The Ship Model Forum

Hello again.

It has been a while since I finished my last ship, the 1/426 Revell Pine Island. I know I'm not up to the standards of most of the modelers on the board, but you guys have been very inspirational to me so I thought I'd give this a try... This time around I would like to stretch my skill set a little so I have secured

1 Revell USS Yorktown to be completed circa 1939 (I thought about doing CV-6 in 1939, but the big black Y on the stack got me Yorktown it is).
1 Revell Battle of Midway Carrier to be completed as USS Enterprise during the Battle of Midway and or the Battle of Santa Cruz Island.
2 x GMM Yorktown class PE sets
Various reference books.
F3Fs and SBCs for the Yorktown and F4F-3s for the Enterprise form SNAFU by Echoco on Shapeways
TBDs and 5 in 38 Caliber singe open mounts and the Yorktown CV-5 air group and Enterprise CV-6 air group decals form Star Fighter Decals.



I hope that by posting here I will keep up with the projects but I must warn you, sometimes my progress approaches glacial speeds...

So it begins:


And already I have been beset by the Revell curse..

Gaps


and more gaps

also this is the first time I have removed the "Aztec Stairs" to be replaced, I hope, with some PE ladders for the GMM set.

I wasn't sure if the gaps around the bow and stern were due to my lack of skills or the Revell kits but several other online build reviews said it was more or less the kit...

I am now filling the gaps before adding the "side walls" to complete the hulls. Test fitting several them has revealed they will be just as gappy if not more so....

Anyway thanks for looking and I hope to have some more to show soon...

Mark B.

Trust me, the gaps aren't your doing. I remember the same thing happening when I first built those kits in 1987 or 1988. Good luck with this project and please keep us informed.

Jodie Peeler

Excellent! Those old kits have good bones and a great hull shape. The flight deck reasonably matches BoGP plans, too. The basic kit is one of Revell's classic best.

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Minor update:

I had to do a lot of work with my little sanding stick here..
1) Fill gap.
2) Let filler dry.
3) Sand down to deck.
4) Repeat (again and again and again)
But in the end look ma no gaps.





So on to the rest of the hulls and more gaps. I'm not sure why the gaps are so bad but they will be worked on this week as time permits.



GAPS


and More GAPS



Things went fine with the Battle of Midway kit above but then I encountered a bit of a set back with the Yorktown kit. When I went to cut the starboard hull part that goes under the island (Part #14) I found it was warped...

Top one is from BOM Carrier kit the bottom one is from the Yorktown kit.



Not only warped but shrunk as well. When I lined up the aft end of the part with the hull, there is "huge" gap at the forward end... Not to mention the fact that the warp makes the part look like a really hot fire took place there.... Why do I do this to myself... What do I see in these kits....



Oh well. On the longest of long shots, I did request a replacement part form Revell. Not sure though how I will proceed with this. Any and all suggestions are welcomed.

Any one out there have one of these old kit as a parts kit?

Any how thanks for looking.
Mark B.

Hey David! That's it exactly...
Thanks for reminding me why we are in this hobby in the first place and why I do this to myself...

Have a great week,
Mark B.

The same thing I see every time I throw about 70% of the angled-deck Essex kit in the spares box and extensively modify what's left: because these old Revell kits reward you for a project well-executed, and you can't help loving these kits because for all their faults, they still got something right somehow.

Good work on the bow and stern gaps. If you can handle that, you can take care of the hangar deck gaps - and if you can handle that, then scratchbuilding a replacement for that warped part is a good way to stretch your abilities. Give it a shot.

Jodie Peeler

Well we’re back…

It’s been a while I know and I did not abandon the project intentionally. Work kind of exploded (read tons of overtime) due to some rather near sighted misinformed and highly political decisions made by people in high places looking to further their careers. Anyway I got even a couple of months by retiring


Now it’s back to modeling.

So far I have fixed the issue with the Yorky’s warped hull part and pushed on with the projects.
I have spent the last few days working mostly on the sterns trying to make them a little more accurate.

I have:
Walled off the rear elevator shaft
Added the two missing flight deck support columns at the stern
Blanked off the holes on the forward 5” 38 Cal. Gun decks
Added the door guides to the bow and stern hanger bay openings
Cut the rail molding off of the flight deck catwalk parts
Removed the molded on 20mm guns from the Enterprise's catwalks (these as well as the 1.1 AA guns will be replaced by 3d printed ones form 3d Model Parts)
Filled and sanded various sink marks and gaps on the flight deck catwalks and hanger bay door parts.

Oh and I have a question… What color would be the best to use for painting the hanger decks? Yorktown will be finished in her prewar fit c. 1939 to 1940 and Enterprise will be done in her Midway fit.
I was thinking of using a very light gray something like Model Masters Camouflage Gray...

Thanks for looking and hoping you are having a great day,
Mark B.

Yorktown progress
CV-5 Hanger deck


CV-5 Bow


CV-5_Stern


CV5 Flight Deck.jpg


Enterprise Progress:
CV-6 Hanger deck


CV-6 Bow


CV-6 Stern


CV-6 Flight deck

Gaps. That's how I remember these kits. I have not built one in many decades but I like what you are doing. I still have these Revell Carrier kits in the stash and you have given me reason to break'em out. Keep up the great work.

Glad you already got some PE and planes. Smart move as your "Build" may generate renewed interest in these kits and that AM stuff could go OOS pretty quick.

Revell was still making a "Yorktown" kit till several years ago but since then Revell had their financial trouble and many old molds got bought up by another Company. I doubt Revell, or what is left of it, will supply any missing or damaged parts on these models.

Nino

David,
Thanks. This is what I really like about this site! You are correct, the supports are way to far back on the stern. Some how I messed up the measurements when I installed the supports. OK maybe I shouldn't do scale conversion math late at night after a few beers...
EZ enough to fix. I'll be correcting this little oversight soon.



