Welcome to my Web site

Welcome to my website. This site is for folks who build or would like to build plastic model ships. I’ve been building ship models for many years and I still get as much enjoyment from the hobby as I did when I started. If you are an occasional modeler, serious modeler or if you’ve been away from the hobby for awhile and are coming back, I think you will enjoy this site.

I chose Revells’ Cutty Sark as the launch project because there are a large number of these kits out there in closets, attics and modelers collections, waiting to be built. Also, this kit builds into a pretty impressive ship model, no matter where the modelers’ skill level is.

The plan is for this site to grow over time, featuring a different model about every month. Previous models will be archived for reference and new visitors to the site. As you may have already noticed, this site is written in a blog foremat with the latest post on top and previous posts in decending order. I hope that modelers will find this website enjoyable and useful and will visit often……………..John

USS Antietam CV36

Altogether, not a bad model. There is a ton of leftover parts with this kit, almost enough to make another model!



















Airplanes and Stand

The flight deck was finished up with PE railings and antennas made from stretched spru. I cut a couple of pieces of .020" styrene and applied the kit supplied decals to make a nameplate for the stand. 1/700 scale airplanes are a challenge and these are no exception. The landing gear is particularly delicate and breaks easy. I had to fabricate a few from sheet styrene after braking them. The clear plastic they are molded in is a good idea except that clear plastic is a lot more brittle than colored plastic. For this reason the props and rotors broke when I tried to remove them from the spru. Model Master Dark Sea Blue was painted on all the airplanes while they were still on the spru. Decals went on ok.











Island and 5in Guns

The island is pretty much a WW2 configuration with a few upgrades. Since I'm building the 1953 configuration the only difference is the upgraded bridge. This didn't fit very well and even after removing material from the bottom of G1, the fit was still not quite right. The extra length of the bridge interferes with the gun director between the 5in gun and the bridge. The PE radar, part # MB1 is great and goes on good with superglue. Same for MB2 but MB3 is not clear at all on the instruction sheet, had to guess at that one. Photos of the Antietam from this period show a yardarm on the tripod mast, but none is included in the kit. I used one from a GMM 1/700 PE fret. I assembled the whole thing on a holder as a sub assembly. The holder makes it easy to position the island at different angles for easier PE attachment. Assembled the 5in. guns and other flight deck items and glued them down with liquid cement. The raised place for the island to glue onto looked pretty shallow and I was concerned the island could get knocked off easily (this has happened on other models). So I cemented a .080x.080 piece of styrene onto it for reinforcement. After cementing the island structure onto the flight deck, I mounted the model onto its faux ocean stand. There is a section under Modeling Tips on how to build a fake ocean.





















































Deck Edge Elevator

The deck edge elevator is a clear part in this kit. I made the mistake of installing what looked like the correct part but it was too small. Pays to read the instructions sometimes. I painted the top surface of the clear elevator dark grey to match the flight deck. This also makes it easier to work with the photo etched parts on the underside. In order to get the support struts in the right place, I used the large PE part as a guide and marked the underside with a pencil. I use a piece of glass as a cutting board and a no.11 exacto blade to remove the PE parts from the fret. Once freed from the fret, a wad of modeling clay is the best thing I've found for picking them up. Zip Kicker ACC accelerator was brushed onto the elevator bottom then each support was lightly dragged through a drop of thick super glue and set in place with tweezers. After all the stuff dried the supports and elevator bottom were painted. The large support was too big ,even after

folding to shape. So I trimmed off the excess and super glued it in place. The deck edge netting PE did not look right or good, so I used GMM deck edge netting from their 1/700 WW2 carrier fret. I've never had good luck with this particular elevator and this model is no exception. White glue and paint were used to help cover up the sloppy job I made of it.





















































Flight Deck







The flight deck fits pretty good and I didn't need to do much to get a good clean joint between the bulkheads and the bottom of the deck. I piled up some relatively heavy items onto the hull to make the joint tight. Applied liquid cement and let set overnight. For the angle deck support struts, I numbered each on the deck bottom with pencil since the instruction sheet can be a little confusing. Again, liquid cement was used to attach the struts. After all the cement dried I painted the underside of the flight deck Model Master Dark Ghost Grey to match the rest of the hull.





