1/400 Otaki CVN-65 Enterprise

[StevenVD]

Thanks SG1 and Marijn. It's too risky to take the island with me this weekend, I'm packing more than 10 models and I don't have a stand to leave it.

[ModelMonkey]

Wonderful!

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Steve. THis weekend, the deck was taken up for improvements. The deck edge galleries look ancient with their casting angles and the welds tapering out. The entire deck was treated with a square file that fit between the "stanchions". After that, Tamiya glue was brushed over this and the filings were scraped with a lancet to get a smooth surface.





The deck has some structures at a higher level than desired. These deck length indications were of course painted on. I removed them and maybe they won't return even, because for these there are no decals in the Revell set.



The same treatment for the catapult lines, it was easier with the knife than the micro saw. This was done after tracing them with the Trumpeter scraper.









The underside is also leveled from the many irregularities, here the resin ceiling from L'Arsénal should take place. The gelleries have Aztec steps where the inclined ladders should have been. I ordered the Infini set of US inclined ladders to replace these, it should arrive at Wednesday.



The crash barrier will be lifted as a PE part.



It can all be reached from the sides with a brand new lancet.

[StevenVD]

Let's finally do a dry-fit of the hull, the deck in its current state and the island.





If the deck is meeting the hull front edge, it slumps in its hollow after that, so it either needs to shift forward or be trimmed.



The oversize antenna bases are cut off the catwalks.





Navsource shows on some pictures how these bases were supported by girders under these catwalks.





Also visible are the inclined ladders leading to the lower decks. Some are leading and others are trailing the platform. I bought an Infini 1/350 generic set, that will at least make this look much better if not completely true to scale. Neither my Revell 1/400 or my Gold Medal 1/350 PE sets have any solution for these catwalk surroundings, other than some reels for firefighting.



I removed the bulky ladders under the deck, these holes will now be enlarged a bit.

[StevenVD]

A lot of markings on deck are cast as an unwelcome protrusion above the deck. This is sanded down and polished maximally.



The structures that would have been welcome, the tie-downs, were left out by Otaki, but that may be for the best as these should be a cutout. There are about a 1000 tie-downs and I rely heavily on the book "Airwing Enterprise"for their positions. It's dating a bit later than the selected period but probably none of the rows of tie-downs had moved.









Basically the tie-down rows are arranged along the keel line in regular intervals. At the deck level, the position of the keel line is not evident. The starboard catapult is positioned in an oblique angle. Some rows are aligned to the catapults and the deck edges. The regular rows I calculated as having an interval of 4mm. I am also running a 1/48 F-14D project and have an Infini diagram showing the exact layout of the tie-downs.



Apart from the measurements, I also had the problem of the construction method. I could have used the Proxxon milling machine with its turntable to drill each hole very shallow, but this seemed unseemly because of the large dimensions of the deck parts and the difficulty of keeping the drill on the same level. Then I thought of a better method I used in a Saab Viggen build. At 1/48 I had used Mastertools' rivet punch.





These could stand in for 1/400 tie-downs. They are only 2D, but the shape is clean and uniform. The 0,5mm diameter punch was selected.







The starboard side is best represented in the book and therefore attacked first. For the port side some Navsource top shots are used. It can be remarked how some areas have a low density and the rows are determined by the center formations running along the keel diverging around the catapults and deck edges. Also the angled deck has slightly irregular rows.



The bow section was punched first taking a few days.





The Navchat picture shows that the row along the keel line is running straight to almost the end of the ship. I chose these to continue to the central deck part. It's easier to work with the deck parts still separated, these can be joined after some detail work is done.



I found some lingering sinkmarks at the starboard elevators.



Some CA glue is used to fill them and then sand it flat.





This week I received the most recent CV-1 Langley book, only one of two I know and only published in the US. I found a used copy.



It has some pictures, but is consisting of mostly the text corpus (which is appraised highly in the press) and has no diagrams. When I start on Langley some graphic reference material will still be needed.

[StevenVD]

The flight deck is further torn down.



Not only does the texture on the model hinder the painting process, but the markings are slightly off the right angle of the landing strip. The starboard line misses the ramp and continues on the bow, while not bordering the starboard stern edge. Compare to the page spread in Hugh Lyon here.





Therefore it is completely sanded down to deck level and the correct outline is lightly traced with an engraving tool.



The tie-downs are now bordering to this engraving line that marks the boundary to a slightly different pattern.