Nino,

It was easy to find the Yorktown but the Battle of Midway Carrier took a few months of eBay trawling... I wonder if Atlantis bought the molds. I know they have released several old Revell kits as of late.

The other good thing about acquiring GMM PE sets in 2017 the price. I think I paid something on the order of USD $25.00 for each one... A couple of weeks ago I was trawling around for a GMM set for Revell's USS Forrestal and found out they are going for something on the order of USD$ 71.00!

Ah....fond memories of building this kit - out of the box - as all three sisters. Wrong camo, wrong this, too much glue, etc., etc., etc., but as a 16 year old, I didn't care. The last time I built one, I actually got Yorktown's camo correct, but not much else. Still, very happy days. Looking forward to seeing more.

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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

Hi guys.

No I haven’t forgotten about the USS Yorktown and USS Enterprise although I did get some what burned out on the work I was doing on the sterns. I have been working on the underside support girders and needed to think of a way to fit them. I could not get an accurate measurement of how long each girder would be without having the deck attached. Then there was going to be fit problems when it comes time to cement the flight deck to the hull. Anyone who has built one of these kits will know how problematic that step is.
After thinking about it for a while (several weeks of on and off thought) the very simple solution finally gelled in my little brain. I taped the flight decks to the hulls ensuring I had them exactly where they are to be when they are permanently attached and added the girders on the port side of the undersides of the flight decks. I will then add the girders on the starboard side and the ones that come out at the rear of the flight deck after the flight decks have been glued to the hull.

Image of girders added to the port side of the fight decks.


I then discovered that there is on more platform that needs to be added to the port side of the stern just below the flight deck attached to the rear wall of the elevator shaft. Merit/Trumpeter give you two platforms for each side, but the CV-5 plans I have only showed the platform under the flight deck on the port side. Pontos and Infini seemed to back this up as their 1/350 detail sets only include one platform as well Thank God, only two to make. I have seen the need to increase my current tool set to include a set of dividers, inside calipers, outside calipers and a T-Square. While I’m waiting on these to arrive, I did do some painting work on the hanger decks these past few days.



Here are some views of the stern work so far,

CV-5





CV-6





I do mean to keep working on these and hopefully I’ll be able to get the sterns finished and move to the bows. I won’t be adding an PE rails or ladders to the hulls until I get the bows done to avoid destroying while handling them during the work the bows and major painting.

Thanks for looking, input very much appreciated.
Mark

Oh and does anyone have any good paint matches for USN 5-N Navy Blue? It seems like the Sovereign Colourcoats brand is a little scarce right now.

Nice to see you're still plugging away on these.

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Well it’s been a long while since I was working on these. I kind of go a little burned out on all of the scratch building and then life kind of just went in an unexpected direction taking me away from working on models. But things have finally normalized and I have been able to pull these off the shelf of doom and have been working on them again. Here is an overall shot of where things stand.



CV-6 Bow



CV-6 Stern



I also added the degaussing cables to the Enterprise





CV-5 Bow



CV-5 Stern



I have started to work on drilling out the port holes on the Yorktown.



I sanded off the port holes below Enterprise’s main deck since they were plated over by Nov of 1942.

That reminds me, any one know where to get some really hard 0.3mm drills? I bent the ones I have and have to order some more.

Hope to get more down in the coming year,

Mark B.

A little more progress. I have been continuing working on various improvements to the hulls as well as some items that will be need to be added before the flight decks can be fixed to the hulls.

I discovered the existence of the boiler intakes beneath the Island a little late in the game so opening up the ports was really not an option at this point. I tried to replicate them by adding a strip of brass PE screen. Then I cut the openings in a 20000 piece of sheet styrene plastic and glued that on top of the PE screen.

Before:


After:



I have begun to work on the ships boats using the GMM PE set. I cheaped out and order a set of 40ft enclosed motor boats form Yao's Studio? off of eBay. Not exactly right I know but more than likely a lot better than I could do in this scale.

I started working on something that I had been dreading form the start of the project namely converting some of the Revell planes to BT-1s. I’m not sure what Revell intended the aircraft to be. I think maybe they were going for SBDs since the original release was the USS Enterprise. Or maybe they were supposed to be SBU2s. I wasn’t adverse to getting some after market BT-1s but I couldn’t find any in 1/487 or 1/500 scales. So I began working on several for the hanger deck.

I cut down the massive pegs that Revell was using for landing gear and added some styrene strip to replicate the BT-1s main landing gear fairings. I was about to add the wheels from the GMM set, but I was really disappointed with the tails. They just don’t look like the BT-1’s tail. The vertical stabilizer and rudder as well as the horizontal stabilizers are just way to narrow in chord. It seems the kit planes are a cross between the BT-1 and the SBU2.

Revell BT-1 Shape Issues:


Then I asked Richard Harden at Tom’s Modelworks if he could down size his 1/350 BT-1s. I mean the worst that could happen was they would say no, but Mr. Harden responded in the affirmative and I jumped on it. These are great little BT-1s. can’t thank him enough for going through the trouble to print these little gems. He does both open and closed canopy versions.

Anyway that's all for now.
Got to get back at it. Need to work up some planes and some cable/hawser reals.
Mark B.


You can see the comparison below. The TMW BT-1 is on the left and the Revell kit BT-1 is on the right.

CV-5 USS Yorktown Booklet of General Plans (1938) https://archive.org/details/cv5bogp1938
CV-5 USS Yorktown Booklet of General Plans (1940) https://archive.org/details/cv5bogp1940

Looking good, and shows an appreciation for the subject.
A fair bit of scratch work, and the GMM pe set should yield a nice finished product.