1:350 Trumpeter USS Essex

[Builder 2010]

Not yet, but getting close…

Got the Radio Towers installed today without mishap. Sometimes it's really good to get a do-over. This was one of those instances. The previous PE got so screwed up that it reached the point that none coulld be effectively used. One got totally lost, 3 were distorted and the Farraday Cages (I think that's what they are) screens were ragged or completely destroyed. This time, I was able to carefully build them, keep the fret from getting damaged, paint and install them so nothing got damaged.

I drilled the hardened Bondic plug with the carbide 0.032" bit, but realized that the 0.032" brass rod that was already glued into the catwalk was not a slip fit. It was pushing the last batch over that pin...forcing I should say... that caused all the distortion. So I went back and re-drilled with a bit that was a few thousandths oversize. I used gel CA which filled the space and gave full support. I pocked some round toothpicks into the holes and painted all these parts, first with primer and then a couple coats of force-dried navy blue.

I was concerned about slipping the Farraday Cages over the towers since they could damage those delicate antenna spreaders, but there was sufficient clearance to carefully maneuver the cage around the installed tower and glue it down. I thought about putting the cages down first, but was concerned about getting the glue onto the pin or damaging the cage.

Here's the front view showing an array of towers. The ship's too long to get full views without losing a lot of detail.

Although many of the Essex Class lost some or most of those towers, the Essex kept all five throughout the War. I thought that I could get away with less since I had lost/ruined so many, but alas, the ship didn't cooperate. With the new supply, I was able to complete it as she should be.

You'll notice in the above pics that all the slots are filled with 20mm guns. I also primed and painted them today and installed all the rest. The ship now has it's full compliment of armament. I painted the anchors and will do some minor weathering tomorrow. I got all the frets of floater net baskets (from now on FSB) painted and will be ready to fold and install them next time also. I have to put small end railings at the ends of all the open catwlaks and I keep forgetting to add a tiny railing leading to the boat deck on the port side.

Then I'll rig the long-range radio antennas and putting on the air wing. Saving that for last because it will be in the way and surely get whacked. And she's done.

 

[Wurger]

 

[parsifal]

nice work....close to finish I think

 

[Gnomey]

Looks great so far!

 

[Builder 2010]

Thanks for the encouragement! Yup! It's about 98% there. Some odds and ends railings, finishing the FNBs, adding the air wing and the little people, rigging the long-range radio antennas and building the case. A good six month project and that's because I'm retired. If I was working it would take 13 months like the Missouri did.

Today, I only had an hour so I started the floater net basket task. I got a full set from one fret cut out and started bending and installing them. Handling the PE chips off the paint so there will be some minor touch up needed when this is done.

I measured the width of the end cap which folds up to close it off, and found it to be 0.070" or thereabouts, and found a piece 1/16th (0.0625") rod to use as a mandrel. I held the rod over the PE putting pressure on it and then bent each edge up and around with a single-edged razor blade. The basket has a high side and low side as can be seen by the end caps not being on the center-line. I made sure I set the rod to account for this and it worked pretty well.

The upfolded ends are secured by a dab of thin CA and then with a tooth pick with accelerator to cure it fast. I use gel CA to adhere the baskets to the railings. It's touch and go since the railings themselves are not particularly robust.

I took the following image before I started putting on the baskets, but I wanted to see about using some big sheets of paper as a backdrop for picture taking. It's impressing even me. Sometimes it nice to step back and admire your work.

I'll continue building and applying baskets tomorrow.

 

[Crimea_River]

Looks great.

 

[Wolfman_63]

Just looked through your thread. Awesome work. I really like the metal work you added. I love the details you have added.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Builder 2010]

Thank you Wolfman and all the others too.

I was really unhappy gluing the floater net baskets (FNBs) directly to the ship's handrails. They were popping off as fast as I could get them on, and it took way too long to what essentially was a simple task. I did wrestle all the FNBs that were shown in my broadside picture of the actual ship, but wanted to find a more secure method.

I woke up this morning thinking about gluing the FNBs to foil and then wrapping the foil over the rail and gluing it to itself making essentially a sandwich with foil as the bread and the rail as the bologna. The foil I was using is wine bottle seal foil which has some body and I use it for all sorts of detail work. I first tried Microscale's foil adhesive, but it didn't have enough strength in such a small surface area. That left me doing it with thick CA.

