1/400 MN B�arn

[StevenVD]

In this update, most resin parts of the island are replaced. This is done because of the poor detail of windows and doors. The parts have simple geometric forms and can be copied to styrene floors with sheetmetal walls.



The lower part is copied here. 8 portholes were sourced from Essex remnants. Doors are from Dunkerques.



The next floor has large rectangular windows, that are drilled in after bending the metal. I didn't have more French doors so from this part it's Veryfire cruiser doors.



Some damage to the windowstyles will be repaired later. All of this is drilled by hand and then cut with a new scalpel blade.



Compare to the resin parts with what seems like heavy shutters. I did not like the look of that. Why was this not slotted into the resin? Then I would only have replaced the doors.



The second floor is easy and has smaller windows. I avoided damage here.



After some filing the three elements fit under the smoke stack.



I had to cut out the round from the stack in the top floor, as there was no more room under the stack for even a PE plate.







Another objective is scratched from the list. But the next one will be even harder. Stay tuned...

[StevenVD]

Now it was time to tackle the planking.



I had toyed with the idea to disassemble the unused Dunkerque decks that are in my stash. After counting the planks on one half beam section I got to 100. If the beam of 6.3 mm was divided by 200, a plank width of 0.3mm resulted. Even the generic decks for 1/700 on Scalemates only go to 0.5mm. Wood decks were apparently out of the question.



But there is a way to get to this using metal foil, like I did on earlier BB builds. A series of points at 3mm interval is connected with an engraved line, and then these are separated in 3 strips, and the last step is to try to get two lines in each of these 1mm strips. Not all of these were on par, but the general idea looks like it should. No butt ends were attempted, these look irregular in pattern.



Drawing these lines and paying equal attention to each offset is the hard part.



Two parts are needed, the flight deck length exceeds the metail foil dimension.



While trimming I missed the rear elevator edge. This means there is a seam close to that edge.



The elevator shaft is opened up. I am happy there are no rounds like on US carriers.





After removing some deck edge details, the new surface can be applied on the rear deck and the elevator doors.



The front part has a system of what look like tie-downs. This is copied to the metal deck.



The cutting of this copy causes some canning.



That can be hammered out.



The front deck part is also fixed with CA and the seam is filled. The only thing missing is the deck edge plank running around the flight deck. On the rounded parts this will be evident, but if I would remove 1 mm I would need a plank that can be molded around the deck edge. Maybe I should avoid this like I avoid the butt ends...

[MartinJQuinn]

Wow! You are ALL in on this build! Very creative solutions

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Martin! Some more changes follow in this update.

I noticed the added foil was loose at the edges. To ensure it to properly adhere to the plastic, I clamped a metal object to it and poured some Zap under the edge.



The starboard edge where the island sits, slightly deviates to the bow. This is according to plans, but the hull doesn't fit to the deck like that. Also, if the island is aligned to that, the stack would not be parallel to the keel.



So I cut it along the hull line and rounded the rear part again.



The tie-down-like things and other removed deck parts were added again. I made the planking foil to tight and I had to add a metal strip to both sides. Some filing was needed to level that strip.



Before fixing the deck, I made sure stuff can't fall in the elevators and disappear. I walled off the open holes with some leftover foil parts that were painted grey, I know there were fire curtains in the hangar. Then the main part of the deck was glued to the hull with some clamping.



The extremities are fixed later on with superfluous styrene glue. The deck was too stubborn to risk CA glue.



The 1935 changes to the ship were not all provided in the kit, so I had to make an important addition to the front deck edge.



In this 1936 picture the changes under the flight deck can be seen.



First the bracing under the girders had to be sawn off. This risky undertaking was almost done when the entire girder was knocked away. It was put back where it belongs and the stumps were filed.





Drilling the holes in the plating could be done with the Proxxon, but I hate to clamp the parts. I could manage it with the Dremel.



The 5 plates were then glued between the posts. There was a working space inside. I don't know if I can add a floor between them, there is a telescopic mast going through.

[StevenVD]

i'm going on scratching with the front elevator cage.



