Puttering in the Study

Dragon 1/700 USS Arizona (BB-39) - Post #2

I finished the parts on the Arizona tonight, which leaves photoetch and detail painting, and wanted to summarize things so far.

3-D printed parts

The biggest addition to the model was the mid-build decision to switch out the kit fighting tops and gun shields for 3D parts.  I had been very impressed with the 3-D printed Pearl Harbor mooring quays (shown painted at left), and was able to located 3D printed fighting tops , gun shields, and shields for the quarterdeck 1.1 inch mounts.

The tops and shields came in orange plastic (an odd choice) and the difference between them and the kit parts is striking.  The new tops are in front - the kit parts are on the ship and behind.  The photo also shows the size of the kits gun shields, which are short, thick, and without vertical bracing.

The last photo shows the boat deck sanded smooth of the old gun shields, and with the tops and shields painted and ready for installation.

Again, I was able to finish with the kit parts tonight.  The next steps is installation of the kit's photoetch, which consists mostly of railings, but also has some gangway and crane detail.  Then it's detail paint and install flags.

I am hoping to finish off the ship's Pearl Harbor appearance by adding the white awnings and extending the boat booms.  The ship's boats really ought to be removed, so I'll probably do that as well.

New model construction docks

Around the time I was finishing law school in 1992, Daddy cut half a dozen 1x6x20" boards for me to use as bases for the 1/700 carriers I was building.  

Several for used for that purpose (see far left) but I turned one into a model construction "dock" (second from left) with basswod strips with sufficient compartments around to hold my basic modeling tools - knife, glue, model paints, etc.  I used a second as a "dock" for models under construction (third from left), and for most the past 25 years they've held the Ticonderoga and 1940 Yorktown that I last seriously worked on when I was living with Mother and Daddy during my clerkship.  Both are almost - but not quite - finished.

As I am getting more efficient at getting 1/700 ships completed recently, I've decided that neither of these docks is really an optimal work surface any longer for a couple of reasons.

I don't need the docks to hold modeling supplies. The tackle box at right does that.  I've recently reorganized the tackle box so that the tools I use the most are all in the same tray, and I always put them away after use. The only compartments I need in the docks themselves are for temporary storage of parts and subassemblies for the model under construction.

I need the docks to be smaller and lighter. Several months ago I picked up a revolving spice tray to use as a base for the Saturn V launch umbilical tower (LUT) so I can rotate it as I work on it, and it makes an excellent work stand for model ships as well.  (It also holds the paints currently in use). The problem is that the existing dock at 20" is too large to comfortably rotate and still be within easy reach, and at 3/4" it's a lot heavier than it needs to be.  Using a half inch piece of poplar with dimensions reduced to accommodate Hood or Lexington - sized models is plenty. If I ever build a 1/700 scale nuclear carrier, I might need the old dock (it was originally sized for a 1/720 scale Enterprise CVN-65) but absent that, the smaller ones will do fine.

So this afternoon while working on the cradle at the workshop I did the necessary cutting and gluing to create two of the new, smaller model construction docks. I look forward to putting them to use in the near future,

Hellcat: The F6F in World War II - Barrett Tillman

I pick up Tillman's books whenever I see them as reference material, but decided to read this one as I'm getting close to building my first Hellcat model.  The book was surprisingly light on the design and origins of the F6F, and is devoted more to blow by blow, day by day accounts of the operational career of the aircraft.  It's dense, but interesting.  Frustratingly, the book is printed in sepia toned ink, so the photos are even less useful as references.

Lost Empress - Sergio De La Pava

What a mess.  I got the audiobook of this book because the principal story about a fictional female owner/manager of the Dallas Cowboys who gets kicked out and starts a competing league with the Paterson Pork franchise sounded really good.  And that plot line was.  It was enjoyable.  But the book has a dozen different ones going on and as magnificent as the full-cast audiobook performance is, it was excruciating listening to it for week after week as I waited for the eventual World Bowl between the Cowboys and the Pork.

This is one of those books that you need to read so you can accelerate through the plot lines you're less interested in.  It's great writing - don't get me wrong - but listening to it in real time was hard.

Brown on Resolution - C.S. Forester

I found a couple of Forester novels last weekend and finished the first last night.  Brown on Resolution has nothing to do with the Hornblower books, but is instead the story of a single British sailor who survives the sinking of his ship in WW I by a German cruiser and succeeds in delaying the cruiser's departure from the Galapagos Islands - specifically Resolution Island in time for a British battlecruiser to locate it and sink it.

It was published in 1929, ten years before the first Hornblower novels, but the style is the same, and the personalities and characters are well-drawn and enjoyable to follow.  The only thing that bothered me was that the two plots of the story never really meshed, so while I really enjoyed the back story of Brown's mother Agatha, it was a little disappointed that father and son never met, nor even knew of each other, at the book's end.