Subject: SMML VOL 1883 Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 00:52:57 +1000 SMML is proudly sponsored by SANDLE http://sandlehobbies.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MODELLERS INDEX 1: Re: Watching paint dry 2: watching paint dry 3: Re: The Mighty Iowas 4: Re: Iowa's 5: Re: The Mighty Iowas??? 6: Re: The Mighty Iowas??? 7: NSFO vs. Distillate Fuel 8: Re: USS OMAHA and color schemes 9: Re: The Mighty Iowas 10: S-boot with 2.0cm Flakvierling 11: Pussers Crab fat grey and other colours 12: Re China Station Colours 13: Re: The Mighty Iowas 14: USN Destroyer Centennial -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRADERS, ANNOUNCEMENTS & NOTICEBOARD INDEX 1: 1/350 USS ENTERPRISE...NEW PE set from WEM 2: Builder wanted ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MODELLERS Hi all, For the next week, there will be a reduced frequency of SMML Digests going out whilst Lorna & I attend the Queensland Models & Hobby Expo (qmhe.com) in Brisbane. All the best, Shane ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) From: Bradford Chaucer Subject: Re: Watching paint dry >> Yesterday I spray painted a 1:48 scale Royal Navy Skyraider AEW 1 using a Testors Modelmaster spray can. After 24 hours although the paint is dry, it is very soft, and therefore very difficult to handle. If I try to handle it I will get finger prints on it. Any suggestions how to harden the paint? The weather has been fairly hot and fairly humid << 1. Sit and consume a good single malt whilst watching. Pretty soon you won't give a damn!! 2. Put a heat lamp on it, then when fully dry, label it skyraider by Salvador Dali 3. Can you enclose it in a container that will keep outside humidity out with some fresh silica gel packs inside to reduce ambient humidity 4. Put it aside till it dries on its own eventually when the weather is more favorable 5. Chalk it up to what you get for defecting and building a wingy thing! 6. Seriously I have dried recalcitrant paint by gently and carefully applying heat. including by putting the model on top of the oil burner, though once left an M3 Bradley to close to the flue - it sagged!! :-) Regards, Bradford Chaucer ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) From: Kurt Van Dahm Subject: watching paint dry >> Yesterday I spray painted ....After 24 hours although the paint is dry, it is very soft, and therefore very difficult to handle. If I try to handle it I will get finger prints on it. Any suggestions how to harden the paint? The weather has been fairly hot and fairly humid. << John: I got a food dehydrator at a garage sale. It is a multi layered stacking series of hoops with trays into which you place fruits, meats, etc. and then force air through the device that dehydrates the food making dried foods that can be kept for extended times. They tend to be expensive devices when bought new, but real cheap at garage sales. The air is just a bit warm from the heat from the fan in the unit, nothing that would harm any plastic at all, but it sure makes a great job of drying paint during humid weather. I don't use mine so much now that I have switched over to the Badger Modelflex Marine Acrylic paints that dry very quickly, but I will keep it for the times I must use a solvent based paint to match a restoration job. Check garage sales for these units as they can be very useful. Take care, Kurt Van Dahm Westmont, IL ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) From: "Michael Worrell" Subject: Re: The Mighty Iowas Pwesty, I was just recently in Norfolk to see USS WISCONSIN at Nauticus, and she too is closed up except for the main deck. After talking to some of the friendly docents, it is my understanding that if necessary, WISCONSIN could be returned to service in six to nine months. According to my copy of Max Newhart's "American Battleships", IOWA replaced NEW JERSEY as the other reserve ship; NEW JERSEY having been sent to become a memorial. MISSOURI is, of course, at Pearl Harbor, somewhere near the ARIZONA. (Where exactly are Piers F2 and F3, anyways?) Of course, being a warship model builder---although very poor--and fond of battleships in particular, the existence of only two IOWA-class in potential service means only one thing: Build new ones! It is a hope of mine to some day be skilled enough to take an IOWA model and make it modern. What's that mean? Lots of modifications, for one. I'd have to stretch the thing quite a bit. Four turrets like the MONTANA-class, along with fore and aft VLS fields for Standard and Tomahawk, dedicated Tomahawk ABLs, a helo deck, RAM and/or Phalanx CIWS, the standard amounts of 5" turrets, and those wonderful Aegis billboard arrays. Top it off with the "Teddy Roosevelt" paint scheme, the style being discussed even now. (Thanks for doing that, folks; greatly appreciate learning.) Yep, I'm dreaming big. When and if I'm out of graduate school and rich (yeah right), would some of you chaps perhaps build this for me? Regards, Michael Worrell "You think you know what I'm doing, so obviously you don't."