1:350 Trumpeter USS Essex

Time to pour yourself a Scotch.

How about a nice 18 year old Bourbon? It does tend to steady my hands a bit.

Today was a mixed bag. I actually finished the two main radar systems, shot them with some primer and put them aside someplace safe. First I got the SC antenna assembled. That required a bit of fussind and annoyance. I needed to make the base for it. It needed a hole to capture the piece of brass wire that serves as a mount for the screen. Here's how I build that pin attachment that I noted the other day.

I flatten the end of the brass wire in successive steps in the flat jaws of a vise grip. I've used this trick to make all kinds of flat/round brass transitions. I then drilled it with a 0.032" drill and soldered it to the un-bent PE platform. I left the bending of them until the soldering was done.

I tried the Kester soldering paste for these kinds of jobs and it does have an advantage in that you can lay down a thin film of it, it alredy has flux and melts at a reasonable temperature. It really stiffens the little platform and the pin is terrific for both attachment and holding the assembly while working on it in a pin vise.



I made the mistake of fastening the screen and it's fragile backing frame onto the unit before I got it mounted on the pad. I also thought that the tiny PE ring that was part of the backing had the same diameter hole as that in the top of the lattice tower. IT WAS NOT!. It was smaller and when I tried to insert the support pin into it, the back frame popped off. I J-B'd it, and should have soldered it.

I attempted to get it back on again, and then it got lost again. It's now not on it and good riddance. I left that pin long and soldered the screen directly to it. That screen ain't coming off.

I put the lower pin through the hole that was continued through the platform and then soldered it from below. Oh... and the circular platfrom came loose when the heat got to it from the soldering of the screen. And the circular rail separated from the platform too. I got it all back together, resoldered the rail to the platform and CA'd the platform to the tower. So here are both major radar installations waiting for attachment to the island.

Some of the fine detals got filled with solder, J-B and paint, but from two feet away it will work. I know... the Missouri has similar flaws.



Next up was the Mark 37 gun directors. These things gave me fits when building the Missouri and based on how it went today, they're going to give me fits again. Part of the problem is my ham fisted handling and the other is the geometry of the modeling of this somewhat delicate full-size structure. The big radar on top was supported by a rather insubtantial tubular frame. The main frame juts out at an angle and is not simply supported directly underneath, and then you have the twin parabolic reflectors and other stuff attached to them.

I went through a full set of Eduard PE and then Tom's modelworks PE before I assembled the four MK 37s on the Missouri. At least the Essex only has two.

Before starting on the PE I built the plastic bases from the kit and then created a holder for them so I can add details without them moving all over the place. The base turned out to have a diameter of almost exactly 5/16". I drilled a piece of scrap and stuck the pieces into it. There were a bunch of other blind holes in this block since it's used as a drill press block so I taped them over so little PE bits down get lost in them. Then I had the idea to add some tape turned back on itself to act as "PE Flypaper" and catch dropping PE.



Here are all the GMM bits that make up the radars for the two directors.



First the pluses. The base PE is good because GMM didn't etch the bends and reduce its strength. Not only did I bend it, but it got unbent, re-bent, bent again, etc. and didn't break. That was a good thing.

After bending I tried it on the top of the director and realized that the very small contact area didn't bode well for using CA to hold it down, but I couldn't solder to plastic. So I cut a thin piece of brass and shaped it to the same size as the director's roof and soldered it to that. It's strong! I will CA the brass plate to the director after all of the rest is built.



The PE flypaper was a non-starter and was more trouble than it was worth so I pulled it off.

I folded the GMM upper mount and then attempted to solder the little tab onto the flat part of the lower mount, and couldn't hold or get an angle that let me solder it any way I tried. It was also very flimsy and kept bending and deforming no matter how careful I was. I then turned to two left over Eduard upper mounts. These are much more detailed and realistic than the GMM, however Eduard DOES etch their bends and this comes back to bite me. I got the lower mount soldered to the frame successfully and then got the upper soldered to the lower in this hybrid deal.



I also soldered the sides of the frame so the arms wouldn't keep spreading. So far so good.

I'm not happy with the blotchy solder. That was the result of using the paste and having the plate not receptive evenly across its surface. I'll do better next time. Paint will hide some of this.