In my other book a picture illustrates a different deviation from the original plan. The port angled deck marking should finish on an extension that is completely absent on the model.



a part of the catwalk has to go for this correction.



H. Lyon's book is being copied to 3/2 on a thick styrene plate.



Tie-downs are then continued, but apparently from "Airwing Enterprise" I should not have followed the line of the oblique catapult. The tie-down visibility on pictures varies strongly, most wide angle internet pictures are useless for this purpose.

[StevenVD]

I thought I was almost through the tie-down stamping business.



Some of the rear deck part edges have a wrong angle. It's complicated by the catwalks that are attached to them.



Behind the starboard elevator is a crane hinge and a catwalk on such a wrong angle edge. Both rulers should be parallel.



A correction piece is added to the deck.



The catwalk is reconstructed around it.



The port elevator was copied from the front starboard elevator, which is spurious. It should be like the other two elevators, with perpendicular corners. Correcting that will be a problem, as the Revell PE floor grate follows this error. The deck edge close to it is easier to remedy.



The LSO security net was still in use here, this will be replaced with PE.



Comparing the Revell part to the deck, my heart skipped a beat. The keel direction span of the tie-downs shouldn't be 4 but 6+ mm. The lateral distance was equal to what I had used.



So I was almost ready at putting a third too many tie-downs. Would this matter in the end? But the elevator pieces would show out the error, with their larger pattern. There was no escape, the deck stamping had to be redone. About 900 stamps in 3 days had been placed. I decided to use plaster to fill them, this does not react wit plastic and can be wiped off easily. A trace of the earlier pattern might remain after painting, but I prefer this to leaving on a deformed pattern. I would make the 6+ dimension to 6 rounded to make it easier.



Not everything is lost by redoing it, though. I can use part of the old pattern to design the new one (4x3=6x2). Some holes are reused. In the diagram above the green indicated stamps are reopened, the red ones remain shut and the blue ones are newly added.



I already restamped the bow part today.



I wanted to remove the massive deck edge cable reel holding structures to replace them with photo etch reels.





This was done with a circular saw and a vertical milling bit.







The catwalks were then sanded smooth. Tomorrow the enormous middle part will be restamped...

[Pieter]

So much work going up in smoke must be awful. For '700 I hope to get away with painted tie downs if I ever build one. About the deck shapes and details (not the tie downs), you may want to have look at the booklet of general plans of Kitty Hawk. Enterprise was a somewhat enlarged Kitty Hawk and as Kitty hawk has no nuclear secrets her BOGP can be found online. https://archive.org/details/cva63bogp1973

[StevenVD]

Thank you for the link, Pieter. I heared the de sign was related, but I can see that most of the design shows small changes in angle. For example I notice Kitty Hawk has the front elevator extended in stead of angled, and the jet blast deflector plates of the catapults are both along a straight angle though the track of the 2nd one is oblique.

Most of the replacement stamping of tie-downs is complete. To get to 100% I had to unite the hull components. I had welded them using the locator lip but still felt a ridge at that location, so I had to remove that lip and even it out.



Sanding had made a shallow depression, so a pool of CA would do the levelling job.



I did not touch the elevator parts, but now they became crucial to fit into the deck. The kit parts are thick and pit-ridden and while having mostly the right layout, the underside is simplistic regarding the real thing. The port elevator has been represented slightly oblique like the front starboard one, but I was able to remove the oblique parts from it and also from the PE grating. I only had to add a new border.





(this is the same plastic part but I used an anachronistic picture showing how it will look at the end of this update)



This is how the underside of elevator 4 should look. Only lengthwise beams support the grating and transversal frames support these.



Sadly there is an inconsistency of even the existing beams with the PE parts. That means all of the elevator surface needs to be removed.



Let's use some heavy machines to ease this job, that's a bit demanding from a little Dremel. First, the thick netting is removed from the elevators with the Proxxon circular saw.



The Proxxon milling device can remove the floor leaving the outside intact. Some melting occurs so I use a tolerance of 1mm. This took about an hour to mill.





Some cleanup of the walls is done.



Using Tamiya Extra Thin a smooth surface is recreated.





One detail I didn't understand in the Revell grating is the oblique edge of the front elevator, this seems missing a border and has a stepped edge.



So I cut a complementary border from metal foil.



The elevator parts fit quite loosely in the deck, so I lined that with Evergreen strip.

