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USS Langley CV-1 1/350


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It's been too long since I was last active on this side of the forum...

the last half year I did stray away from ships and tried myself in figure painting...

but now the itch is back and I started with a whole new project.

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but wait! There is more:

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Here are some shots of the sprues and PE frets:

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I started with what I thought will be the hardest part. the girders under the flight deck.

More for fun I did the first half of plastic to see how long it takes

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this lot took me 30 minutes including clipping them off the sprues filing them clean and glueing all together...

then I started the PE one...

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the first segment took me 3 hours to get to this point (bent, soldered together and cleaned up with a file)

Oh boy, this will take some time! But damn it is worth it! both the extra money and the extra time!

I'm pleased with this start

 

Thanks for looking,

 

Cheers Konrad

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Now man you have a dedicated follower ;) I'm seriously considering this one ( in a seaplane tender rendition ) to be my next big scale 'project of a lifetime' that will replace Danton :)  Pictures at their site are of really poor quality, could you make some close ups of hull plating for me please? 

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1 hour ago, Michael M said:

Now man you have a dedicated follower ;) I'm seriously considering this one ( in a seaplane tender rendition ) to be my next big scale 'project of a lifetime' that will replace Danton :)  Pictures at their site are of really poor quality, could you make some close ups of hull plating for me please? 

I will take some close ups tomorrow morning. I think it looks pretty good but judging by the quality of your Danton build (am following since you started) you might have a higher standard than me...

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Well then I'm waiting impatiently :Tasty:

The better it is, the less work in improving it ;) 

Are those PE girders strong enough for the job, without strengthening them? What is it 0,2 mm?

Edited by Michael M
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13 hours ago, Michael M said:

Well then I'm waiting impatiently :Tasty:

The better it is, the less work in improving it ;) 

Are those PE girders strong enough for the job, without strengthening them? What is it 0,2 mm?

Your wait is over!

regarding the girders, Trumpeters PE is generally very soft and flimsy brass... when it's not bent it wobbles a lot, seen here from above:

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but when bend and soldered it is really strong

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I'm not quite sure if it's possible using CA that's why I went with soldering even if it takes longer and is more cleaning work.

 

Now regarding the plating:

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the plating is quite subtle, no huge craters as scribe lines and the elevation between the higher and lower plates is also plausible... there are some problem areas due to the slide molding:

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the stern area is worst. almost no plating detail visible.

 

HTH

 

Cheers Konrad

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Cool thanks a lot. I see that there is also nothing on the bottom of the hull, but that could be remedied quite easily. The rest of it looks far better than i expected.

My personal experience is that trumpy's PE is more less the same thickness and hardness as Eduard's, which I'd classify as cut out's of retired Soviet tanks ;)  But maybe they improved lately. I've seen that they're planing to release Langley in both versions in 1:700, I wonder if thy'll be able to replicate that on the half size hull....

I'm staying glued to the monitor in anticipation of your next move.

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Well my next move looks really similar to the last one ;)

I continued with the next bit of girder:

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then I had the great idea to check the fitment...

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looks okay... trumpeter planed the whole kit already with the additional PE set and made slots where the PE sits...

time to check the fitment with the deck...

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hmm... when I align the feet from the third one to the deck the front looks like this... not good!

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this might be the reason. Does Anyone have a solution how I can straighten it so it fits both top and bottom???

As I'm hoping you can help me I laid the girder aside and started with the ships hull.

First problem: Hawser pipes. I will not fill the whole bow to drill real hawser pipes but blocked the view with a simple piece of plastic sheet

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next I glued shut all decks as I don't need to access the inside anymore.

The fit is fabulous!!

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Next the not so happy work: ejection marks!

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First time I tried this method on the elevated ejection marks. Tedious but effective!

The filled ones are now drying untill tomorrow.

Next I testfitted the superstructure just because I wanted to know how it looks 😉

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when seen like this it looks like a cargo ship

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well if anyone doubted... the plastic girder is a no-go!

 

Hope you can help with the fitment problem

 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions

 

Cheers Konrad

 

 

Edited by USS_ESSESS
I can spell English...
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Well Konrad, it looks like a cargo ship...because it was a cargo ship, a fleet collier to be exact ;) To be honest I'd gladly build it in that version as well. The whole type was ill fated. Have a look, it's a good read.

