This is my first build and I'm dedicated to finishing it the best I can. It is a big learning experience and I'm enjoying it immensely!
Tamiya 1/350 USS New Jersey 1980's
Pontos detail kit including PE, wood deck, decals, veteran resin.

Please feel free to point out how to improve technique. My painting skills are pretty bad. I am putting off getting an air brush until I can find more workspace. I consolidated the pontos instructions with the kit instructions and am more or less following the build order of the kit instructions. This seems wrong to me. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Also could someone tell me how to post pictures from my album in this thread?

Thanks,

This was the first thing I did. I filed and sanded the barrels to try to get the mold lines off them. The gun metal ring is too wide and sloppy but I'll get better with practice. I have since replaced these with brass from the pontos kit.

This is the 3rd and final time I painted the hull. The first two times I over coated it and it ran. I used Tamiya TS32 haze gray, TS6 flat black and TS33 dull red all in spray cans.


Painting acrylics by brush is hard at least for me. This is a 3rd coat after I thinned it with a bit of water. I also found that cutting the wood deck with all of the holes and cut outs was difficult.


Boy I suck at painting. I should have probably painted the deck before putting all the other pieces on there and before I attached it to the hull. I won't make the same mistake with forward deck and superstructure. I enjoyed putting the PE bitts on her. There are 3 parts, the base and the 2 posts. I super glued the base then used a .026" drill for the two holes then super glued the 2 tiny brass posts. Then of course my usual bad paint job. I can see where I've got copper on the outside of the rangefinder. Don't know how that happened

im not sure about your kit, but any and all holes should have been precut and easily seperate from the actual deck that you would apply when peeling it off the plastic sheet

That's what I thought too. I think maybe the die didn't cut throught the plastic backing. Piss poor perforation as it were.

Okay after reading Ashey's online tome again I have decided to strip the wood, remove the bitts (this is pretty easy, I already removed a few with pliers), remove the chocks (these will be harder as they are model glued) strip the paint off the decks (not the hull), get all of the main deck prepped and glued to the hull so that I can get all of the seams with putty and sanding. Of course this means I have to replace the pontos wood deck, too late for paint on the wood detailed plastic parts, I'd have to rescribe damn near the whole thing.

What's the best way to remove those chocks, razor saw? jewelers saw?

I am going to an expo/contest thingy tomorrow and I hope to see demos of some airbrushes. Imo get me one before I lay down the first coat of primer. My wife isn't nearly as excited as I am. Don't care. I have end stage renal disease and I'm by god gonna enjoy myself

one thing that i know is that the die shouldnt cut through the plastic backing. it was made so that when you pull up the deck pieces that you are going to use, the die cuts will stay attached to the plastic.
im curious, just based on what you have said so far, as to whether or not you are actually using the self adhesive backing that should already be there for the wood deck. mine is also a pontos deck, so your should have the same backing.

If it isn't a manufacturing defect then I am certainly doing something wrong. When I removed the deck page from its sleeve I noticed it had perforations so I initially tried to just break the piece I wanted (the first case was the surround for the aft 16" gun). It came loose in a few places but the majority of it seemed not to. I decided to use an exacto knife and cut the piece out. That was difficult but I managed it. Then I noticed that there were holes that needed to be made and I likewise cut them out. Very hard but doable. Then I peeled the backing off of the resulting piece and applied it to the deck. Sucker sticks really good, bubbles and rolls easily smoothed. When I did the forward deck I forgot to cut out a fiew holes (couple of main hatches) and when I put the deck on the hole pieces popped right off. Maybe that was my problem, I should have peeled and applied and just let the extraneous bits come off?

Mk 37 gun director. Damn that's hard for an old man with shaky hands! I hope the next 3 go easier. Thank goodness for Gator Glue!

Missile deck painted and attached with director. 5 in guns (veteran) painted and glued. Nearly every bit of wood deck is now on the ship. I have the first mk38 built which goes on the pylon on the missile deck ready but haven't attached it yet (it looks terrible! but I'm gonna keep powering through it)

Stop knocking yourself John, you are doing fine.The build looks good so lighten up and enjoy yourself
That is what it is really all about, if you aren't having fun you probably have the wrong kit
Cheers mate, keep the photos coming,
Julian

Thanks Julian. I am having a wonderful time. I can hardly wait to get home in the evening and work on her. The only reason I'm embarrassed is because I can see from the work on this forum that I have a LONG WAY to go with my skill set but then again this is my first effort and I am very happy with what I'm doing. I ordered the Trumpeter Arleigh Burke 1/350 to do next (in a few months probably). Everyone here is very helpful and supportive and I'm grateful to have found you. Thanks!!!

