1:350 Trumpeter USS Essex

[Builder 2010]

I know this is a WW2 Aircraft site, but I've seen some nice ship builds here AND I'm doing the Essex in late WW2 trim in the measure 21 scheme (Navy Blue 5N verticals, Deck Blue horizontals). I'm doing it with lots of bells and whistles using Gold Medal Models and others PE, some scratch-built mods, and very little weathering (build as an engineering model). I'm posting the build on WorldAffairsBoard.com and FSM's ship modeling forum. If there's interest, I will also post it here since there are many members of this forum who have good insights and input. This is just a taste. I've detailed the fantail since much was out of reach for painting and detailing. I'm waiting for the main PE to arrive, but have been making use of left over PE from other builds. In this picture, the lower rail is an Eduard product, and the upper is old GMM.

 

[Builder 2010]

Thought I'd share this with you all. This is not my first ship model done in high scale. 6 years ago with the completion of a USS Missouri completed as the ship appeared in late September 1945. I chose that point in time because on the way back to Pearl Harbor they striped the decks of their deck blue paint restoring the native teak and they had removed some of the 20mm AA guns and tub that flanked #2 main turret. After leaving Pearl for Navy Day in NYC in October 1945, the Measure 22 paint scheme was changed and a large "MISSOURI" was stenciled on the its flank. I used laser-cut wood decks and wanted them to be seen so I chose this one time in its history that showed the wood, while still maintaining most of the WW2 armament and radar suite.

Model particulars: besides the decks, the model uses Eduard, Alliance Model Works, and Tom's Modelworks PE, ABER brass main guns, brass props, steel prop shafts, scratch-built brass masts (fore and aft), extra stanchions and supports on all overhanging decks, and others.

The model was offered a place in the USS Missouri museum ship in the Captain's cabin, with one caveat. I needed to get it there on my own $$. I couldn't come up with a way to get it there without breaking it, so it sits in its case in our spare bedroom. I'm finally going to get up the nerves to take it to the local IPMS contest and see how it fares locally.

This ship had exceeded what I thought I was capable of, and set the bar very, very high. I hope that I can equal it with my Essex build.

 

[Crimea_River]

Very nice work. I expect your Missouri to do well at the contest.

I really must get back to my USS Princeton.

 

[Builder 2010]

Thank you. If I remember to not be out of town on the contest date, I'm going to submit it this year. Maybe I'll have an Essex to go along with it. Not hearing any, "Don't waste our time on boats, I'll give you some more info. By all means, get started on that ship model.

I'm thinking that to bring everyone up to date, I could give the URL to the PostImage web site. I found this photo sharing site to be the most bulletproof of the free sites. No ads, fast up and downloading speeds, and reliable links to forums that require pictures from sharing services.

Here's the link. I think this site is open to the public. USS Essex — Postimage.org.
If it doesn't work, please let me know. If it does work, it will at least get everyone up to speed on what's been done so far. I tested the link and it works. The images are listed chronologically with the first being the earliest.

Let me summarize. This is a rather old Trumpeter issue (2002) so it suffers from their traditional complaints; poor fits, lots of flash and ejection pin marks, and needing lots of filler to make a "ship shape" job of it. With lots of labor, it can be a very nice model. I believe late issue Trumpeter kits are much better as the Asian competition has certainly heated up making all the makers strive harder to make better kits.

I'm going to use as much PE as makes sense. For example: I bought Alliance Model Works (AMW) 40mm quad gun mounts with shields only to find out that they're almost impossible to successfully build in 1:350. I'm a decent model builder. If I'm not having much luck with something, it's probably because the parts in question are not very good. They etch 0.005" brass which is very thin to start with (Eduard use 0.010") and then they further etch the bend lines reducing the material thickness to less than a piece of paper. The end result is parts break on the bend lines without doing anything. I'm hoping the Gold Medal Models PE is a bit more robust. The AMW gun barrels were resin and they too are so fragile as to be almost unusable. They're sending me another set of them to replace those that broke during construction.