---Aeon Flux ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) From: "Hub & Dianne Plott" Subject: Re: Iowa's Saw the Wisconsin at Norfolk during the IPMS Nats. and you are only allowed on the top decks. It is part of the inactive fleet and thus subject to callup. Hub ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) From: Darren Subject: Re: The Mighty Iowas??? >> I was just wondering if all of the Iowa class battleships are still on call? << I talked with the Director of the USS NEW JERSEY, RADM T.Seigenthaler, and he mentioned that the NJ was no longer on the active list. The lower space interiors are being made ready to be included in the tours soon. WISCONSIN and I believe MISSOURI are still on the active list. This is why WISCONSIN has her interior hermetically sealed and dehumidified. I think IOWA might have been removed sometime after her gun accident, but not sure. Darren ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) From: SeaPhoto@aol.com Subject: Re: The Mighty Iowas??? >> Can somebody give me an update on what the deal with these far from obsolete ships? << The USS Iowa and USS Wisconsin are maintained in Category B preservation, as Susuin Bay and Norfolk VA respectively. This is the highest category of preservation, and includes cathodic protection and dehumidification. The Wisconsin would be the primary unit activated, although it is highly unlikely this will ever happen. The Missouri and the New Jersey have been stricken from the Navy and transferred to museum organizations for their display. Kurt SeaPhoto Maritime Photography www.warshipphotos.com Order via our online catalog...now taking credit cards via Paypal Warship Models Underway www.warshipmodelsunderway.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) From: Joel Labow Subject: NSFO vs. Distillate Fuel >> Now instead of turning the sides black, the stuff (Navy distillate fuel) can and has been known to eat the paint right off the hull if the seas are calm enough and left to its own devices! << I'm not a snipe...but I find this a little hard to understand. Distillate fuel is essentially kerosene, which shouldn't dissolve paint to any significant extent (it doesn't in my shop, at any rate). Further, UNREP speed was and is 12 knots so any DF pumped over the side can't linger against the paint for very long. Can any current Navy folks shed further light? Joel Labow ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) From: "Arthur Taylor" Subject: Re: USS OMAHA and color schemes Michael London described the color schemes used by the RN in tropical climes prior to WW2. There may have been a period in the early 20th.c. in which at least one ship on the East Indies and then China Station changed the pattern described. I have been researching HMS "Eclipse" (1894) for a considerable time. The earliest photo I could get, from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, was dated 1904; the ship is clearly all-gray. At this time, it was on the China Station. Around this time-frame the Admiralty was implementing the change from Victorian schemes (e.g. black hulls, white superstructures, "buff" funnels, etc.), in favor of all-gray. I later obtained a photo of "Eclipse" dated 1897; she has a white hull with a dark (probably blue) stripe at upper deck level from stern to stem. The superstructure and ventilator ducts below the cowls are white; the cowls themselves are "buff". Funnels and masts are "buff". Now "buff" appears to have been anything from a "primrose yellow" through to some shade of yellow with a pigment (possibly orange?) that appears very dark in the photos of the day. Photos of the ship in 1906,'08, and '12 show a gray finish, but I don't know where she was stationed. The early photos show no boot topping. Does anyone know when this was introduced? Brian Taylor ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9) From: "Eugene P. Kessler" Subject: Re: The Mighty Iowas Pwesty, I was aboard the Wisconcin (BB64) within the last ten days. She is sealed up, and you may tour only above decks. The Navy removed the four Iowa Class Battleships from the Naval Register in 1995. However, Congress ordered the Navy to reinstate two of them so that they would be in reserve in case they are ever needed in a conflict. Originally the New Jersey and the Wisconcin were to be reinstated. However, New Jersey's congressional delegation wished to have the New Jersey as a tourist attraction at a pier in Bayonne. Subsequently the Iowa was selected to join the Wisconcin on the reserve list. Gene Kessler Silver Spring, MD ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10) From: "Doug Bauer" Subject: S-boot with 2.0cm Flakvierling In Steve Wiper's "Warship Pictorial #15" on Kriegsmarine S-boote p. 61 shows a line drawing of a Type S-100 with a 20mm Flakvierling mounted astern....I've searched the entire book, plus other photographic references I have, and haven't found a single picture of an S-boot with such armament. Can anyone verify if any boats carried this particular weapon in action, and perhaps identify their hull numbers? Doug Bauer Poway, CA ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11) From: Subject: Pussers Crab fat grey and other colours Hi you ALL On the theme of unusual paint schemes, in 1960 I was drafted to HMS Scott based at Chatham, Kent. My previous unit had been the shore base HMS Sultan in Gosport, the engineering school. I asked around but no-one seemed to have heard of the Scott. I had married during my leave and having never having a Chatham ship before I arrived adrift having come on the train the longer route. I used the last of my money on a taxi from the station. The Cox'n, on my joining, was not very impressed. As I had previously passed for PO I was informed that I was the Killick of the stokers mess, and doing PO's duties down the boiler room. At sea, we wore "Survey Rig". HMS Scott was a survey ship engaged on East Coast Survey, anywhere from Dover to the Humber.Our task was to survey for wrecks and establish their height and position with great accuracy. Wrecks of two world wars and before. This was when the thought of 50 ft draught supertankers were just an idea on the drawing board. HMS Scott was built in 1939 as a Halcyon Class sloop/minesweeper. Designed as a survey ship she was soon converted to minesweeping and undertook that task throughout the war. At the end of hostilities she reverted to surveying duties. When I joined