JohnWS

You're working too fast for me Rob. Nice to see you back at it. Good start on the taut wire measuring gear, & a great idea for the handrails too. John

Hello everyone! Yes, it's another torpedo boat. This time, I'm attempting to scratch build a late model Elco 80' boat, circa 1945. There is a lot of reference materials for these boats in books & on the 'net, so this should be a fun & relatively easy build (famous last words ). Some of you may recall that the hulls for my previous two torpedo boat builds were carved from a cedar fence post. But this time, I going to take a shortcut and use the hull from a Revell PT 109 plastic kit. This is an old kit, that's been reviewed & built many, many times. I saw this kit at an antique market and I couldn't pass it up for the price. The quality of kit leaves a little to be desired, and the plastic parts are a little smaller than 1/72 scale. But, the kit should serve my needs. To begin this build, I made a stand from a 3/4"x4" piece of oak trim, using two finishing nails to attach the hull to the oak stand. [/url] Next, I drilled holes in the bottom of the plastic hull to match the location of the nails. Two pieces of plastic tubing were glued over the holes to strengthen the hull and to guide & support the nails. [/url] I found layout drawings for the Elco boat on the Internet, and printed them out in 1/72 scale, for reference. I used the drawings to identify what I will need to change on the 109 kit, to upgrade it to the 1945 model. The major changes involve modifying the kit deck to remove the Oerlikon gun mount at the stern and the support structures for the torpedo tubes. [/url] Removing those items will require major surgery. So instead, I decided to make a new deck and will build the superstructure & deck fittings from scratch. I made the new deck by gluing pieces of Evergreen plastic sheet together. I ended up laminating pieces of .040", .030", and .015" sheets (available at the local hobby store) to give enough thickness so I could contour the deck surface. The Revell deck was used to trace the shape on the plastic sheet, and the size was checked against the the plan drawings. It was a little bit of a battle to glue the new deck to the plastic hull, as the hull was twisted in the box. Luckily my new deck is strong enough so I could bend the hull to the proper shape when glueing it to the deck over the course of three days. After a quick start, the rest of this build will be slowed down over the next few weeks due to Christmas activities & while I wait for a few purchased items. Hopefully, I'll have some updates soon. Thanks for looking in. Cheers! John

Not a lot of work done recently on the Elco, as it's just too hot & humid here. We have air conditioning, but I'm concerned I'm still going to run into masking & paint problems due to the humidity. So, while the boat sits on the shelf until the weather cools down, I decided to look at making the boat's hull number decals. I used Photoshop to design a few different sizes and printed them on Testor's white waterslide decal paper. The only issue I ran into was getting the correct background colour to hide the white paper colour in-between & around the numbers, & that matches the dark ghost grey I'm using for the hull & superstructure. After some trial & error, I ended up with a pretty good match. Testor's recommends using a gloss clear coat to set the decal colour. However, I use flat (dull) clear coat for my decals instead. The flat clear coat works well & (I think) makes the decals blend better with the painted surface they're applied to. I've also found the gloss clear coat makes the decals look darker when under a bright light (e.g. a camera flash), while the flat clear coat looks pretty consistent under a variety of lighting conditions. That's it for now. Time to get a cool one & chill. Thanks for stopping by. John

I'm always amazed at the craftsmanship needed to make & fit the various bits & pieces to build these small boats.

Thank you Steve for an educational, & fun build.

Not to worry. I've been corrected for calling MTB's boats a few times. I figured if MTB's were ships, they would have been called MTS's. I'm attending a reunion with my training division in September, so I've got to brush up on my naval terminology soon. As far as being damaged, I've found dark rum is the best cure.

The boat's (ship's) crest is another nice detail.

Nice job on the waterline. Very convincing. The waterline on MTB's were pretty grimy from a combination of oil, fuel ... and algae floating on the water's surface. Here's a colour photo of BPB MTB 460's bow showing the dirty waterline.

Here are the titles of two books that have build & service data for the Thornycroft Coastal Motor Boats #'s 26, 27, 67, 68, 213 - 217, & 327 - 331 + Thornycroft MTB's 49 - 56. Royal Naval Coastal Forces 1939 - 1945, MTB's, MGB's, MA/SB's, ML's & HDML's - A. J. D. North - Almark Publications, ISBN 0 85524 068 7 (hard cover), & ISBN 0 85524 069 6 (soft cover). This book includes a few photos & line drawings of the Thornycroft boats, as well as the build & service data. Warships of World War II, Part Seven: Coastal Forces - H. T. Lenton and J. J. Colledge - Ian Allan Ltd., London.

Awesome looking build Dan. Sorry if I missed this when reading your thread, but can you tell me the boat's scale? Thanks, John

I like it! I can almost feel that cool sea breeze. (Sea breezes would feel great, as we supposed to be over 40° C this weekend) John

Hi Stuart. Yes, the stop rail is okay. There's a small 'bump' at the rear of the stop rail that's supposed to limit the depression of the forward guns so they don't shoot anything on the back of the boat. Thanks for asking. John

She's a beauty! John

Oh, oh! One more series of photos showing the MG's & stop rails dry fitted before being put away while painting is in progress. John

Thanks Kev! At some point I want to compare an out-of-the-box Elco build to this scratch build project. Working with the 1/72 PE makes me appreciate the PE work some are doing at much smaller scales.

Hello again. Guess what? The 50 cal. machine guns are FINISHED ... finally! The MG's take prominent spots on the 80' Elco's, & I wanted to make them as detailed as possible on this model. Here's a photo of the completed MG mounts with the guns & the PE ammo belts. Building the guns & mounts seems to have taken forever, but I'm really happy with the way they turned out. The PE ammo belts make the gun assemblies pop. The following photo includes a few additional photos of the completed guns. A comparison of the model guns compared to the actual ones is shown in the upper right corner. Now it's time to get back to painting the deck & superstructure & start adding the little details. Thanks again for looking in. John

You should get a sales commission from EZ Line.

Thanks for the EZ Line tip Steve. I've ordered both black & brown.

Here's a selection of books I've used for coastal forces in the English Channel.

Looks good Kev. Thanks for providing the seascape build process steps, too. John

I thought I'd share a couple of photos of the assembled machine guns, before they're sent off to the paint shop. The Eduard PE ammo belts fit & will be a nice addition to the guns. Next up, painting the MG's & assembling them in the gun mounts. John

G'day everyone! Another short update. I've added a 'canvas' spray shield to the aft MG turret stop rail using a piece of close weave material, and primed & painted both Mark 17 MG mounts & the stop rails. Also, I received the Eduard PE ammo belt set, ordered a couple of weeks ago (great customer service from Eduard). In addition, I've been doing research on the .50 Cal. machine guns & their assembly in the Mark 17 mounts, to determine what detail would be visible in 1/72 scale. As a result, I was able to scratch build the following parts for the MG assembly; - added detail to the White Ensign machine guns (including relocating the molded bolt handles on two of the guns to the opposite side). - two cradles, one for each pair of guns. - four ammo belt feed guides (using wine bottle foil). - a couple of small parts that will attach the cradles to the gun mounts. Next up, gluing all these little parts together & adding the guns to the gun mounts. Thanks for looking in. John

Another beauty, Kev!

Looks great Kev. Will she be under full sail? Here's a link to another photo of the bow wave for consideration - http://www.woodenships.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/IMG_0003-600x629.jpg. By the way, where are the guns & torpedo tubes?

Looking good! John