Like the Missouri I'm also going to produce all the masts and yards using brass. This is more secure, lasts longer and doesn't deform under rigging tension. Besides it's challenging and fun to make your own. What I'm not going to do is super-detail the hanger deck like I've see some builders do. It's almost impossible to view the interior. This kit does have some of the primary interior shapes so when painted white, it will look like a hangar deck. I'm going to light the interior with some LEDs so what is in there will show up.

I don't like heavy weathering, and want the model to be like an engineering model, not the player in a diorama. The Missouri has no weathering. Besides, just after a vessel is shopped, it's going to be pretty clean. On the trip back to Pearl, I'm sure that Captain had everyone spitting and polishing the whole ship above the water line.

Yesterday, I built the 5"38 Mark 38 twin gun mounts using scratch-built brass barrels. The Trumpeter barrels were too thick and I broke a couple necessitating making my own. Today I went on to build the island and finish up the bow area. Since it's all hidden by structure, it all needed painting now rather than waiting till the rest of the ship is painted. There is extra PE on these that was left over from the Missouri project 6 years ago.

In addition to the bow work, I mixed my own Navy Blue 5N. I used Life Color naval colors for the Missouri and liked the shading, but thought I only had a drop left so I played around with Tamiya paints to get a close match. It turns out that it's a dark blue-gray color, but needed a touch of red to get it right.

The center patch is the Life Color sample, and #7 was my last trial. Then I found a bottle of pre-mixed 5N left from the Missouri project. It needed some thinning, but still worked. I airbrushed the bulkheads this color and brush-painted the deck with Deck Blue. Deck Blue and Navy Blue are very, very close to each other with the deck blue being a bit darker. In the Missouri's measure 22, the Navy Blue didn't butt up against any Deck Blue so you couldn't see the similarity. In this case it looks like the same color being used in both places.

I built as much of the island as I can now before the GMM PE arrives (which I just found out will be early next week). I didn't want to paint myself into a corner by putting plastic in place that would block applying the PE. The stack and some small joints did require a little Tamiya putty, which BTW: is one of the best on the market being very fine grained and quick drying.

The last thing I did was install the bow flight deck supports. Since this is an aircraft carrier and will have aircraft on it, and since those said aircraft are WW2 Naval aircraft, that further justifies posting this thread on a WW2 Aircraft website (of so it seems to me). If you stare at this pic you'll see I put real chain for the anchors which will be effectively invisible when the flight deck and all of the detailed catwalks are installed.

 

[fubar57]

Beautiful looking ship. You may have missed it but the site does have a ship section...Ships I'm just waiting for a decently price U.S.S. Constellation and then I'll start a thread

 

[Wurger]

 

[Gnomey]

Good work so far!

 

[Builder 2010]

Is there any way, other than copying and pasting, to move what I've done so far to the "ships" forum? I'd like to put it where it belongs.

 

[Wurger]

Done... the thread is moved...

 

[fubar57]

You da man

 

[Wurger]

 

[Builder 2010]

Well thank you! That's terrific.

 

[Builder 2010]

So... now that my thread is properly located lets continue doing some work. I just read Andy's thread on building the Princeton and he sets a very high bar for working with photo-etched. I asked him to provide me with some tips on using CA and PE and getting the PE to stick to the model and not everything else. His work is terrific and I will strive to make this build of similar quality.

I noticed that Andy had this nice header at the thread's beginning that listed various details about what was to follow. How do I add that to this thread?

With just over an hour in the shop I put on the bow 40mm gun tub and started installing the bow railing (an old GMM piece. I figured that being a dark blue color, you won't really be able to tell the older GMM from the new stuff that's coming next week. Besides I wanted to do some railing work.