her she was painted white with a buff funnel, SURVEY COLOURS. Loads of sea time. It was usual to anchor when it got dark and start again at first light. I learned about tide watching with our survey launch. (Something I never did) and wire sweeping was ongoing all the time. Drift sweeping to establish the height of a wreck. Two days anchored in the Dogger bank with the engines going to keep her nose into the sea. The machinery (Steam Turbines of 1750 shp and Boilers at 250 psi.) The boilers had been derated and nothing much worked as it should. No 'Robo' feed regulator on the boiler but all the latest radar and slave stations for accurate navigation. What a great way to learn the job. On another theme, I noted that the "K" Class and their close sisters the "M"s were mentioned in these lists a short while ago. I have detailed drawings of BOTH in my plans lists. www.john-lambert-plans.com On the theory that you heard it first here, there is also a publication on the way detailing the Giant "X1" submarine with its twin 5.2" mountings. Yours "Aye" John ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12) From: MEDWAY Subject: Re China Station Colours I have a black & white photo of a County class in China colours which shows her to all white including the superstructure with buff funnels. Also, in the Navy Museum at Portsmouth there is a pre WW2 model of a Town Class (1/96 scale I think) again all white hull & superstructure. Re post war colours for the RN, under Admiralty Fleet Order 2249/1947, ships in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea were white hulled, upperworks, funnel & masts. This lasted I think until circa 1955 when the Loch Class were refitted and became the first RN ships with air conditioning. They came out of refit grey and resumed their Persian Gulf duties. Michael Brown ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13) From: CA139JOHNF@aol.com Subject: Re: The Mighty Iowas BB61 Iowa-Reinstated 1/4/99 Status:Maintainance Category B BB62 New Jersey-Stricken 1/4/99 Status:Museum Memorial BB63 Missouri-Stricken 1/12/95 Status:Museum Memorial BB64 Wisconson-Reinstated 2/12/98 Status:Maint. Category B Maintenance Category B Reserve Category B ships are designated by CNO and will receive the highest practicable degree of maintenance within personnel and funding limitations. Dehumidification and cathodic protection equipment and flooding alarms are installed. Category B is applicable to ships ONLY. Ships selected for this category are the most urgently needed to augment the Active Fleet in an emergency. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14) From: MIKE.LEONARD@CUSTOMS.TREAS.GOV Subject: USN Destroyer Centennial Fast Ships in Harm's Way: 100 Years of 'Tin Cans' http://www.surfacewarfare.navy.mil/destroyercentennial ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRADERS, ANNOUNCEMENTS & NOTICEBOARD ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) From: "WEM" Subject: 1/350 USS ENTERPRISE...NEW PE set from WEM WEM are pleased to announce the imminent release of our etched brass set for the 1/350 USS ENTERPRISE, "The Ship". WEM PE 3522 consists of an A4 sheet of relief etched brass. The parts list can be viewed here: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/white.ensign.models/wembrass/wembrass.htm#350ENT and the image can also be viewed right here: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/white.ensign.models/wembrass/wempe3522.jpg We are also working on PE 3523, 1/350 USS ENTERPRISE, "The Airwing", which will provide an amazing range of PE bolt-ons for your aircraft. This set will also work well with the excellent Gold Medal Models set for the ENTERPRISE kit (which we will still supply to Loren Perry's loyal band of followers, of course!), The price of this new set is 27.66 Pounds, post free anywhere in the world, which is about $38.00. The new PE set for the HELLER 1/400 HMS HOOD has just arrived, so evenings will be pretty much occupied over the next few days while John and I cut brass and stuff envelopes! The set is a tad under A4 in size and is priced same as the ENTERPRISE set.. The WEM PE 4004 parts list can be viewed here: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/white.ensign.models/wembrass/wembrass.htm#400HOOD and the image can be viewed here http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/white.ensign.models/wembrass/wempe4004.jpg Orders cheerfully taken ;^) Caroline Snyder, White Ensign Models http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/white.ensign.models/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) From: "Joseph L. Vacca" Subject: Builder wanted I am looking for some one who will be willing to build for my company a 1/350 model of HMS Broadsword, Type 22 Batch I RN Frigate. I am the president and general counsel of Broadsword Services, Ltd. (www.broadswordservices.com) and for some time I have wanted to display a ship model commemorating the Falklands War in our offices. I purchased a 1/350 HMS Brilliant from White Ensign and found that my skills are not adequate for the quality I want. Therefore, I would be quite willing to pay a reasonable fee for some one to purchase and construct such a model. If you are interested, here is my contact information: Joseph L. Vacca Broadsword Services, Ltd. 2819 South 125th Avenue, Suite 256 Omaha, Nebraska 68144 (402) 898-0773 e-mail: joe@broadswordservices.com Joe Vacca ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the SMML site for the List Rules, Backissues, Member's models & reference pictures at: http://smmlonline.com Check out the APMA site for an index of ship articles in the Reference section at: http://apma.org.au/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- End of Volume