Trumpeter CV3 Saratoga, 350th scale

[Skyking]

I've got the partial airwing posted over in the In-Progress thread, and a couple of guys asked for shots of the boat itself, so I thought I'd toss up a few here. This is my first ship project, and I jumped in with both feet. I probably should have started out with something smaller, with less repetition, and less airplanes. But no, I pick a 31 inch long monster with 25 biplanes and multiple assemblies of the same item up the wazoo. It's been educational, but I gotta admit, it's been fun too... except for today, which I'll cover in the pictures.

Here's a shot of the Main Island, with Pilot House, Bridge, gunnery range finders and masts. I've got the Gold Medal PE set for this, which gives all the railings, new side netting, detail parts for the AA guns, launches, winches, etc. It also has 350th scale brass figures of Captains Halsey, Towers and Reed, the three consecutive Captains of this era, for the pilot house. And no I did not put them in. :lol:

The Funnel portion so far. I have completed a bit more than this since this picture was taken. The recognition stripe is painted, and the flight control houses aft are in place. I'm trying to determine if the E award was awarded and displayed during this time. I know they won an E award for gunnery on Towers watch, but the Engineering E award came on Reed's which would have been 1938ish, so it may not be appropriate for the subject I am building. (darn)

Holy Deck Batman. How to stuff 31 inches of plastic deck into a 24 inch workspace. It's well molded and comes in three pieces. It fits fairly well, although I did use a sanding stick and files to work the fit a little better. I did not want to attempt to fill seams going across and damage the planking detail. Scale wise the planks appear to be a bit too wide, scaling out to almost 16 inches. If I'm not mistaken the real decking was 12 inch planks, but it's not that noticeable.

What IS noticeable though, and going to be a huge pain in the back side, is the decals for the elevator warning stripes are way too small for the elevators, both forward and aft. Any suggestions on an easy way to paint them? Trumpeter also has deck lines scribed in that do not match up to any photos I have of the deck, so I'm not sure where they got them from. The painting instructions show yellow lines running every which way, but all my pictures show two parallel wide lines (48 inch?) fore and aft, with a thin center line down the flight deck.

There's also some confusion if "SARA" that's painted on the aft end is yellow or white. I've read both. I am leaning toward yellow as it would be more visible from the air. The deck surface is painted White Ensign Models Mahogany Deck Stain, and I used Model Master Insignia Yellow for the striping.

With the yellow stripes, yellow winged airplanes, and gray superstructures, it will be a most attractive ship.

Cheers and thanks for looking.

Mike

[Huey Gunner]

Keep going. Look's to be an attractive build.

[Fishwelding]

Awesome build! And it really looks like it's coming together real well.

As for the small decals, there's several options. One is to try and print your own to scale. Or, cut up yellow decals from somewhere else to piece together on the deck. Or if you're really comfortable with masking, mask 'em and paint 'em. Not quick or fun, admittedly.

[Skyking]

Thanks for the comments guys. It's appreciated. FW I ended up painting the elevator stripes. It took me the better part of two hours to mask them, but they came out well. The deck is in the midst of being washed with dark brown oils to make the planking "pop". (Thanks for the advise Pete!) When it's done I'll shoot some pictures. Right now the wash is "cooking" and I'll wipe it off in an hour or so. I'm off work for three days this week so I have lots of plastic time.

I have most of the funnel finished. I installed the top and it looked toy like, because you could see into the interior and the inside walls of the funnel stack. To make it appear to be actual funnels, I added funnel stacks made from .040 plastic sheet, and painted them black on the inside. Now with the top on, it looks much better with individual funnel stacks. I've added the PE grills to the top of the stacks, most of the railings, shaved off all the molded doors and replaced with PE Doors from the Gold Medal set, and added the searchlights and rangefinders. I have to add the ship's whistle and a few other doo-dads yet, but it's coming along.

Bottom side of the funnel showing the funnel vents made from .040 sheet.

Here's a shot of the right side of the funnel. (Starboard, sorry guys) The Gold Medal railing is a dream to work with. Not having done railings before I was a bit apprehensive, but they are very malleable and easy to shape. The additional cost of the set is well worth it in my opinion. The pictures don;t show it well because of the contrast, but the stack looks very realistic now when viewed from above. No more giant gaping hole, but 4 individual vents coming to the top. I have to add the boat deck and hose reels yet. They are made up but not installed in this picture yet.

As always thanks for looking.

Cheers

Mike

[richter111]

Have you posted on modelwarships.com yet?

[Skyking]

Have you posted on modelwarships.com yet?

