LCM3 PA13-2, Operation Overlord -- Finished

[robgizlu]

That is hugely impressive 

 

Rob

[dnl42]

@robgizlu, thanks! One of the things I'm really happy with is the resting position of the mount, which is pretty close to that photo. Right now, the mount slews and elevates, but I'll glue it into position lest it gets damaged.

[Courageous]

5 hours ago, robgizlu said:

That is hugely impressive 

 

Stuart

[longshanks]

Cracking job!

 

Kev

[dnl42]

Thanks @Courageous and @longshanks!

 

Kev, the manual and the photos of the actual mounts you provided were key to this effort. 

[dnl42]

Woohoo! Both mounts are done!

 

Here's my reference shot again. The boat number is white. As near as I can tell, the mounts are Haze Gray.

 

I used some hex nuts & bolts. For most of them, I used the smallest examples with the bolt portion cut off, leaving just the hex nuts. I used the largest nut and bolt for the center column.

[Silenoz]

Nice gun mounts...

[dnl42]

Worked on the bilge pump. Basically, a tube, a cylindrical frustum, and the pump handle. Here's a screen shot of the frustum pattern that I made in Inkscape and cut onto 5 mil aluminum sheet salvaged from the vacuum seal of a Costco coffee can. I rolled the pattern around a pencil point to form the frustum.

 

The tube is 0.125 Evergreen tubing with a 5 mil inset cut into one end so the frustum base outer diameter was flush with the tubing outer diameter. The other end of the tube was drilled out so the tubing material was thinner. The handle is 0.045 Evergreen rod with a 0.019 brass rod shaft.

 

And here's the completed bilge pump.

[longshanks]

Neat solution 👍

 

Kev

[dnl42]

The water barrel is done. Here's the prototype from an LCVP training film on youtube.

 

I made up the barrel from 1/4, 3/16, and 1/8 Evergreen tubing and 1/16 Evergreen rod.  The bands are 5 mil Al cut into 0.03 wide strips. The handle is .018 wire with Albion tubing. The legs are 1/32 Evergreen strip. 

 

The 1/4 and 3/16 tubing was cut to length and then chucked on my Dremel tool using a suitably tight machine screw. The Dremel was run at the slowest speed to prevent the plastic from melting so that I could shape the barrel using 0, 2, 4, and 6 cut equaling files. The max diameter is 1/4 while the ends are just over 3/16. Once shaped and smoothed, I cut the 1/8 tubing and 1/16 rod a wee bit shorter than the body, formed a rod, and then glued it in to form the barrel ends.  The leg tops were shaped with a crossing file.

 

I painted the barrel with Mr Color C45, Sail Color, formed the bands around the barrel, added the legs, and finally attached the handles

[longshanks]

Impressive 

 

Kev

[dnl42]

I just got Mr Color SC-14, Navy Blue 5-N. and SC11. Haze Gray 5-H, from Sprue Bros. My original plan was to use Colourcoats, but the US distributor was out of 5-N, with no mention of any restocking.

 

I primed everything using thinned Mr Surfacer 1200 last weekend. This weekend's plan is to get to the filling and filing identified in the priming session and then get some color on the hull.

 

[dnl42]

She's Navy Blue! I just placed the conning station and Mk 21-1 mounts on the hull for visualization. I meant to add the lifting eyes before I painted the hull, but, oh well. I'll add them and touch them up... 

 

I finished the conning station. I added the magnetic and gyro compass bits out of Evergreen plastic; the cables are lead wire. I also repainted the wheel with Humbrol #54, which is a brass color v. the copper color of Game Color's "Brassy Brass".

[robgizlu]

That's some lovely detailing

Rob

[longshanks]

Wot he said!    

 

Kev

[JohnWS]

6 hours ago, longshanks said:

Wot he said!    

X2 

 

John

[Courageous]

 x3

 

Stuart

[Richard E]

A masterclass of small details - do you have any plans to add any cargo to the finished craft ?