[StevenVD]

Now the daunting task awaited to work on the underside of the elevators from that one picture. I removed part of the front beam.



While selecting Evergreen sets for this, I also brought this nipper from Greenstuff. It's like their regular nipper, but with one of the jaws extremely thin like a knife. This allows for very little compression of the material.



This is visible on this piece of sprue. The left legs were cut with an ordinary nipper and show a whiteout. The right legs were cut using Greenstuff. It also has a "blade stopper" screw allowing for adjustment.



I looked for the heavy Evergreen H-beams but these were too broad to be added on the PE part for the elevator floor, only allowing for 2mm. But the same visual effect and greater height can be reached with C-beams.



Because these have the plate on one side, the cavity should be filled with an extra flat beam. Also, the two central beams should taper out. I removed the top and cut out a wedge on the ends, putting the bent top back. The flat beam was cut to this shape and inserted. This was then fitted in to the elevator wall and glued with plastic cement to the sides. It didn't adhere to the PE part because I was planning to use CA for that.











It then appeared to me that I had referred too much to only one picture that had an extreme "frog perspective". The front beam of the elevator was shown very reduced in height and part of it was obscured by the security netting. Other pictures showed these beam with double the height I had cut it to. The next beam had to appear partly from under it.





So I had to add height to my C-profiles. I did have plain rectangular beams exactly fitting on the PE part with CA glue. You don't get to see these from the side angle you'll be watching the model in after all. The Greenstuff nipper allowed to remove the cemented beams with minimal damage.



Here, the beams are heightened accordingly.





This was also an incentive to remove the recut front of the elevator part and replace it with carefully cut ABS plate.



After this was added, a transverse profile had to be inserted too. This was now only possible from the inside, using a drill to clear the space. I did have the right kind of Evergreen H-beam.





Two more girders should cross through the beams in an X-shape. It's impossible to use a drill for that, so I had to cut these up between the beams. Because of the small size I just used a square ABS-rod.







Then about 100 slices of thin Evergreen strip were placed between the beams, finishing the structure.









2 out of 4 elevators were built in the lowered state, with the cable guides on the outside. These will be the front starboard and one of the aft starboard ones.

[StevenVD]

Due to some hosting problem, pictures may load slowly or incomplete. Please reload in that case as that solved the problem for me.

After the creation of the elevator parts, now the sides of the ship had to be adapted to the elevator positions. For the elevators to function, the deck edge should be right above the hangar door edge. That appeared to be a problem in the Otaki kit, with or without corrections made. Some of the hangar doors were shifted a bit to aft, resulting in them not being aligned to the elevator supports. I had to restrain from cutting into the elevator PE gratings, because they would not look integral anymore. I saw that even in the beautiful Revell elevator PE there were inconsistencies with reality. The outward strip of el. 2 and 3 should be shallower and el. 2 should have the inside strip not perforated.









Elevator 3 had a good deck edge connection.



I had to reverse assembly to correct this problem.



The elevator supports are removed.



The side of the ship was a distinct part and is removed.



The side is put back 2mm shifted to the bow and the front end is peeled out a bit. That creates a step of 3mm to be filled in.



The curve of the hull below the elevator. This will have to be adapted to fill in the step.



Section shwoing how the elevator support is not connected to the hull. The purple segment will have to be filled in.



A 3D-sketch showing in orange what has to be added to the green ship side section below the elevator.



A collection of ABS plates of 1 and 0.5 mm thickness has been applied with modeling glue. At the edges, CA glue has been dropped on.



The whole is milled into shape, making a lot of noise. Sanding is also attempted, but it's a large surface to cover.



Parts have been smoothened out, but other areas got a bit roughened and will need repetition.



The port elevator was built with an erroneous slanting deck edge, which had been corrected earlier. But on the ship it is also constructed differently , with the elevator support outrigged and a hangar door extension strip. I will have to add 7 to 9mm material.





Compare to the starboard elevator's smooth transition:



I might have to exaggerate this extension to make the fit.

[Edoardo81]

What amazing work!!!
Your attention to details is oustanding!!!
What book are you using for your reference?
Keep the good work!!

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Edoardo! Here you see my Enterprise library:

[StevenVD]

Removal and repositioning of the rear lift gate was performed.





The deck edge of this elevator is taken back a bit, exposing some of the elevator parts that were fused to the deck. These are filled in.



I had conserved the corner that was cut from the elevator PE and used this to add a few rows of mesh.



It still fits well.