You are doing a very nice job on her. Don't knock yourself about it.....Cheers mark

Hello John.
Just found this thread and thought I would add a little advice about wooden decks as I have quite a few under my belt now.
1. Remove all the pieces from the wooden deck sheet for things like vents, hatches etc before you start to remove the deck from the backing to apply it to the model. This makes things much easier as most of those fiddly little wooden bits stay with the main sheet when you try and lift it from the plastic sheet backing.
2. Always apply the deck to painted plastic, never bare plastic as it sticks better.
3. If the deck starts to lift in any places run some thin CA glue under an edge near the spot and push it down again.
4. Take your time and make sure you rub the deck down into place in all spots using tweezers etc.
5. I find it much easier to attach the plastic deck to the hull before you paint the hull etc as you get a much more study hull and you won/t have any problems with getting glue on your nice painted pieces which could ruin the finish.
6. Continue to enjoy your modelling time. If something gets you uptight leave it and come back to it later.

Cheers
Warren

Many thanks for the tips Warren. Some of them I have intuited from screwing up, others like waiting to paint the hull I had not considered but I certainly can see where I have compromised the finish and so now I know and my next one will be better. I guess this is an incremental process but with helpful tips from all youse guys I am getting much better much faster than I would have left to my own devices.

Cheers shipmates!

John

Here's something that I recently had to think about. I wanted to get the main deck attached to the hull for fitment. The 3 16" guns are supposed to rotate (I really could care less if they do). So now if I wanted to make the guns rotatable I would need to attach them before I attached the deck because afterwards I can't get to the underside of the deck. I didn't want to do that because I just know those barrels are going to get in the way and/or get snapped off or fall to some calamity. So I made the choice to wait and then hard glue them into place. Have you guys dealt with that question before? What do you do in this kind of situation?

Thanks,

John

So you want the turrets to sit in place without gluing them? Use Blu-tack or similar to hold them there.

Don't be so hard on yourself John. Big J's coming along very nicely. & remember, having fun is what it's all about.

As for those turrets, well, I'd go with Warren's idea & use a bit of blu tack.

Here's what I did over the weekend. Out of curiosity how do you guys deal with a circular railing on a platform. I struggled with this mightily. I tried to shape the railing as close as possible and then put gator grip on the edge or sometimes on the horizontal edge. At any rate how do you guys do it?

Hey John,

Your method sounds about like what I do - it is just a difficult modeling task! I usually shape the p/e rail around a rod or dowel with about the same curvature as the part the rail will be attached to, correcting progressively until the shape is as close to perfect as I can get it. I try to get the part to fit onto the plastic surface without the need to make adjustments to it once in place. The reason for this is that if the metal is glued down under any tension at all it will have a tendency to pop loose as the glue bond weakens over time. I know that isn't supposed to happen, but experience has shown me otherwise...


Anyway, your approach seems to be working and your New Jersey is coming along nicely!

i personally, do post by post. i will get teh first couple posts glued in place and slowly wrap around gluing each post individually after that. Hardest part with this is getting the first coupld started.
Depending on what the railings are for, i may also use the kit part that it is being glued to,as a tool, to set the curvature needed when i am ready for gluing.

That's an interesting idea Jesse. I think I'll give that a try. It would seem like it would take a lot longer but be less risky, like you said after the first couple of posts. Thanks!

I too use the Dowel method but use a size slightly smaller than the curve as P/E has some springyness in it. In the end it is what works best for you and are happy with the results.....Cheers mark

Hey john:

Looks like you are doing fine with your first ship build. It is an adventure. You picked a good one to start with. Tamiya kind of falls together. Good that you are cahllenging ourself with the PE. You seem to have pretty good intuition on how to use all this "fancy" stuff. What you are learning here will go miles toward our next build.

Thanks for the encouragement Steve. I hope to finish her soon. Not a beautiful build but for a first effort I think respectable. More learning and practice with CA is what I'm working on now as I am putting on railing. Then repairs of the bits I've broken off while doing it! Tjavascript:PasteSmiley(':-X')hen touchups and then on to Arleigh Burke and a fresh start. I'm having a blast doing it too!

Cheers,

John