Rob 1

Excellent work! She's coming along really well. I'm enjoying the progress and all the description of the ongoing works, looking forward to further updates in due course.

Ooh, I like that. Not only is it really well finished and beautifully weathered, the composition and level of detail is just perfect to make a great little diorama, enough detail but not cluttered, and the elements all well inter-positioned. Well done.

There's quite a bit going on behind the scenes with my USS San Francisco at the moment, although not a lot worth posting photos for at the moment. Most of the cutting and carving is done. The decks are fitted to the hull, and now piecing together main 'chunks' of superstructure, quite a bit of time is taken filling all the joints, which aren't bad in this kit but it all looks more complete when filled and smoothed over. Also quite a bit of time is spent on research, which fortunately there are ample good quality photos from that year. Typical of a number of alterations: I was able to confirm from this photo of CA-38 in May 1942 what I had seen on other photos of the class, that the solid balustrade edge moulded along much of the deck edge above the hanger (all along the angled portion of the superstructure) requires removal and replacement with railings. Photo above with grateful courtesy of www.steelnavy.com

That's looking very tidy . Looking forward to seeing some 'golden oldie' naval aviation on the deck.

She's looking really good. Was just reading about HMAS Canberra at Savo Island in August '42 - such brave men. Great to see yours in better times.

Phew, looks like a lot of re-building. It is looking good so far though, the re-built stern end has come out really well.

I remember going through the Tilly discussions before. Whether any Austin Tillys were used appeared to be inconclusive, but they did use Hillman Tillys, which look pretty similar. Also, with regard to the colour, they were RAF blue before the war, and some reports speculate that front line and airfield vehicles would have been repainted but some secondary support vehicles (such as some staff cars and Tillys) may have been overlooked until they needed repainting for maintenance purposes, due to the massive pressure of prioritising the thousands of new front line vehicles being churned out during the war. No one can say for sure, but that was good enough for me when I did mine in the same colour as yours

That's a lovely display, lots of interest and detail all finely done.

That is very nicely finished, well done.

Nicely finished Mustang, I bet it looks impressive 'in the flesh'.

Thanks Will. The method I used for my last couple of ships is to airbrush all the decks first, then airbrush the vertical surfaces close to the lower edge where it meets the deck but being careful not to reach the deck and spoil the finished deck surface. Then finish off up to the lower edge with a bit of careful light brush work. My favoured paint is Life Color acrylic, these seem to brush very smoothly adjacent to/over the previously airbrushed surface without much colour or surface diference. Also a final fine spray of satin varnish seems to magic away many discrepancies between brush and airbrush finishes.

That's interesting that you're doing the same one! How's your progress going? any problems so far? My work has started with demolition, cutting and carving. The anchor facilities on the hull and deck look a bit 'numb', so have received some remedial work. The hawse pipes have been drilled out and shaped a little in both the hull and deck. I found a fairly good photo of one of the class showing the chain going through the hawse in the deck, and will need a bit of photo-etch mesh from spare stock to cover part of the opening in due course, and will re-form the anchors a little to fit correctly up the hawses. Also the moulded on chain was dire, so carved it off to a clean deck, and will add seperate chain in due course (will need to source some). The GMM instruction also point out a glaring error with the 5" gun shields all moulded on the deck back to front! so have carved them off as the GMM set provides a full set of replacements and a 1:350 template to aid bending to the correct shape, so should go on fairly easily (hopefully). Its good to change them for the photo-etch ones even if they were the right way round, as the replacements are nice and fine - see last photo below. Also drilled out all the scuttles, to just appear as a clear dark open hole for each.

Just looked through this thread - mouthwatering! I'll enjoy watching this progress in the future.

I'm enjoying watching this progress, particularly enjoying seeing how much good detail you can get into this scale.

Is that involving drilling out and removing the horizontal 'deck' portion of the catwalk but leaving the regular vertical ribbing supports? Looks like a lot of work, but effective once the new photo-etch perforated decking is placed.

Made a start on CA-38 USS San Francisco this weekend, starting with unboxing and checking the quality of the goods. I've read certain reviews, and on the whole this Trumpeter kit received fairly good feedback, especially considering it's not the newest kit out, although among the latest generation, also the Gold Medal Models photo-etch set received high praise. On the whole, I am pleased with the quality and finish, although the thickness of the hand railing was a little disapointing compared to the Pontos set I'd used on my previous ship build. The photo-etch includes most things expected such as railings, ladders, cranes, catapults, radars, etc. including a decent amount of parts for the aircraft, and seemed to have a number of extra parts for later modifications such as later radar sets.

Looks good so far. Have the photo etch parts been painted up at the same time prior to fitting?

Just had a look at the photos of this build; wow, amazing, and wonderful work.

Thanks for the comments all. I certainly learnt a lot on this build, and will include experience gained in my next build and hopefully learn a bit more.

I'll consider the District Tug 'Nokomis' finished (for now). I will probably continue fine tweaking the weathering and perhaps adding more working bits and pieces on the decks - its like doing a drawing or painting; you could go on and on adding and tweaking and it never finishing. I'm generally pleased with it, such as the oil drums and the faded knees on the guys jeans came out well Anyway, some better photos as promised. The water's a complete cheat by the way, its just sat on the page of a book with a photo of sea water, to provide an instant backdrop.

Very well detailed model, nicely done.

Just seen this thread, great photos of a superbly finished ship. Well done Callum, you should be proud of her.

Well done, and nicely done camoflague. She looks every bit the mencing bulk of the Tirpitz that tied up much of our fleet for a large part of the war.

Wow, those photos above look absolutely superb! Great work. The ships are high standard models in themselves, but particularly like the level of attention to detail and finishing that has gone into the dockyard buildings and structures. This could inspire me into doing a substantial dock scene one day (depending on how my planned little one goes first). Looking forward to seeing more photos of this in due course

Doing the final works on the tug adding more ropes, the anchor (which I managed to forget ), and moved one or two guys around into slightly better positions. I'm aiming for her to be completed by this weekend, then after finishing the 'starter' will move onto the 'main course' ... one of these: I've gathered a collection of photos of cruisers at Mare Island and Pearl Harbour, of which there are a suprisingly good amount of high quality ones available, particularly on Navsource.org. I'm aiming for something resembling one of them but not one in particular, and aiming for 1942 where she was before she goes off to see some amazing and brutal action around Guadalcanal in late '42 in a number of famous actions against Japanese cruisers and a battleship. I love cruisers, particularly these classic pre-war heavy cruisers, and although the Portland class came out recently, I quite like the look and build of the Astoria class, and out of them it had to be the most decorated of them all; the USS San Francisco.