Then it was time to make the parabolic double screen. This is a Eduard part also and therefore has those etched bends. The first one I bent fell into two pieces are that bend line so I worked it as separate pieces. Then suddenly... they were gone. Somehow they both got off the t-shirt and into... what?... the floor?... not this floor, at least not in a 25 square foot area. Quantum Rift again!

So I bent the second and last set I have. This time it didn't separated into two. I decided to solder this also since it's an awful CA job. Got it all soldered, and then disaster strikes.



That joint kept breaking when doing the Mo and it broke again. This picture clearly shows the difference in sophistication between Eduard and GMM. I've got some ideas about how to fix the broken support tab by reinforcing it with a piece of solid square brass stock that will be soldered into the crotch of the joint and it won't break again. I also have Tom's Modelworks PE MK 37s and will attempt those if I can't find those lost parabolic screens.

I've taken thousands of pictures on models with my iPhone and never realized that the telephoto method of finger-pinching that's used to do telephoto normal pictures, also works at doing macro photograhy. I found it by accident today and went "Whoa! What was that? How did I do that?" I played with the phone and found that I could take dramatic ultra closeup pics like the above.

I also found that my old Missouri still had it's horn and it will now be re-purposed to be the horn for the Essex.



I'm glad I found it since I didn't really want to scratch-build this. The GMM set has a PE whistle platform. Now it has a whistle to go on it. That old ship has done noble duty giving up its pieces for better projects.

Looking good.

Making good progress on a daily basis. The SK antenna support on my Princeton is slightly different as that support column doesn't go into the lattice work.

Looks great so far!

Probably doesn't go into the lattice on the Essex either, but I wanted a joint that wouldn't fall apart if I breathed on it too hard.

Had a rare Saturday session. The weather was disgusting and it was a good day to do some more work. I also did one hour on the bike and elliptical so I don't feel too guilty. I spent almost 2 hours building ONE Mark 37 gun directior. This time I decided to try the Tom's Modelworks bracket and screen since it is a bit more robust, doesn't have etched bend lines and I have 8 sets of them. Unfortunately I don't have any extra lower bases. They were all consumed in making these things for the Missouri build, and I went through a ton of them.

I say unfortunately becasuse the front bent leg of the base finally fell off after about four resoldering sessions. So the base has three legs. You can't really see it, but it certainly has less structural integrity.



To reinforce that critical mounting lug, here you can see the piece of square cross-section brass rod that I soldered to the lug.

Again, I wanted to solder everything. It's forgiving (to a point) and if something isn't quite right you can re-position it. That being said, it was the constant attempt to get everything right that caused most of my troubles today. I wanted to get the radar reflector properly captured in the tips of the bracket. I had to solder and re-solder probably 5 or 6 times before it was right. And that was not just doing the soldering. Other bad things started happening the more I screwed around with it, including, the lug separating from the block, the base de-soldering from the brass plate (twice). Then I wanted to add the side parabolic screen. The first time I soldered it, it was off-center. The second time, sticking out too far. Then the screen detached...and so on for two hours.

I finally reached the point when I could CA the little IFF antenna that sticks out of the middle, and then the side antenna's lug broke when I attempted to file the brass plate to get it to conform to the plastic unit below it. I then soldered it on directly to its side with no reinforcing lug. And it was done. I may put a tiny bit of filler around the brass plate if I can do it without wrecking the whole deal. I've been known to do that... attempting to do just one more thing... and then it hits the fan.





There are still some more details that go on the director including a couple of ladders and a WTD in the base to let people get into the housing. Next session (Monday), I build the second director. I would like to think the second one will go easier than the first and this is usually the case, but not when messing with PE.

Well guys... I had and even rarer Sunday work session, and what a good session it was.

Instead of the two miserable hours building the first Mark 37 director, I got the second done in less than an hour without any hassle. Frankly, I should buy two sets of PE for every ship model I build; one for practice and one to actually make into a model. I added the ladders and WTDs to both and gave then a shot of Tamiya primer just to get an idea of how much of the yucky stuff was now hidden.



And here are both directors ready to go onto the island.



