Ahoy Mates,

As I am currently involved in building up a 1/700 scale USS Baltimore for the "Cruisers of the 20th Century" Build Along, I have been searching out references to help in detailing out the model a bit. While I do have a couple of Photoetched sets, one Gold Medal Models and one Toms' Model Works set, they do help out in the respect of adding common items like rails and ladderways, radar set ups, range finders and that sort of thing, ships have a whole lot of things in addition to that. You can find ship plansets from various locations about the net that will go a long ways in detailing up your vessel of choice, but then those do cost, sometimes a pretty penny.

When I get ready to build a ship, I usually surf about a bit and consult various sites that are dedicated to the general class of vessel, in this case a Cruiser just by putting the name and number of the ship in the search box and then check out what comes up. Sometimes it will refer you to the usual Naval sites that most of us are familiar with, sometimes it will take you to a specific ship site on the net put up by former crew members, sometimes it will direct you to a model that someone else has crafted, and then sometimes you draw a blank.

As in the case of most US Navy vessels there are numerous images out there that you can download into a picture file and build up a lot of information just on visual evidence alone. I also have a desktop picture changer that I got from the Microsoft site as a freebie, it first came out as a bonus toy in one of the funpacks and has proven to be rather popular so they have kept it around in one form or another. You select the file on your computer and it swaps between the various pictures and pops them up on your desk top in a rotation that you can set anywhere from 15 minutes up to hours, it also blows them up to considerably larger than what you get or downsizes them a tad to fit on there. This has proven rather handy in showing me a number of things on various builds in the past.

While most everyone is familiar with Adobes' Photoshop programs either in use or by name alone, manipulating images is one thing that you can accomplish by other and much less expensive means. I use Paint dot net, a freebie that can do a lot of things rather quickly, I use it to crop, resize and manipulate all the images that you see on my posts. But it can also be used to isolate particular sections of a ship in a photo that you may want to add some pizzaz to.

While working on the USS Baltimore the other night a set of images that I had gotten from one of the Cruiser sites caught my eye when it drifted across the desktop. There are six Quad 40 MM Bofors towers, three per side on the ship. Being that my model is only a 1/700 scale critter, these are basically little rectangular box shapes with a mounted set up on top in a tub. I was impressed that Trumpeter had actually included some treadplate in the bottoms of each tub, but the sides of the towers are just as plain as can be. Seeing what they actually looked like in the photo got the gears to spinning in the old Mark I computational device between my ears.

To start with, the photo section in question is this little bit here.



As you can see, there are ammo handling lifts on either side of the towers, the model does include them, but they are just shapes on the sides. Atop each one is a small section of rail, at the bottom is a little more detail and there are a pair of swinging frames, that in this instance are holding a boarding ladder section, on the face of the tower. There is also a section of conduit and a lamp that is on one side that I picked out from another photo as well as a port hole in the face that the ladder section is hiding in this shot.

To come up with the railing bits that are atop each of the 12 lifts will require a bit of work, but I will show you how to make this relatively painless in the next installment by way of a home made jig. The swinging frames are just going to be a little bit of stretched sprue added with a set of PE small boat rigging lines attatched. So just keep watching.

Mr. Massey, you have my (and the rest of our readers) full attention, mate....I really enjoy your posts, J, your style of writing is informative, and very easy to understand and relate to...looking forward to the next!

Hi Joseph

Details, details - they are just the worst and better things in ship modeling!
The worst, because if you don't do your homework properly, you will be shooting yourself on the foot
The better, because you will have a different and accurate model, and most of all, you had a lot of fun (and pain) making it!!
One thing I found difficult and also annoying was when I was making my Midship Models 1/700 USS Cassin (1943 fit) there were very few (I found five) photos of her after the rebuilt, and these proved good but they lack a lot on those small details.... The same thing is happening with USS Texas (1895) where there are a lot of "blank areas", but, in this case you have to rely on the manufacturer and on the couple of photos of the real thing!

