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Custom Photoetch Set Part I

March 31, 2008 / efoeth

As a full scratch build, having a custom photoetch (PE) set isn’t that far fetched. When I started drawing the set, Trumpeter hadn’t released its model and the only available sets were those of Iron Shipwright’s and White Ensign Model’s. Neither set was any good at all. Now several sets are available with the only interesting sets those of White Ensign Models (new set), Lion Roar.

I specifically do not include Gold Medal Models (GMM). Although I have used GMM sets with great enthusiasm in the past (sniff, memories), their sets are still according to the trusted GMM design: a (for current standards) small set with railings (50% of the set), generic parts for some navy (40% of the set) plus a few dedicated parts for the ship in question (10%). I feel this setup is outdated considering the huge PE-sets other manufacturers produce and their new sets sell you the same parts in a reshuffled configuration. The added HMS Hood detail set is “nice”, but not spectacular. The etching quality has always been very good though.

The Lion Roar set is quite impressive when you see all the frets lined up, but on closer inspection the etching design is crude and contains many errors. I feel it is, well, clunky. I think Lion Roar has a long way to go in designing their PE. With the release of the Japanese aircraft carrier flight deck sets, I do think they are improving and have released a truly innovative replacement part. They also released a very nifty HMS Hood main turret in resin which is clearly made superbly, but they managed to completely botch up the rangefinder and the barrel is crap. In short, it’s a great set for a beginner who’s not afraid to spend half their building time knee-deep in superglue, but not really useful for a more demanding HMS Hood modeler.

I like the White Ensign Model set best, having the most HMS Hood specific parts and add to that the most correct Royal Navy parts. This might have something to do with the fact I sent them my etch set and I recognize a few parts, although they’ll deny it, of course. But, having already admitted to designing my own etch set, the WEM set was a bit late for me to use. Plus, even White Ensign Models didn’t nearly include all the parts I wanted for my own model.

So, custom-design PE sounds like the ideal solution, but it didn’t quite turn out that way. I spent far too much time tinkering with the drawings and adding more detail loosing sight of the final size of the part. All the stairs, each of them designed to fit the exact deck height and width for their specific location, all snapped in half when I tried to bend them. The material isn’t very malleable and some folding lines weren’t etched properly (designed too thin). So, the set is definitely to be etched in a new form hopefully without beginner errors. But on the other hand, some parts turned out fantastically!

So, this is the entire set. I didn’t do the printing and etching myself, this was done by Saemann-aetztechnik in Germany.

1-10 Assorted stairs
11-12 Deck hatches including inside detail plate
13 Quartedeck deck hatch
14-15 Ammo loading hatches plus inside detail playe
16 Superstructure doors
17 30ft gig detail
18 Quad Vickers ammo locker hatches
19-20 Boiler room uptake vent hatches
21-22 Assorted watertight doors, correct style

A Quad Vickers detail parts
1 base plate
2 Frame
3 Spent casing bins
4 Shields
5 Ammo drums
6 Assorted detail

B Paravane, assorted detail

1 Searchlight covers
2 twin 4″ ammo loading lights
3 Quarterdeck bulkhead hatch, inner
4 Crane pulley
5 Pompom director seats
6 Pompom director, assorted detail
7 Quad Vickers ammo locker hatches
8 32ft cutter detail (unusable)
9 Small reels
10-12 Medium reels
20+22 Large reels
21 Quarterdeck bulkhead vent hatch

1 Degaussing cable (not used)
2 Night lifebuoy rack
3 HACS inside detail
4 HACS, assorted detail (over scale)
5 Pompom ammo locker hatches
6 Funnel grid detail
7 HACS detail
8 Deck hatch awning support

A UP launcher
1 Casing
2 Ammo locker hatches
3 hatch
4 Front/rear casing detail
5 Door
6 Window frame

B Pompom
1 Traversing engine detail
2 Railing
3 Hand wheels
4 Ammo locker frame

1 Commanders hatch main turret
2 Capstan, assorted detail
3 hatch for boat deck
4 Assorted detail
5 Torpedo loading hatch (can you spot the error?)
6 Pompom ammo locker hatches
7 Ammo hoist hatches for the boat deck
8 Large reel
9 Spotting top detail
10 twin 4″ ammo locker hatches
11-13 Single, double, and quadruple skylight hatches
14 Deck locker detail

4″ gun
1 Elevation gear
2 Loading lights
3 handwheels and assorted detail
4&5 Fuze setting device detail
6 Traversing gearbox
7 Awning support
8 Vision port hatches

1 Signal light detail
2 Mushroom vent detail
3 Admiralty ladder handrails
4 Quarterdeck detail
5 Pompom ammo locker hatches
6 Main crane pulleys
7 Clump cat heads
8 Main derrick detail (not used)
9 Ships name
10 Eyelets
11 Rigging details
12 Mast stay detail
13 Assorted stairs
14 Quarterdeck bulkhead hatch
15 Quarterdeck bulkhead hatch, inner
16 Sounding machine
17 Skimming dish, assorted detail
18 Assorted deck hatches

