSA.

Cheers: Tom

Tom is absolutely correct. Trumpeter inexplicably included the later, lighter-weight Mk.32s in the kit.
Here's a link to the correct ones, Mark 28s, offered in 1/200 scale.

http://www.shapeways.com/product/WH3SC8 ... d=57426094

Wish they were cheaper but 3D printed products remain expensive. Hopefully, that will change as the technology continues to mature.

Thanks for the info on the turrets being the wrong type. I vaguely remember reading recently
somewhere on the forum that they were the wrong type.

I'm not ready at this time to put another $200 into her at this time as I am about $1000 in with the kit, the two Pontos
PE sets, plus the styrene and paint. On top of that the CIC and I are in escrow now to buy our first home. Very exciting
times.

With the small amount of time I have had to model I have been working on the 5 inch gun turrets and will hopefully have
them finished with PE and painted by the end of the weekend.

In the pic below I show what I've done and how it looks next to one had I done nothing to the turret as far as the barrel openings.
The other 8 turrets are in various stages of build up.

Thank you all for the info you provide me and for taking the time to look at my slow build.

Hope everyone is having a great time with their builds. It's always nice to see what others do to
make it their MODEL. No matter your skill level, how fast or slow you go, whether you do this or not do that,
just please remember to have fun with it. It's your time and your model, do what you like that makes you happy.
If someone doesn't like it they can kick rocks, your not building it for them your building it for you.

Unfortunately, I myself have had to box up my Mighty Mo build for the time being as the CIC and I are 8 days out
from getting the keys to our first home. It will be about a month before we are settled in but I am very excited.
My new work room will be about one and a half times larger than where I am now so it won't feel as cramped when I'm
building. I will also have more natural light as there are windows on two walls. Just waiting for items to be moved
out so we can move in.
And when its time for a break or something just doesn't start going together right and I have to step away
Please keep posting those wonderful model builds. Its always nice to see different techniques.


PH