¹⁄35

Modeling the Capsized U.S.S. Oklahoma!

Wasting No Plastic
First task on my adventure was to clean up the two hull halves. After thirty something years in constant production, the moldings for the kit have gone to the dogs. Flash, warbles and what not all had to be cleaned from the mating surfaces. The two hull halves were glued together and allowed to set overnight. The next morning (04:40 to exact) I sanded the seam down the middle and inserted the two stand parts from the inside to plug the holes for the stand parts then I was off to work. By that evening, the parts had cured rock solid and I sanded the plugs down with my favorite scraping tool, 50-grit sandpaper.

After everything was smoothed down, I held the model in my hand at an the angle I thought the Oklahoma would have rested at and drew a mark all around the hull on a level plane. I used this as a guide for the Dremel tool to slice the underwater portion of the hull off. The cut was leveled with a piece of sandpaper laid on the pinewood base and the hull parts sanded in a figure eight motion.



The base was prepared from a pinewood plaque. I painted the surface wet-on-wet with Polly S RLM 66, Ocean Gray and NATO Green. What no blue? Pearl Harbor is a shallow harbor without enough depth to get the really deep blue color seen on most photos. Not to mention that it has a rather muddy bottom that was still settling after the attack stirred things up. Gray was used for the shallower areas, RLM 66 Black Gray for the deeper areas in shadow and NATO Green for everything in between. My usual application of Modge Podge (actually it's puzzle glue) gave the water some dimension and the model placed at an angle on the wet glue.