Welcome aboard for my first small-scale warship build for the Pearl Harbor 75th anniversary campaign. This is my first foray into the Model Shipwrights forum and I'm looking forward to hanging out here for a while.

I've chosen to try and represent the New Orleans with Trumpeter's 1/700 kit. She'll be OOB I expect and won't merit a full blow-by-blow blog. As such, I don't anticipate much in the way of scratchbuilt detailing but you never know....

Here's the kit all ready to get under way (I've not even cleaned up the desk much from the last build)

Paul,

Have secured my beer and am ready to watch your build.

Dave

Paul,
I've just signed on for your "1st Cruise". I know virtually nothing about ships nor ship building, so it's going to be a multi adventure for me.
Joel

Count me in Paul!! I hope you post some progress shots...always fun to follow along; OOB or otherwise! SHould be a fun build for you. Trumpy makes a decent kit in this scale! I am not sure if the kit has any PE railings included...but if you wanted, you could probably pick up a generic set dirt cheap just to add some bling. Either way, it this will look great! Enjoy the build!

Thanks guys!

David, I'll join you in a few holiday beers !

Joel, always a pleasure. This is new territory for me too but it's all just the same plastic right? Right???

Todd, I'll definitely post plenty of progress photos. Not a bad idea about the railings too; I noticed that there were a couple of great looking PE sets for this kit but it seemed a little extravagant but a cheap set of railings would probably enhance things a lot as well as give me some more practice with this most fiddly of mediums.

Definitely! The big PE sets are nice, but more often than not, a decent model will shine bright without all the bling! I would think if you had a couple floaties under your belt and said "I love this ship thing", it would not be a bad thing to consider making a bigger project for yourself. Being you first dive, Just have fun with the kit. If you came across something like railing for a couple bucks, they are one of those pieces of eye candy that catches the eye!

First real chance to sit down after all the Christmas madness and take a better look at the model.
The sprues are crisply moulded and flash free in what seems a fairly soft plastic which is not brittle but easy to cut.

I've decided to make the full-hull model although a waterline plate is provided; The hull is in two parts at the waterline allowing the two choices to be easy with no cutting required although some very minor filling along the snug waterline join will be necessary.
The deck is in two parts with the higher fore and lower aft sections separated.

So far a pleasure to build !

Paul,

Nice beginning. Are you going to place her in a water scene or display her on a pedestal?

Dave

As this almost feels like a "throwaway" experiment into ship modelling I may as well try out a water scene too. I've been reading up on some of the techniques used and have been very impressed by some of the results.
I've got nothing to lose by trying and if I can carry over the lessons into a bigger scale, more detailed ship then all the better !

Paul,

Diving in with both feet. I like it!!

I primarily use the acrylic gel method of building my water scenes. I am still perfecting that method but so far I like it. The only draw back is the wait time for the gel to dry.

Dave

Paul,
Nice start to your USS New Orleans. Although it does feel somewhat strange following a build that doesn't have wings.

Joel

Great seeing the hull come together...glad to hear you are enjoying things! I'm with Dave on jumping in with both feet...why not?!

Cheers all!

I got some more time at the desk and assembled the three main gun turrets today. Tomorrow back to work after the Christmas break but hopefully the guns themselves will be added before very long.

Paul,
Nice progress with those turrets. At my age with rather poor eyesight, 1/700 scale is rather to small to attempt.

Joel

Ahoy Paul

Nice start I am watching along with interest.

Cheers


Sean

It's fiddly to be sure and I come away from the bench with a sore head from frowning with concentration !

I don't think it's the size of the pieces, you'll get tiny antenna or cockpit furniture or whatever on aircraft kits too. It's more the volume of tiny pieces that looks intimidating so far.

Thanks for watching Sean, I hope I can make this an interesting build!

I got stuck into finishing the turrets today but got sidetracked when I considered how important it was to get every gun barrel lined up nicely so I spent my limited bench time today in making a gun-barrel jig.

Paul,
Now that that alignment jig is really impressive. I'd have struggled silently cursing trying to maintain the alignment of the triple barrels.

Joel

Seems i'm not happy unless i'm tinkering with spare styrene and glue!

Made some good headway with the various superstructure parts. Everything is going together easily with little cleanup required. So far so good Trumpeter !

Although the instructions dictate the completion of each deck at a time including all AA guns etc, I'm going to leave them for now. There seems to be enough room to add them later and I'll get a cleaner coat of paint on everything before the small stuff gets in the way.

Paul,
Looking real good. Talk about making progress. You're flying through this build.
Joel

Paul,

nice work. I especially like the jig you developed for the main guns. Alignment is always an issue I face when working with the armament. Keep rolling along.

Dave

This will be a quick build if things go as well as they have so far. The fit has been great but one thing i'd say is that any "locating" parts (for example, to help align each of the stacking decks on the superstructure) is very vague and is a rough guide only. Each part still needs nudging and aligning by eye to be true.

Thanks David, it was a fairly quick process to cobble together and definitely saved me some time and headaches.