1 Deck locker detail
2 Spotting top detail
3 45ft barge detail
4 45ft barge rudders
5 Rangefinder hatches
6 Boat rudders
7 Assorted deck hatches
8 45ft barge steering wheel and propeller
9 45ft barge railing
10 Voice pipe cabinet hatches
11 Mast detail
12 Assorted stairs
13 Paravane locker hatches
14 Assorted stairs
15 Assorted stairs
16 Cutter details (not used)
17 Fast motor boat propellers
18 Boat rudder details
19 Boat rudders
20 Boat rudder details
21 Boarding ladders, short
22 Boarding ladders, long
23 Boarding ladder handrails
24 Boat detail

1 Assorted seats
2 Random detail
3 Frame for bridge
4 Degaussing cable (not used)
5&6 Mushroom vent detail
7 Assorted hand wheels (4 and 5 spoke)
8 Assorted seats
9 35ft fast motor boat engine hatches
10 35ft fast motor boat stairs
11 Fast motor boat, assorted detail
12 35ft fast motor boat, handrails
13 Too small
14 Assorted handrails
15 25ft fast motor boat, windshields and too small parts
16 Fast motor boats, propeller shafts

Secondary Guns, part I

March 13, 2008 / efoeth

HMS Hood carried 7 Mk XVII High Angle/Low Angle Twin 4″Guns. The first four were added in 1937 and three more in 1940. These guns are open mounts with a gun shield. So, all the detail on the interior remains fully visible. I started working on new shields soon after I received the kit by White Ensign Models. Their shields were not etched but cast and are somewhat on the clunky side.

Ah, a very early attempt at building the shields (Actually, this is a result of the second set of seven shields). These parts are made up from individual sheets. It takes some cutting and slicing and a good deal of pencil work to prepare the parts which is quite difficult to do several times in a row. The problem with these parts is that both the tumble-home of the side panels and the curvature of the front panel exerted a little bit of stress on the parts. It’s not as if you could see the cracks developing before your eyes, but the height of the shields varied too much from gun to gun. Also, the parts aren’t very strong and I spent too much time puttying and repairing them. Still, they look much finer than the part by WEM.

So, I decided to vacuum form the parts. This required a nice template I made from brass. Fortunately I had access to a small milling machine. This is the template after I already finished all the parts, so it shows some wear from cutting.

After the vacuum forming, resulting in several failed attempts, I made a series of parts to act as cutting templates. With these templates I was able to trim the parts to size with some consistency. I took my time building these cutting templates, as you can see from the above picture. I used a very fine tip X-acto knife to first scribe-in the first cut. Then I removed the part from the template and carved away.

A top view of the same sequence.

The slots in the front of the shield required a series of cutting templates; two cutting templates for the opening for the guns and the view ports, one for the horizontal lines (note that there are subtle height differences) and one for the position of the chairs. These templates were a bit tricky to align nicely as you want to keep the thickness spacing between the view ports even and small deviations show. Getting them right cost me a few more shields. Ah well.

Another cutting template, this time to trim the two internal bulkheads to size. Building all these templates takes time, but you don’t have to spend hours cutting the parts to size, deciding which ones to keep and ditching the remainder. The right side has a small indentation and the left side is angled inward 4 degrees. When dealing with two of these operations on either side with some chance of failure, templates to the rescue!

Here you can see the center bulkheads being fitted. I used a small spacer to keep the parts in the right position and angle during gluing. The bulkheads were cut to size and sanded flush with the shield.

Fitting the custom-etched hatches for the view port. Again, using a small spacer helps a lot in aligning the part correctly. Note how well the inner bulkhead tapers exactly toward the top of the gun shield

Most of the detail on the inside of the gun mount is made from custom-etched parts, including a lot of seats. Here the use to steel for the etched parts appeared to be a bad choice. After folding, the material had a tendency to break, unlike the more malleable brass (note to self).

This is just a small test to see if it were possible at all to place the seats in the shield with some accuracy. Apparently, it is, even though the seats are at odd angles. Can you see that the chairs are slightly misaligned? Neither can I, but the inner bulkheads were in the way for the #3 seat (from left to right). I suppose this is a small error in the cutting templates.

Here are the guns themselves are being glued together in yet another template. The guns were custom-order work by Steve Nuttall.

There’s a bit of detail on the breeches as well. Note the cute detail at the end of the red pointy thing.

All guns and their trunnions, in a dry-fit. I got a bit carried away with the etching, so the elevation gear is visible. I doubt it is visible on the final model, but just having it on this very photograph was worth the effort. Well, not really, but I was experimenting with the etching, finding out what is possible and what isn’t. The part worked out really well.

Here the guns are bring glued to the trunnion with a template.

Main Mast, part I

February 8, 2008 / efoeth

HMS Hood carried a typical tripod main mast, with the topmast fastened with stays from the star fish. Several modifications were performed on the mast, including the addition of a radar set of which no drawing exist how this was actually done. The main mast is constructed from styrene and the top mast is a brass mast from modellmarine, made by Burkhardt Masch. I choose a mast with the correct lower diameter and taper, cut to length later.

