Deck Guns

I worked to add the six additional deck guns to the Maine. Here's a pic of what the real ones looked like:
The most complicated part of the weapon is the seven legged mount. Combrig supplies this part as photoetch. I cut the part loose on a piece of black ceramic tile that I sue as a cutting board. To bend the part I took a toothpick and rounded off the end with a sanding stick. I then placed the piece onto a soft cloth and pressed the toothpick tip into the center of the part. The legs were bent up by the cloth and the "give" in my finger tip.

I then attached the mount with thick CA to the deck. The guns were painted on their resin pour stub, cut loose and then mounted with thick CA.

6 month update

So. It's been 6 months since my last post. In that time, you'd think that I would have finished the Maine and moved onto other ships. You'd be wrong of course. You see, dear Reader, that in the interim, that my wife and I obtained a little dog. She's half Golden Retriever and half Tasmanian Devil. Her name is Finn, and she's a great load of fun.


The other event that sucked up my time was a move from the Milwaukee area to the Chicago area. Yep, we managed to move at the right time...getting a premium for our home and managing to pick up a brand new home for what I consider a great price. My work commute has gone from a 110 mile round trip to 16 miles. It's doubtful, I'll make that up in modeling time however!

So when I was last working on the Maine I was attempting to solder the masts together. I can tell you that doing one fairly quickly turned out to be a bit of luck. Getting a second one made to the same standard turned out to be the devils own task. I spent numerous hours and cut a lot of brass trying to get it right. In the end I was successful.

I ended up making my own 3rd hand device as you can see below. It worked out OK but the wire that I used made it tough to get the parts aligned because of the inherent "springiness" of the whole design.






As you can see from the following pictures I finally got the masts made, painted and stepped into their holes on the deck. I have also managed to get the ratlines trimmed and attached. I used WEM ratlines that are very nice. I had to trim them with a pair of scissors that have the blades cut from titanium (so it says).


Once the ratlines were in place I was able to start placing the railing on the foredeck and the aft deck. Comparing the work that I did there to the bridge, I can see a definite improvement in my abilities. I would say that the key to getting good railings is to use small sections of railing. Much of what you see on the for and aft decks are numerous sections of railing pieced together. At the point the pictures were taken above, I still have the bend by the deck guns to do. What is in that picture is made up of 8 separate railing section with another 4 to be added. (joy)











I used spare ladder railing to add in the deck stairs since none are supplied on the PE sheet.


All in all, she's not looking too bad. With vacation time coming up, I hope I can complete her. Then I'll cover how I plan to build a case for her.

Soldering the Mainmast

This post concerns the soldering of the mainmast. This is the first time that I’ve ever soldered any parts for a model. I made a run to Home Depot and purchased a soldering gun, flux, and solder. Something that I would add to the purchase is a device known as a third hand. (You’ll find out why later)

(The third hand)

I started off this part of the build by using an index card to transfer the dimensions of the mainmast from the plans. I used the card as a cutting base to get the mast cut and joined at the proper lengths without hosing up the plans. The mainmast was .032" brass rod, the top mast was .020" diameter brass rod. The remaining parts were made from .016" diameter brass.

This is the first time I've ever soldered a mast but it turns out that it's not that difficult. The first thing to do is to make sure that the components are clean. I sanded the brass stock that was going to become the mast with a sanding stick. I also tapered the top mast for a more realistic appearance.

Once they were clean I applied a little dab of flux to the parts. The flux facilitates the soldering of the parts by providing a chemically clean surface. Then I took the gun and heated it up. Using a small amount of solder I touched the tip of the gun until a small amount of solder melted off onto the gun tip.

In turn I sued the gun to “paint” the area where I was going to join the parts. This left the parts with a surface area of solder on them. Set aside the gun and align the parts as you want them joined. The main to top mast is the easiest join. In this case I secured them to the index card with some masking tape.

Heat the gun up again and touch the tip to the parts. The solder that you painted on earlier should “flash” (liquefy). Remove the gun and you should then have two soldered parts. Don’t over-do the application of the solder. Less is more in this context since only the top surface of the solder has any grip on the parts.