No I haven't, and to be honest I doubt if I will. I've perused the site and there are some really fantastic models and builders there. Being this is my first ship my pride won't let me be the onion in the flower patch . Maybe when I get a few more ships under my belt I'll feel thet my attempts are up to the standards there. Thanks for checking in.

Cheers

Mike

[Skyking]

Having a hulluvagood time now. The deck has been washed with a burnt sienna oil wash to make the individual planks jump out with contrast. I called Pete Fleischman - model washer extrordinare - for some tips and he got me going in the right direction. It wasn't as daunting as I expected, in fact, it was piece of cake. I just am leery to try new techniques, as I seem to have this penchant for mucking things up the first few times I try, and I didn't want this to become a crash test dummy for oil washes. The one dumb thing I did was to wash and flat coat the deck, the realize I left off the decals for "SARA" on the fantail. No biggie. I just re-glossed the fan tail, added the decals, let them dry and rewashed them, then flat-coated again. Can't even tell I dumbguy'ed. While waiting for decals to dry I opened up the limber holes for the anchors. The kit came with them molded closed, so I drilled them out, ground them to shape then inserted plastic tube inside them to simulate the guides for the anchor chains. Looks much better.

Here' a closeup of the deck after washing. It looks so much better than a one color deck.

I have the deck taped on here for test fitting prior to gluing the deck in place. It was then I noticed this...

The deck is almost 3/32nd too short, as compared to the length of the hull. It happened to Charles Landrum also, during his build/review of the Lexington on the IPMS website, as this kit shares the same basic molds. It's something to be aware of if you decide you would want to build this one for yourself. I decided to make it flush at the bow, and I did all my trimming at the stern, as the stern is thicker plastic. I also drilled two holes and epoxied two 1/4-20 nuts into the bottom. These will be used for the bolts that will mount the completed model to the base, a slab of 3/4 cherry that I chamfered the edges 45 degrees, and rabbeted the top lip for a glass dust cover.

As always thanks for looking.

Cheers

Mike

[geedubelyer]

Nice to see the progress on the ship Mike.

You seem to making terrific headway (Headway, that's a nautical term is n't it?)

The addition of the etch to ship models is a treat to see. All of that scrummy detail :P

Also, the deck looks much better with the oil wash. The individual planks are more apparent now.

Ya know, when you get used to that wash technique you'll even be able to use it on the tiny pieces too. You'll be thrilled to see all of the detail emerge on things like those search lights and gun emplacements. Let the wash dry and then dry brush the surface with the original colour to give ever more depth.

Great stuff so far Mike, I'll folow this closely now that I've found your build thread.

:)

[Fishwelding]

Skyking, the deck looks fantastic! This is really shaping up to be a stellar build. I really like the idea of a good quality base, too. I'm sometimes amazed when people build models that are works of art, and then attach it to the cheezy plastic stand included in the kit.

[Nev]

Thats some really nice work - the wee planes are particularly impressive. I know these big carriers are pricey, but you certainly seem to get your moneys worth.

[Skyking]

Hiya Guy,

Ya know, when you get used to that wash technique you'll even be able to use it on the tiny pieces too. You'll be thrilled to see all of the detail emerge on things like those search lights and gun emplacements. Let the wash dry and then dry brush the surface with the original colour to give ever more depth.

You know it is kind of addicting. Now that I see it's not as painful as I thought I'll do a bit to the Island and Stack. Not too much though, as the prewar Navy motto was "If it moves Salute it. If it doesn't, polish it". They were generally pretty clean above the flight deck, so I'll concentrate mainly on the lower hull.

Nev and FW thanks for the comments. It's a fun build so far and I can see more ships in my future.

Well it's out of the blocks and onto the Gangways. I masked off the flight deck and shot the red for the bottom and the Gray #5 for the Hull. Previously I had sprayed the black boot stripe, and masked it off with 3/32nd wide masking tape. Unfortunately pulling the tape off also pulled paint, so I'll have to re-shoot the black in spots.

I couldn't resist. It looked so nice after the removal of the masking that I had to set the stack and island in place to "see how she looks". I'm hooked. What an attractive ship she is.

It's a bit difficult to get the entire boat into the view, but here's a shot from above. I'm happy with the striping, although there is some (OK a lot) of uncertainty regarding the Palisades being Yellow. There's a post at Modelshipways that calls them out as being gray #5, same as hull color. They very well could be, but at this point I don't want to run a risk of pulling the PE Palisades off the deck remasking them, so they will stay yellow.

The stack and island look right at home. I noticed both of my 5" gun mounts have a bit of a droop to them so I'll have to pop them off and remount them so they are level.

