Anyone here with a Verlinden 'Carrier flight deck with blast shield' ?

[Rob de Bie]

I just bought a 20+ year old Verlinden 'Carrier flight deck with blast shield', and I'm looking at its details. The one I have is made in the Belgian era of Verlinden (catalog number 300), and is made of a light-weight foam resin. It has the unfortunate consequence that it also has a ton of air bubbles, since apparantly no vacuum or pressure was employed during the casting process.

 

 

 

There's another version, from the US era of Verlinden, and that's cast in solid resin. The catalog number is 'SS VP-003' with SS representing 'Signature Series' 🙂 Is there anyone here with that kit? I would like to know whether the casting quality is better.

 

Rob

Edited February 3, 2021 by Rob de Bie

[roym]

I have it. It weighs a ton....

 

The bubbles are there too,cbut that's not the worst of it.

The deck itself is warped, to the extent that the catapult track dips and bends, not in a straight line in either the vertical or horizontal planes.

In addition, each one of the blast shield parts are all of different thicknesses. It's impossible to get them all aligned to each other (or the base).

I think you've got the better of the two.

(and yes I've tried the hot water trick on mine... usually makes it marginally better until it cools down and reverts to warped state).

Says enough that I have mine 20 years and still not finished it.

[Drifterdon]

Rob,

I built the same light weight foam one that you currently have for a customer probably 25 years ago.    If I recall mine was also warped (all four corners pulled up) and I had to try and flatten it by building a base and frame around it to try and help lock it down (pinned at each corner of the frame).   I also recall that it was resistant to any adhesive in it's raw state.   I had to prime and paint first and then glue the blast shields down after painting.   It was a real pig of a kit.   It looked OK from 6 feet away but up close you could see the pin holes/pits and warped parts.   I just made sure it was plenty busy with blast shield up and F-14 in nose down ready for launch attitude along with lots of deck personnel and fire tractor.  Not very realistic but that's how the customer wanted it.   I was never so happy to be done with a project.

 

Don

[Rob de Bie]

2 hours ago, roym said:

I have it. It weighs a ton....

 

The bubbles are there too,cbut that's not the worst of it.

The deck itself is warped, to the extent that the catapult track dips and bends, not in a straight line in either the vertical or horizontal planes.

In addition, each one of the blast shield parts are all of different thicknesses. It's impossible to get them all aligned to each other (or the base).

I think you've got the better of the two.

(and yes I've tried the hot water trick on mine... usually makes it marginally better until it cools down and reverts to warped state).

Says enough that I have mine 20 years and still not finished it.

 

Thanks a lot for sharing your experiences! I had not considered warping at all, since mine is relatively flat. I just measured it, and in the middle I measure 1 to 2 mm out of plane warping - i.e. almost nothing.

 

I'm a bit surprised that the resin version has bubble problems too. Maybe it was too big for their vacuum or pressure equipment?

 

From the (few) photos that I saw of the 'Made in the USA' version, I noted the blast shields were cast differently than my 'Made in Belgium' version. Mine looks like six identical pieces, but I haven't cut them from the pouring stubs yet.

 

Rob

[Rob de Bie]

2 hours ago, Drifterdon said:

Rob,

I built the same light weight foam one that you currently have for a customer probably 25 years ago.    If I recall mine was also warped (all four corners pulled up) and I had to try and flatten it by building a base and frame around it to try and help lock it down (pinned at each corner of the frame).   I also recall that it was resistant to any adhesive in it's raw state.   I had to prime and paint first and then glue the blast shields down after painting.   It was a real pig of a kit.   It looked OK from 6 feet away but up close you could see the pin holes/pits and warped parts.   I just made sure it was plenty busy with blast shield up and F-14 in nose down ready for launch attitude along with lots of deck personnel and fire tractor.  Not very realistic but that's how the customer wanted it.   I was never so happy to be done with a project.

 

Don

 

Thanks too for your memories of the kit! I can agree with the 'pig of a kit' part.. It looks so sweet on the box label, but inside.. oh dear. Great idea, bad execution. Do you remember specifically what you did with the tie-dows spokes that were (presumably) mostly absent?

 

I'm comparing the thing with the relatively new Italeri carrier deck, and there are lots of differences. My current understanding is that the Italeri kit has a C13 catapult, whereas the Verlinden it looks more like a C7, as used on older carriers. In that sense the Verlinden kit has something unique to offer. But I really need to do more research before this claim is proven true.

 

Rob

 

 

[SERNAK]

17 hours ago, Rob de Bie said:

I'm comparing the thing with the relatively new Italeri carrier deck, and there are lots of differences. My current understanding is that the Italeri kit has a C13 catapult, whereas the Verlinden it looks more like a C7, as used on older carriers. In that sense the Verlinden kit has something unique to offer. But I really need to do more research before this claim is proven true.

 

Rob

That's the only reason why I want to buy the Verlinden catapult.

 

By the way, I am not surprised that there is some wrapping on a such big piece of resin. even on smaller parts such as, an aircraft's resin wings you can notice some wrapping after a decade or more.

 

P.S.: Maybe somebody could point out if there are any significant and of course obvious differences between the two catapults???

[Drifterdon]

18 hours ago, Rob de Bie said:

 

Thanks too for your memories of the kit! I can agree with the 'pig of a kit' part.. It looks so sweet on the box label, but inside.. oh dear. Great idea, bad execution. Do you remember specifically what you did with the tie-dows spokes that were (presumably) mostly absent?

 

I'm comparing the thing with the relatively new Italeri carrier deck, and there are lots of differences. My current understanding is that the Italeri kit has a C13 catapult, whereas the Verlinden it looks more like a C7, as used on older carriers. In that sense the Verlinden kit has something unique to offer. But I really need to do more research before this claim is proven true.

 

Rob

 

 

Rob,

With regard to the tie down spokes, after I painted and weathered the deck, I went back in with some light grey paint with a fine brush and lightly painted them in.   Mostly a dry brush to highlight that they were there even though there wasn't much detail.    Again, it was one of those "don't look too closely" things.

 

Don

[Rob de Bie]

1 hour ago, SERNAK said:

That's the only reason why I want to buy the Verlinden catapult.

[snip]

P.S.: Maybe somebody could point out if there are any significant and of course obvious differences between the two catapults???

 

I plan to launch some catapult questions when my research is done. Right now I'm shooting from the hip, it's all very preliminary. One major obstacle is that the usual catapult footage is shot from eye level, and that just doesn't show catapult details. But I'm slowly finding footage from the island, and that helps. More later!

 

Rob

Edited February 9, 2021 by Rob de Bie

[Rob de Bie]

1 minute ago, Drifterdon said:

Rob,

With regard to the tie down spokes, after I painted and weathered the deck, I went back in with some light grey paint with a fine brush and lightly painted them in.   Mostly a dry brush to highlight that they were there even though there wasn't much detail.    Again, it was one of those "don't look too closely" things.

 

All clear, thanks!

 

Rob