Greetings one and all.
Next ship on the slipway is Trumpeter's 1/350 USS Ticonderoga. Laid down in 1943 and completed in 1944 she participated in a number of actions in WW2 even after getting hit by a few kamikazes early in 1945. The ship was then modernised in the mid 1950's, and participated in the Vietnam War before finally being decommissioned and sold for scrap in 1973.
In a nutshell that is the life and times of the Ticonderoga, named after a Revolutionary War Fort.
The first Trumpeter Essex' were released in 2002 (well that is what is molded on the water-line plate anyway. The box claims copyright in 2005 and I bought the kit in August 2008.
The box also claims that the model is 773.7mm long, 128.4mm in beam and has 750 pieces, most of which will be in the armament and air wing I suspect.
Please forgive the picture but here is what I will be utilising in the build of this ship,

Here is the colour scheme she will be finished in..

Too help with the scheme I bought a number of Gator Masks by Mr Loup, one of which was for this scheme.
I looked for a long time for a blue stained wooden deck for this kit and it took a while to get one at a decent price, most places wanted $50 for the Pontos set, but I persevered and finally got one on special at Luckyhobby for a substantial saving.
As well as those items I may use brass barrels for the 5in guns in the turrets but am not sure if I have any stashed away among my collection of metal detail parts. If not the kit stuff is fine.
The BigEd set comprises the following..

I was also toying with buying some Veteran Model 5in/38 single mounts but due to being a little unemployed at the moment the kit guns and Eduard PE details will have to suffice. I can always replace them later when/if I get another job.
So that's it for now. Hope you can come along for the ride.
Cheers
Warren

I've always loved the color scheme on this carrier. How do the single mounts in the kit look?

Hi Jeremy and thanks for looking.
I will put a picture of one up for you sir. They are not too detailed with just four parts.. But the PE may help.
We shall see.

OK Jeremy, Here is the naked mount..

Pretty woeful as you can see. Then we have a coup;e of pictures of the improved, Eduard-PE equipped mount.


The fusing mount is a bit 2D but I have seen much worse.
I think that will have to do for the moment. Can always swap them out later if I get the urge.
And here is the hull having the hanger decks installed.

Enough for now.
Bye for now.
Warren

You see that gap between the deck and the hull..

Well that has caused a whole load of hurt..
After I got the bow in place and cemented nice and firmly I went to install the bow deck and guess what, it wouldn't fit. The problem is not the deck but the bow piece being about 2mm too short. So after carefully ripping the bow off again, luckily it was only held on with brittle CA glue at that time, I glued the bow deck in place first..

Then I clamped the bow piece in place once again and applied CA to it at first, then applied some thin plastic cement to hold it firmly in place.
Now I am left with this HUGE seam on both sides of the hull.

In case you were wondering, before I pryed the bow off using brut force I tried to de-bond the CA but the stuff you use for that likes to dissolve plastic, which I had forgotten about..
OS now I have to get rid of those seams AND sand back the part of the hull affected by the de-bonder.
It never rains but pours..
Before I attack the seam I am going to have to clamp everything in place using the plate for the bottom of the hull just to make sure everything is straight before I go filling said seam.. actually seam is too nice a word, more like.. canyon..
Sigh

Great to see you tackle another one. Are all Trumpy kits this way? That's why I've never built one before...

I know you'll manage. Keep it up and good luck!

Cheers!
Stefan

This is the first Trumpeter kit I have come across with such a bad midtake Stefan. I have built lots of Trumpeter kits but not one quite so old except a tank which was great as well. I also have the Yorktoen in the stash so it will be interesting to see how they went with the short-hull Essex'.
Dtill contemplating how to fix the canyons.

Looks like a piece of plastic card will do the trick, then sand it down and fill any remaining gaps with putty.

Great to see a new build from you Warren-keep 'em coming! That's too bad about the gap! Am I seeing things or is the front section of the hull leaning down on a different angle to the main section of the hull? I'm with Stefan: plasticard to fill the gap and putty and sand off smooth.