Keep on - I am enjoying your posts more an more



Rui

Jay, I have to ditto the kudos to your writing style, very accesible and informative.
Also thanks for the heads up on the free graphics program, I have been using the (also free) GIMP 2, also powerful but huge learning curve
Cheers

Ahoy Mates,

Thanks for the kind words.

I have to agree Rui, sometimes you can get into trouble with some of these things. One problem I have noticed particularly with ships that have a long service life is that the changes made from one version to the next get photographed but not dated in the pictures. You just have to try and see that you isolate your references to one specific time periods' group of photos. And that can be easier said than done at times.

James, I have to agree about GIMP, it is rather feature rich and as you have noticed that does lead to a rather steep learning curve if you are interested in really getting into it. There are places that you can find out more information, forum groups like the Kim Komando site and even a couple of GIMP users groups are a good place to check out and ask questions.

Well, on to the subject at hand. Just for interest, the second photo that I have to help in detailing out my quad mount towers is the after tower and shows a bit more of the side of the tower structure. It also shows a couple of loafing sailors hiding between the side of the tower and the railing.



The towers that are given on the model to work with are nicely done if a little bare, but this is to be expected in the divine scale (1/700). They do include the ammunition hoist shapes on either side so that is a plus.



Comparing the size of the ammunition hoists to my selection of styrene shapes and sheet in stock shows that they are actually just a tad larger than .030" X .060". When it comes to forming rails and other bits of brass, a trick I picked up from Toms' Model Works Photoetched parts instruction sheets is to make a jig to assist in forming the shapes required for various parts. It does not have to be fancy or made from the finest materials. Styrene from Evergreen or Plastruct makes these handy tools easy to construct and replace if required. I have one that is used to bend up the 20 MM Oerlikon sheilds that I made up when I first started using brass that is almost four years old and has seen lots of use.

For this project, I got a chunk of .030" sheet styrene that was a cut off from making another part for another project and cut out a section to use. A strip of .030" X .060" styrene was cut into strips and laid out on the larger base. By just lining up the strips side by side and removing one from between two of them and gluing them down each in turn I was able to come up with a jig to bend the shapes of the railings required. Another plus is that I can use a chunk of the same material to form them by pressing it down into the valleys once the railing is laid over the tops of the strips.



In the next installment I will show how this is accomplished and what pitfalls you must look out for in this sort of thing. And there are little adjustments that you can do to make this easier.

While I was checking out parts of the ship and working over them to see what parts I could detail up a bit, I found that the front face of the after stacks' related structure actually has a boarding ladder section that is molded in place so I can use it to come up with the size of the ones that I can make to add to my swinging frames on the face of the towers once I get them built up. Nothing like having the model manufacturer provide you with things like that, even unintentionally.

Research in any project is the most important part of building, in my mind. There are so many blank spots out there on every ship that some details can be lost. You see so many pictures of a ship underway or sitting in port, but most of those are an overall image.

There are so many tiny details that can go into a ship build. Even with all the AM details that are around it is still next to impossible to build a ship 100% true to its original fit. Then when you look at an USN ship from WWII, they seemed to change by the month.
I know when I get around to working on my Russian pre-dreads I am in for a fun time looking for references.

Your digging on the Baltimore is top notch and your research looks to be paying off.

I guess I am a bit lazy. I love my 350 scale ships. I get the PE sets for them and 99 % of the time go with that using a bt of stretched sprue to do a small bit of rigging. I will say that once in a while, I will notice something I've seen in a picture that I just "gotta have" on my ship. Thank God for evergreen strips and rods. I do like what I am reading here. I might start doing a bit more on some of my future kits. I have a walk around of the Alabama so that might be a good starting place.

Careful there Steve!!! Sounds like you're headed over to the "dark side" :.

I really got hooked when I did the Missouri, and it's really one of the decisions one has to make in building a ship, ESPECIALLY as Jim mentioned, a US ship during WW II. Just how much detail do you want to add, and not only do you have enough photos to show what you want to add, but are all the time periods correct?