Plastic girders are definitely NO GO , but I love that oddball look of the rest. I don't have any skills in regards of soldering, repairing my laptop plug once in a while is the tops of what I can do :(  I'd suggest positioning of girders on the hull with the deck on as well, sticking it together with a few drops of CA, just to set the proper angles and then joining them together properly.

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great work so far Konrad as to the alignment issue have you thought of clamping the framework and applying a small amount of heat to the joint to try and straighten the frame :idea:

 

beefy

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18 hours ago, USS_ESSESS said:

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How about taping down the bottom part, then melting the solder so you can push the legs back to 90 degrees. Tape the legs at the correct angle if necessary, then fill the gap at the joint with a little extra solder.

edit: which is more or less what beefy said above, which I did not read.

Edited by calistan
ninja'd by three hours
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Thank you everyone for the suggestions!

I was hoping to find a solution that does not include undoing the soldering... but I might have to bite the bullet there...

The last days where unusual stressfull for me, as my beloved girlfriend is now in home office... so I did not have as much modeling time as I wished... but today I was able to sneek into the hobby room for a few hours!

And I went on with the bridge contruction. After sanding the filled ejection marks flush I assembled the plastic parts and added most of the PE

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for ease of painting I kept it in two pieces

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Next task will be either trying to fix and continuing the girders or trying to remove all the bridge pillars from the sprues without destroying them...

That's it for today!

 

Stay safe everybody

 

Cheers Konrad

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Yesterday was not a good day!

It all started off quite innocent. filling some ejector pins, glueing some plastic....

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but then I decided it was time to fix the girders... My idea: fix it with some CA to the flight deck and just tweak it a little... so far so good, right?

Hell no!

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I died a little on the the inside!😭

so after some considerable time and the appropriate amount of strong language🤬 it was time to disassemble everything wich is pretty easy as you just need to heat it up and everything pops right off.

I tried to straighten the damaged part as good as possible:

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and was then left with this lot:

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now I came up with the idea to build the whole structure fixed to the deck below. So some small drops of CA and the first girder was in place

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it looked promising so I went on

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You see that? Yeah, I f***ed up big time!

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I came too close with the soldering iron and melted one of the beautiful fairleads I just glued on earlier... and of corse it's not one of those parts where trumpeter supplied spares...

That was the time I just had to leave the man cave and do something else... not sure if I'm brave enough to go back today...

 

Cheers

 

Depressed Konrad

Edited by USS_ESSESS
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Hi Folks,

 

I'm back!

 

after the above mentioned half mental breakdown I stayed away from the hobby room for a couple of days.

 

With all this social distancing and travel restrictions I was able to enjoy my hometown for the first time without tourists... I could get used to that!

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But on to modelling:

 

I just did not feel like going on with the girders after I managed to crush one section AGAIN (no pictures of that this time) but I swear I will get this to a pleasant result, eventually...

 

I thought I might start with the part of an CV thats most important: the airplanes!

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It took me hours to get to this point, PE landing gear is just not my friend but I'm quite pleased with that. Next will be the struts that hold the upper wing.

 

And just as it happens to be "a thing" at the moment here'S a picture of my wonderful pixnor tweezers that made all of the above possible

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I have them since 2017 and I can tell you they are worth every penny! couldn't imagine modelling without them anymore.

 

on to plastic parts:

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Rudder, propshafts and propellers are glued on, aft superstructure is just mocked up but getting slowly to the point where I can introduce some color to it.

Does anyone have a good recommendation as to colors for both vertical and horizontal surfaces on US ships of that era?

 

Cheers Konrad

 

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Hi Konrad,

 

very pleased to hear that everything is settling down for you now.  The Langley is the next carrier to get on my shopping list, so please don't give up on yours as I need to learn from your build! :thumbsup:  I just need to get through these first.

 

Mike

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2 hours ago, bootneck said:

Hi Konrad,

 

very pleased to hear that everything is settling down for you now.  The Langley is the next carrier to get on my shopping list, so please don't give up on yours as I need to learn from your build! :thumbsup:  I just need to get through these first.

 

Mike

I‘m missing the 1/144th one in this most impressive list!

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29 minutes ago, Michael M said:

Looks cool, but you've swapped the props. Right one should turn clockwise and the left anticlockwise. That bill is really nice :)

Damn... being a ships engineer this mistake is a no no for me😱

will correct it immediately 

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