USS Columbia in dry dock

Steven Van Dyck
With ABSD-1 the last component has arrived and construction can begin. It's quite a heavy box because of all the floaters.

Tom B.
This will be an interesting project 👍 A drydock surely presents an interesting way to display full-hull vessels!

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Tom. I started with the first step of the ABS-1. It comprises 120 plastic parts to clean up. I also discovered that there should be 20 Oerlikons on the dock that don't seem to have PE parts and of course there should be turned barrels. But I'll worry about that when I build the Columbia superstructure.

Steven Van Dyck
The piers for the dock are constructed. It's simple but repetitive, once you glued them you can dry-fit them on the deck and keep them there without any pressure. The decks don't fit as easily, I will have to pre-assemble them before painting.

bughunter
What a huge amount of plastic! ... and parts, PE and more. I hope you have as much fun as this project is big 👍

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Bughunter. Today I fixed the pontoons to a plank, but then I found out I can add another ship to the diorama with the Hawaiian Pilot, a type that can be seen on different pictures. I think it's rather 1/350. That means have to fix a strip to the plank and then just increase the showcase dimensions.

Steven Van Dyck
Hatches and light poles are added to each of the 20 walls. One remark is that you do not get one spare particle for even the smallest parts...

bughunter
There is a gap on the floor between the little "boats". Will this be covered?

Steven Van Dyck
This gap on the outside of the walls will be covered with PE walkways. What happened on the inside is not so clear, apparently only a plank here and there was laid across.

This weekend, I made a new base plate that was first 90x40 centimeters, but later I decreased the length to 85 centimeters. This was done because it was measured rather 89,5 and this could cause trouble with the glass showcase that will have to fit in it. So I will order it 85x40. I also had to redrill the holes in a new top plate to be able to rise the dio above the showcase edge. The elevation was made with PVC L-profiles. There will now be enough space for the ABSD, the freighter and some of the barges seen on different pictures, but these barges seem at least half the length of the pontoons. They will only fit alongside the ABSD like the freighter. Some smaller barges I ordered from L'Arsenal. i looked at printed designs but found these either lacking detail or being too short. So I will have to scratch them.

Steven Van Dyck
Some YRDH work boats are scratched form Navsource pictures (navsource.org/archives/14/3356.htm) . Also, a lot of PE had to be cut loose and cleaned up.

Steven Van Dyck
The boats are further detailed and the cabins on the walls are primered and added. There is little indication where to put them. The PE triangles for the catwalks were a chore to align with a ruler.

Lochsa River
Quite the modeling challenge!

bughunter
I'm not a ship builder, but I really like this project! Very nice PE _and_ scratch work on the boats 👍

Michael Kohl
Massive project. Will take quite some perseverance. I like to follow.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks for your appreciation, every step takes a few days now. The same for replacing all gun tubs with scratch metal, so the thickness would be to scale.

Treehugger
Photo 107, is this photo etch parts, or something you made yourself? (Thin AA pit)

Steven Van Dyck
Made that myself, it's just a 3x31mm metal strip coiled around an excel knife handle.

bughunter
You are really diligently 👍

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks. The Columbia (ex-Birmingham) hull is now assembled and provided with the propulsion shafts. A bit of putty did improve them.

Steven Van Dyck
The two 15-ton cranes and the cross bridges are a delight to build, because it all fits perfectly and no bending tools are needed to bend the large PE parts. I primered the crane cabins because of the many windows. Care should be taken not to press too hard on the PE frameworks, they can get crushed under pressure. A minus in the manual is that the position of some parts is not shown in detail. The stanchions of the cross bridge railing should be aligned with the frames, something that is hard to see in the manual.

Pietro De Angelis
Amazing work!

Dominik Weitzer
wow. thats incredible work. wow.

bughunter
All those huge PE parts looks so filigree! That will be a nice dio together with the ship 👍

Neuling
Just amazing!

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, I bought the glass showcase cover today. The railings on the pontoons were added and I made a start on the turrets for the Columbia. One thing I noticed is that the props in the kit are inferior to the Dragon Independence/Princeton ones. This is clear form the reference picture for Independence. The pitch in the Very Fire props is too steep.