The Pontos Essex sets I used both had this useful fret.



The shape could be refined to get the outside of this framework of perforated I-beams.



I separated the desiderd frame from the fret and removed the unneeded partitions.



The section is split in two halves and filed clean from burrs.



Four of the frames were made. Because of the part numbers etched in them, one cracked, but it can be mounted on the inside. The perforated part of the I-beam can be added from a generic set.



I drilled between the holes in the beam to get the slit shapes. They are a bit oversized, but the smallest beams with better holes seemed too fragile to drill. The beams were added to the frame.



Two crossbeams are added and the frame is closed down. Then it's glued to the elevator roof.



A second frame was added. I still have to add the tension braces and the vault.

[StevenVD]

Some old PE frets are now selected to construct the vault in the elevator.



Some narrow beams are cut to 8.5mm.



These are used to make these tension frames.



Most of the elevator is now constructed like on the picture.



This crane should get some drilling.



But I'm used to building cranes with PE. I first tried to trace the resin on some foil.



But I never got the shape as clean as the resin.



So I drilled the holes after all. The PE was found in the Dunkerque remains.



The smallest planes are built. The wing removal was difficult with 2 broken parts.



Four small pins should locate the wing on the monocoque.



These are quite frail and would break easily.



The spars will fix that problem.



The resin wheels are mounted on these too.



There seems to be a dimension problem. These should fit in the front elevator.

[JIM BAUMANN]

Good work on the elevators!! use a No 10 P scalpel Swan-Morton blade to flatten the oval cut-outs in the crane
aircraft fuselage length versus elevator....

which is wrong?

best wishes and strength to carry on!

JIM Baumann

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Jim. Apparently the planes were multiple millimeters too large, they should have measured about 18mm overall and that's also the length of the elevator. And now the rest of the airwing is built.

Levasseur PL101



I almost used the wong airframe on these wings. They look alike and differ a bit in length.



All these resin planes use the fragile PE pin system to fix the upper wing like the D�woitines seen above.



It's a relief when the lower wing is fixed.





Here L'Ars�nal did not draw the Levasseur 101 axle, I presumed it had one like the L10 in the picture above but this might be wrong. In the Levasseur 7 drawing the struts are drawn as straight as the L10 ons, but these should be under an angle. This is quite misleading as you don't have the space for vertical struts. I removed the PE locator pins because the resin is too hard and thin to drill.



The axle is reproduced in ABS.

Levasseur 7



The difference here is the rectangular wing profile.



The lower wings got placed harder, because of the struts that had to be added later on.



I did not add an axle here as it was used as a torpedo bomber.

Vought 156 F



The casting skin is removed. There is an option for resin wheels and I took it. The PE wheels are nicer than the Eduard ones, I might use them in stead for the Levasseurs.



No locator hole for the tailwheel was provided.



The locator pins for the landing gear were bent to use for gluing to the wing surface. The propellers are badly attached to the fret with 4 points. It took al lot of effort to clean the burrs of the fine PE blades.

Loire Nieuport

A peculiar design with the faired front wheels and reversed double tail rudders.



These are completely built from PE.





The front wheel fairings are not present in the model, the resin wheels are pressed in a PE part.



The prop system is cleaner here.



The airwing is now ready for painting, though the D�woitines can't be placed near to the front due to the bad fit to the elevator.



The ship's propulsion system is made entirely from resin. The drawing shows the inner axles with struts mounted both to the keel, this is incorrect. On the model the struts are partly connected to the hull.



Removing the axles results in damage and scarring to the complete part. It's best to replace the shafts. 1.5mm ABS rod is used.



I made an error in the first shaft, the traces are still visible on the hull. This could be avoidable by numbering the resin parts.





I removed the locator pin, why drill in the propellers if the placement is obvious?



The rudders were added after drilling holes that were not indicated. This concludes the underwater hull construction.

[FFG-7]

according to this drawing, the inboard props should be further back to the stern & maybe also the outboard props.
forget about the drawing as this site has upload issues as it won't let me upload a 588kb file.

