The Ship Model Forum

Guys, I need a little advise from all you experts on my 1:700 Tico from Hasgawa. Before I go to it, let me explain how I got to this point. I am working on painting the flight deck, which I am planning to pretty musch finish and protect before I go to any detailing since masking and further work on it with all the delicate railing etc. seem very tricky.

Since planking is done using raised panels I plan to use sanding to higlight the details.
First I painted it with black:

Next was wooden layer. I deliberately used very thin paint and let it flow a bit off raised panels. I also applied it in slightly irregual manner:

Then I covered it all with blue deck stain - unfortunately I forgot to make a picture of that phase

Next were the deck markings. I decided to paint them because of two reasons, first decals do not look very realistic plus they can't be sanded.
I therefore first masked lines:

Then the numbers:


And here is the end result (sorry for pictures, lighting was not ideal):

Now came the moment of truth. I started sanding with 6000 and 8000 sandpaper to highlight black and wooden details and make the flight deck look worn. Next steps will be adding tire marks, dirt and the rest of the weathering but need to know what do you think about the effect so far. Do I need to go a little deeper or is it OK?

very well done. wish my lines and numbers on the FDR looked as good as your Mr. T

gtb -red wrote:very well done.

Agreed! You did a great job getting the tape alignment right for straight lines.

This past weekend, I painted the flight deck markings on my 1/350 Yorktown. I choose to paint for the same reason: sand through the Deck Blue to bring out the wood color. It took me a couples hours a day for two days to mask the deck. Tedious, but the effect was well worth the effort.

Since the wooden planks on the real ships were stained, not painted, and that wood wears faster than steel, the wooden planks weathered differently than the painted steel tie-down strips. See how the wood weathers differently than the steel tie-down strips on USS Randolph's flight deck in the photo below. I hope to achieve this look on my model.

Good photo, thanks.
It seems I need to rub off some more blue paint to get more wood visible plus I will use some oils to add different shades of wood.
In 700 scale I ithink I don't need to worry about detailing tie down strips, perhaps just a very light drybrush.

The result is perhaps slightly too intensive, a slight filter at the end should take care of that:

It was too nice weather this weekend to be inside and make much progress. Nevertheless, I was able to finish all four 5 inch twin dual purpose shielded mounts. I added sight hoods made from styren, side doors from aluminum foil and PE back doors. I also sealed the paint with Future and made a (slightly too heavy) wash.




And for size reference, all four siting on One cent coin:


Question for moderators of this thread. Since I am documenting my build into pretty small details, would it make sense to move it into separate thread and only post major steps into this massive thread?

FlyingLow wrote:Question for moderators of this thread. Since I am documenting my build into pretty small details, would it make sense to move it into separate thread and only post major steps into this massive thread?

You can, but the picture post area will prune out threads that haven't been updated past a certain date. What I've been working towards is pulling out posts and photos and turning them into a static page we can put on the site as sort of a "in-progress build" article that we can link to on the main page. So it'd probably be just as good to pop them in here.

FlyingLow

Great build so far. Have you made any more progress? Any more photos to show us?

Hey Dirk, thanks for kind words. Yes, I am still alive and kicking and there has been some good progress on the Tico. I am taking pictures as I move forward just didn't have time to organize and post them. I should be able to do so in few weeks.

As above posts were moved from the "Calling all Essex Class Carrier fans" topic I will first some of my earlier posts so everything is at the same location, just in case somebody will find it usefull.

This is how it all started:



Hasegawa kit has no interior, so I had to scratch build the hangar deck:


Interior of doors is simulated using aluminum foil:


I enjoyed driling hundreds of holes into "beams"


Of course many doors were cut open:


Painting has begun:



Some very basic weathering also on the hangar floor, because of the angle much won't be visible anyway:

Time for an update showing some of my corrections and impreovements to the hull.

First I had to cut away all the modifications that were added later. It seems that Hasgawa kit has a pretty bad mismatch of the features from the different periods:


Quite some styrene and filler was required to correct stern to somewhat acceptable shape:


I also had to build new openings for anchor, I think I made it too big but it should do.

Next step was to simulate steel platings and other notable features. In this scale it really has to be subtle so I only used couple of layers of Mr. Surfacer. Did I mention I had to buy a lot of Tamyia tape




I think result is pretty good:



I used soldering wire to make external piping:

I decided to use planes included with the kit for the planes that will be stored in the hangar just because they are not best and will not be very visible down there. For the planes on the flight deck I will use Trumpeter sets that are made from transparent plastic and seem much more correct in shape and size.
Last sun bathing on flight deck before they go down into darkness of hangar deck:



If you look closely you will notice I also built 5 Corsairs even though according to my information Tico did not carry them during the first deployment, they will be in hangar pretending to be Hellcats

I have a question for experts. I believe Helldivers should have the part of wings that gets bent upwards painted blue, however in the photos I looked at they are white, which seem quite unusual. Can anybody shed some light on how were the planes of Airgroup 80 in 1944 painted?

I was thinking long and hard, shoud I add all the railing, antennas and glue everything first and then paint or should I paint first and then assemble. Since I don't trust my clumsiness I decided for something between: build and paint components and then do final assembly.

So it was time for famous Dazzle camouflage or as it is officially known Measure 33, Camouflage Design 10 A or in short 33/10A.

I first resized three different sources to match 1:700 scale so I could use for taking measures and prepare masks. I was stunned how wrong the Hasegawa painting instructions are. As expected the official instructions from US Navy are most correct when compared to photos.


I was masking mostly using Tamiya tape, only for curved lines I cut masks from Frisket masking film, which didn't work too well because of it's low tack it didn't adhere well to uneven shape of the hull and piping on it... well nothing some sanding and touching up can't fix

Light grey was so similar to Mr.Surfacer it was quite tricky to paint, here already masked:

Painted:

And dark blue:

Since I was using Acrylics it went pretty fast and here is the moment of truth:





And dry fitting with the flight deck to see how it looks:



I like it, what do you think?

That is a most impressive build!

I don't know how I missed seeing your build, but I'm glad that I found it!
She looks great so far.


Bob Pink.

Very, very nice

Really enjoyed following this build, very impressive and lots of detailed steps.

Happy modeling

John