I've discovered that it seems like each one of the 175 Fletcher class destroyers was different in some way from every other one, and they all looked very different at the end of the war compared to how they were initially built. You can see the class evolve as the lessons of war were folded back in to the build and update process.

Since I really don't have photos or plans for the specific ship I'm making, I've decided to incorporate as many "late war" features that seem typical from the majority of the photos available. It really significantly increases the build time having to figure out not only what to make, but how to make it, but that's what makes building something that has it's own name a lot of fun!

Thanks Mates,

I am working on the next installment and since I have a couple of days off from the salt mines, I will get it up shortly. But I have to agree with Jim and Tom, WWII ships got worked on, a lot! Most subs got gear and new equipment added almost every time they came into home port, whether it was official Navy issue or not. The PT Boats were constantly upgraded as to the number of weapons and quite often were sourced from some pretty interesting places, the 37MM Oldsmobile Air Craft cannons were taken from Aircobras that had been turned out to pasture at airfields here and there as newer and better planes replaced them. JFKs' PT 109 sported a 37MM Army Anti Tank cannon on its' foredeck. Sailors are a resourceful lot and when it came to up gunning their ships and boats all holds were off.

The larger ships were worked on during refits and repairs and new equipment was always high on the list of things that were very desirable.

As I pointed out previously, with all the pictures that are around from ships of all types, it can be quite the task to narrow down the ones that you can use to model a specific ship at a specific time in its' life. Fortunately, the smaller the scale, the fewer options one has to deal with, yes I know there are some modelers out there that put them out with watchlike workings, but for the most part, the aim of this particular piece is to deal with a few modifications that most everyone can do to even the divine scale (1/700) ships that are available. For the larger scale ships, it can get even more impressive as layers of details are easier to add just by dint of the amount of room to work in. I am discovering this on my build of the ORP Wicher, a 1/400 scale kit that even though I have the companies own PE set for, I am waiting on a set of doors and hatches from Toms' Model Works to add just a bit more to.

Ahoy Mates,

Now that I have a jig constructed to make up the little railing sections atop the ammunition lifts on the Quad Towers, it is time to put it to work. I have a choice as to either stainless steel or brass railings from the two sets I have for this project, the stainless steel ones being from the Gold Medal Models one or the Toms' Model Works brass set. I chose a section of the brass as it is a bit easier to bend in the tight confines of the jig. As the railings are of three and four bar types, I chose a section of four bar railing to do the deed.



Obviously it needs to be trimmed down to a two bar with a bottom runner to glue the bit to the top of the lift parts and this was accomplished with the aid of a trusty #11 Xacto blade. I did it by Braille, that is to say use the tip of the blade to feel for each stanchion then bring it down to cut it as close to the rail as possible. If you do it right, it saves having to do a lot of file work cleaning things up. Also don't toss the freed bit of single rail as it will come in handy later on.



To hold the railing in place while I set bits of the same styrene strip into the openings in the jig I just clamped one end in place with a "Bulldog" type clamp trying to position the stanchions in the run over the high spots. This will change as you add the strips but that is okay.



The now formed bit of railing now looks like this.



Now for a bit of a trick. The railing sections between the stanchions are a little long to make the two required uprights on the parts atop the ammunition lifts. As you cut out the squared off "C" shaped sections try to get parts of it that are containing at least one stanchion. Flipping it over this way and that you can get enough to start off getting 12 good units. Save the trimmings as you will need them later once the parts are glued to the tops of the lifts themselves. A second pressing is needed to get the required 12 sets for this particular project.



To build my ladder for the swinging arms on the face of a couple of the towers it would have been necessary to do a bit of careful measuring and eyeballing, but Trumpeter has made this easier by including a section of that boarding ladder mounted atop the after stacks' deck house. With a little slicing and dicing of some more styrene strip, I shall have a dimensionally correct sized part quite easily.