Here you can see the tripod under construction. I choose to do this ‘in situ’, in order to have the tripod legs fit in their emplacements in the deck part and simultaneously have the mast completely up right. A small mould (tube) was used to keep the mast up. The small platform was cut at least 15 times before I had one with the right shape, with the small strip around the main mast of a constant thickness. That strip broke often all the time during drilling.

is a diesel exhaust pipe connected to the port side tripod leg. This exhaust is fitted to the tripod at three points. I first drilled in the exhaust pipe at the correct locations, taken from the best photograph I have to the mast taken f om the bridge, and then drilled-in in the tripod through the exhaust pipe. Next, I made several rings simulating the flanges keeping the individual exhaust pipes together. Of course, you can use rods and disks, but a single rod and rings is structurally more sound, especially with a few drilled-in holes. After the pipe was glued to the tripod mast, the rings were glued into place. A protective cover is fitted to the base of the exhaust pipe. My guess is that this cover is fitted in order to avoid damage when handling the admirals barge that is stowed very close to this location.

Each tripod leg is fitted with a ladder. I choose to use ladders by Aber, which I considered the best ladders available. They need to be folded, which is very tricky for longs lengths of ladder, but they can be directly glued to a bulkhead without additional supports and drilling in that usually spoils the fine feel of the etched part. Note the odd curve in the ladder as it approached the lower platfrom below the main starfish. I also added a cover to the diesel exhaust pipe, estimated dimensions from the photograph at right.

A nice detail shot of the main mast below the yet-to-be-fitted star fish. A small ladder runs from the upper platform the star fish. The main topmast housing is fitted to the bottom of the topmast. There are several nice drawings, but none to scale. This part will require more detail. A small metal tube is seen sticking out of the rear of the mast where the tripod legs meet. I have no idea what it is and it isn’t on any of the drawings, except vaguely on a few photographs.

A nice close-up of the topmast and wireless yard. Drawings of this yard are much better in Anatomy of the Ship: Warspite, by Ross Watton, including how the yard was fastened to the topmast. I like this detail, I haven’t seen it before on 1:350 models. The yard arm was hard-soldered to the topmast. Normal soldering resulted in a very weak bond and I didn’t like the prospect of gluing. With these scratchbuilding projects, the chances of handling damage are must greater than with kits, so I wanted a strong bond. I bought a Proxxon torch and started practicing hard-soldering. This is really tricky to do and more often than not I completely vaporized the brass parts. This is why the topmast and flagpole are made from steel. But even then, the solder wouldn’t flow between the two parts no matter how careful I was with adding flux and aiming the torch. I spent hours soldering wire together and in the end I just decided to stop playing around. Fortunately, the parts were soldered correctly in one attempt, with only some minor deformation in the topmast which was easy to remove. I added very small brass rings to the yard to simulate some much-needed detail. The flagpole is connected some distance from the topmast. To my surprise, the strength of the model is sufficient. Even more to my surprise, that flagpole was later removed to add the Type 279M radar antenna, which is a standard Royal Navy part. So, I snapped it off!

UP Launchers

December 30, 2007 / efoeth

HMS Hood carried 5 UP launchers when she was sunk (UP stands for Unrotated Projectile.). These weapons could fire 20 3inch rockets containing so-called aerial mines. These mines had a 238 gram explosive charge tethered to a parachute in the hope that an enemy pilot was polite enough to hit them. However, this actually never happened with the 60 units placed on various ships. The model is based on John Lambert’s drawing no. L/0/96, but this drawing contains one error; the sloped-back glacis plate was not in the drawing. The drawing did contain enough information to design a few etched parts so that some wonderful detail can be added.

The edges of the etched part folded around the launch tubes is not 90 degrees, but actually two 45 degree angles. Folding the part to size wasn’t very easy (I did use a cut-to-size fold mould) and the first folding attempt proved to be difficult. Using styrene as a filler and then drilling in the tubes using the front as a template didn’t work out either as I frequently drilled right through the etching so in the end I cast the part without the front etching. I hadn’t cast anything lately, so I order some CR-600 casting resin and 1-to-1 mold rubber from Micro-Mark. These products mix on a 1 to 1 basis, so you can mix by volume and avoid many casting disasters when preparing small batches. All the detail of the etched part is retained perfectly in the casting. I drilled in the launch tubes using a drill-press with a positioning table at the workshop at work. The tubes are 0.5mm with a spacing of 0.6mm, so that’s only 0.1mm between the ‘tubes’. Small errors show up immediately if you’re off by the slightest amount.

I forgot to cast a block to hold on to the part when using the drill press and I also lost quite a few castings due to errors in drilling or handling. I guess I cast and drilled in over thirty parts before ending up with five acceptable parts.

Here is one model protected by splinter shields atop B-turret. A door is present on the armoured operators cabinet, including the sighting window. A hatch is present on the other side of the model, probably an access hatch to the traversing mechanism. An etched part is added to the bottom of the launch tubes (not on the pic). The ammo boxes are based on photographs of HMS Hood.