[dnl42]

2 hours ago, Richard E said:

A masterclass of small details - do you have any plans to add any cargo to the finished craft ?

Thanks!

 

That's somewhat up in the air. My original plan was to add a Sherman with wading gear, as is seen on the box art of several kits. I got several Sherman variants along with a wading gear set. But, in trying to determine which specific variant, I found out that Shermans deployed from LCTs and LSTs, not LCMs. They were apparently paired up in the Pacific, but that wasn't my goal for the LCM. I do have pictures of Jeeps, CCKWs, and other vehicles on LCMs in Normandy, and I am building a 1/48 Hasegawa Jeep, but I'm not convinced yet that I'm going to incorporate that into the build per se or just have it there for sizing purposes. I may end up putting a Sherman in wading gear next to the LCM.

 

I am considering not fixing the ramp in place, making sure it can be posed up or down. The primary issue with that scheme is the ramp cable back to the winch. I did leave the engine compartment hatch free to open, so I could put excess line in there.

 

In any event, this build will focus on the LCM with only its usual gear. 

[dnl42]

The conning station is truly done. Now.

 

Staring at pictures of the mast, I eventually figured out it had 4 legs and a light. One picture showed the shape at the top. I made my version from a couple of short lengths of Evergreen tube and a rod so it was solid at the top and hollow on the bottom. I then chucked it in a drill and used sanding blocks and files to shape it. The light lens is a bit of clear sprue from another kit. Another photo showed a wire wrapped around the forward-port leg running top to bottom; I used 0.2mm lead wire for that.  I decided to go with an orange life preserver ring as it's clearly not the hull color in the image, and looks similar to the lower hull, which I assume is red (it's neither hull color or black). I cleaned up the kit's version of the ring by removing the molded-on hand-hold ropes and then painted the ring and some paper strip with Humbrol #18. I used some tan rigging thread in my stash. To eliminate the thread's stray hairs, I rubbed the thread across beeswax and then used a heat gun to singe off the hairs and melt the beeswax into the thread. Some CA attached the paper bands and thread to the life ring. I made the life preserver rack with strips from PE fret and 5 mil Al sheet.

 

A  training film showed the fire extinguisher was shiny, so I went with Alclad White Aluminum  Some color photos had a brass valve atop, so I went with Humbrol #54.

 

I also added dial faces for the gyro repeater and magnetic compass.

 

Edited June 10, 2019 by dnl42

[dnl42]

Just as I was about to put on a clear coat, I realized I forgot the bow fairleads. I fashioned each of the upright parts out of strip stock by drilling a hole in in the strip a little below centerline and then cutting at the edge of the hole. Some shaping with needle files finished the parts off.

 

With that, it was time for decals, flat coat, rigging the ramp cables and then final assembly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[longshanks]

Some very impressive work there, I've enjoyed your build

 

Kev

[Courageous]

For relatively simple design, you have put a lot of work into, with lots of research and good attention to detail.

As Kev says, impressive and very enjoyable.

 

Stuart

[dnl42]

@longshanks and @Courageous, thanks!

 

It needed substantially more work than I thought it would, be but I really enjoyed the build.

[evdb]

On 24/02/2019 at 21:19, dnl42 said:

Working on the eyes welded to the frames and deck that guide the various ramp cables. On the port side are the ramp latch release cable, the cable from the ramp winch to the equalizing sheave, and the cable that attaches to the ramp per se. The starboard side only has the cable running forward to the ramp sheaves and then the ramp. An extract of the photo with the best detail on these aspects is shown below. It shows the ramp latch release cable running through holes drilled through the frame. But, looking at my subject reference and other photos show the ramp latch release could also run through eyes attached to every frame. I found another photo that shows these eyes are small and asymmetrically shaped. Back to the photo below, there are 3 eyes for the equalizing sheave cable; two appear to be half -round  and the other is rectangular for some reason. The rectangular eye is welded to the rearmost frame, the 2 half-round eyes are welded to every other frame forward of that. Finally, the ramp cable eyes are L-shaped, attaching to the frames at the top and deck at the bottom. The forward-most eye is welded to the foremost frame; the remaining are attached to every other frame running aft. Because of the construction, the equalizing sheave cable eyes and ramp cable eyes aren't on the same frames.