I have done some more work on the two stacks as I intend to do some more detailing to them as well as other parts that I have managed to get together up to this point. The stacks themselves have a molded on steam vent pipe that is unfortunately placed on either half, so once the halves are glued together it makes a rather wide and somewhat flattened looking pipe. Looking at the pictures of the ship, it is apparent that the pipe actually stood off from the stack a little bit and was held in place with support straps to the stack. Also on the front of the stack is a ladder. They molded the ladder section on the very top part of the stack, a separate piece, but left it off of the main body of the part. It probably would not have survived the cleaning up of sanding the joint down anyway, so it is not a great loss.

Remember that bit of railing that was trimmed off the section that I am using for the ammunition lifts? It will get used to form the railings that went around the tops of the stacks themselves, each one had two of them but these were not molded on so they have to come from someplace. There are several other parts that need attention, the main and secondary turrets, as well as the various deck levels of the main bridge and so on. You can see the rear face of the after stack deck house where I have added a strip of styrene to finish the walkway that went completely around that part. All of these areas had railings that are far easier to add before the parts are glued together as well as other little details that you can add.

Ahoy Mates,

I have been tinkering away at things on the Cruiser Project and have a few more things accomplished. The little brass railings atop the Magazine Lifts went into place easily enough after a little bending. Then there were other bits and bobs that went here and there. There is a lot of railing to go on this thing despite the fact that they have put so much splinter shielding molded in place on the various levels of the ship. I have also added two sets of rail cutoffs from the Quad Tower bits to the top of each of the stacks as well as a couple of steam vent pipes to the back of each and a ladder up the front. All of these things were picked up from studying the pictures that I have dug up on the net as well as from Squadrons second volume on Heavy Cruisers in Action. Although I will admit that more comes from the pictures off the net since they are so much easier to manipulate and blow up for better viewing.



I have also added a number of doors and hatches and have most of the major structures built up. But there are a number of details that I can still add from the PE sets I am using and a little styrene strip and rod. The decks are looking quite busy with what there is, of course none of this is glued down yet as I still do have a number of things to do and add.



It seems as though the further back on the ship you go, the sparser and more limited the details become as molded. The after deckhouse required a lot of sanding once glued together to clean up the seams on the ends and I found these ladderways and platforms molded on that I didn't really think fit the rest of the level of detail. I will be removing the stairway detail and adding to the platforms with some strip styrene then use some PE ladderways and railing to dress them up to fit the rest of the ship.



Having so many options of things to add from the PE sets makes a ship model this size a lot busier. While they always looked sort of sparse when I used to do them straight out of the box, all those details put them into a more interesting build for me. I have cable reels, doors, hatches, all the smaller 20 MM single mounts to add as well as a few other things that I am picking out from looking at the pictures I have not to mention all the railings that go all over the place. Be back with some more next time.

Ahoy Mates,

Sometimes when you are researching a bit of detail and check out the photos then check out the model as you build, it becomes apparent that somewhere along the line the model manufacturer missed a few things. I used to notice this more with the older less expensive kits but even now days there have been a few things that still slip past the old engineer or proof reader.

When I was working over the pilot house for the Baltimore something kept popping up in front of me and it took a while before I finally snapped to on what was amiss. Here is a cropped shot of the section that was bothering me.



Now here is a shot of the same section of the model isolated so the differences were easier for me to spot.



On the upper level where the radar and range finder units are, they sort of short sheeted the splinter shielding and the searchlight mounts dropped down a level. Going down to where the searchlight mounts are, that particular deck should actually join the level where the forward stacks' mounting level is. Sort of made a little section where you can see the base of the mast below and coming up through the deck above. I can understand making these two parts separate, easier from the manufacturing standpoint of molding. Sticking the searchlight mounts out on extensions and dropping them a level is sort of lame but none of this is that hard to correct. And no, I am not counting rivets so much as I am trying to make a model that more accurately represents the actual ship. This is just one of those things where ease of making the model kit sort of surpassed a more accurate representation of the same.

Since I have a a few days off from the salt mines coming up, this will be my focus of effort to try and fix this little gaff and work on the ORP Wicher some as well. Stay tuned as they say.

Looking very good Jay!