These are now set aside. I just looked a Trumpeter Essex on Pinterest built by a fellow from Singapore and he got all the extra bits onto those directors. I imagine he's a much younger person with much steadier hands. I've gone as far on these as I did on the Missouri and they look pretty good on that boat.

Next up was completing the tri-mast with the replacement yard arm PE sent to me by Loren Perry. Again, having a practice piece where I found out what was going to be a problem paid off. I was able to nail this one without a hitch.

The first thing I did differently was get the lenght of the made yard arm dead on. It's a telescoping assembly of Albion metals super-tiny thin-wall brass tubing. The inner is .4mm, then .6mm and finally .8mm. I didn't solder both ends, just one side to keep the tubes in place.

The next thing I did was file a nice flat onto this assembly to give good solder surface.



Finally, and the most important thing, was to do all the soldering of the PE to the yard while the PE was still flat and attached to its fret. I first tinned the two parts with a very thin film of solder. For those of you who aren't familiar with how solder works and why it's so strong is this. Solder actually infuses into both substrates. It forms a metalurgical bond, not just a physical one. Glue creat a physical bond to non-porous surfaces so solder is much, much stronger. And since its the metalurgical bond that provides the true strength, the thickness of the solder actually weakens the joint. More is not better.

I didn't want to fill any of the signal halyard eyes or other fine detail, so I was very judicious about the amount of solder I was applying. I used TIX liquid flux for all my metal soldering jobs even if I'm not using TIX lo-temp solder. This was done with the Weller soldering iron with a small chisel, not pointed, tip.



I then used the RSU to hold the made yard over the extreme end while aligning the other end with my fingers. The RSU heats so quickly that you can hand hold parts an 1/8
away before it gets too hot (it depends on the mas of the metal you're heating of course). When that end joined I moved to the middle and then the other end. When it was settled in I went back and hit some intermediate locations.



The end result was a solder, true yard with no distortion and none of the details screwed up. Here's a comparison of my test piece and the finished one. Really makes the case about having two sets of PE, doesn't it.



The next step was to get this onto the tri-mast without messing anything up. I placed the yard under the platform with the yard braces tucked under the platform between the brass brackets and marked this location on the rear two mast columns with a fine-tipped Sharpie. I then, using a small diameter diamond coated cylindrical burr, ground a couple of cicular divots so the yard would have a positive location into which it can settle. I then tinned these divots with TIX solder. I didn't want to use 60/40 becasue the melt temp is too high and I run the risk of de-soldering anything.

I again used the RSU to clamp one side against that column and aligned the other side with my fingers and hit the foot switch. It heated quickly and melted the tinning and joined. Then I did the same to the other side and the job was done.



After I took the pic I rotated the two weather vanes to face into the wind, and set it on the island to admire how it looks. There are a couple of very small antennas that go on those straight stalks sticking up. They're pretty fragile and I'm going to wait until this is on the island before installing them.



There's the whistle platform to build, and a small mast and yard mounted to the aft of the funnel which I will replicate this yard making method and build that one. That yard is shorter and has less bulk so I'll build it out of the two smallest size of the tubing. Then I will start adding open WTDs (there are four in the GMM set) and all of the ladders I had scraped off the kit island. I need to add loads of little railings and a few inclined ladders, and then add in all the radar sets. I'm thinking about doing as much super-detailing of the island BEFORE I put in on the ship. Most of the rigging stays on the island. There are some guy wires that need to be installed on some of these non-lattice masts.

There's something immensely satisfying about building stuff like this out of brass.

Again... it was a good Sunday!

Good indeed. Looking excellent.

Well thanks!

It was a great Sunday, but it could have been a disasterous Monday. Yesterday, when I took that last photo of the tri-mask posed on top of the island, I had an open bottle of Tamiya liquid cement behind that white cardboard backdrop. I had pushed the backdrop not realizing the cement was behind and tipped it over... forward.

When I got down to the shop today, I found the island solidly glued to the Corian work surface on my auxiliary workbench. Other stuff was glued down also since there must have been dissolved styrene in the glue. It was all dry so I got a razor blade and pried the island off the bench. I scraped all the remaining glue off the Corian. The cement does not attack Corian. Had it, I wouldn't have been able to separate the island from the bench... small blessing.