Steven Van Dyck
The 6-inch and 5-inch turrets are finished and the conning tower front is replaced with PE to get rid of the elongated side windows. I think the replacement doors are a bit smallish, they differ 1mm in height.

Plastic bro
Absolutely gorgeous Job on the dry dock

Michael Kohl
Speedy progress. Very clean work on the PE parts.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks for the nice replies and likes. This update is about the Woban class tug boat. A very nice and cheap kit that will add some life to the dio. I did need to straighten the deck part by applying heat with a cooking pot. Now all kinds of PE appendages can be selected. I also got the L'Arsenal building materials and some railing for the smaller ships. One picture shows how you get to replace the cruiser 6 inch rangefinders that are apparently 50% underscale. I am glad I got the upgrade set, though the PE doors are underscale themselves and will not be used.

Plastic bro
Great job on the models can't wait to see the whole thing finished

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks for the enthusiasm! Yesterday there was a lot of walking around, all of the ABSD sections are now primered. I used Tamiya XF18 Medium Blue for this. I suppose modulating this will get me something like the original color, because even my modeling store doesn't have the Mig colors to compare.

Plastic bro
Don't feel bad where I live we don't have any hobbies shops ( brick and mortar) stores

Plastic bro
What color are you using for the light gray color

Steven Van Dyck
I am contemplating not following that paint scheme. I'm currently looking for pictures indicating that any ABSD had a deliberately applied light gray paint striping. I think Takom somehow fabricated that out of the rust and salt spotting that is applied to the temporary underwater parts. If you look at my project picture, you see two indications for this. At right, there seems to be the light grey paint, but the demarcation is wavy. At left, the top part is darker. If you look at the ship in the middle, the paint difference is much clearer and really sharp. Another thing is the battleship grey that is indicated for the deck. In the colored videos from ABSD there is no trace of grey, it's all ocre and sand colors, even on the tops of the walls.

Steven Van Dyck
The cruiser is now peppered with small PE particles and railing. The complicated part in this kit is that you get PE parts already in the kit, so for this you check the kit manual, but the upgrade has its own manual. And then I have to avoid some PE that does not feature on Columbia. And I have to avoid the parts where the wooden deck comes first.

Plastic bro
Great job on the cruiser can't wait to see the whole thing display

Pietro De Angelis
An apotheosis of photoetched parts!

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, more on the ABSD and cruiser today. I added Germen Grey to the Medium Blue to get a shadow color. I had to paint hunderds of horizontal lines freehand. This is easier now the dock parts are unassembled. The cruiser is getting its AA barbettes, but there is an error in the manual swapping the magazine holders between the barbettes. C2 is not needed on the deck but in the first midships barbette. I will be changing the base for this barbette, as shown in the comparative picture. Also I need the old radar type on the range finder and not the orange peel one from 1945.

Steven Van Dyck
In this update, some barbettes that were replaced with scratch, some windlasses and finally the two catapults with their seaplanes. Of course this is partly dry-fit and they sit on the deck because of that. I found the most remarkable plastic node on this fret, it looks like a Worms sprite.

bughunter
Top job 👍

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Bughunter. Now I made the ship's crane, I revised the first pair of quad Bofors barbettes into the shape specific for USS Columbia and I also prepaired the base for the diorama.

Plastic bro
The model is coming along beautiful

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Plastic Bro. I built the quad and double Bofors installations. When the aiming devices are added, I'll start the 20mm pieces.

Plastic bro
The model is coming together great

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Bro. Now I had to remove an oversize seam between compartiment 3 and 4, causing some damage to the walls but ultimately the dock got better because of it. I also found the necessary SC-2 antenna in a Pontos Essex upgrade I have in stash.

Pietro De Angelis
What a show, I can only imagine the end result!

Plastic bro
I can't wait for the end display 🙂🙂

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, guys. I had to temporarily break up the dock to eliminate the last seam in the middle. This was done by completely reversing the dock on two bars and sawing/cutting near the edge of dock 4 and 5. After returning upright both halves a strip was removed from the plate and then the docks did fit close together. The plastic frame was fixed with PVC glue. Then another 60 PE parts were removed from the fret and painstakingly cleaned up before assembly. I made a CS-2 radar antenna from the Essex Pontos kit, but I have to change the masts because at first they were not composed like in the kit.