Kenny

that's really very good stuff you have been doing here Jay -great methododlogy! I stay posted

Thanks Guys,

I do love to tinker with these things and they surely do give you lots to work with on this one. Studying the photos I have available shows me more work to do on the various sections of the ship and since my favorite part is the building of the model more than anything else, it is a win win in every sense of the word. Even the box art seems to agree more with the pictures than what is in the box.

Ahoy Mates,

Digging through the picture files is handy when you are working over a detail rich ship model like the Baltimore. There are photos of the ship from 1943 up into the 1952 period when she was refitted for service in the Korean War. And therein lies the rub. With so many photos and such a long life you have to find reliable photos that are dated to the specific time period that you want to model.

I did find some photos of the ship that were large enough to get a good view of the pilot house area that I am working on and these were dated to 1943, the period I am modeling the ship after. One was even in color, or perhaps colorized, not sure, but it does offer a decent view.



You can see that the searchlight tubs are on the proper level, but placed on the ends of a flat runner as they are, they still need some work. You can also see that the upper levels are slightly different from what is in the kit box. The box art does reflect all of these differences so that is what I am going to work at. There are also some supports that go under the tubs that I can add from some PE fret material. The more I study on these pictures give me more things that I can do with the ship, so it is all good.

Now I will have to get another one of her in her 1944 fit so I can do the fancy camo paint job and enlist some of the other changes that I have noted in that build.

Ahoy Mates,

With all the fun and excitment of getting a new computer, the old one bit it after downloading XP Service Pack 3 and following Microshafts' fix it directions for their band aid, I have had a little time to work on some of the small stuff on the Baltimore. Most of the work centered on the three deck structures, so here is where I am now.



I added more railings and bits and pieces to build up things that were a bit soft such as the Intake trunks on the rear of the third level of the main Pilot House, that is what the white styrene sheet is back there. The original bit as cast was sort of rounded and needed a little defining. The two searchlight platforms got cut off then reattatched without the bit of runner that set them out so far, I also added the smaller circular base section that was missing according to photos and the box art. A strip of styrene stick the proper size got inserted between the stacks' mounting platform and the rear of that same level to enclose the area where the mast mounts so you can see a bit of it on the level below as in the pictures. The kit has a section molded on the front of the upper level that stands out from the splinter shield but they left off the side bits, these were added with some styrene stick and the shielding was carried on back a bit further. And then, even more rail sections and ladderways were added to the appropriate areas with some Gator Grip instead of CA.

The second stacks' deckhouse was finished off with some more railings and ladders and then I carried out the modifications to the after deckhouse. I removed the molded on stair cases leaving the stub platforms then added a bit of styrene sheet to widen them out to the width of the vertical ladderways. A set of hatches were added to the upper deck where they come through so it wouldn't look like the Winchester House.

Overall it is getting to look a lot busier on there. I still have lots of gun mounts, searchlights, railings and other things to add to it, but it is coming right along.




All of this fiddling and fooling about is just from studying the photos and box art in my efforts to make a little better model. Most of these modifications would not be noticed under a coat of paint, but when it is compared to another one built as it comes out of the box, the differences would be more apparent.

Ahoy Mates,

The next thing on my agenda was to use the PE parts from Gold Medal Models US Destroyer/Cruisers' set to replace the gun director and radar parts that are provided in the kit. These aren't bad but the improvement made with the PE parts suits me better.



After removing the various parts needed to construct the Mark 37 Gun Director Radar sets from the kit frets, I had to remove the mountings for the radar part. This was fairly easy with a pair of nail clippers and bit of sanding with a sanding stick. While I was at it I also got the bases for the Mark 38 Gun Directors out, did the same thing to them and then glued both base sets to their positions on the fore and aft deck houses. The hardest part of all this was keeping from knocking off the tiny arms that stick out from the sides of each piece.