The rocket launcher pads at the stern are cleaned up, they had some casting traces.



They fit quite badly, some corners have to be cut.





Otaki then adds a part that is way too shallow under this part of the flight deck. I have to scratch an alternative part.







More of these underdeveloped areas under the flight deck can be discovered at starboard. Behind the bow a small platform is provided.



Compare to the real ship, that had a heavy sponson and a broad framework of girders. Behind it, braces are built adjacent to the elevators.







This was sketched out on the hull.



Plates could be cut, but for the spheric parts a B-25 spare nose was sacrificed.



At this stage it looked a bit like fragile modern art, but later on it was fortified with more filling parts and milled into shape.





The outboard girder frame was prepared on a fragment that was cut from the deck edge, leaving only the outside of the deck.



It was put back flush under the deck.



The third starboard elevator was assembled with the edges not completely matching. This was corrected without separating the massive glue face.





Otaki made the elevator supports quite overscale. These will be replaced by metal frames for more realism.



Apparently the ship had only on the second elevator a pair of inclined supports.I discovered this looking at some pictures from three quarter view. It made me think that elevator was broken, but it seems this design was necessary to use the standard elevator length on a curved hull shape. To correct this, taking the ship's side away and inclining it, would be so overreaching that I'd better leave this detail out. I would have to add double the amount of styrene sheet already applied to the hull.



What did need to be changed were the hangar door vaults. These were conceived as oval tubes but the vault space is rectangular and only the doors are curved. At this stage only a drill could be used to remove excess tubing.



I never fixed the hangar parts so this was cleaned up easily.









Then reconstructed the vaults. I now notice how the L'Arsénal parts are as overscale as the floor, cutting will be necessary.



All cast-on railing needs to be removed from the kit parts. Some of the railing is inside the recesses of the hull.





Another recess has a 2D crane half-relief, this will be changed to 3D.

[Joelle]

Finest scratch-built construction.

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Joelle!

Both small boat bays are now cleaned up, some resculpting was done. It still has a mellow look but this detail will be hidden inside the hull overhang and covered with a PE railing.



This motherboard connector strip is cut to 4 wires.



Each wire is then separated and routed to one side of the hull, to have both polarities over the whole length.



The Tamiya engraving tool is used to cut the starboard platform between the front elevators. It was not aligned to the deck edge but to the hull, contrary to some plan I saw on Ebay (Dave's Drydock). I might have bought the plan if I knew it had some authority, but I don't see any source mentioned.



The five portholes on the bow are added with this nice piece of PE. I drilled them partly.



The sponson below the island is very simplistic and underscale, so I have to add a complete scratchbuilt section to the plastic. This needs to extend in front and to the back and has angles approaching 90, 60 and 30 degrees in stead of one plane in 45. It is also perforated at multiple levels. I had to project the section to determine plate lengths.



I got it out of the sheet in one part.



But it got ripped when it was bent. Maybe for the better, to make it fit under the deck.









The lower part needed to be filled and sanded flush to the hull.



I made a measurement error in the back part, that was sourced from the Navysite.de site pictures, that are really valuable for this build.





Time to fix the L'arsénal floor plates. These had been heat-straightened but I succeeded in leveling them somehow.









Large holes had to be filled in, though. I shaped some thick ABS parts to close up the largest gaps and used modelling and CA glue to connect these to the hull and the floor respectively.







The port sponson after the elevator is now finished.





I want to make the new elevator rails out of brass profile.

[StevenVD]

There was a site downtime, so this update will be humongous. All the better for you readers.

Another ton of plastic is added to the ship. The elevator supports are made from 1.5mm brass H-profile, not yet ideal for the correct shape but this gave the best results. It renders the front track for the elevators but not the internal track. The port elevator has some extra structural elements with perforated plates. One attempt failed because the drilling tool did melt the plastic. This was avoided using a pinvise.



The perforated plate is joined to the profile and the hull with a wedge.





I built the mirror version to the front of that elevator, though this is different in the ship. But I can't make up how the hull should be skewing and only show the top perforations.



The wall was moved a bit to the inside after all, checking some pictures.



In the kit some errors to the stern need to be corrected by adding small ABS parts.



The plastic railing is removed and the gallery thinned, while a sparepart of the Hawaiian Pilot from the Columbia project comes in handy as a compartment wall. A door is drilled. I had to avoid to build in eighties' additions to the ship.