I measured both the amount of foil needed for the FNB interface and then the depth of foil that would fold over the rail. I cut off a strip and measured the width of one FNB, and folded it in my PE folding tool so the fold was nice and square. I glued the high side of the FNB to the foil and then glued this assembly to the rail. Here is the foil measured to hold four FNBs together. This also made gluing mulitples easier... not a lot easier, but easier all the same.

The idea actually worked, and the connection between the FNB and foil, and the foil to the rail was much, much stronger. I glued up singles, doubles and four-in-a-row and completed the entire port side. I toyed with the idea to remove the starboard side's FNBs and redo them with this method, but decided against it leaving well enough alone. So there is a visual difference between the two sides. I surmised that going back and attempting removal would result in some rails coming loose and I didn't want to deal with that.

On the starboard side I attempted to brush paint Navy Blue to clean up all the mess, but this resulted in some FNBs falling off creating more mess. So I stopped that and decided that I would airbrush all of them when finished. I did some selective masking to keep the spray off the flight deck and did the touch up painting. But, before doing this I did add the two tiny missing railings buried in the port side; one to the boat deck and the other on a ladder platform next to an access manway. You can see this railing in the below.

This reverse angle view shows what you can see of the foil. I think it's a decent solution to an annoying problem and, while not prototypical (I actually don't have a clue how the FNBs were hung from the rails) it does not look too obtrusive and at least the port side's FNBs won't fall off. Can't say the same for the starboard's. I would think that the real ship probably had some form of framing behind the baskets that actually tied them to the ship. I can imagine that they would be quite heavy especially if awash in seawater spray.

The last thing I did today was locate a single bar railing and put it on the FD to guard the elevator opening. This railing was pretty messed up and I fiddled with it until I had a stretch of railing that would cover the distance. Again, it's not really pretty, but it works. The other method would have been to drill the deck, use some guitar string rods for stanchions and string it with E-Z Line, or fine copper wire. My first choice worked. In this image you can also see the small rail on the boat deck on the right side of the picture.

I really not happy with the whole FNB exercise. I don't like how they come out when folded and glued since there's a lot of variation between them. And as careful as I tried to be, they're sitting at all kinds of angles and don't look very shipshape. I thought about leaving them off, by AMS set in and I was compelled to do it.

What's left? Putting on some end-of-catwalk railings which are simulated with a chain top string, and then rigging the long-range radio antennas. Finally, putting the planes on deck. A very fine modeler, David Koeleiski, says he glues his with CA. I suppose that's how I'm going to have to do it too.

The plexiglass should be getitng here soon. General Plastics and Rubber's router broke and the part was supposd to arrive yesterday. My work is on the top of list. Regardless, I have a Ford GTA to finish and a half-built structure for the railroad, so I won't get bored waiting.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Gnomey]

Great work so far!

 

[Builder 2010]

Well, dear readers, we are on the home stretch. Speaking of home stretch, how about that Justify? Being a Louisville resident, we're very attentive to great horses. He's going to spend some time at the stables at Churchill Downs. I got the long-range radio antenna rigged, added a few of those little end railings (pain in the butt), added two inclined ladders to go up some minor elevations in the port side catwalk system, weathered the area around the anchors and, finally, started adding the air wing and the little people. The model will be done TOMORROW! (Most likely)

Rigging the antenna towers started by running the horizontal lines (4) from one end to the other. For the aft towers this was just two. For the foreward towers the lines led through the middle one to each end. I simulated insulators with a drop of Bondic. It worked very, very well for this purpose. In fact, I would recommend it. After curing it for a couple of seconds I colored it with a touch of Tamiya clear green. The lines are just CA'd directly to both sides of the towers for the up and down lines and to the outriggers for the athwartships lines.

For the downrunning lines, I first belayed the lines to the bottom rungs of the towers and then just touched them with thin CA where the two lines touched. As noted before, once the CA hits the E-Z Line, it will cure almost instantly. That's a blessing and a curse. If the lines accidentally touch they will stick there too.

Here's what the front set looks like rigged.

The aft towers came out the same. Whew! This was one of those steps that could go very, very well or very, very badly.

I then attempted to add some rust around the anchors. I'm not happy with the result and will redo it tomorrow. It's too much. I just want a touch of rust where the anchor would naturally bump the ship.

It was time to install the air wing. I decided to just put a dab of thick CA onto the landing gear and set them down. I first laid them all out in a logical arrangement, then started in the front and worked to the back.