Gold Medal Models instructions are quite clear as to how to form and make the sets up. Using the jig that I made from Toms' Model Works instructions for the gun director radar array from the Fletcher Class that I made a while back, bending the main array parts is easy enough. Center the flat pieces on the two rounded bits so that the divider bars on each lay across the middle of the rounded parts, use the back of a #11 blade to form the center bend then push the ends down over the edges and you have a perfect bent up pair of arrays, it takes longer to tell it than it does to do it. The smaller Mark 22 array that sits to the side of the Mark 12 unit is just as easy using a chunk of styrene rod, laying the flat piece on the rod and squeezing your finger down, the part bends right on over and you have to two curved bits done.

Forming the base and support parts is just as easy with my Hold and Fold tool. One can never have too many tools. Time for a break and I will back with more later.

Hey Jay, do you know Ballymore (hon!) had Mk 49 directors in 1943? You can see the starboard side mount in that 1943 superstructure picture you posted near center. Small detail, perhaps, but one most modelers haven't known before now.

Thanks Tracy,

I was wondering about that, the kit shows a pair of searchlights installed in those two tubs on either side, so much for Trumpeters' research department, but the pictures show the Mark 49's as you have pointed out. I didn't know what they were at the time and now that I do, it is one more thing that I get to change in my efforts to make a more accurate model. Of course, in the divine scale, they won't be much more than a pair of rounded angled nubs in there, and it would appear that they don't have the small radar dish on the side from that picture. Of course, that could be the censors at work trying to disguise a part of, at the time, top secret equipment. In your link, I noticed that not all Mk 49's had the radar units, some had gyro units instead, so that could be why they don't show up. Thanks for the heads up on that little bit of naval technology.

That is one of the reasons why I like this forum so much, as the old song says,"With a little help from my friends....."

The vast majority of the Mk 49s did not have radar; they were a competing design with the Mk 51 as far as I've been able to determine but suffered from higher maintenance needs than the Mk 51 and thus the optical-only units were ordered removed in 1943.. the radar equipped units lasted longer, some until 1945 when the replacement radar units such as the Mk 57 and Mk 63 came out. I have a page on the Mk 63 started but both it and any Mk 57 page are waiting on more information and pictures before I can post anything. Rick and I continue to work on the Mk 49s for now as we get the chance to make trips to archives.

great work jay!

Thanks James,

I have a couple of days off coming up and hopefully I will get to spend some time on this as well as the Wicher. I am sort of waiting to get the book from Pacific Front Hobbies on the Wicher, hopefully this week.

Thanks again Tracy for the information on the Mk 49 sets, a nice addition to what I am hoping is a more accurate build.

Ahoy Mates,

I have been working in the salt mines of late and while not having a lot of time to post much, I have been working on the Baltimore when I can. I have most of the details added that I wanted to. Just a few things here and there to make it look a little more like the ship and less bare than the average 1/700 scale OOB build.



I have added a few lines of rigging as well as the smaller details to the quad towers that I picked out from the photos I found of the ship online. The upper decks got a few items from sheet styrene that I noticed were lacking in the box.



The radar arrays and changes made to the after section just followed along with what was done to the forward end. Once a coat of paint or two goes on there, the varied look of PE brass and steel as well as white and gray styrene get covered up and will be unnoticable unless you put it next to one built straight out of the box.



It does help to "Busy" the overall look of the smaller scale models by adding details like this as small as they are and keeps them from looking quite so plain. I am planning on adding this to a "Sea Base" so I won't be missing the lower hull section and it's related details that Trumpeter has included in the kit box.



I did finally get a chance to use some of Gator's Grip Acrylic Hobby Glue when I attatched the rails to the main deck and I must say that if you haven't tried it yet you are missing a pretty nifty product. Using the Hypodermic Syringe with the flattened tip provided to apply a bead of the glue the length of a section of GMMs' railing and then setting it down in place after trimming off all the attatchment bits from the fret made for a quick and easy job of something that has been a rather tedious operation in the past. I can see that I will have to get some more of this stuff for future use.

Paint works will be coming up next in the form of two colors of Model Master Acryl Paint. The colors are as close as I care to get for accuracy and still quite easy to apply with an Airbrush, not to mention the clean up under the tap is a breeze. I also like the fact that the house doesn't take on the air of a body and fender shop with the thinners involved in using Enamels.