The anchors are no good, this has still got to be remedied. I got some CL-56 anchors but these are undersized for a carrier.



The domes under the rocket launchers were simplified greatly in the kit, I had to recreate from pictures the angled plates covering these.





The first part was cut using a picture as reference. The second part was a projection from the sponson. I couldn't avoid a small step with the hull.





The third part merges the first two. All of them are curved.



The situation to starboard is slightly different in height and some cutting was needed there.





Watching all these pictures carefully I noticed a series of shallow reinforcement ribs to the hull. I started cutting some strips from plastic sheet.



But these apparently are all over the ship, so I decided to go for an Evergreen 2.5mm strip set.



As I did with the starboard midships plating, I had to add material to port side as well. The angled deck sponson is narrowing to the bow waterline, causing an ugly sinking line.





So I added again a blister from ABS plating.







Another milling and cutter session polishes the stepped blister. It's causing some smaller aesthetic problems but the sponson is straight again.



The rest of the reinforcement is added to port side mostly and some small parts to starboard.







A mold is designed to reduce the resin hangar gate dimensions. Measurements were taken from the L'Arsénal gates and the kit hull. The test print was made and it fits well. It's still missing a flange but the change will still be worthwile. Printing this is also sparing me some plastic sheet surface.









Part of a wall got stuck to the floor, so I had to hammer it loose. The resin is not very shockproof with the grating printed to one side and it spalled. Setting it is easy but it left a scar on the floor.



I painted the floor in Gunze Black Gray and modulated the tie-downs with NATO black. The floor was then coated dull.









The section between the front elevators had to be scratched.

[StevenVD]

In this update you see the assembly of the hangar space. To facilitate construction and prevent overspray, I wanted to paint the walls out off the hull. I think the L'Arsénal resin kit is not or incompletely reduced to 1/400 like I requested. Parts of the wall therefore have to be skipped.



I try to remove the most bland sections, but I have to leave space for the sliding doors.



The firewall must be moved to the spot in the floor where I left the sliding rail. A large resin structure was sitting there and had to be shifted.



Some sprues would support the wall in mid-air.



This dry-fit shows the improvement before painting.



Tamiya white is used for the sides.



In the sixties the walls were painted white in one color. The resin kit is made for the later years, probably after the eighties' overhaul. It shows instructions for painting a dark ribbon on the entire lower edge. It would facilitate fixing the wall to the uneven, darker floor.



At the higher level in the back I painted white overspraying the grey floor. This is no problem because it won't be visible from outside.



I only have decals for that later period so I'll use these in a partly anachronistic setting. L'Arsénal has provided two sets of decals. One is in color and the other is identical but in white. I supposed the white ones are a base for the decals coming on the dark areas. These decals are a bit translucent and the yellow is darkened a lot on the grey color. Imposed on the white decal, it shines like it's supposed to.









While fixing the walls I had to clip some of them a bit. The resin breaks unpredictably but the jagged edges will be hidden under the large sliding doors.





The port wall is not entirely aligned with the placement groove in the floor, only the front part can be inserted. I made a jog in it at the firewall location so it won't be conspicuous seen from the doors.



The historical fresco with the predecessors of the ship might also be anachronistic. I should check on that.



Because of a ridge between two uneven floor plates a seam shows under the port hangar wall. This looks ugly from the gate perspective.



An overview of the hangar space.















The front part is still dry-fit to be able to reach below the parapet.



While trying to separate the floor parts, a hole was blown right where the wall was pent upwards. The fragment was put back just a bit lower.



This reduced the seam greatly.





The thin lines on the decal sheet must be cut out meticulously to reduce decal film. These decals are so strong that they don't break, they stretch in stead so you can't slide these lines from the paper. I just peel them off and apply.

[Mark Deakin]

Hi,

utter madness, love it, at some point my old Tamiya Enterprise will be back dated but no where to the level you are doing....and out of interest how much of the original kit will remain ?,,,,

Regards,
M. D.

[StevenVD]

Most of the large components are in shape now. I didn't get any of the kit planes when I bought it, so I got one of Otaki's spare packs and these might end up in this hangar. The resin airwing might fit on deck. I just ordered 4 1/350 resin CVN anchors. Most of the work from now on will be on the deck and its edges. One thing that still bugs me is wether to install the resin ceiling elements, and how to integrate multiple LEDs in them. These elements are not at all fitting in the angular shape I built and they might prevent a good fit of the deck like it now has.