Steven Van Dyck
20 Oerlikons are made for the ABSD. Also some PE was added to the superstructure.

Somehow my text size is decreased slightly...

Gary Victory
Steven, What a project. And so much progress in such a short time. Admire your work, just wish i had your touch with the photo etch. Keep up the great work.

Steven Van Dyck
Thank you Gary, you can now see the painting and the assembly of all these PE parts. Some serve to cover the gap between the dock sections and others to use as the catwalks. These were highlighted in light blue. Finally the catwalks can be finished.

Michael Kohl
Massive project and at the same time intricate details. This makes an appealing combination.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Michael. Today I added the Very Fire Oerlikons. I need 6 turned brass bases comparing to a Birmingham picture, but the manual states you only get 5. Luckily the shape of the gun shields is corresponding to the Columbia ABSD pictures. Last I made the Carley Floats from the upgrade. These will be fixed to another batch of PE girders.

Steven Van Dyck
Lots of ladders were added to the ABSD this weekend. Also the stern of Columbia was detailed, I enclosed a comparison picture of when Birmingham was bombed, so you see the ladder and the smoke tanks I added today.

Steven Van Dyck
The freighter now got some attention, all the railing has to go and the seams are running trough the windows, making a good fit more difficult to sand. I am now comparing to a picture of SS Lyon, but that has not served in the Pacific theatre. It's just a very clear picture.

Steven Van Dyck
The freighter deck is fixed to the hull and some tapering is removed from the cabin walls. The anchor chain was procured from some Princeton spare PE.

bughunter
Wonderful work on the details!

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, bughunter. Yesterday the ABSD deck was painted in a glossy rust color and the freighter got some portholes. Still more rust will come on the wall tops, but this will be harder to mask. Until now I did not need tape, only 3 pieces of shaped cardboard.

Steven Van Dyck
While the ABSD is masked properly, the freighter is getting some detailing. I decided to do one of the Bayfield class (not the lead ship, that was in the Meditteranean in 1944). But then there should be no goalpost mast, so it's replaced with two non-tapering kingposts.

Dominik Weitzer
since i wrote the first time, it is great to see, what you are doing. such a bunch of details even in every part you put on. great!

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Dominik. I did some detailing work on the freighter, adding some mast parts and PE inclined ladders from a generic Trumpeter set that didn't say it was for German ships. Then I had to find a way to paint the ABSD top without touching the lamp stands, these having been assembled and painted before the color difference became clear. Masking fluid was a bad idea, the mask doesn't come off without the paint. So I used removable tape cones that could be tilted to pain around the lamps. All in all it took 4 hours of continuous spraying, changing the tape and walking around to have al angles needed. And this is for only 50 % ready.

Steven Van Dyck
The rust is now ready and the ABSD can be varnished for the decals and some ladders.

Steven Van Dyck
A small pontoon was needed at one side of the ABSD, so I used some staples to give it structure. Then I proceeded to drill holes in 400 blocks for the ship. These are filled with copper thread to locate the blocks on the deck.

Pietro De Angelis
Impressive job!

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Pietro. Today I built the two L'Arsenal 5 inch guns on the freighter. I built the wrong shape of platform, so I altered this to look like a Bayfield class gun platform. I also used AK pipes to make 2 mast replacements. About 400 wood blocks should be shoved under the Columbia hull, but I want to pin down at least the 300 that will touch the hull. It's a lot of drilling, pinning and cutting from th sprue.

Steven Van Dyck
The blocks on the ABSD centerline seem to be composed of 3 units per assembly to be able to support the keel. This is not replicated in the kit. I had enough unused blocks to compose about 40 triple blocks. I also woked on the freighter forecastle and front weather deck. Barbettes are scratched to house the different armament types.

Steven Van Dyck
The smaller blocks are placed closer to the side. Two stainless steel pins are inserted and will hold the hull off the cruiser. The freighter needed a lower smoke stack and higher masts.

