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Trumpeter 1:200 Arizona

Heavens Eagle said:
Hippy Ed said:
Paul, I'm glad to see you have found the link useful & Tracy White of Researcher@Large has done extensive research. He has personally spent many hours digging thru boxes & books at the National Archives over the years and in conjunction with Dana Bell have given us modelers alot of good info on the ol' gal.
On Tracy's site, there's even a diagram of the rigging for Arizona. :drinks
Click to expand...

If you are referring to the drawing where they marked it up with all the Dec 7 damage, I grabbed it as well. While it does show a nice amount on the rigging, it only really gets things started. While I have a couple of books on the Az, it will still be "Best Educated Guess" on the rigging. That is a long ways off yet though. Have a lot of little things to build and paint before then Ed.

Time to play paper dolls on the bow part now. Much easier to tweak on the 'puter and cut once on the part.
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I think that's what I was referring to :unsure: I just remember something about searchlights in the title. Yeah, the damage drawing was very interesting & thru his research, it cleared up the 1 theory... it was suspected that a bomb went down her stack but, her screens inside the funnel are still intact.
 
Ya all got me on a posting 'puter day it looks like. I have the layout for the bow part all done to my satisfaction. Now to go and cut plastic. Here is the layout. If you want to use it on your Trumpy Az, just copy it and scale it up. Should be in scale though to post it is a little small.

Enjoy.

Arizona-022.jpg


All the little numbers and letters are best guess for where the cleats for the anchor chain stuff go. Eduard has replacement PE for these parts so I will be removing the little plastic tabs anyway. Have not measured the thickness of the molded plating on the deck but shouldn't be a problem. Probably .010 inch thick will work fine. To remove the extra I will be using my jewelers gravers (fully sharpened) and an Xacto chisel blade (also razor sharpened).

I have already tested this on the one little section at the very front and it worked quite easily. It just took a light touch to shave off the plastic in thin smooth curls. Fun Stuff.

Have fun all!
 
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I spent most of yesterday and today modifying this part. It is roughly 7-1/8 inches by 3-3/4 so by itself it isn't all that small. Much easier to handle than if it were mounted on the 3 foot hull. To my eye, I can see some irregularities where I removed the plating and scribed the planking, I doubt it will matter once paint hits it and some shading.

Of course I am looking at with the optivisor so obviously I will see stuff that will never be seen by the naked eye. :blink

Here is the before/after photo:

Arizona-023.jpg


Once I have the basic hull together with the 2 deck pieces and everything smoothed and blended, I am going to fill all the little places were the planks butt end to end. "Why?" you ask? Because in all the photos I have looked at it is quite obvious the where the planks are side by side, but almost impossible to see where the ends meet. That coupled with the totally incorrect way that Trumpy did the planking and it will be simpler to just add hundreds of dots of Mr. Surfacer over those little lines and sand them smooth. Paint and washes will take care of the rest.

Any Navy guys out there want to pipe in and comment? I am going by 75+ year old black and white photos. Even on ships like the Texas and Idaho where I have color photos, you can see the straight lines, but not where the ends meet.
 
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Think you're on the right track Paul, I doubt they would be so uniformed. I see one photo, looks very old but you can see the end of a planking but you don't see any others around it.

Paul have you checked out the movie "Here Comes the Navy"? Old Jame Cagney movie with a lot of scenes on deck of the Arizona as well as the Macon.
 
moon puppy said:
Think you're on the right track Paul, I doubt they would be so uniformed. I see one photo, looks very old but you can see the end of a planking but you don't see any others around it.

Paul have you checked out the movie "Here Comes the Navy"? Old Jame Cagney movie with a lot of scenes on deck of the Arizona as well as the Macon.
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I know about it Bob, (thanks for reminding me though) (y) Love the old James Cagney movies. One of my favorites is "Yankee Doodle Dandy" about George M. Cohan. The end scene where Cagney tap dances down the stairs after seeing the president is one of the best scenes in the movie. It was also something he did spontainiously off the cuff first take. The director loved it so much that they added the music for it much later.
 
Hey Paul,

Only now did I see that you had already posted so much in a thread... :smack :blush: :blush:

I am beyond impressed. Looking very much forward to your progress.

Which paints are you planning on using on your "monster" ship?? You will probably need it by the gallons...

Cheers!

Alex
 
Hey Alex, thanks for looking in. It seems like I have not done much but wave the 3ft planks around since I started. I finally started on step 1 working on the propellor shafts and such. Problem with this kit is it was designed as an RC model. As the ship had these cone shaped parts that stuck out around the shafts from the hull, the kit has big clunky boxy shaped things. For RC you would fill them with thick grease to keep the water out.

I removed the big clunky things and shaved them down close to the hull shape with my Dremel. Then sanded the little bit left nice and smooth which left nice oval shaped holes. Inside was a nicely rounded slot that 5/32 dia Evergreen tubing fit perfectly. It also ended up nicely aligned with the external supports. I have been taking photos as I go and it should be be mostly finished with this little section tonight.

You asked about paints. A lot of folks do painting in this order; primer, acrylic base colors, Future clear coat, oil washes, detail paint etc. I tend to be very old school. I tend to do enamel paints over plastic, with some priming first over resin and odd materials. Then I use acrylics and Pelikan brand india type inks over the enamels for washes, shading and weathering. I used to use PollyS acrylics years ago but they are no longer available and the Vallejo brand is much superior. So far I have not thought much about painting except in doing research for what colors it needs.

I have a lot more work to do to the base hull before even thinking about paint. When the time comes I will determine the exact color I want and go from there for the paint. A whole lot of reddish brown for the hull, some black, a lot of some light tan "colors" for the deck, some sea blue for the upper hull and turrets, possibly for some superstructure as well, though I believe some difficult to reach areas were still a dark grey. Then there was some insignia red on top of turrets 1, 2, and 4. Finally everything above the smokestack top is an off white super light grey.

Early 1941 the Arizona was still a very light grey color. By mid 1941 the color call out was for ships to be a dark grey which almost appeared black in some photos. By September that had changed again to a sea blue color. The Navy was working on camoflage coloring for it's ships.

Glad you like it so far, this is just barely started.
 
I spent a lot of the weekend working on the Arizona. Cut a large hole in the rear part of the hull, did a successfull experiment, did a bunch of scribing, carving and shape blending and built up one 5 inch 51 caliber deck gun.

The hull stuff photos are in process. The gun was to check the height and openings in the superstructure for alignment.

The experiment was to see if an idea would work for fixing the bulgie sided bow and a couple of other things. :D


So far so good. :captain
 
Hey Ed!
In my best Monty Python fake French accent,

:stinker

I will probly sit down and work on pics sometime this week. Could be just a few or could end up a bunch, you'll have to wait and see.
 
Heavens Eagle said:
Hey Ed!
In my best Monty Python fake French accent,

:stinker

I will probly sit down and work on pics sometime this week. Could be just a few or could end up a bunch, you'll have to wait and see.
Click to expand...

:rotf :rotf Man, I luv Monty!! I'm just keepin' ya on yer toes with this :drinks
 
I went in watched my shows and did some detail work on the hull sides tonight. Then it was computer time and I was able to whip out a bunch of pictures.

As usual my pictures are self explanitory so enjoy! :D

Arizona-024.jpg


Arizona-025.jpg


Arizona-026.jpg


Arizona-027.jpg


Arizona-028.jpg


Arizona-029.jpg


Arizona-030.jpg


Arizona-031.jpg

To be continued...
 
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