[JIM BAUMANN]

Of the drawing is too large to upload here;

FFG-7 could you do a screenshot of the area on the plan and post it here a a jpg ?
or you can send the screen-shot to me as an e-mail via the e-mail button below?

I would be very interested, almost a much as StevenVD
Kind regards

Jim Baumann

[StevenVD]

I took 2 pictures of the stern next to plans in the book.

[FFG-7]

Jim, when trying to upload the picture to this site, the upload bar swings back & forth for 10 minutes or more even for a file less then 1mb in size by which time I cancel the upload & edited the post. tried jpeg, png, tiff(original file format) & bmp.
here is a crop view but not as good as full size as numbers cannot be read properly if at all.

[StevenVD]

I'll check if this is a worthwile change, because it means a lot of cutting, sanding and resetting. Now, some work on the hull is shown. The port galleries were drilled out but not refurbished. I used spare PE for this. It should have been T-profiles with beams bending inward but that would have been too hard to make from the exterior.



I proceded to bend these railings for the catwalks. The missing ribs on the underside have been replenished.





But then I realised that I misunderstood the quite sketchy instructions and had made an error in the port catwalk placement. This was also the cause for the missing level change. I have to remove the long part and then place this further back. I did this carefully to preserve the PE ribs on the underside.



Only a few ribs came loose with the removal of the catwalk. I do need to make a lot more for the short part that will tak its place under the galleries. The long part is restored to the kit form by adding the two cut halves. Because it will now take position on a slightly curved edge, I snipped the side at two locatons so it would follow this curve.



A ridge of CA glue is milled from the hull.



After restoring the catwalks, the railings can be put back. The ladders are spare from former projects. L'Ars�nal has failed to add enough of these for all the level differences.

[StevenVD]

According to the instruction booklet a third anchor was included in the kit resin parts set, as a part cut from the casting block. I did not find this and moreover, four anchors are needed in total. L'Ars�nal seems totally oblivious to the existence of the stern anchor. It's a lucky strike that I have lots of anchors from Very Fire, that had included about 8 extra in the Birmingham kit. These only need to be trimmed down to the B�arn size. Here the left anchor is trimmed and the right one is original. Its out of focus but you can see the width difference.





These could then be mounted.



On the stern a nameplate is missing. The Aber PE lettering set is very useful here, applied on a piece of bent spare PE.





One of the strangest omissions in the kit are all the missing davits for the boats. You get one set in the PE parts, but you should get ten to provide all boats with a means to launch them. You only get the supports to place the boats, and these are very simplified like they were massive blocks. It has taken me hours of referencing, cutting and drilling to get this right. The booms at the bow and stern were made from styrene rod, but you should leave out the overly thick 0.6mm diagonal bracing on these booms. That should only be ropes.









I used Gunze 305 as commended in my modeling store as a replacement for the used Humbrol number. I considered this too dark. After priming, one scratch catwalk section did not have any supports, so I made 20 extra.



I decided after modulating with NATO Black, that I had to saturate this with light grey Vallejo primer to get anything like on the B�arn pictures. Then the deck was covered with Dark Yellow 2, wood brown and deck tan.

















It would be easy to place the deck striping before fixing the island structure.

[StevenVD]

The airwing is painted Gunze 306.







The decals for the airplanes have a common carrier film, necessitating to cut out all roundels. At the same time the deck decals are printed separated. And you don't get the white tricolore strip for the ailerons, you have to trim the blue and the red. It's even easier to paint...





Half an hour later, the roundels were put on. The upside was easy.



It appears the underwing roundels for the Levasseurs are not reduced in size. They do not fit there as indicated on the hand-drawn instructions.



It's a good thing the underside will not be visible. Now the hull red is put on the ship.



The shadows are indicated with red brown.



I tried to deconnect the resin sloops with a nipper. Though the casting block is thinner, one boat broke and some others were pitted at the bottom. Some CA glueing followed.



Each of them needs a tiny boot topping.



Wit a small offset I then added the grey camo.



