The Ship Model Forum

Hello:

Just for fun, here's another picture of the air wing.

And speaking of the air wing, it's about time I started to paint the wings of the air wing. These are the folding outer wings for the TBFs and F4Fs. They've previously been puttied and sanded to fill in the panel lines. I'll try a mass production approach by taping them all down to a piece of low tack tape and airbrushing them all at once.

Mike

Hello:

It's been two weeks, so time to post something. First, I've been working on adding the look out tower to the island. There was quite a gap between the top level (i.e. "The Hat") and the area above the windows that needed filling. Here's what that looks like so far. I swear it'll look better under a coat of paint.

Mike

Hello:

Also, returning to the hull to finish off a few last things before it goes in for paint. Under the 5" guns, there are two holes (I think for mooring ropes) and the portholes above them. It seems like this row of portholes remained while the rest were plated over. The kit portholes are round when viewed from the side, which makes them oval when viewed perpendicular to the surface. Those holes were filled, then drilled out with a 1.0 mm drill to make a hole that is round when viewed perpendicular to the surface. Looking at the photo, I think I should do a little sanding over the mooring rope holes...they look a bit rough. The pencil like under those parts is my attempt to draw a level line. It looks really tilted, but that's because of how the tilt of the hull increases going forwards. From the side it's reasonably level.

Mike

Hello:

One thing that's completely missing from the kit are the stacked life rafts. There appear to be 4 sets around the hull, each with a large, medium, and small raft. I stole some from my USS North Carolina kit, but they're all neatly nested together, whereas the ones on the Big E are sort of tilted into each other, and the bottoms of the rafts are all at about the same height. So the small raft is modified from the North Carolina kit, with a 'floor' from a PE set of floater nets. The other two rafts are bent copper wire and sheet plastic. Overall, attempt #1 looks ok. Just need to make 3 more like it, and then figure out how to mount them.

Mike

Hello:

Just in case anyone thinks this is all sunshine and rainbows, I found this major oh-**** thing yesterday. I glued in the deck/structure that goes between the hangar-deck level and the flight deck at the very stern (kind of visible at the right of the photo...kind of dark in there). I laid down the flight deck, and found a huge gap...I can see day light across the hull above the 5" gun gallery. The underside of the flight deck is resting on top of this structure (apparently it's the propeller shop), which in turn is pressed against the stern deck. I have no idea how this got messed up, but it clearly needs to get fixed. First step is to measure the gap, and figure out what needs to get cut. Unfortunately, anything that needs to get cut is all brass PE, so not easy to lop a good mm or two off the top.

Mike

Hello:

The island is coming along. The look out tower is now attached to the island, so now it doesn't fall over with the lightest touch. The yard arms are installed. I waited to install the yard arms until after the look out tower was installed so that I could align the yard arms to the base of the island and the flight deck. From above, I held a square against the side of the island and adjusted the yard arms to be parallel to the side of the square. From the front, I adjusted the yardarms to be parallel to the deck. One thing I noticed is that the top 'hat' of the look out tower must have gone on a little crooked, as the two yard arms are slightly skewed from each other (i.e. the starboard side is a bit forward of the port side). It's a bit hard to see, and fixing it would require tearing apart a lot of the look out, so I'll let it be.

Mike

Hello:

Regarding the aft end of the island, I finally got the loud speakers installed. This shot also shows the big long ladder that goes up to the look out tower. That ladder went in surprisingly easily. Given my experience with other ladders, I was expecting quite the fight, but it slipped right in.

Mike

Hello:

On other news, I've also put together a few PE subassemblies: the two radars and the main mast. The only major subassembly left for the island is the foremast. These all went together without any fuss...just following the directions. The only real care was getting the parts of the main mast to be square.

Mike

Nice work, all around. She's looking good.

_________________
Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

Ship Model Gallery

Hello:

Work on the Enterprise has been on a short break to finish off another project. Your regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly...

Mike

Hello:

Staying with the airplane theme, but these are really tiny. The canopies and props have all been added to the Avengers. I got some Vallejo black primer, so I used that on the props as a primer and then I realized that I don't really need to paint over the primer. The canopies don't have the right number of frames for an Avenger, but given the scale, it gives a reasonable impression of the greenhouse canopy. I used a fine tip brush, then after the paint dried I scraped away some of the excess with the tip of a facto blade where the paint went a bit too wide.

One thing that drives me nuts about little canopies is that you really notice the light reflecting off of the bottom and the edges. This is from total internal reflection of light inside of the plastic. To suppress this internal reflection, I painted the edges of the canopies dark gray, so that instead of reflecting off of those edges, the light goes into the paint and is absorbed. It's a similar thing to how fingerprint scanners work. I'm quite happy about how this worked out for the Avengers.

