Ahoy crewmates! Time to rise and shine. It's Monday.

It's a pleasant 77°F here at the news desk but that won't last for long. Looks like triple digits again today in the deep south. Remember to drink lots of water today.

Let's take a look at what's new around MSW.

Pre-WWII Style Scratchbuilt Riverboat
Grzegorz Zięcina (pedro) from Poland has built a beautiful pre-WWII style riverboat and shares construction photos with us. Greg said that he built this model on commission. "I'm primarly armour modeller but you know, things happen. It is 100% scratchbuilt from plans and painted using photo as reference to match the actual building stage just before priming as the customer ordered." Greg says the model is 60 cm long (around 2 feet) at 1/30 scale. A ship worker said it was constructed from pre WWII plans with slight modifications to the wheelhouse. Greg goes on to say "I don't know more about the subject, but this boat is supposed to carry passengers (tourists?).."

She's a fine ship and Greg should be proud. Surf on over and take a look.
Scratch built riverboat

USS Monitor Center Online
Mark R. Smith (Gunny) shares a link to the USS Monitor Center. It's a very informative site, giving the public a look at life on board an American Civil War ironclad. "I just spent the better part of an hour or so at this interactive website, all about the ironclad, "USS Monitor", including an interactive section...very cool, and informative as well!" Gunny says. I must agree.

When you get some time, go back in history at the USS Monitor Center.

What's your favorite battleship era?
That's a question I ask in a new poll question. Are pre-dreadnaughts your favorite or do you love the power of a World War II battlewagon. Vote now and don't forget to tell us about your answer. We'd love to hear it!

Poll Question

The Great White Fleet Instalment 115
In this installment, Sean Ford (fordboy) post some awesome photographs of the US Great White Fleet in Auckland, N. Z. Sean is doing a fine job documenting the historic voyage.

Instalment 115

Photo Walkaround of the HMS Ocelot
Our very own Luciano Satornetti (Littorio) has become quite the shutterbug and brings his crewmates yet another great photo walkaround from the Historic Dockyard, Chatham. Sit back and take a tour of the "HM Submarine Ocelot".

Walkaround


Crewmate Sound Off
Now is the time in which you can share your news and views. Give us the poop on you latest builds and future projects. Share with us your weekend adventures. We all want to know what you did this weekend. So, sound off mates!

That's all for now from the news desk. Remember, if you can't get to your bench and build, at least you can talk about it.

So long, and if the phone doesn't ring, it's me.
Later...Gator

I didn't get nearly as much done as I'd hoped, but when do I ever. I received the bottle of Gator Glue and I've started to play around with it a bit. The two biggest things I like about it are are that the smell is almost non existent, and it allows you time to reposition a PE part better than CE. I showed it to some of the guys at our after hours modeling at the LHS. One guy who publishes a aerospace modeling magazine wants me to write a review of it. So I'm hoping I'll be able to get Kenny some more business.

I worked on the stacks of The Sullivan. I've found that the macro lens of my daughter's digital camera doesn't really let me get close enough to really show the small PE details. I guess I've have to be satisfied with longer shots. I also worked a bit on a DML Sherman I've been fiddling with for a long time. I want to finish it before Aug 22 and our next IPMS mtg. This months theme is DML kits.

No building time, just preparations for my week-long holiday (which officially begins this Wednesday at quitting time at the office! )...yardwork, wrapping loose ends, etc in the day light hours...evening time spent on MSW feature edits....pretty soon, it's Monday morning again...(sigh)

Still not much done this weekend. Had to work Saturday and came back with a sore arm. Kenny you should of seen it. I managed to hurt myself on a table saw without even having it plugged in.

I did manage to bend and glue another PE part on the DE and did some cutting and sanding on the PT Boat.
Luckily I have today off so I may get something done.

Hi Kenny/folks,

No watery things done this past week, some work on my Churchill AVRE (for Nan Red) and the re-birth of an old Tamiya 105mm from a past life into a Polish Sherman IB.





Cheers

Al

Stepped up the work on the North Carolina. Had to make some compromises.
1. As good as they look in those super closeup pictures, those quad 40mm mounts are a living hell to try to put together. I tried doing the ones that came with the Lionroar set which were made of 5 brass pieces and used the gun pieces from the kit.......sheeesh !!! I have since gone to usiing the kit pieces and gluing on the brass gun shield and rear railing piece. I could not imagine how intricate that WEM one is.
2. The next thing to go by the wayside was the 20mm stuff. three tiny brass pieces. So now it is the kit plastic gun with the brass shield glued on. I think the guys putting that stuff together have eyes like eagles and super small tools for cutting it out of the fret and holding it together while you try to use some glue to hold the pieces together. I spent about 4 hours just trying to get this stuff to work as well as cutting some of the tiny tiny pieces away from the fret.
3. Should have taken the advice from Halfyank about the liferafts. I bored out the centers to glue in the metal replacement pieces. The damage to the sides of the rafts outweighed the beauty of the metal screen replacement pieces, as they are glued directly onto the sides of things
4. I did skip sanding off these funny looking pieces that were molded into the conning tower and replacing them with the brass ones. I just didn't see a real sight enhancement. Kind of like sanding off the molded hinge pieces in 35th scale and replacing, not really a big difference and it can't even be seen by the naked eye, but folks do it because it was included in the kit and they want to get their moneys worth. Me, I figure it all gets made up with all the brass guns, anchor chain and beautifull propellers that came with the kit as well as the cranes, catapaults, multiple types of gun shields and railings.

Oh needless to say, not a whole lot was actually acomplished.....about half the conning tower was built, but it has the PE doors and railings on it.

I too have been busy doing the armor thing for the last couple of weeks. I'm finishing up an M54 5 Ton truck using a combination of parts from the Real Model resin cab, the AFV M35 2 1/2 ton truck kit and the Italeri M925 Shelter truck, plus a fair amount of scratch building. It's been one of the hardest builds I've ever done, because there's so much "guesswork" and trial and error (mostly the latter )in getting parts to fit together where they weren't actually designed to do so.

I probably won't be doing another ship until I start my Fletcher class for "Forgotten Sisters".

Tom

My Fridays are usually spent working on the computer and running errands (I work 4 ten hour days). I did manage to get the back yard cut down to size in the afternoon. Thank goodness for this 9 day drought we have going.

Saturday I got to do some work on my 1/48 Sherman Calliope for a club build. (Model Shipwrights and Armor builders?)

Sunday was going to be a build day too after I got the front yard cut, until Renee overloaded the hanging rack in the laundry room, again. Spent the rest of the afternoon putting up a new hanging rack and repairing a shelf above the dryer. Oh well.

That's my weekend in a nut shell.