The ship got its own topping prepared.



As the tape was removed, the hull red had oversprayed on the camo.





The anchors were masked and painted black.



The overspray ribbon was softened by spraying Gunze 305 again.





Later it will be moderated with light gray, after the wash.

[StevenVD]

The boats still needed some detailing on the deck. I found some Dunkerque woodgrain deck cutouts that had been primered and the open boats did fit in. A selection has to be made between the 2 shown types.



The other ones show a canvas top, so I painted these white.





The ship's deck was coated gloss, to use a Mig brown wash. Like that, the wood color would be darker, more like on pictures where you see contrast with the white lines.





The deck markings looked a bit yellow so you can't make the deck tan. After the wash I used Pledge until a shine was visible.



i started with the most impressive decal of the 1939 option, the front one. By nature this will split in the four corners of the compass, extending to all sides. I managed to reunite all snippets and after a while the thought of having to paint the lines was abandoned.



Actually the decals are very useful if you get to master the application problems. You can't touch them with your fingers once they are put down, or be attached to them. They are longer than they should, so you should trim them on the elevators and deck edges. They pass over the tie-downs on mid-deck so I used Daco Sol to soften them. Sometimes a ruler is needed to check for linearity along the deck.



When all was done, I also fixed the island and the elevators. This may create the impression that it is almost finished, but there's still no AA guns, searchlights and rigging.

[marijn van gils]

This kit looks like a lot of work, and needing a lot of persistence...
Great job Steven!

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Marijn. It sure is, but this week somebody chose to start the same project, he even got 2 kits: https://www.scalemates.com/profiles/mat ... bum=130689 . Let's wish him all the luck.

Now let's go over to some of the last building steps before the weathering phase can start.



The plastic 75mm/L50 guns are not detailed enough for use. The gun base with all its wheels, seats and visors is reduced to a simple cylinder.



Also the gunshield is totally underscale. The width is 1/2 the height.



Compare to this reference picture, showing a square frontispice. It also occured to me that the cutout in the fight deck edge is too narrow, but thats too late to change.



Only a piece of metal plate would do to replace this. I made it 5mm wide.



Compare to the kit part, a gunner wouldn't even get behind the shield like that. Also, the gun slit could be made narrower, because I also found a barrel replacement.



The shield needs some sidewalls, these can simply be added from the plastic gunshield cut in two halves.



The barrels will be replaced by these 3 inch Aber ones, exactly what would be needed in 1/350.



I changed the shape of the gun base until it had the right outline.



I then removed a much from the breech as possible to still be able to drill a locator hole. If the original gun was 3037mm, the whole should only be 7,6mm. I got at least to 9mm. But only the barrel part passing through the gunshield really matters.



I tried to place the shields, but some can go a bit lower.



To make it perfect, a visor slit should be added to each shield, but I thought this would make it prone to ripping apart.



The 37mm guns have all lost their unprotected resin barrels. A roll bar or separate packaging could have prevented this.



A good thing I didn't dump the Very Fire 1/350 kit parts for the Dunkerque double 37mm guns.



I didn't change the calibre, they are probably underscale for 1/350.



All you get for searchlights are these buttons on stands.



There should be one small light at the rear of the smokstack. I did have some from Eduard, but I replaced the PE stand for ABS rod.



The four 120mm lights would best be replaced by some Very Fire Birmingham plastic and their resin replacement parts. These have the correct supports.



I don't know what L'Ars�nal had envisioned when they designed some strange telemeters looking like library lamps. I found this clear reference pic showing a simple tubular design with a narrow base on some sort of gimbal.



So I decided to scratch this from brass tubing.



If the 1939 deck markings are used, this has some consequences for the environment around the deck crane. A covered hut was placed on the gallery behind the stack and a sponson was added behind the island structure to support the starboard AA fire support unit. This had a telemeter and a firing computer inside a round tub. I made something resembling this from afar. Later I also made one in front of the stack, where L'Ars�nal only gives you an ammo crate.



The pictures show railing around the fire support.



