USS Arleigh Burke DDG-51
Fit of the hull is ok. Not perfect but not too bad. I removed the moulded on masker system for easier sanding and because the ones on the upper hull did not fall in line with those on the lower hull. I replicated them as they were shown in the kit.
Then I found some reference showing the masker system to go all the way to the keel which only is sensible taking the function of the masker system into account. So I removed the styrene strips and added new ones that run from side to side.
I glued two nuts into the keel with epoxy. The will be used to mount the ship on a stand.
The sonar is a seperate part, made of two halves, which are split vertically. Trumpeter decided to add a horizontal line to the dome. All my reference shows different so I filled this horizontal line.
After some hours of sanding, filling and sanding I finally achived a smooth sonar dome and a smooth transition into the hull.
This reference shows the boot topping is 54 inches wide, which translates to 4mm in 1/350 scale. Other reference shows the boot topping at the stern is only 42 inches wide which would translate to 3mm.
For easier masking I decided to go with 3mm overall. This allows me to take separation of lower and upper hull as reference. First the upper hull was masked.
Followed by a thin layer of Ammo of Migs grey primer.
Then the boot topping was sprayed on. To take the scale effect nto account I used a 50/50 mix of Black and Dark Sea Greay to obtain a dark gray.
Then I cutted 3mm stripes from wider masking tape an applied them carefully directly under the masking tape which defines the upper hull. This works well for all vertical surfaces. Near the stern the hull gets more horizontally so I had to add some tape.
Possible gaps between the two masks were covered with additional masking tape. Then I preshaded the hull with dark grey, light grey and green.
Followed by a thin layer of AK Interactives Schiffsbodenfarbe AK731. The hull red from Vallejo is far to brwonish and dark compared to reference pictures.
Then all tape was removed and I was rewarded with very clean color borders.
According to reference pictures the sonar dome seems to be covered by some sort of rubber? I tried to mask this area but without succes. So I hand painted it. Again with dark grey, not black.
The upper hull has also received it's paint. I also painted the forecastle including the red marking araund the turret. There are no decals provided for this detail in the kit!
Detail of the 'Danger Area' arount the turrent.
CIWS with some scratch build details. The barrels are made of stretched sprue. 6 pieces glued araound a shorter center piece. It's way over scale but looks a lot better than the kit part which is just one big blob of plastic.
... and CIWS with some paint on it.
VERTREP markings at the bow done. The decal in the kit is wrong. It shows the center line solid, not dashed. So I masked them and applied them by airbrush. Lines are 0.5mm to wide... but I'm not going to fix that.
Flight deck primed in a very light gray and masked, ready to receive the deck color of dark seagreen.
Final result after touching up with a paintbrush.
Opmerkingen
18 5 January 2016, 17:50
Christian BruerWell that comes out pretty nice and smooth. Looking forward to another masterpiece following your Prinz Eugen🙂
Cheers, Christian
5 January 2016, 19:17
Ingmar StöhrThanks Christian. Upper hull painted. All that masking worked very well. Very clean borders. Just some minor flaws in the area of the masker system. Managed to mask and airbrush the red circle around the turret as the kit does not provide any decals for it. So far I'm very happy with how the bow area looks. Next steps are the VERTREP markings on the bow and the other deck areas. The kit does provide the VERTREP and landing deck markings as decals but I'll try to airbrush them as well.
7 January 2016, 08:40
Ingmar StöhrThanks Gerald.
Sven, that is because I forgot to send you a PM 😉 Nice to have you on board.
7 January 2016, 12:30
Christian BruerYour yard workers are fast in painting a ship🙂
Convincing work so far!
By the way, deck markings are masked and painted or decals?
7 January 2016, 18:00
Ingmar Stöhr🙂 still on holiday and motivation is high.
So far all markings you can see are masked & airbrushed. The kit only has the markings for the flight deck and the VERTREP on the bow. No "Danger Area" markings are provided! Instead Trumpeter decided to include some very tiny sings that belong somewhere... The decal for the VERTREP on the forecastle is wrong. The center line is solid, not dashed. So I had to paint those as well. And now that I'm at it, I will also airbrush the flight deck. But this time I painted everything white (actually very light gray). This makes the masking much easier 😉 I used that with the red circle around the gun turret. Must not forget the hull numbers! Prinz Eugen had none 😉
7 January 2016, 19:39
Ingmar StöhrProgress in the last two days was somewhat slower. Managed to mask and paint the flight deck.
10 January 2016, 09:55
Christian BruerClean and sharp masking on the flight deck Ingmar! Very well done!
Your Arleigh Burke inspired me to take a look to an old but cancelled project – Academy's OHP Frigate. I started this for a couple of years but put it aside because of to much extra work the kit requires because of some, let me say, not state of the art plastic part molding. There are a lot of les sharp edges and contours what I cut of and tried to replace, as well as some inaccuracies building one of the long hull boats. But the Pontos set and your nice work inspired me to take it back from stash🙂
10 January 2016, 11:06
Ingmar Stöhr🙂 I also have that OHP from Academy plus the Pontos set in may stash. Those are nice ships!
