Monday has arrived and I am hoping for a less soggy day than yesterday in the Darbyshire hills.

Anyhow away from the man cave does not keep my hobby at bay, last night I managed to secure a 1:200 scale USS Arizona on Ebay at around 25% off normal price I then immediately purchased the last Big Ed set from Eduard. while the missus sleeps this morning I will have a look around the web for research materials.

This will only be the second US ship I have ever built, the other being the Olympia, there is a build diary on the forum somewhere. interested in building this as she is quite a pretty ship from my preferred period with a story.

if anybody is aware of any good books or films on the subject do let me know

Before we made our way to Eaym yesterday I did manage to get some building time, with the cruel sea on in the background

Masked up the hull ready for the camouflage



Again using life colour I have airbrushed using three coats, pleased to say no airbrush drama this time





TIP - now the keen eyed amount you will have noticed the spice jars in the background, these ar not foreign objects I use these to put rigging thread spools in. the little holes in the top are great at stoping the thread tangling

While all that paint is drying I carried on with the etch work. The moulded fire hoses were removed then the etch cradles added in their place. The fire hoses were made up but put to one side for later.



I also did some work on the gun tub. quite a bit of the kit part is removed, striping it down to base only. the etch being a lot thinner gives a very to scale look once in place.









Thats it foe now, I won't get an opportunity to be in the man cave for a few days

Jase

Looking good Jase, very nice work... .. Great idea with the spice jars too, thanks for sharing that one....

Regards

Alan

My 1:200 USS Arizona arrived today, not as big as my Bismarck in that scale but twice the size of Makasa.

Its interesting to look over the model and see what you get. Unusualy for a trumpeter kit there is two options for paint finish. essential red turret tops or not. I dont like Trumpeter paint charts, not enough detail, I prefer to be directed to the colour through the instructions but hey.

A quick flick through the box and there is a large decal sheet that has lots of signal flags, unfortunately there is no rigging plan provided and no indication of where these should be added . there are 4 sprue of good looking figures. not come across these in ship kit before, but they look great, I think you can purchase them separately so may be able to add to them too.

Other than that for the most part its just a scaled up version of the 1:350 scale offering. The number of sprue are about the same the amount of etch about the same. At this scale the expectation is that a greater level of detail is achieved and in some areas you can see that, the ships boats and the primary range finders certainly amongst them but in other areas like the primary weapon turrets they are still very simple. the funnel still has a moulded on vertical ladder for example and one of the superstructure rooms has windows that need drilling out.
The hull has a waterline option which is nice but there is going to be a couple of big joints in the deck I fear.

anyhow as straight from box build at this scale it docent cut the mustard for me, dont get me wrong its a loverly kit in many ways but it does need an update set. there are several sets about I have gone with a Big Ed set as you get a good level of upgrade at a reasonable price compared to some. but your still adding £70 on top of the £190 kit price. you can easily add £80 for a wood deck set and £20 for secondary bras gun barrels (main guns in the kit are turned aluminium) plus ring thread and paint your easily at around £400

I won't be spending that. other than the etch set I may buy deck masks but nothing more. I have seriously gone off wood decks, even the best ones. it just looks wrong when the deck furniture is lower than the deck and the lasered detail is often incorrect or over scale or both. so I plan to paint the deck planks individually instead.

I will post some picks tomorrow

Jase

[quote=darbyvet]I built this ship.My biggest beef was the insane number of parts.I did use a wooden deck and a photoetched set.Painting was "fun" It didnt fit in my spray booth and I think I used 12 bottles of Vallejo blue paint in total and 4 bottles of red for the hull


Carl

Hi carl I dont think it has as many parts as Bismarck but certainly a good number

I will bare in mind the volume of paint you used, I went through the paint list today and other than the deck I don't have any of them so that's the last bits I need to order to complete the build set.

got a couple of things to finish first then this may well get to the build desk

J