Some Essex railing was added to the stern. I had added two doors but this seemed only necessary at starboard, so the port one was removed again and replaced by a round hatch. I hope that was not a 1946 addition. The cable guides L'Ars�nal had indicated to glue upside down on the deck, were redirected to their correct position.



A funny colockwork-like arrow was scratched for LSO purposes.



I can also announce that the showcase for B�arn was ordered this week. It is measuring 65x20x20cm and will be identical to the USS Princeton showcase. that one is fitting in my Ikea DVD-closet.

[marijn van gils]

It sure is, but this week somebody chose to start the same project, he even got 2 kits: https://www.scalemates.com/profiles/mat ... bum=130689 . Let's wish him all the luck.

Wow! Judging by your tempo, I bet yours will be finished first though!

[StevenVD]

In a few weeks it could be finished, Marijn. No doubt, the ship will make it to Plastic and Steel in october, but you didn't tell if you would go there too.

Something that is not included in the model are the smallest AA component, the 13,2mm Hotchkiss guns. These were a replacement of the first AA armament, 8mm mitrailleurs.



A few years later, these got a splintershield (masque) and this is shown here. Sadly only a part of the shields are shown, the text mentions six double emplacements on each side. In this image they also take a location that was used by the starboard rear telemeter. This then seems to return in 1946.



This is the only clear picture in the book of the first three gunshields while being painted. A search online for this kind of armoured double emplacement did only result in one 1/350 3D-model. That at least gave me an impression to scratch these shields.



For the gun particles I still had in my stash the remainder of the 13,2mm Zuikaku guns. The Finemolds triplets I had then put away because of their crooked barrel combinations. I also had six of the superior Infini single PE guns on turned bases, five of them still having a turned brass barrel. That all resulted in 22 barrels. I decided not to mind too much about the scale difference with my 1/400 project, half of these barrels would be hidden behind the gun shield.



But on that 3D model I noticed that the shields taper to the sides, this was not visible on the picture and I had made 6 of them before noticing that. Also I understood that they were all double barrel guns.



I corrected this by redistributing the Finemold barrels under the gunshields. They were decent again if separated. I would also need to completely disassemble the Infini guns to get three sets of two barrels aligned correctly. The missing barrels had to be scratched.













All guns, searchlights and telemeters were painted and placed on the ship. The port 13,2mm guns are protruding above the deck more than the starboard ones, because of the level difference of the catwalks. I had to add sprue nodes under these guns to get them to fire over the railing, maybe this is overscale in height. I decided to put these guns where the original 8mm guns were. The two unused resinboats were apparently also additions for this period, they were placed on scratch supports on the catwalks. The starboard telemeter was described as double and I found it left on the picture above with the painted gunshields, having two optical tubes superimposed. These also had to be placed on nodes to reach over the deck.













I didn't want to use silver for the canopies, it's ugly and I needed metallics for the Levasseur cowlings too. I decided some trompe-l'oeil blue shine would be nicer. The tricolore decal system for the tail planes doesn't work, there is no space left for the white between the red and blue decals. That meant all had to be painted on by hand using Vallejo Ferrari red and transparent blue. These were also used for the hippocampe images on the Dewoitines. They are not included in the decals, but can be found on a few pictures and artistic impressions on the web. On the Levasseurs, the torpilleur and bomber codes are written in fineliner. For the Voughts and Loire-Nieuports I am still looking up the necessary color schemes, apparently this was more colorful.







Dewoitines and Loire-Nieuport AB4 color schemes.



This weekend I received B�arn's glass showcase. I wanted the base to be like the Dunkerques. First a wood profile frame was made.





Finding no plank fitting in this frame, I combined some smaller ones. That won't be visible.



The ship's supports have to be connected through the false floor by this plank.



I covered up the floor sides with a PVC profile.



It was filled in with styropor particles.



Then that is glued together.



Only the brass supports are still visible, the rest is covered by a cardboard sheet.



If I push down the ship another 5mm I have 10mm left above the mast. Then, the broche and the ribbon wll be added. But first some weathering.