1/700 Veryfire USS Montana

[Woozaa]

Hello there

 

So because of the entire Covid-Situation i figured, I could start a somewhat longer build and decided on a project I wanted to do for a while, namely the never built USS Montana. The reasoning behind was, that the Iowas are one of my favorite Battleships, but my last attempt on one of those landed on the shelf of doom, which probably has something to do with aound 50 photoetch  Oerlikons and Bofors 😅. To circumvent that a little and looking at pictures of the builder-model over at the invaluable navsource.org, I could delete a lot of the AA-armament by adding the boatdeck, the matching cranes. and the open bridge. Also I want to give the ship a little bit distinction from the Iowas.

 

The Kit

Veryfire is I think a relatively new manufacturer from China, but has already some nice plastic kits and the (in shipmodelling) obligatory upgrade sets in 350th and 700th scale. Their Montana-class kits are to my knowledge the only ones in plastic form and I think they did them in conjuction with Blueridge models, which already had resin versions of the subject.

As you may notice, I didn´t actually use the Montana kit, but the one for USS Louisiana, which has the open bridge for some reason, but that works in my favor. Curiously the Louisiana kit comes with parts for the enclosed bridge anyway and with some little modifications to the forward Superstructure, which is slightly different to the Monatana kit, you could easily build the ship with the enclosed bridge.

The details for 700th scale are pretty great and you really have to look for tiniest amount of flash. There is also an extensive photoetch sheet with radars, railings, catapults and the rear crane. Additionally i got the "fast battleship" sheet form Tom´s modelworks which has parts for the early SK radar and boat cranes form the North-Carolinas, which I think look right for the Montana, compared to the builders model. And the last thing is the wooden deck sticker form Artwox, originally for the Montana kit, but it also fits the Louisiana version, except the base of the foward Superstructure, which requires a little bit of modification. The only thing that bugs me with this kit are the Bofors, they look to plain, but atleast the Oelikons are quite nice, you only have to glue photoetch shields on and they look the part, maybe a little thick, but I think it´s okay.

As you can see in the pictures I have already worked on the model for about a week and the superstructure is nearly done. Because it looked a little empty in places I used some baskets from the WEM Iowa/Missouri-photoetch sheet to liven thinks up a bit. The only thing the kit-photoetch is missing are ladders, I might have to think of something, but also don´t want to overdo it. In the past I got bogged down in details and the fun went with it sometimes, so this time I´m compromising: only add details where absolutely necessary. That the ships never actually got build gives me a lot of creative freedom there, which is nice😄.

 

Ok. but now some pictures of the actual build:

 

The lower Superstruture

This one was kind of my testbed for the build process, which I hoped to speed up a little: First putting everything (plastic, railings) together, the priming, painting and in the end putting the wooden deck on. The wooden deck was a little problematic because it crashes a with the railings in some places (my fault), but luckily I cut it out first, dryfitted and trimmed it. Only then I glued it on. (The deck blue color is another question for another time😅) (also one sticker is still missing)

 

The Forward superstructure

The FwSuperstructure went together without problems, the radars were another thing altogether. The SK radar and Main Director are form the Tom´s sheet, a little bit fiddly, but manageable. the secondary directors on the other hand nearly ended in catastrophe and I have no idea why. Now they are a little bit crooked, but I can live with that.

 

 

Ok, that´s it for the moment. I did build some more, but need to take pictures first.

I hope you had fun until now1 and stay safe

 

Cheers,

Alex

 

P.S.: Here is the link to the Montana- page on navsource

 

        http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/67.htm

 

     I´m not quite sure, if I am allowed to include their pictures in my posts.       

 

P.S.2: I know, that the picture quality is not the best, but for now my smartphone has to do, my camera broke 

 

Edited August 15, 2020 by Woozaa

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday Woozaa, she would have been a very powerful ship. I can't recall ever seeing a model of this class before. Your railings and radar look very good. Regards, Jeff.

[Woozaa]

 

 

20 hours ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday Woozaa, she would have been a very powerful ship. I can't recall ever seeing a model of this class before. Your railings and radar look very good. Regards, Jeff.

Thanks and yes, she would have been a beast. As I recall, there was never a kit in Plastic form, only resin.

 

 

Ok, here are more pictures:

 

The Rear Funnel

The rear funnel was for some reason not the same hight, as the foward one. I checked the reference and it seems, that there are really differences concerning the builders model. The earlier one had actually (as I can manage to see it) funnels of different hight, the late model had very clearly funnels of the same hight. To correct this, I used some styrene. 

 

First Turret

Those were straight forward, but I deleted the bofors and added some floats and baskets. The plastic barrels look quite good, only thing to do is drilling them a little bit out.

 

Ok, this how the supestructure looks right now:

The hull

The fit was pretty good, tamiya surface primer (the one from the gluebottle) should be enough to smooth the joint. At the bow there are some very faint sinkmarks and at the stern is some burring from the slipmold.

 

So, this is it for now. Next up is painting the forward superstructure and sanding and preparing the hull for primer.

 

Cheers,

Alex

 

[Woozaa]

Hello there

 

I totally forgot in the earlier posts to mention my intentions for the camouflage scheme😅. My Montana will be painted in Measure 21, again a little bit different then the usual Measure 22 and actually grounded in reality with USS New Jersey.  Battleships in that dark blue scheme looks quite menacing.

I managed to paint the Forward Superstructure, next would be the forward mast rigging. 

 

Currently I´m working on the hull, sanding and priming the seam.  I will take pictures, when the railings are on.

 

 

Cheers,

Alex

Edited August 19, 2020 by Woozaa