10 January 2016, 16:30
Ingmar StöhrSo after a short trip to a warm island somewhere south of India my vacations finally ended. And I have to say 10 hours at work does slow down the progress a lot. Plus I did some preparations for our Scalemates Meeting. But I managed to get some work done on the superstructure. The kit has great detail there. But hey, let's remove most of that and replace it with even better PE detail 😉 Opened all those air intakes an mounted superb looking PE parts over them. And I can tell you, this ship has an awful lot of those. Details mostly painted. Some touch ups to be done. I fear the next step has to be weathering the hull before I can start to mount all the small detail to the main deck. I'm a bit anxious not to ruin all the previous work by a failed weathering. Well, this will most likely have to wait till March, after our Scalemates Meeting.
11 February 2016, 21:09
Ingmar StöhrThank you mates! All the PE is After market. The kits PE is rather thick. The Tetra set has extremely fine detail and so far was great to work with and fits perfectly. Only the instructions are not that great. But with a little common sense and guesswork you figure out what belongs where.
12 February 2016, 05:27
Scott DuttonBeautiful work, I really appreciated your commentary on the painting. Ive just done a ship project and was very unsure on build and paint sequence, your masking has produced a sensational result. Congrats and thanks, beautiful photography by the way.
13 February 2016, 20:58
Ingmar StöhrThank you Scott! Nice to know, that all this writing is read by someone 😉
13 February 2016, 21:05
Holger KranichIch bitte die Herrschaften schon im Vorfeld meine jetzige Ausdrucksweise zu entschuldigen:
Alter, wie geil ist das denn? Und warum, zur Hölle, habe ich das hier noch nicht gesehen?
Da scheint wohl jemand langsam auf den Geschmack von Salzwasser gekommen zu sein! Das sieht ja bis jetzt schon absolut klasse aus, Ingmar, aber man ist ja auch nichts anderes von dir gewohnt!😢
13 February 2016, 21:05
Ingmar Stöhr:-D Thank you Holger! Nice to have you on board! Somehow it seems that I'm better in building ships than tanks. I stocked up my stash considerably with ships. At the moment I'm thinking about getting myself the new CV-67 JFK as birthday present. But I already have ships for the next 4-5 years in my stash.... so ok, I have AFVs for about 10 years.... so I still need to catch up on ships 😉 If only those kits where not that expensive (and big)!
13 February 2016, 21:13
Ingmar StöhrAfter a longer pause for the scalemates meeting, one F-16 and half a Jagdpanther later I'm finally back on my Arleigh Burke. Pictures show most of the progress of last weekend. Main mast detailed with lots of tiny PE parts. A lot of railings have to follow but first its up so some paint.
14 March 2016, 20:20
Holger KranichI´m looking Forward to the first coat of paint! But ist sometimes sad to cover this marvelous pe Job with colour...😢
15 March 2016, 08:25
Ingmar StöhrThere you go Holger 😉 Still a lot of PE railings and other details to add. Also noticed some mistakes. The Tetra PE set has stunning detail, but the instructions suck! Oh well, as long as I don't want to rip the whole mast apart I guess I have to live with it.
15 March 2016, 21:03
Christian BruerVery nice and inspiring, and Ingmar about any mistakes, I think you're the only one who knows😉
18 March 2016, 18:25
Ingmar StöhrYes, that's true. But also I'm the person whom I have to spent most of the time with 😉
18 March 2016, 19:24
Christian BruerYep and that makes it complicated - same with all ones on my models😉
18 March 2016, 19:26
Ingmar StöhrHello Mates. Sorry for not posting any updates since March. Progress slowed down and I didn't feel like posting an update for every tiny piece I added. But finally she is finished. Please find some pictures of the finished model in the album. I also posted a lengthy build report on our website (in German). Hope you like it and thanks for watching!
igamf.wordpress.com/..urke-trumpeter-1350/
19 August 2016, 19:29
Ingmar StöhrThank you James! I did not use any of the kits photo etch. It's all from the Tetra set linked in the Project here on scalemates. If really liked the PE, but the instructions are not always clear and are sometimes missing some numbers or placement info. But nothing you couldn't figure out.
19 August 2016, 21:20
Christian BruerHi Ingmar, congratulations, excellent work and finish 👍
Cheers, Christian
20 August 2016, 19:37
Bart Goesaertthat's a nice piece you've built here... very impressive build... a real masterpiece...
22 August 2016, 10:02
Ingmar StöhrDanke 🙂 Bin aber ganz froh, dass ich damit nur Modelle bauen muss und keine Herzen operieren 😉
25 August 2016, 16:16
Album info
The kit shows her in an early outfit. And I think I will aim for a time frame around 1990. There are a lot of hi res reference pictures on the internet but most of them are from 2000 onward (thanks to digital cameras).
The kit has some nice detail, but has some accuracy issues. I'm going to fix some, but since I'm no expert on those ships and high res pictures are scarce from the 90s, I'm sure I overlook something.