The glue melted and distorted the port side not quite up to the next deck level. It caused slight fissures and other distortions. I wasn't going to replace all the molded-on WTDs, but now I was forced to... another small blessing. I scraped all the doors off, and then filled the surface with Tamiya putty. Kind of poetic...Tamiya glue did the damage-Tamiya putty will fix it.



I did other stuff while the putty set and then sanded it off down to a level surface. I'm sure that it's still damaged and will probably shoot some primer on it to highlight the surface and then re-fill.



How the filler appears sort of shows where the damage was. It's miracle that the whole thing wasn't wrecked which either would have scraped the entire model or left me another very challenging scratch-build project. I probably could do that, but sure didn't want to.

While it was curing I built the lattice structure under the exterior elevator. Unlike the horror of the island disaster (and I'm not talking about Puerto Rico), the elevator went together perfectly. There are 6 PE trusses and that's covered with an elaborate lattice plate. The plate needs to be folded to conform to the trusses. I needed a template.

The easiest way I could think of was to put the PE Fret on a piece of white paper and lightly shoot some rattle can primer at it leaving a silhouette on the paper. I spray glued the paper and put it on some card stock, and cut out one of the images with a razor knife. I used this to get the fold angles right which really helped in the getting it on the trusses.

The trusses were CA'd to the styrene elevator. It was finicky, but went without any complications.



like the rest of the PE on this model, I try and solder brass to brass whenever possible. In this case it was the perfect solution. I tinned the lattice frame on all the vertical members for their full length, not knowing how much melting I would do.

I carefully put some TIX flux on all the truss edges and placed the lattice on top. Setting the RSU at about the lowest setting, I handheld the lattice on the low edge and got it aligned on the end truss and then, using the RSU tweezer handpiece, lightly (very lightly) held the two pieces together, hit the foot switch and released it as soon as I saw a puff of steam from the flux vaporizing. That took about a half second. It was almost instantaneous. Held any longer and it would have burned through both peices.

I then went to opposite end's truss and did the same thing. To solder the narrow end, there wasn't clearance to get the tweezers in so I used the Weller iron and pressed the piecees together while I stabilzed the other end. With the ends done I went back with the RSU and did all the other trusses at their top ends and middles and used the iron for the bottoms. This whole activity was very quick and it's quite solid. I am relying on the CA to hold the trusses to the elevator, but there's a lot of pieces sharing the load.



It looks really nice and complicated. I would have hated to try and get that lattice to work with CA. Solder doesn't screw around.

I also did a small job; put the PE screens on the funnel outlets with CA. I need to make a couple more minor antenna sets and the small rear mast which I believe is also where the American Flag is displayed. These will be brass too.

I was getting ready to finish up all the railings on the island and now I just have to do some more stuff. I may remove the molded on piping and add real materials.

Lucky you didn't melt more plastic than you did.

Those trusses look really spiffy. Hope all goes well with the repairs

Bl**dy marvelous. You are doing an excellent job.

It's not that you screw up. I do that plenty! It's how you recover. It's the same in restaurants, and in business of all kinds. Stuff happens! Good recoveries is where you shine.

A reader on one of my other forums where I post this build suggested that instead of trying to re-finish that ruined island side, that I should laminate a piece of thin styrene to re-create the surface and get a fresh start. I thought this was a terrific idea and executed it.

I started by measuring the key dimensions and then creating a cardboard template and then transfer this to 0.010" styrene. It slipped nicely under the angle brackets under the gun tubs and fit flush under the 2nd level gun tubs. Before installing I scraped off all the details and would replace all of them with 3D pieces.



Here's the cardboard fit onto the island.



The styrene was thin enough to wrap around the ends. I didn't like the seams on both ends anyway so covering them would be a plus. I would shape and fill the wrapped end on the other side. I used liquid cement to make the joint.



With a nice clean surface, it was time to add all the details. I located the WTD locations prior to applying the laminate and then marked those locations on the new surface. I have a new way to apply PE details. It consists of using a white, Japan-made, special "pencil" (well... it looks just like a pencil) that gently holds PE for placement. A slight twist after the CA glue sets releases the part from the pencil. The other is using Gel CA. It sets much slower, can be applied in a tiny dot that stays put, and gives you time to move the part around to align it. I previously used thin CA. While it set fast, it was almost unmanageable for me. Brian Bunger, the owner of Scale Reproductions, told me to try thick CA. What a difference!



