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Trumpeter 1/200 USS Iowa


johndon

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24 minutes ago, steve5 said:

You could paint them on the sprue , add them at the end , 

 

I may have to but I prefer not to if at all possible to avoid touchup with the brush later.

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Gidday John, that's a neat idea regarding the square section and the clamp. My ship turrets are a third of your scale/size (1/600) so I clamp the round rotating pin of the turret with a clothes peg. Same effect though.    That turret looks very good also. Regards, Jeff.

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Work continues on the Iowa and I'm trying to get something done every day even if it's just gluing a couple of parts together.  It was pointed out to me on another forum that, in the camo scheme I'm doing, the turret roofs were blue, not black so turret 1 has had it's roof resprayed.  I did this without any masking so there is a bit of overspray to sort out but I ran out of paint so a trip to the model shop is in order.  The blue isn't massively different to the black but it is just about noticeable...

 

IMG_2412.jpg

 

I prefer, and always have built, my ships as waterline and modelled the water.  I'm concerned about my ability to do this effectively in 1/200 scale so I'm keeping my options open and retaining the full hull so the propellers and rudders have to be fitted which as been done.  I've also fitted a couple of retained nuts on the inside of the hull so the ship can be bolted to a display base.  If I decide to go for a water base, I'll use a couple of inches of foam and sink the model in to it.  A bit more sanding and filling to do and the hull will be ready for primer and I'll need to decide how/if to represent the hull plating.  Current thought is to do it with masking tape and thick layers of primer...

 

IMG_2411.jpg

Edited by johndon
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Excellent work, will be watching this one progress as have this one with Pontos deluxe(blue deck version) plus the MK1 armament set (auction site for £15) for the bits that Pontos don't change or the other way round. 

 

What are the books you got like for info. I got the New Anatomy of USS Iowa, it's great for detail but not many real pictures. 

 

Chris

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11 hours ago, magpie1832 said:

What are the books you got like for info. I got the New Anatomy of USS Iowa, it's great for detail but not many real pictures. 

 

I've got the following books:

 

USS Iowa at War by Kit & Carolyn Bonner 

Iowa Class Battleships On Deck by David Doyle

The Iowa Class Battleships by Malcolm Muir

 

All the above have lots of photos although the 'On Deck' book concentrates very much on the Iowa's after the 1980s reactivations.

 

USS New Jersey World War II to the Person Gulf by Robert F Dorr

Battleship New Jersey by Paul Stilwell

USS Missouri at War

 

The three above are useful for generic shots but obviously no use for detail shots of the Iowa specifically.

 

The 'holy grail' book though is:

 

Iowa Class Battleships Their Design, Weapons and Equipment by Robert Sumrall

 

The book is full of detail closeups of various parts of the ships and has a number of very useful closeups of the Iowa in WWII.  It can be quite difficult to get a hold of though, I got mine for £4.99 from a charity shop but I've seen it for sale on Amazon for over £100 in the past.  For me, it is pretty much a must have for anyone building any one of the Iowas.

 

Edited by johndon
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I've been working on the aft turret this afternoon and the 40mm gun tub that sits on top if it.  I've been fitting the ammo racks to the 40mm tub and, despite being fairly confident with PE, I found these to be a nightmare to install, keeping them level was especially problematic to the point where I resorted to adding some small bits of 1mm styrene between the second and third rows but I'm going to have to come up with a better solution for all of the others. I'm not very happy with it but it is what it is...

 

IMG_2413.jpg

 

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The ammo racks are complete but this had absolutely kicked my bottom tonight...

 

The racks in the corner have only one 'support' piece to get the height and that is right in the corner so trying to keep them level is all but impossible.  I've ended up cutting some pieces of 1mm * .25 mm strip to the walls to give the racks something to rest on.  I hope that they will just about disappear once painted.  I'll probably now do the same for the other gun tubs but cut the strips to match the length of the brass pieces to make them less obvious.

 

As per my last post, I'm usually OK with PE but these racks, just 9 pieces of PE in total, have taken me almost 3 hours of work...