 

HB provided 0.02" copper wire for the eyes. This scales out to 1" thick bars! I replaced that with 0.01" brass wire, which scales out to 0.5" bars. The only smaller wire I have is 0.005", which is very flimsy and feels too small. Anyway, it took about 3 evenings and this morning to put all the above together. Here's my representation  of some of the 18 eyes on the port side; there are 7 on the starboard side. I made 5 or 6 more, but they launched into low earth orbit during handling.

 

I'm still working on the guide that routes the ramp latch release cable from the foot-operated control in the conning station. That detail is shown below, in another extract from the photo I showed above. You can also see that the ramp release cable appears to just lay atop the ramp winch cover. I may need to reduce the height of my ramp winch cover.

 

I also haven't worked out exactly what the ramp latch looks like, but I know it doesn't look like what HB provided! HB provides 2 ramp latches that look more like fence latches and were to be attached port and starboard within the hull. I haven't found any evidence of such an arrangement. 

 

Thanks for  looking. 

In this post there are partly magnifications of an image from Getty Images with number 50488369 (gettyimages-50488369). However on Getty Images I can not find this number; it also seems en digit short.

Can you post the full image or give a link to gettyimages?

 

And thanks for the inspiration for my own current building of the Trumpeter 1:72 LCM3.

 

Cheers,

Ed

On 24/02/2019 at 21:19, dnl42 said:

Working on the eyes welded to the frames and deck that guide the various ramp cables. On the port side are the ramp latch release cable, the cable from the ramp winch to the equalizing sheave, and the cable that attaches to the ramp per se. The starboard side only has the cable running forward to the ramp sheaves and then the ramp. An extract of the photo with the best detail on these aspects is shown below. It shows the ramp latch release cable running through holes drilled through the frame. But, looking at my subject reference and other photos show the ramp latch release could also run through eyes attached to every frame. I found another photo that shows these eyes are small and asymmetrically shaped. Back to the photo below, there are 3 eyes for the equalizing sheave cable; two appear to be half -round  and the other is rectangular for some reason. The rectangular eye is welded to the rearmost frame, the 2 half-round eyes are welded to every other frame forward of that. Finally, the ramp cable eyes are L-shaped, attaching to the frames at the top and deck at the bottom. The forward-most eye is welded to the foremost frame; the remaining are attached to every other frame running aft. Because of the construction, the equalizing sheave cable eyes and ramp cable eyes aren't on the same frames.

 

HB provided 0.02" copper wire for the eyes. This scales out to 1" thick bars! I replaced that with 0.01" brass wire, which scales out to 0.5" bars. The only smaller wire I have is 0.005", which is very flimsy and feels too small. Anyway, it took about 3 evenings and this morning to put all the above together. Here's my representation  of some of the 18 eyes on the port side; there are 7 on the starboard side. I made 5 or 6 more, but they launched into low earth orbit during handling.

 

I'm still working on the guide that routes the ramp latch release cable from the foot-operated control in the conning station. That detail is shown below, in another extract from the photo I showed above. You can also see that the ramp release cable appears to just lay atop the ramp winch cover. I may need to reduce the height of my ramp winch cover.

 

I also haven't worked out exactly what the ramp latch looks like, but I know it doesn't look like what HB provided! HB provides 2 ramp latches that look more like fence latches and were to be attached port and starboard within the hull. I haven't found any evidence of such an arrangement. 

 

Thanks for  looking. 

In this post there are partly magnifications of an image from Getty Images with number 50488369 (gettyimages-50488369). However on Getty Images I can not find this number; it also seems en digit short.

Can you post the full image or give a link to gettyimages?

 

And thanks for the inspiration for my own current building of the Trumpeter 1:72 LCM3.

 

Cheers,

Ed