For long railings a trick is to tape it to the hull where you want it before adding CA. Otherwise, you're wrestling with some very flimsy brass that will not cooperate. CA is applied from the back. You'll have to go back and touch up the paint to hide the shiny adhesive. I'm using Tamiya Tape which isn't too tacky. You don't want a tape that will pull the railing back off when you try to de-tape.

I located where the chocks were and removed a bottom horizontal rail at each location.

So that's one more rail down and lots more to go. When I was a kid building many, many box-scale Revell ship kits, I longed for the ability to add "real" railings to them. To me, railings make the model. Only one, the USS Buckley Destroyer Escort, was a large enough scale that it had stanchions where you used thread to create the rail. I loved that model. As Andy noted on the Princeton, with carriers and their overhanging flight decks there are inaccessible areas that need full detailing and painting early in construction. That's why the painting on the hull edges is so... yucky.

On monday work will continue. When the rest of the PE comes, I'll get back to the island. I'm thinking about how to build the tripod mast out of bras.

 

[Wurger]

Nicely done. However I would say if you would attach the raillings before painting you could avoid the double work on coating. Additionally a glue works better when the backround is without a paint applied.

 

[Builder 2010]

Agreed. I chose this order since it was so tight to get the vertical and deck demarcation color line with the railing in place. As it is, I'm going to have to go back and touch up anyway which sort of defeats the purpose of my scheme I suppose. In the rest of the model, the rails go on before painting. The Navy Blue and Deck Blue are so close color-wise, that it probably doesn't matter how neatly I paint that edge.

 

[Wurger]

OK. I see.

 

[Crimea_River]

Making the tripod mast out of bras would look odd. Brass would be better.

 

[Builder 2010]

Details, details...

All the GMM photo-etched arrived on Saturday, so I'm going to rip that unsophisticated PE railing off and put the correctly engineered one.

Spent the weekend poring over the GMM frets. Some of the parts will be very challenging. Also working with some other naval mavens, we came to the conclusion about what additional mods are needed to make this a late-war Essex. In addition to the extra sponson 40s on the port fore hangar cat sponsor, there seems to be no other added sponsons that other in the series got. Many of the Essex-Class carriers had their bow and stern 40 tubs doubled, had an additional two 40 gun tubs hung off the flight deck in the aft third of the port side, and an additional three sponsons irregularly spaced under the island on the starboard side. Intrepid got these. Essex didn't get any of them.

But the Essex did have one of the 40 tubs removed from the fore end of the island and the flag pilot space pushed out so it coincided with the island body below. At first I thought that since I had already glued it all together, I couldn't make this change, but after studying the images and then the island I said, "what the heck! It's styrene. I can fix it."

In order to cut out the flag pilot cabin to move it forward, I needed to cut the island below so the saw could reach it. I didn't want to destroy the flag pilot front due to the porthole detail. I also had to remove all the galleries and platforms surrounding this area since all of this is changed and actually simplified.

Saw cuts, even using thin razor saws do leave a kerf and remove material. They are also not perfectly sqaure. So I had to true up the edges and remove any underdeck bracing castings since these will be replaced new with the new galleries.

Notice the stiffening rib I installed in the island body and also in the chunk I took off. I needed this to keep the geometry intact now that the structural integrity has been disturbed.

Here's the other side. I glued a piece of 0.010" styrene sheet to raise the top surface to replace what was chewed off by the saw. I trued up the flag pilot front and it's just sitting aligned where it will sit. There is a gallery platform that I've started to shape out of 0.020" styrene. The shape of the new gallery is a half-circle in front of the flag pilot. The gun director on the kit is actually too far back and will be moved during the mod. I'm actually doing what they did to the ship in the 1994 shopping.

The countersink bit was being used as a temporary support when fitting up, and it shows clearly how small all this is.

Here's an image of the Essex's modified island front.

Here's a photo of the same.

So... wish me luck as I continue to mangle this kit.

 

[fubar57]

Lots of work ahead, looks good though

 

[Wurger]