Thanks guys.
@ Stefan, that is basically what I am doing but I used some round stock I had laying around.
@ Russell, it is an optical illusion Sir. I thought the same thing at first but it is fine.
Am finding a few more gaps turning up but they will be easy to fix as well.
More photos anon... (that means later)..

Hey all, for what it's worth, the upper hull piece in the kit is the same as the short hull kits. However, Trumpeter cut off the front section and includes a replacement. The problem is that the cut doesn't match the new piece, which is where that gap comes from. The best way to position it correctly, as Warren discovered, is to attached the forecastle deck piece to the replacement bow, and then attach that deck to the main section.

Also, be aware that if correction and detail is your thing, there is plenty on this kit to keep you working!

Thanks for that Tracy.
It would be nice to have some better detail painting instructions.. The overall ones are superb, but there are no instructions anywhere for all the deck fittings etc. I am guessing the go with whatever camo color is over them on the sides and Deck Blue on the tops.
But I am wondering about under the flight deck...

Do you mean the hanger bay? Weren't they white or off-white? Trumpeter certainly is a prolific model manufacturer, but their kits, especially ships, are often frustrating. Soft details, and you have to putty and sand every time you put two parts together .

Hey Biggles!

Nice of you to join the build. The areas I mean are at the bow and stern of the ship under the flight deck. Nowhere shows you what the camo did on those large surfaces or indeed the color of the deck fittings in the areas.

The only putty I have needed so far is for the canyon where the bow attaches to the hull. But that is sorted now.

I had to resort for fitting a piece of plastic sheet to the back of the aft port gun area wall as it had a number of deep ejector pin marks. Rather than puttying and swearing I just cut out a piece of styrene from some sheet stock and glued it in position. Voila, no more pin marks! Why can't manufacturers just wait a little longer for the plastic too harden so the ejector pins don't cause these marks, or do what Dragon does and use those little nubs on the parts?

Oh, and best news so far for the past 12 months, I start a new career as an Avionics Instructor Monday week..

I really don't know, that's why I refuse to buy the old 1/700 C-5 kits from Testors/Italeri. The silly things are warped like crazy from premature removal from the molds.

Those guns really are.... err, basic? Does anyone still have the VM replacements in stock?

Congratulations on your new job as an Avionics Instructor, Warren! That's fantastic news!

@ Jeremy, yes they do but it has to wait until I start to get some wages coming in.

@ Russell, thanks for that. It is a massive relief and the pressure evaporated almost instantly.

And now for a quick update.. To fix bow canyon insert plastic rod and lashings uof thin plastic cement. When that is dry fill with gap filling CA glue, then cover with lashings of putty.
/>
Finally sand back with wet and dry emery paper and repeat putty as necessary.
The horror of ejector pin marks...

Luckily these are under a platform that would need a boroscope to see when the ship is built. So they are not being touched as I don't own a boroscope..
And finally..

The first PE for the kit. One of two cranes on the ships port side. A little liquid putty will fill any of those gaps without having to use solder. Or CA glue can also be used to make them disappear.
That's it for now. It might have a few problems but all in all it is going together without too much fuss.
Thanks for visiting.
Cheers
Warren

Nice going Warren,
The gap had me a little worried to say the least but you tackled that problem in a grand manner mate, great work.
Keep the photos coming, this should be another Inman classic.
cheers,
Julian

You're definitely having a grand weekend Warren! I'm still not sure how you can focus on this build the way you are with your new job coming up

I suppose I just love building things so much.

Well I am up to painting the hull stage.

It is a bit long for my spray booth so I leave one side down and do a quarter at a time. Adapt and overcome..
Notice my economising and having used masking tape at hand to use (when I remember)..

