Fletcher Work Continues

 While I am waiting on material to finish the dry dock scene for my Scamp model I have been plugging away at the destroyer model. This over all view shows most of the structure is assembled. 

The side of the ship where the structures were supposed to be flush with the hull have been cut off and replaced with new plastic (white) or relocated flush with the perpendicular line of the hull. I have also added detail to the stack interior (white plastic) and corrected the forward 40 mm bofors cannon tubs to match the hull line. I am scratch building the gun director and will need to do a lot of work scratch building of the 20 mm and 40 mm AA guns as the ones in the kit a rudimentary. The other major task is to replace most of the cast on and grossly out of proportion items on the mast. I think that will keep me happy enough with the detail at that point and I will call the kit work complete.

Blue Devil Started

This model will be done as it looks like on the box art. The model is not a particularly good model to start with. It is 1/125th scale but the detail is heavy, inaccurate and clunky. It is made to be motorized so has many compromises to allow this. I will do some scratch building of items that are grossly wrong but I am not going to go crazy on making it accurate (famous last words). The main goal here is going to be building a realistic sea to display the ship on.

Dry Dock Details

 Cooling water spilling into the basin.

Dry dock nearing completion

 The dry dock display base is turning into its own mini project.

It is time to affix the model to the blocks, weather the model, add the water from the shore cooling water supply coming out of the auxiliary seawater over board hull fittings and install the safety staging around the topside of the sub. 

Final details

Final details have been glued to the hull. I placed a 1/72 scale figure on the fair water plane to establish the proportions of man to this ship. At just under 250 feet these were the smallest class of nuclear subs built for the U. S. Navy except for NR-1 a small "research" vessel.

 Close up of the masts, it would not be normal to have every mast raised, and certainly not in dry dock. I choose to have them all up for additional visual interest.

View from aft, the silver line near the rudder and stern planes are Zinc Anodes. These would corrode as a sacrifice minimizing corrosion of the steel portions of the hull.

Dry Dock Display Stand

I will display the Scamp on this Dry Dock Base. Painted with primer in this image. The stone work and color will be established using ink, embossing paint and washes. Once that is complete meshing the sub with the base will follow.

Hull cleaning and preservation completed on the Scamp

The aft escape trunk, hard too see any detail in there but it has piping, gauge boards, the lower hatch and bubble skirt in place. This hatch will have the 3 shore power cables running into it, shore power was how electricity was supplied when the boats reactor was shutdown. 

Nice clean paint job, I will add the draft marking decals next and then it will be on to adding the final details to the hull, installing the masts I want showing. I will then add the safety railings and other items on the upper hull that are on a ship in dry dock. The dry dock itself needs to be painted and detailed too, currently it is just painted in gray primer to seal the particle board.