I then put the first little person on the deck, the plane starter.

I have to decide how I'm going to arrange the folks. They're all deck people with different colored shirts. With plane ops underway, many of the armorers, fuel guys would be in the catwalks and out of the action. The deck would be full of yellow shirts. I don't have any brass. There's another fret with officers types that I don't have.

Of course I couldn't leave well enough alone and decided to jiggle one of the planes to see how the thick CA is holding. The plane I touched was the last Avenger. One side was not attached, and when I attempted to remove it to add more CA, the landing that was stuck was really stuck and unglued itself from the air plane. So I had to get it off the deck and reglue it to the plane. Then the other gear came off. And lastly, I dropped the darn thing on the floor and one of the horizontal stabs came off and the prop. The more I messed with it the worse it got. Tomorrow I will rebuild it and get it back on the deck...one way or the other.

Lastly, I treated myself to a new lab coat. The last one served well, but it was so gross, my wife insisted that I get a new one. Here's me with it.

 

[fubar57]

Looking good and nice to see the face attached

 

[Wurger]

With Geo. Well done.

 

[fubar57]

This is a smaller carrier model but has lots of guys on deck...

USS Nassau CVE-16, The Little Princess | Paul Ooi Modelworks

 

[parsifal]

Its a great job and has been marvelous to watch it all unfold.

 

[Builder 2010]

That's a beautiful model and does give me ideas for where to place all the characters. Thanks for all your comments and attention!

Had just a few moments in the shop today after exercising and doing errands, so I fixed that semi-wrecked Avenger and got it back on the flight deck. Now I'm not touching any of them. I tipped the boat 90 degrees and nothing fell off so I'm good to go. Tomorrow, I'll add all the folks that makes sense to.

I fixed the landing gear using Bondic. Bondic has an advantage where you can cure it instantly without having to touch it. I find sometimes using accelerator on a toothpick to set the CA, that the CA sticks itself to the toothpick which then pulls it off the work piece and pulls the part out of position. With Bondic, if you can hold it still while shining the light on it, you're good to go.

When the crew's on the boat, I'll set up the backdrop and take some higher-res pictures of the finished product. That is… after I fix up that rust on the bow.

 

[fubar57]

Awaiting the photos

 

[Builder 2010]

Finished completely yesterday and took the beauty shots. Only added about 20 characters. Started getting worried that it wasn't worth the effort and I had some close calls in knocking some stuff (planes) loose, and didn't want to put up with that any longer. It was time to end the project. I used the Canon EOS and mulitple exposures for great depth of field followed by image stacking software (ZerenStacker) to blend all those various focal point pictures into a cohesive whole. I don't have seamless backdrop paper and, instead, used large sheets of paper. I had to hide the seams and did all that in post processing using Corel PhotoPaint. Here's the lineup.

Here's Essex sitting with another great ship that served in the Pacific. Both ships are configured in Late WW2 dress. I'm still waiting for the Plexiglass to finish up the case. I don't like all that detail being exposed to dust and spiders. Notice, the lights are on!

This was one a heck of a build. It took about 6 months and thanks to all for following along with the highs and lows. To build Out of Box would have taken a couple of weeks. Once you add all the enhancements you're in for a much longer ride. It would have been an easier build if it was a Tamiya kit, but unfortunately, Trumpeter is leading the way with large American capital ships. The results, however, are truly worth the effort.

So what new did I learn on this project.

• First of all, I continued to advance my skills in soldering PE and developing more secure ways to fasten stuff onto the model.
• I continued building skill in making my own decals.
• I further developed fabricating techniques including cutting the island and repositioning the flag bridge without screwing anything up.
• I discovered Bondic and found it very successful for things that I hadn't thought of.
• I discovered 3D printed tiny guns that saved many hours of work (and frustration).
• I also found that using a fine-line Sharpie did make reasonable canopy frames for tiny canopies.
• And lastly, I learned a ton about the Essex Class in doing the research to make an updated model.

Thank you all for following along and all your wonderful comments. It will be a while before I do another military build. I've got other railroad oriented projects in queue. That said, I have my eyes on a large scale A-1 Skyraider and a modern Navy LHD like the new Essex. It would be fitting to build another of its namesakes. Meanwhile, I'll keep following along on all the other projects here on WW2 Aircraft.

 

[Wurger]

Well done. I like her much.