The other joints are going to be harder to do. Firstly because they are just more complex and secondly because you don’t want to heat the parts up so much that the earlier joints you made re-liquefy. I advise using metal clamps to hold the parts since that will act as a heat-sink to drain off excess heat.

The third hand would be useful to apply items such as the boat boom. I rigged something up using a chunk of florist foam but do yourself a favor and buy the third hand tool. These parts took me 2 hours to make…most of that time spent in a rather frustrating attempt to align the booms before I figured out the florist foam & alligator clamp arrangement.

A related 101 course on soldering.

Mid deck/Boats finished

The pictures ought to speak for themselves. The only details added at this point that haven't been previously discussed are some brass grab rails on the two steam launches. The rails came from 1/400 scale PE ladders. I also added a couple of boat crane hooks from a 1/700 IJN carrier PE sheet I had as a spare.





The next thing to tackle is probably going to be the aft superstructure. I'll be learning some new skills... soldering brass masts.

Boats and Rework

I took all of the boats that were going to populate the decks and mounted them to long toothpicks in order to paint them. Trim the end of the toothpick and dab the cut end into a drop of CA. I then very carefully stick the toothpick to the underside of the boat that will be towards the centerline of the ship. For the boats that were still on their resin casting gates, I simply used alligator clips obtained from the local radio shack to hold them. I mounted all the boats into a chunk of florists foam and headed to the spray booth. The boats were painted the same color as the hull.
Jim Baumann suggested that I replace the railings on the catwalks between the decks. I agreed... they looked pretty clunky compared to the WEM railings that I was using. So I pulled the bow catwalk up and cut away the railings and replaced them with the extra fine stuff. I opted not to replace the aft catwalk since it is going to be hidden by the two boats straddling it.
I also managed to finish one of the boats. I used short lengths of fine wire crushed in a pair of flat pliers to make oars for the boat. I also added a short length of "rope" made from fuse wire that was wrapped around the tip of a toothpick, slid off, and then pressed flat with pliers. It might look a little clunky in the photo but remember the entire boat is about 1 cm in length.

Boat Deck Supports

The kit supplied boat deck supports are on the brass photo-etch sheet. Unfortunately, there is no way that they will actually fit the kit. The supports have to be placed on either side of the superstructure guns. At this point on the superstructure, the sides angle in in order to provide the guns with a good field of fire.

The supports don't take this into account and hence they won't fit. In order to solve the problem I used .015" diameter silver-bearing solder. I bent the solder in an improvised jig of dress-making pins stuck into a piece of basswood. I flattened the resulting parts between my glass photo-etch sheet and a steel ruler. I attached the parts with CA. I'll paint them once they're dry. I'll also probably have to do a little tweaking of the boat bottoms in order to get them to sit straight since their are no cradles on my jury-rigged parts.

The pics below should explain the process fairly well.

Bridge Decks completed

The Bridge Decks are now complete. The only casualty was the loss of the starboard pelorus to the carpet monster. I also added the two diagonal supports to the bridge wings on each side of the ship.

The railing also looks a lot cleaner on the upper bridge. The reason is that I broke this section of railing down into 5 separate pieces. So there is a lesson learned. Complex shapes are better captured by a greater number of railing pieces. I trimmed them just short of a stanchion at the corners and then attached them to the follow-on piece at a stanchion.

And of coarse, I have to include the obligatory overall shot.

A little Test Fit

So while I've been busy doing Spring projects around the house, I've managed to slip in a little bit of work on the Maine. I've fitted most of the fresh air hoods to the centerline.

I also completed the lower bridge deck. This meant using the photo-etch to build the octopus like 6 pounder guns. These things are tiny and have numerous legs that need to be bent in order for the weapon to sit straight. I also had to add the upper bridge supports from the PE sheet. I trimmed these so that the upper bridge deck sat flat. I was originally going to use the resin deck but the PE is just too nice to omit.