One thing about the kit's hull is that it is totally devoid of any detail. It's molded smooth with no relief of the plating that is very evident in pictures. I masked off the plated areas and sprayed primer first, then removed the masking and had nice raised relief plating. It really added a lot of dimension and texture to an otherwise bland portion of the ship.

I've got a ton of Fiddley Bits to add to it now. All the Gangway ladders, barriers, arresting gear and wires, a host of stuff. Not too much longer and this ship will be ready to launch.

Cheers

Mike

[Skyking]

The last three nights have been spent adding various details to the hull. Most of the railings are on, I've added the arrestor sheaves and cables, and installed the AA Guns, lifeboats, and platform stairs. I removed the molded in boat platforms that were along the top of the deck and replaced them with .040 plastic cut to size. The kits had depressions in them for the plastic stairs, so I figured it would be easier to make new ones than to fill in the depressions.

Here's the port aft AA guns, with railings going around. The Gold Medal set also gives details for the AA guns to give them some visual interest.

Here's the arrestor sheaves and cables. I used my stretchy Lycra thread for the cables. It was a cinch to install these. I glued them in place before folding them over, then I placed the end of the cable between the halves, put a spot of CA onto the top half and folded it over, trapping the thread in between. I had all of them installed and finished in about minutes. Anyone contemplating doing this model but are afraid of using PE, I can't recommend the Gold Medal set high enough. Everything fits like it's meant to, and it's the easiest to form brass I've ever worked with. No annealing to soften it was required.

Here's a look at the lifeboats and launches along the port side. The railings and stairs were installed after the boats were put in place.

And here's the port bow AA guns. I have to add safety railing along the deck just above the gun placements, both front and rear.

Next will be to add the Island and Stack, finish the railings, rig it and add the safety nets along the side.

Cheers and thanks for looking.

Mike

[Skyking]

On the home stretch now. Just about all the fiddley bits are in place. I have to add a few davits for the 40 foot launches on the boat deck, a couple of yard arms on the stack, then rig the maze of stays and lines, and this turkey is done. It's been a fun build. I've never done a ship before, and it's really opened up a whole new world of modeling. I can see more ships on the horizon. The only maddening thing about them is that references seem to contradict each other, and with refitting and overhauls, it's very difficult to portray a ship as 100% accurate. The Saratoga was a much different appearing boat when she went down at Bikini Atoll, from the time her keel was laid. There was probably a dozen or so refits in her 20 year lifespan, and each one altered her appearance just a little more. I know mine has some accuracy issues. The pilothouse is too short for the time period I built her for. It's accurate for the early years, but for '36 it should have been almost doubled in length and the range finder was set atop the extended portion. Oh well. I know it's wrong... sue me..lol. This model will never be entered in a contest or see the light of day at any show. It wasn't my intent, rather it was an experiment to see if I enjoyed it, and I did, immensely. The kit itself has a few bugaboos to watch out for, but overall it's a decent kit. Gold Medal's PE set is easily the best PE I've ever worked with, period. Starfighter Decals were also well worth the investment. I have a ton of cash wrapped up in this thing... almost 300 dollars US by the time you factor in the PE set, decals, references, etc, but it's an impressive model. I'm having the glass cut for a dust cover to go over the base, and then this will have it's own display area in a prominent location in my man-cave. The next picture set will be the completed model, rigged, flat-coated and weathered, and with a deck full of yellow winged airplanes. She sure is a colorful lady.

Side view. You can see my reference drawings from Floating Drydock and a couple of other sources. I'll be rigging her from these.

One thing I didn't count on, was how difficult it is to photograph this thing. It's loooong and to get the whole boat in the shot I have to back away about 4 feet, then zoom in until it fills the range finder. I'm shooting using a Nikon Coolpix 8700, set to Aperture Priority, f-stopped to 8. and shooting about 1/4 of a second with no flash, and white balance set to fluorescent. They are decent for not being anywhere close to a good photographer.

Final parting shot. Kind of makes you imagine you are on downwind, getting ready to turn onto base for another arrested landing.

Cheers

Mike

[Huey Gunner]

Keep at it! Look's sweet.

[Hippy-Ed]

No I haven't, and to be honest I doubt if I will. I've perused the site and there are some really fantastic models and builders there. Being this is my first ship my pride won't let me be the onion in the flower patch :lol:. Maybe when I get a few more ships under my belt I'll feel thet my attempts are up to the standards there. Thanks for checking in.

Cheers

Mike

Excellent work there Mike I'd say you could give some of those guyz on the modelwarships site a run for their money. I;m buildin' my 1st ship over there right now. The 1/700 Doolittle Hornet CV-8.

