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Scratch building masts (WW2 era)


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Hi,

I could use some advice on building simple tripod masts (early WW2, RN) using available brass masts and yardarms.  I'm thinking that there has to be a reason that you can buy manufactured masts for some ships rather than try and build them yourself.  Can a newbie do this?

 

Does this involve soldering?  If so I'll need to research and practice that, and get a much smaller gun than my Weller.

 

Thanks,

 

Dave

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Thanks - I wasn't aware that I could get styrene in mast thickness.  I'll check around because that would be much easier.  Good thing I didn't throw the pieces away - now I can mike them since I need masts for a carrier and destroyer.  I case you are wondering, I didn't break all those pieces. I bought a Ark Royal/ Tribal on Ebay for $4 so that I could take it apart for practice / learning.  Maybe not such a good idea since I saw a new kit marked down to $14.  This thing was way over glued and the masts had been re glued and I've spent many hours fixing things.

 

Dave

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You can get Evergreen round stock down to 0.020 inches in diameter and Plastruct down to 0.010 inches, so you shouldn't have any problems. Even modern radar masts can be done with the 0.010 stock and look good on all but the smallest ships (I used stretched sprue for the radar mast on my USS Gemini).

 

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On 3/13/2019 at 4:17 AM, TAdave said:

Hi,

I could use some advice on building simple tripod masts (early WW2, RN) using available brass masts and yardarms.  I'm thinking that there has to be a reason that you can buy manufactured masts for some ships rather than try and build them yourself.  Can a newbie do this?

 

Does this involve soldering?  If so I'll need to research and practice that, and get a much smaller gun than my Weller.

 

I don't understand the question exactly, but when our modeling club bought a lot of Albion Microtubing together, especially the ship builders were very enthousiastic. So you might want to look into that:

 

http://www.albionhobbies.com/albion-alloys-precision-metals/

 

Don't overlook the 'Slide Fit Tube Selection Packs', they are the best start.


Rob

 

 

 

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Thanks again for the info.  I ordered some Evergreen tubing and am waiting to hear from Albion as to who is their distributor here. That Connecto system from Albion looks neat, especially for building masts, and I need to build 3.

 

Dave

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