The machine gun posts were turned on my lathe and fitted to the bridge, along with the machine guns.
The rear gun deck was also made. I also cut all the freeing ports in the bulwarks, followed by masking and spraying two panel lines along the hull to replace the detail sanded off.
The winches were all made from sheet and tube styrene.
Back to the superstructure, and a few more railings have been added. This was now waiting for the other ship kit to use the lifeboats, so it wouldn't be painted until they were fitted.
I'm not sure if the next modification was appropriate for Liberty ships, but certainly some merchant ships were modified, and I thought it would make a nice feature on the model. What am I talking about? A CAM Ship, Catapult Aircraft Merchantmen. The model would have a launch ramp and 'Hurricat' fighter added to the foredeck.
Sweet made a 1/144 scale Hurricane kit, with two Hurricanes in the box. One would be fitted to the ship while the other would be built as a flat car load.
While I was waiting for the other Destroyer kit to arrive, I made a start on the Hurricanes. The initial assembly was good, with the tiny kits fitting together very well. To cut down on tooling with an injection moulding tool just for the canopies, there are two canopies moulded onto each main sprue. This gives two clear canopies and all the airframe parts from just two tools, just needing one injection with clear styrene.
However, this means one aircraft is moulded in clear, which is very hard to see what you are doing while you work. As soon as the models were in one piece, I gave them a spray with etch primer to make them more easy to see imperfections.
All the camouflage painting was done by brush, as masking something this small would be a nightmare. It was hard enough to hold them as it was. They span just over 3 inches, with some parts little more than 1/16 inch square.
They were given a coat of 'Future', then decals were applied and the fighters just needed a matt coat before the canopies were fitted.
During the fighter build, while things were drying, I made a start on the launching ramp. At 1/2 inch square, it was going to be too fiddly and fragile to make from microstrip, and a one off brass etching would cost a fortune for such a small item. So....my solution was to cut a strip of clear acrylic, polish the edges until clear and use self-adhesive aluminium foil to stick on the structure.
It works very well as you can see below, with your eyes drawn to the structure and not the acrylic strip.
The supporting pylons were made in the same way, and all the aluminium was then painted. A walkway has been added at the top of the rear pylon for the pilot and aircraft launch crew. I just need a ladder up from the deck. The hull has also had some rust streaks added from the water freeing ports.
The rigging for the cranes was added next, plus the ladder for the lauch ramp.
With the arrival of the other ship kit, I was able to fit the davits to the superstructure and build the other lifeboats. These needed to set fully before the lifeboats can be fastened to them.
I also took the opportunity to compare the Destroyer Hull with the converted one to see how much it had changed. It's hard to believe they started out the same.
The superstructure is now painted and weathered. The planks for the hold covers have also been glued on deck.
While building the ship, I was also been working on drawings for the dockside cranes. As with so much on this layout, the cranes are going to be animated. The cranes themselves would be scratch built, based on a typical 1930's Level Luffing Crane.
Slewing and Luffing ( being technical ), will be controlled by micro aircraft servos built into the cranes, while the lifting cable will be operated by a sail winch servo under the baseboard.
I'd previously drawn out the crane to scale, then transferred the jib measurements to a piece of wood which would form the building jig. Two holes were drilled at each end of the main part of the jib, and a 1/16 brass tube inserted. A 1/16 square tube made up the connecting piece. As each part was trial fitted, some small blocks of wood were glued down to the board to hold the brass in place. This allowed the following pieces to fit in the same place since there were four sides to make.
The tip of the crane was made in a similar way. For a while I wasn't sure how to make the curved back piece until I discovered the 1/16 square tube would bend without kinking.
Here's the main parts of the jib made before the cross pieces were soldered on connecting the sides together.
To avoid a meltdown causing all the joints to fall apart, the diagonal cross bracing was added using styrene, glued in place with Loctite Hysol 9462 Epoxy.
While I had a basic design to follow, making these work was a little mind bending at this scale, and most of the mechanics was being made up as I went along. I had a basic idea of how I wanted to make everything work, but the fine tuning was done as I went.
The legs of the crane would connect to a square base housing a micro servo which controls the rotation of the crane. One of the main problems, is making the crane so it can come apart should a servo fail.
The pictures below show the basic box structure containing the servo, and the walkway and circular mounting for the crane. The circular mount actually gives the extra height needed to hide the servo.
Here's the upper part of the crane body. This contains a second servo on its side that controls the elevation. This section also has to dismantle to extract the servo and also to connect the elevation mechanism. The brass masts at the left side support part of the elevation mechanism and counter-balance weight.
I realised that the upper square base of the crane which turns, would now obscure the deck during rotation. Bad luck for anyone walking around the crane! So the lower 1/2 inch was trimmed to a cylindrical section. The servo head was also screwed in place with more of the tiny screws.
This general view shows the top hatch of the crane body, and the side hatch that covers the servo. Also visible are the supports for the jib counter balance.
This picture shows the link that joins the jib to the balance weight cam. The linkage from the servo drives upward on this linkage to operate the jib. The link was still drying here and needed further trimming and shaping.