[Skyking]

Thanks HG and Ed. I placed a link over there to here, so if anyone wants to check it out they can. Appreciate the comments.

The boat itself is done. I just have couple of spots to touch up and then I can add the aircraft, put the dust cover on it and store it away until my mancave is done. I added a few items that were not included in the kit such as the range light on the stack, and an aft stand-off for the dressing line going to the stern. I rigged it as best as I could tell from all the drawings I have. They all contradicted each other, so I took a little of this and a little of that and did what I could. Certainly not all of the rigging is there, but it's a good representation. I used .003 nylon for the rigging. It was a bit stiff to work with, so next time I'm going to see if I can find some fine silk thread, perhaps from a fishing supply store. I flat coated the entire model to tone down the sheen, and I have to admit, I'm hooked on ships. I have a couple of others in the stash that I want to do, but first I'll finish up the Devastator, and get going on my next scratchbuilt project. I'll put up a couple of shots when I have the aircraft installed. I have a few left to decal and assemble.

As always thanks for looking.

Cheers

Mike

[Hippy-Ed]

Alrighty Mike!! She looks great so far She'll definately look

better when ya get the air wing upon her naked deck Nice job on the rigging, it is

difficult to find what is right for any ship since they changed often. Look at the

big "E" CV-6. Look at all the refits she'd had, battle damage repairs, etc alot of work

was done at foreward bases, at sea by their own repair crews, etc.

[HOLMES]

STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL Mike....Love the AA guns...

The Ship is looking absolutely GORGEOUS and your detailed workmanship just gets better than ever before........

Love the coloring and the deck ...WOW !!!

Silk thread . that will definitley do the trick but you can also buy silk thread from shops that sell sewing things like needles and thread...

They will have silk thread in variety of colors too( if you need them in any other color than plain invisible )

Love your projects and it is always such a pleasure and delight to see and follow your work Skyking.

HOLMES.

Edited November 16, 2008 by HOLMES

[geedubelyer]

Hi Mike,

It's good to catch up on your progress with your carrier. You've made huge leaps forward since I stopped by last time. I can't believe you've nearly finished this now. Terrific work.

She looks mighty fine even now but will really come to life with the aircraft on deck. Any plans to add a few crew men?

I spoke to a bloke at Telford who had crewed his carrier with figures from L'Arsenal of France and also Prieser. These figures were three dimensional and added further animation to the build.

Please let us see how she looks in her case with the planes on deck soon.

Oh, before I go, the propellors look lovely. Are they real brass or did you paint them? (Sorry if I missed you mentioning it previously...)

[Skyking]

Ed, Holmes and Guy thanks so much for the comments. I appreciate it.

Good idea Holmes. I'll have to see what they have. I know the fly-tying guys have some really fine thread, but if I can find it local it'll save some time.

Guy the props are resin props that Jon sent me from Ironshipwrights. the kit props are 4 bladed and completely wrong. I wrote to Jon and asked if he had any 3 bladed screws that were close and a few days alter a package arrived with them. First class service.

Last night I dropped one of the Corsairs and watched it explode into 5 or 6 bits of plastic and PE. I've managed to find all but one of the wing struts. Tonight I will do the old vacuum with a hankie over the hose trick to see if I can find it, otherwise I'll be one aircraft short until I can get a replacement part. Dang these things are tiny, and with my fat fingers it was bound to happen. I think this confirms stepping up to 32nd scale will be the right decision.

Cheers

Mike

[Skyking]

It's Done! Yellow wings everywhere. I love it. They aren't permenently mounted yet as Im playing with different layouts until I get one I like. All that remains is to have the nameplate engraved and she's finished.

Thanks for looking. Now to move on to the Devastator and start cutting wood for the Boeing.

Cheers

Mike

[Hippy-Ed]

Excellent Job Mike!! :lol:

[indydog]

This is my first ship project, and I jumped in with both feet.

Mike

First ship? Yea, right.... comon, fess up. You've been building ships in private for years, right?

Seriously, that looks BEAUTIFUL! Excellent job on the build, love the rigging and the yellow-wings.

[Fishwelding]

Skyking, that's a stunning replica. The colors are particularly impressive. It looks like your debut in ship modeling is a complete success!

[HOLMES]

Mike,

STUNNING !!! AWESOME....BEAUTIFUL....

SHE looks absolutely FABULOUS and the planes decked out on

the flightdeck looks so REALISTIC and the Ship

is PERFECT....Where will the nameplate go...Still waiting with baited breath to see the Finale.....

HOLMES