Here it is. The workbench is cleaned and ready to become the New York Navy Yards

I glued the deck pieces in place and am in the process of filling and scribing the planks. This is potentially the finished result. I will have to paint it first to be sure but I think the seams look pretty good.

I situated the elements of the base and taped out the outline - after staining the oak with a black stain. I then used L shaped tim moulding cut to match the tape outline, attached it to the base and painted the inside with a deep blue color. Trumpeter kits have a separate top and bottom hull for making a waterline kit - in calm water. On the open sea the waves make the lower part of the hull vissible at times so I would have to attach a little of the lower hull. I glued it and then used my dremmel to chp off the bottom. With the bottom off and the base set up I was ready to pour the clear resin that I was going to use for the water. I sealed the bottom of the ship with my daughters Play-Dough so that the resin would not leak into the cavity and trap it to the base. The I put the hull inplace and mixed and poured. The resin is a product used for simulating water in fake flower arangements. It took several days to cure fully and remained flexible but worked pretty good. In the future I will use a resin that they use for making stained glass jewlery that sets hard. I will add waves and such with Liquitex Gel Medium later. I removed the hull after about 2 hours when the resin had just begun to set. If I waited much longer I would never have gotten the hull out. Now the hull can be moved in and out and fits nice and snug.

I drilled out the resin turrets and built a jig to line the barrels up right. The ring mounts for the 5" turrets were terrible so I removed them and replaced them with washers that were the correct size.

Steel plates used to join deck 2 and superstructure tower. Adding resin blast bags to turrets and finished, unpainted turrets. I wraped tape around barrel then "Painted" with thinned putty to add sharp edge to front of blast bags. First piece of superstructure added Drilled and corrected hawse pipe area Taped off the hull and used several coates of primer to create strakes. A fun comparison of the hull of the North Carolina to the hull of an Iowa class ship.

Painted and weathered the deck. Did a layer of deck blue, a layer of wood color and another layer of deck blue. I then sanded the top layer of blue till the wood color started to show. The bottom layer of blue was in case I sanded too deep. After sanding I did some touching up to improve the look. Notice the seam between the deck pieces still visible. I have some ideas to hide it. Masking the deck for painting. It would stay covered for a long time. Dazzle scheme applied. I did not take any pictures of the tedious process of masking. It took many hours even with the gator masks to help. The superstructure is just tacked in place to I could remove it later.

I used a dot filter like armor modelers use to begin weathering the hull. Finished 5" Turrets Added photoetch bracing to the breakwater Installed the metal anchorchain. Detail of stern showing splinter shields for the 20mm guns and ammo lockers ships whale boats with photoetch details Worst part of the model. The practice loaders for the 5" guns. The trumpeter part is about 15 scale feet high and looks nothing like the real thing. I made a couple of my own that look far better. You can see the comparison with the Tamiya version and the real thing on the USS Massachusetts (notice the height of the door compared to the loader).

Whale boats in place

May 27, 2013

Putting the first waves on the base using Liquitex Gel Medium. Used the hull in place then removed and cleaned it. The final (mostly) water with the boat in place but not attached. Duplicate angles with and without the flash.

May 31, 2013 - I did not want to use the plastic masts because they would bend under the tension of the rigging. There are no replacement masts for the North Carolina in 1/350 so I had to make my own.

I started with brass rod and welded several pieces of the Eduard photoetch to them. Other parts I glued Its important to finish all of the welding first because when I got the torch near the shorter mast the glue burned off like a torch and all the glued pieces fell off. I may expiriment with other glues to see how heat resistant they are. In any event I am very pleased with the result and these masts will be much stiffer when attached to the model.

June 12, 2013 - I did some work on the cranes, catapults and AA guns the past several days.

I thought I took more pictures of the cranes and cats but here is one bad picture of a boat crane. 40mm Bofors Quad Mounts: These are pictures of the kit guns with Master barrels and eduard etch for the gun shield and railing on one gun and the other gun is the Alliance Modelworks set with Master barrels in place of the resin ones. It proved very difficult to drill holes in the correct location for the Master barrels in the Alliance set due to the very small size and you can see that the barrels are not aligned very well, so for the next one (not pictured) I just used the Alliance resin barrels. It looked just as good and took way less time. The next day I got the Veteran Models set and put one of them together. It is superior to the Alliance one and comes with brass barrels and pre drilled holes but ultimately it is hard to see the difference on the small parts. The ones in the pictures look bad but I may use them in locations where they are painted navy blue. It will be almost impossible to see the details in a dark painted location. I added the Mk-51 directors from Paper Labs and these are very nice pieces. Wayyyyyy better than the kit parts. The Veteran Models 40mm guns came with directors as well but they are resin and not as nice as these. One of the things I was most excited about was the 20mm Orelikons from Master. These things looked awesome in the pictures. I am sure that if we find ourselves in hell it will be an eternity of putting these things together over a thich shag carpet. I think I tried 3 times with no success and the real temptation to just use the kit parts. I dropped 2 on the floor just as they were ready to attach to the base and could not find them and the third I mangeled so badly that it was useless to try and use, then it fell in the carpet too. My last attempt of the night was to ignore the instructions and build one in my own order. There are 5 parts per gun and the instructions have you bending the support for the shield and the gun rack/sights first, assembling them with the gun barrel and then attaching the assembly to the base. I attached the base to a stick then glued the parts to the base one at a time. I bent each part after gluing it in place flat first. The 2 guns in the picture took about 1/2 hour to do with the new method. They would have taken about an hour each the other way. Only 46 more to go.