Moving on with to the F4Fs...

Mike

Those Avengers look great.

Hello:

Lately the effort has mostly been on the F4Fs, getting the canopies on and painted, and adding the props. I'm about half way through this effort, and I've 'only' lost one canopy. Photos show that the prop hub was often silver, so I've painted them accordingly.

In other news, decals. Let's do some math: (25 F4Fs + 20 SBDs + 12 Avengers) x 6 stars per plane = 342 decals just for the national insignia. After trying to scrounge enough decals to do the airwing, I found that Starfighter decals does a decal sheet that specifically includes the airwing for Enterprise at this time. Shortly after placing the order, the sheet arrived.

The Avengers have long been the test articles, so they got declared first. My first try didn't go well, as I couldn't get the decals to slide off of the paper, regardless of how long I soaked them. I sort of peeled them off with an exacto blade. After a bit of Googling, I learned that hot water can help, and indeed it did. But it can help too much, as one of the side numbers for an Avenger came off in the water and curled up on itself. So hot water really helps to release the decals, but not too much.

At this point, I've decaled 4 Avengers. Having been decaled, I also put the wings on, trying to get the tilt of the wings right. The tops of the wings tilt inwards quite a lot, and the wing tips are point to the ends of the elevators when folded. Overall, I think that went well. Only 8 more Avengers to go.

Mike

Great work on those planes!

The decals add up quickly to a lot of work indeed... Will you still add the numbers (I think the Starfighter sheet provides them too)?

Hello:

The Avengers do have their numbers on, as provided by the Starfighter decal sheet. However, they're very hard to see with the wings folded.

Lately, effort on the Big E has been getting the canopies and props on all of the F4Fs. That is now done. Nothing really to write home about...just a lot of hours to get it done for all 25 planes.

Next: decal the rest of the Avengers and get their wings on.

Mike

Hello:

The Avengers are done. Well, there are a few little touchups here and there, but other than that they're done.

I'm not sure what I'll do next. Decaling the F4Fs next would make sense. I might focus on finishing off the hangar deck area so that I can get the flight deck glued down.

Mike

Hello:

Decaling on the F4Fs is underway. The picture was taken after I had decaled the tops of the wings, and I just finished the bottoms of the wings as well. I use 5 F4Fs to test the side decals, and those now have the decals on both sides. Just 20 more of those to go.

Mike

Hello:

Several photos show that Enterprise had sets of three rafts of different sizes that were nested into each other. There appear to be four sets, two per side, that look like they're hanging by ropes. These are not well depicted by the kit, as the hanging rafts sort of settle to be even at the bottom with more of a gap at the top.

After scratch building the rafts, I glued them together with the right offset and tilt. To mount the ones near the front of the hangar deck in place, I made some brackets to hold them in the right place. For the ones at the bow, I glued some sheet plastic to the back to give it the right tilt. I'll try to figure something out to represent the ropes that support the rafts.

Mike

Hello:

And just to show that all is not sweetness and light...

I'd like to get the flight deck glued down soon, as that'll be a major milestone in the project. While glueing on the rafts, I found this problem. The flight deck is sitting about 2 mm higher than it should be, and in the picture you can see light coming through from the other side. I just fixed this problem at the stern, and it turns out I have the same problem at the bow. The PE bow deck supports are all touching the forecastle deck, so I think those parts are too long. I think I'll have to rip those all off and cut them down shorter (not so easy as it's all brass).

Mike

Hello:

After fixing the issue with the fit of the flight deck at the bow (there isn't much to show, but I can assure you it was a lot of tedious work to rip it all apart, grind down the brass, do a bunch of test fitting, reassembly, and repainting...riveting stuff I know), focus has shifted to getting the flight deck installed. I figure that's the next big milestone and there's no sense in avoiding it. So that means getting the hangar deck squared away. I don't intend to do a lot of detailing in there as it's hard to see and an infinite time sink.

Here's a picture of where things stand now, or at least a part of it. The problem I realized is that the hangar deck walls weren't white. They are on carriers today, but not back then apparently. I was looking at this picture of the hangar deck and noticed that, while yes the wall aren't as dark as the deck, the walls are darker than the sailors' hats. The walls are about as dark are their shirts. I'm not saying the walls were blue, just that they're about the same darkness. Maybe some sort of light or medium gray. So, I'll continue to add a few more details in there, then pick a gray and repaint the walls.

Mike