 

IMG_2415.jpg

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Another change to the blue on the turrets.  After examining some more photos, I decided that the blue was too dark and another modeller recommended Tamiya XF50 Field Blue as a reasonable representation of Navy 20B.  Turrets 1 and 2 have had their roofs sprayed with this and it does look a lot better.  Turret 1 needs a tiny bit of touchup and the blast bags painting and turret 2 is at the basic blue/grey stage with more grey to be done as well as the black camo (this time on just the port side of the turret) and the blast bags.

 

IMG_2423.jpg

 

I'd also like to say thank you to Roger Torgesson who has very kindly sent me some very high resolution photos of the Iowa in the paint scheme that I'm trying to represent.

 

John

 

Edited by johndon
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The hull has now had an overall coat of primer which, as usual, has highlighted a couple of areas that need a bit more work.  The ship has also been fitted to a temporary base.

 

IMG_2429.jpg

 

Working on the bow, the 20mm gun tub, as supplied in the kit, is the wrong shape and Pontos supply some etch parts to act as templates to help reshape it:

 

IMG_2430.jpg

 

And, just for the sake of it, a view of turret 1 and 2, still some paintwork to be done on both:

 

IMG_2431.jpg

 

On the real Iowas, there is a distinctive lip to the edge of the deck which isn't represented on the kit.  I'm keen to do it but it means adding a very thin strip of styrene all the way round the hull.  On the real thing this also has a rounded top edge but I may not go that far...

 

Edited by johndon
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The pic below may not look like much but it is a test for a fundamental part of the build.  The Trumpeter hull is pretty much devoid of detail whereas, on the real Iowa's, when you get close enough you can see the plates that made up the hull so I need a way to represent these.  The needs to work in closeup and needs to fade as you move away so it needs to be subtle.

 

This is the first test and it does look like it will give the sort of result I'm after.  First was an overall coat of primer followed by a strip of masking take where the 'plate' is to be, two more coats of primer then remove the tape and add the actual hull colour and you get what you see below.  Looking at the edges closely, I think I'd go over the primer with some very fine emery paper prior to spraying the hull colour...

 

IMG_2436.jpeg

 

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Your build is looking better and better all the time as you add more parts and details. I'll be interested in seeing how your attempt to paint hull plates comes out. 2 more photos showing the main deck bow area that might be of some help to you will be sent s soon as I post this.  Roger

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Another not very exciting but necessary test piece for the Iowa.

 

The Iowa had a lip that ran round the edge of the deck, the top of which protruded beyond the hull sides as you can see in this photo:

 

https://travelswithmaitaitom.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ship_iowa14.jpg

 

The Trumpeter kit does not include this so I'm going to have a go at doing it.  I've seen elsewhere on the web where one person glued a plastic strip round the deck and then glued a length of wire to the top of that the represent the round over.  It occurred to me that it might be easier to make the whole thing up first and then glue it to the deck so here is a first try with .25mm * 0.5mm strip topped with .5mm rod, slightly over scale but about as small as my fingers and eyes can manage.  I'm not the easiest thing to photograph and I'm not looking forward to having to make 8' of it but I think it will be worth it...

 

IMG_2439.jpeg

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As if building the Iowa wasn't enough, I've started on a side project, a kit my late wife bought me about 20 years ago.

 

As if it isn't obvious from the pic, it's the 1/350 Tamiya USS Enterprise CVN65 kit.  In the 20 odd years I've had it, I never got further than gluing the hull together so I figured I'd dig the island out and put it together.  The outside walls are all glued together but the different levels aren't yet so I can still access the interior.  For the age of the kit, the parts fit was almost perfect.  I need to decide which PE to used, when I got the kit, all that was available was the Gold Medal Models set but clearly things have moved on since then...

 

IMG_2441.jpg

 

Edited by johndon
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Ah! the lovely USS Enterprise.   I built one many years ago and it looks an impressive and imposing model when finished; although, probably not as imposing as your mighty Iowa! :clap2:

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2 minutes ago, Iceman 29 said:

With 1.71 meters that would be the longest plastic injected ship model, before the Yamato ( 1,31 meters)... Not sure if this is possible. 🤨

 

Just make the hull and the deck from separate pieces as Tamiya do with the 1/350 version or Trumpeter did with the 1/200 Iowa :)

 

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