I also added the aft flying boat deck. Since the model is made to the "as planned" version of the Maine, two torpedo boats are supposed to occupy these positions. To my knowledge, Maine never actually carried these boats. It's possible that the supports were modified to some extent in order to carry the smaller boats. I elected not to alter the PE so that meant I needed to find some boats that were big enough to fill the position. These ones came from a 1/700 USS Enterprise CV-6 kit. Maine probably never carried such large boats, but they fit the bill nicely anyway. Besides, if I hadn't just told you that, you'd never have known!

Overall, she's still looking a little barren but starting to shape up nicely. I will have to add the bridge wing supports next and then the boat decks over the superstructure. That will be a challenge since the PE supports are actually a little oversized to fit the area over the 6" guns on the superstructure.

Starting on the Photo-Etch

Someone posted a question on SteelNavy asking what paints I was using. Rather than describe, I thought I'd just post a pic of the paints. The two folkart paints are from the craft section at Walmart. The other two came from the local hobby shop.

I've started adding the photoetch to the bridge deck. This is an odd shaped part and it's got quite a few complex bends in it. I elected to do it in multiple pieces rather than trying to get one piece bent correctly the whole way round. For bending I use a razor blade and a pair of flat jawed pliers. Nothing special...although I might pick up an etch mate type tool before I'm done.




At the magnification of the photo's the photo-etch looks pretty crappy, but the magnification makes every last blemish stand out like it was high school picture day! In reality, you can't see some of the more twisty bits of railing.

Starting to look like a ship

I added the forward turret since I wanted to add the walkway between the foredeck and the main superstructure. In order to do that, the turret had to be in place. At this point, a great deal of work is going to start cascading...before I can apply A, I have to apply B etc. This is where resin kits can become difficult because there really isn't an assembly sequence. But then real modelers don't need instructions right?


The next pic shows the funnels in place. Everything in the pic is glued down at this point. The funnels have wire added to the sides to detail it, as well as the photo-etch grille on top. Note that the 6" gun on the forward part of the superstructure has been sanded down a little... this was to allow the bridge deck to sit level.

A little headway

I've been working on the Maine slowly even if I haven't posted lately. The work that I did following the paint application was a wash of the deck. I used an oil wash of very dilute burnt sienna. The goal is to be subtle...if you can notice it, you probably over did the wash. I apply it sparingly to the entire deck. I also did a very light grey wash to the hull and a mix of burnt sienna and black to the vertical superstructure.

I also painted all of the coal scuttles. These are the round objects all over the deck. They were used to load the coal into the bunkers. Normally, these probably would have been bright brass, since they were polished. I chose to make them dark grey so that I had something else that contrasted with the deck.

The pic below show the wheel house with the bridge wings added. I used strip styrene rather than the provided brass since I thought I'd get a sturdier part that way.

The only items actually glued down are the midships 6 inch guns. The other parts are simply in place for assembly check.

I've painted the brass. The kit provided brass has been augmented with Atlantic models pre-dreadnought railings as well as ratlines. I also am using some spare photoetch for the inclined ladders. The next step will be to start applying some of the etch to the centerline stairwells. A key to the assembly is to work from the centerline of the ship outwards as well as from midship to fore and aft. That helps Mr. fumble-fingers from smashing some delicate work.

Painting Outcome

So the moment of truth arrived... I had to remove the masking. The priming had solved the issue I ran into the first time. Take a look at the pictures below to see how sharp the seperation is between the differing paint colors.


So I have officially made up all of the work that I lost. I'm quite pleased and ALL future builds will be using the primer that was recommended below.

Redux

Well a few weeks have passed since disaster struck. Since then, I have essentially repeated my earlier work. Although, this time I must say I've become a little more efficient at laying down the masking. (Practice does indeed appear to make perfect). In the image below, I have just completed the masking of the deck surfaces. I used all of the same paints as previously described. You can also see some of the tools that I have been using to lay down the masking. The straight blade is for cutting the strips and cutting them to length. Using the blade I lift up a corner and then take hold of it with the tweezers. I maneuver the strip into place and "pin" it with the steel probe seen in the upper left.

In the image below, I have just completed covering the open areas between the masking with liquid mask. I use a toothpick to apply the liquid mask after I have thinned it with water. The viscosity of the mask makes it tough to use a paintbrush for application. Once the mask dries, I will be ready to spray the hull.