I painted the flight deck with Tamya Haze Grey Spray. This is a shade or two darker than the hull and closer to the way the ship looks in photos. The angled deck was masked off and sprayed with Tamya IJN Grey. This is slightly darker than the rest of the flight deck but will give me a straight line for decal application. To give the fight deck a used look pastels were rubbed onto the areas with the most heavy usage. The landing area and the elevators were rubbed with black pastel and the area next to the island structure was rubbed with brown pastel with a little black for darkening. After this Testors Glosscoat was sprayed on in preparation for decaling and to seal the pastel. If the pastel isn't sealed it gets on my fingers and subsequently, everywhere! It's important to get the stripes on the angled deck straight. If not this spoils the look of the model. For this reason I decided to forgo the decal stripe down the center of the angled deck and paint it instead. Long solid decals are almost impossible to get straight and keep straight after applying decal set. I lightly drew a straight line down the center and masked it off with Tamya masking tape. Model Master Camouflage Grey was painted on instead of white. White is too bright in these scales to look realistic. Again a little black pastel was rubbed on for that used look. The rest of the decals went on ok and Testors Dullcoat was sprayed on after overnight drying.













































More Hull

Model Master Dark Ghost Grey was painted on the hull, this is very close to haze grey. The darkening around raised relief did not work out as nice as I had hoped but looks OK. I dry brushed some Model Master Light Grey to highlight raised areas. Masked off the boot topping with Tamya masking tape and painted Testors Flat Black. I decided to finish all of the hull assembly at this time and install the photo etched railings. It is easier to do this now, before the flight deck is installed, but there is more risk of knocking them off during later stages of assembly. I think it's worth the risk though.

















Starting the Hull

I'm going to build this one as a waterline model so I'll be leaving the lower half of the hull off. The two large braces across the hull opening needed to be removed with a razor saw so the hull will sit flush on the base. After drilling two holes, two 10-32 nuts were super glued to two flush braces for attaching the hull to the base. A couple of styrene strips were cemented in place to make sure the nuts don't break loose and turn when the screws are tightened. The hanger deck fit very good and liquid cement was liberally applied to make it permanent. A little help from some tape and paint bottles kept it in place until the cement dried. The rest of the parts that make up the area between the hanger deck and flight deck were cemented in place with no problems at all. Model Master Euro 1 Gray was painted on the hanger deck and all weather decks. Model Master Light Gray was painted on all the interior vertical surfaces. In order to keep the raised detail from becoming obscured by painting, I'm trying a different technique on this model. I painted all the portholes and raised details on the exterior Model Master Dark Gray. When I paint the hull color I'll go lightly over these areas to give a shaded effect. The third step will be dry brushing the raised details to (hopefully) make them standout.





























Opening the Kit

I picked up this kit about a year ago. The USS Antietam CV-36 in 1/700 scale by Dragon. I don't know how many parts are in the kit but there are plenty, especially for a 1/700 scale kit. In addition to the parts needed to complete the model, there are a few duplicate parts molded in clear styrene such as a clear flight deck, sponson and elevators. If anyone chooses to view the inside of the hanger deck this will accommodate them. The hanger is quite detailed and it seems a shame to cover it up, but I think making it viewable only encourages people to handle the model and this is never good. Two frets of photo etched parts come with the kit and include radars, some railings and crew figures. A real nice air group comprised of '50's era jets, props and helicopters promises to make this a fun model. Right now I plan to build this in the 1956 configuration.





Finished

For a kit this old, it went together without any real problems. The deck was a little warped but still glued up pretty good. Making the rat lines is a challenge but doable. I prefer to take photos of my models outside in daylight when ever possible. The natural light adds a little realism and lights everything.







































































Finishing Touches







Seems like the closer to finishing a model I get, the more small details there are to wrap up. Touching up paint here and there where I missed a spot or scraped some paint off for gluing. One thing I always need to do is apply clear flat to all the shiny super glue spots. I use Testors Clear Flat acrylic and a small brush for this. For the glass in the windows and stern lanterns I use Testors Clear Gloss acrylic the same way.

I made coils of rope from thread wrapped around a brass tube and painted them with clear flat acrylic so they would hold their shape. After this dried I cut the connecting thread and slid each coil off the tube (not as easy as it sounds). A sharp pair of scissors was used to trim off the excess from each coil. There are no belaying pins in the pin rails to drape the coils over, so I just superglued them to the pin rails. I accomplished this by first brushing some accelerator (zip-kicker) onto the pin rail. Holding the coils with tweezers I dipped each one into a small puddle of thick super glue and just stuck it onto the pin rail. The accelerator makes the superglue set up at once.

Finally the name plate. I usually don't like to use gold or other metallic paints for this because it just doesn't look real enough. Testors Red-Brown acrylic with Tamya dark brown for the lettering worked fine. Good old super glue did the job of attaching it to the base.










































Flags

This kit comes with 5 flags and some are really big ! After carefully cutting each one from the flag sheet, I folded each around a thin piece of spru and used my fingernail to put a small crease for the flagstaff. Elmers glue was applied to one half of each flag as it was installed. Carefully, I wrapped each flag around its flagstaff, working the glue toward the edges of the flag. When the glue was dry, I used paint to touch up the edges of each flag. Finally, when all was dry, I used a paintbrush handle to form each flag into a waving motion. A small drop of superglue keeps the flags from sliding down the staffs.