I am using Lifecolor paints for the hull and am slowly but surely working out how to spray them successfully. I find Gunze and Tamiya work great almost everytime, but Lifecolor takes a bit more experimenting. But at least they have the right colours out of the bottles, and they do brush pretty well.
Enough for now, I have to go and finish this coat of grey. Then I will let it dry for a day and apply the Gator Mask for the rest of the scheme.
Cheers
Warren

Good to see you underway again Warren and great to hear you got yourself back into the workforce. Congrats Buddy.....Cheers mark

She's coming along nicely Warren

Greetings one and all.
Well I finally came to spraying the Navy Blue part of the camo scheme and the Lifecolor paint did nothing but clog my dual action airbrush. I tried cleaning it out but couldn't un-clog the tip, so I removed it and it had dried paint through it. That happened three times so in the end I gave up with that airbrush. Then I had a brain-wave (a very rare thing) and decided to give the old Paasche single-action a go. I have had thise airbrush for almost three decades and it is still working great, and fundly enough it sprayed the Lifecolor paint with no problems at all.
And then it happened, I ran out of the paint.. argh!! So now I have worked out how to spray it properly but have to wait for some to get here from Japan as no one in Australia stocks that color, except if you buy the US Navy set which would mean I had all the colors twice, except of course UA626 Navy Blue..
I will just have to build all the guns etc and the island while I wait for the paint to arrive.
Until later
Cheers
Warren

If you're doing post dazzle, then the areas under the flight deck are the same as the areas they're near (Ocean in gray in this case, as she was ordered to paint into the 1945 version of Measure 12)

For Dazzle, the overheads in that area would have been white to assist in countershading.

Hangar decks would be #20 Deck Gray on the deck, white on the bulkheads and overheads, *BUT* the elevator pit bulkheads were painted a dark color so that they didn't destroy the camouflage when lowered. I don't have any official directives on this yet, but it looks like it was generally painted to match the camouflage; most of the ships use Navy Blue, but one shot of CV-3 Saratoga in her dazzle shows the elevator well next to/below the island to have a continuation of the Ocean Gray that was painted on the island above it. They also painted a black band 6 feet wide around the top of the elevator well so that they could lower the elevators at night for engine operations without destroying the light-tightness.

You are a one-man encyclopedia on US Navy Camo by the look of it Tracy! Thanks heaps for all that information. I will put it too good use when the new batch of paint arrives.
I thought I would back-track a bit and give you some idea about the mask I am using for the camp. It is not perfect as I think it has been sized to fit the short-hull version of the Essex-class carriers, but that is not too much of a problem. The mask looks like this when you unroll it.

First up you paint the lightest color first, in this case Light Grey, then Navy Grey then Navy Blue. I won't bore you with the details. After you paint the first color and let it dry you apply the first stage of the mask, then spray the next darker color, wait for that to dry , put those masking pieces in place then spray the last darkest color.

Any tiny gaps you can use the excess vinyl to mask or some ordinary masking tape. I am staying hopeful that the mask won't leave any sticky residue behind after its extended stay in place on the hull.
After exhausting my Navy Blue and ordering two more bottle from Japan, I decided to start on the armament. First up I finished the remaining three 5in/38 single mounts and put them aside. Then I started on the quad 40mm Bofors. Here is a kit on and a PE one for your viewing pleasure.

Can you see why I use the Eduard ones?
The instructions from Trumpeter say I need 17 of these mounts, the Eduard instructions say eleven, and I counted 12 of them from the instructions.. I made 12 and we will see how we go. Eduard only supply enough to make 16 maximum, but I am sure I have spares somewhere just in case.
And here we have all twelve

I just noticed I got the gun angles wrong on one of them so I will have to adjust it a bit.
I just started the twin 5in turrets this afternoon and have the kit plastic glued together. I will fill the gaps later. One thing that is supplied are railings that are placed either side of the guns on the front of the turrets, but I can't see much evidence of these being installed on many turrets on Carriers, so I suppose I will leave them off!
That is enough dribbling for now.
Thanks for looking.
Warren