I not completely happy with the hole I made for the open door. It's a bit ragged, but if I want it much smoother the hole would keep getting bigger and it's alrady about as big as it should be. I suppose it could be a little lower, but not any wider. I scribed lines for the portholes and doors so they would line up nicely.

You will also notice that I actually put eyebrows over the new portholes. I decided to try this and it worked pretty well. I first formed a coil about the right diameter using a round parallel jawed pliers that I bought from MicroMark. After forming the coil, I cut them apart with the flush cutters and then used the placing pencil to put them over the portholes. I also started replacing eyebrows ground off when I was doing all the filling after making the Flag Bridge mod. When I put them over the two ports in the flag bridge front, it turned out that the right side was canted towards the right and the left towards the left and it looked like the face of Wall-E. Too cute! So I had to redo it. For some reason, that redo took as much time as putting on the seven on the flat surface.



This small gauge brass wire is the fancy birds nest of twisted wire on the top of some Spanish Rioja wines. Besides being a good red, the bottle provides some added value, first with the wire, and then the foil which is also great scratch-build material.

Good repair there. The only thing I find about thick CA is that it seems to gel in the bottle over time and not squeeze out out. I've thrown out at least two half filled bottles of the stuff so I've stopped buying it.

Thank you! Even when CA thickens, as long as it kicks with accelerator I'll keep using it. But it does reach a point when the kicking starts getting impacted and it's time to chuck it.

Life is good!

Last year I had a purchasing dream come true when my wife and I bought a genuine Herman Miller Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman. We had purchased a knockoff 37 years ago that was completely shot and we figured it was time to get a real one. One of the buttons on the seat cushion let go and it was a warranty item. They picked up the chair five weeks ago and shipped it back to Grand Rapids.

Today it was back. In the meantime, I was using the ottoman with a wing chair. It was all wrong, difficult to have my laptop positioned correctly and made typing all this a pain. Unfortunately, the chair was shipped in a new chair shipping box strapped to a pallet and dropped ship in front of my garage. The driver said he wasn't permitted to bring it into the house. He helped me move it in the garage and out of the rain. I then had to unpack it, and heft it into the family room.

Of course I slipped on the cardboard as I tried to move it down off the pallet and fell on my left side with the chair on top of me. I was being impulsive. I could have waited for my wife to return. I did get it in the house. I am now sitting on it and loving it, and have a sore rib, but otherwise I survived. I'm annoyed at Herman Miller for sending the chair back to a residence without having it set up in the house expecting the home owner to unpack it, get rid of a pallet, and all the cardboard, especially when they had two fellows pick up the chair in the first place.

Onto the model. I continued adding vertical ladders, and inclined ladders and ran into a connundrum. The ladders are etched with the bottom slant perpendicular to the deck on which it should sit. It may be prototypical, but it makes gluing them in a real challenge. You're attempting to super glue the ladder in place with a single needle point contact area. It's very, very insecure!



I thought I was bending the railings wrong. So I kept trying to un-bend them and bend them the other way, only to realize after screwing up a few of them, that I was being ridiculous and that the etching precludes changing that bottom angle. It would be much better for us model makers if the tapered base was parallel with the deck thereby increasing the gluing area by an order of magnitude.

So here is today's work.



Oh, and the other thing I did was put the reinforcing plate in place and re-drilling new Tri-mast mounting holes to accomodate the new mast. Again, this isn't prototypical, but it was more importan to me that the mast be properly attached, and the side railings which go on next, will properly disguise the interface. In the above picture you can see the thickness variance I had to create so the new plate would settle over the kit's wings that had the original mast mounting holes. I actually used the razor saw to slice the piece horizontally to reduce the thickness at that spot.



It's interesting to note that with just this little handling to test fit the mast I caused deformation of some of the yard arm details. Nothing permanent, just annoying. Every time I touch PE I bend something I don't want to bend. Sometimes I wonder why I even do this stuff, and then I look at how fabulous ship models look when all the bells and whistles have bells and whistles and it makes all the aggravation worth it. Kind of like childbirth and raising kids, only more important. Boy... am I going to get slammed for that one.