|
Salt Late City's hull form is extremely simple when compared to Nachi but I filled the spaces with balsa anyway. Due to its simple form sanding was a breeze in comparison. No complaints here, the fit is very good with this model. I always paint the hull bottoms. The balsa filler all but eliminated any shrunken forms with plates. The bow on this model I feel is the best I've ever seen. The design enabled the bow plates to literally snap into shape. I didn't glues the edges until after I placed the forms. When dry fitting the paper just formed the concave shape with no real issues. I used extra thick CA on the former frames and placed the sides in place with only gentle pushing. Once the CA dried I used white glue and brushed in the edges. The prow formed decently well and the color matched up perfectly. I works back to the stern until the 2nd to last plates. I install the stern plate, nicely wrapped a single piece from the end going forward. WAK provides a little extra length for the 2nd to last plates that I just glued over the stern plate leaving a paper thick bump that is only visible when looking from the stern forward. I uses a black sharpie pen on the bulkheads to visually control the depth of sanding.
For reference, my old Fly Portland is shown at her side. The Fly Portland may have been the best of the old hand drawn kits I ever seen and I'd still recommend it today. Both ships are by far the most successful cruisers the US Navy had in WWII. The US treaty cruisers paled in comparison to the Japanese counters, but these two earned 20 battle stars between them and did more damage to the enemy than any other US cruisers while sustaining punishing damage. The Japanese ignored the treaty all along, for comparison Nachi is actually a couple months older than Salt Lake City and was by far the superior vessel.
Joe,
|