Steven Van Dyck
An extra two rows of blocks are added to the ABSD deck. Also, some Bayfield superstructure parts have to be built in in the Hawaiian Pilot kit. The ship was transformed to an ARA attack craft and this included an extra housing behind the original superstructure. Therefore the best reference is a contemporary model at Navsource: navsource.org/archives/10/03/03033a.htm

Michael Kohl
The amount if detail is still awsome.

bughunter
Still following this great build 👍
They made a model to test the conversion? Cool.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, guys. Today I scrached the davits out of brass H-profile and some sheet metal that is hand-cut and bent. I added a reference picture of the Bayfield ship DuPage. A, B and C are built now, D, E and F will be next.

Steven Van Dyck
The davits are installed after the superstructure is completed. This means some structures detailed earlier had to be removed. For the beams a smaller brass profile is used.

gorby
WOW! What an astounding project.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks Gorby. The davits are now detailed with two pulleys made from a smaller brass profile. The beam is mounted on two plastic parts. I made some changes to the bridge plating and to the added deck house. I won a bid on Ebay delivering me two sets of Voyager Carley floats. It's too late to use the Flyhawk 5 inch guns and directors, so I'll have to procure me another battleship in the future.

Steven Van Dyck
New additions to the freighter are the hoist booms made from small diameter brass tubes, a windscreen that was cut out of metal sheet, posts for the deck structure and a relocation of the anchors. Two extra kingposts were needed.

Steven Van Dyck
A Carley float kit is added to the project to complete the freighter. Also the cargo hatches are fixed with one opened up to the tween deck. The cargo booms are dry-fit and the anchors moved down. I used a 1.2mm brass tube to drill the portholes in the scratched parts, I just made some grooves in the tube tip to do the drilling. I also threw a clearcoat over the ABSD, that took me 5 hours for one layer.

gorby
Exceptional quality work Steven.
I love the dinosaur (photo 454) but not sure how it fits in with the dio. Jurassic dry dock? 😄

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks Gorby. The dino wanted to shine just like the ABSD.

Steven Van Dyck
i looked for some PE fret that already had a useful shape to scratch the boat supports near the cargo hatches. To make the holes in them, I glued them temporarily together and drllled with the Proxxon machine. After that and some polishing, these parts were useful.

Michael Kohl
Steady progress on this big project. Keep it up.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Michael. I made sure I can ceep it coming by buying a new set of ship models on eBay. But for now I made some roofs for the barges. I made a lot of use of staples to make details on the smaller ships.

Pepe
Faraonico trabajo!!!

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Pepe. Now I detailed the barges, built 3 ladders from staples and drilled holes in the Columbia hull for fixing maintenance planks and the cable to hang these from.

Steven Van Dyck
I could not make use of the L'Arsenal barges for this US Navy project, but I needed some YF barges. So I scratched these much like I made the YRDM's.

Thomas Bischoff
Amazing attention to details. The ships themselves would have kept me busy for years! Googled the history of these drydocks - pretty interesting.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Thomas. Now I built the shacks on the barges out of corrugated plastic plate.

Steven Van Dyck
Hull red is added to the cruiser and IJN grey as a primer to the barges. These got doors from staples and pieces of metal.

bughunter
The kits and you work are great, but I'm most impressed with your scratch work 👍

Tyson Tu
Agree with everyone - amazing scratchbuilds 😀 Great fun following along with your work!

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, today I did some painting on the Columbia hull and the deck of the boats. I also painted the props gold an then added a greenish shine to make them bronze.

Steven Van Dyck
The blue part of the MS22 is painted on. Also the main mast is scratched from an engraving of Columbia in Bremerton. The paravanes are finished and some wooden elements are painted in Light Earth. I still need to put the boot topping on the hull.

Steven Van Dyck
I did some massive hairspray weathering on the ABSD and now it's like on some of the old pictures.

gorby
Excellent progress Steven.

Steven Van Dyck
I repaired paint damage with Vallejo Granite Grey, then applied decals on a gloss varnish layer, but the water level indications on the walls are not provided. I then applied a rust enamel wash on every horizontal part and did some streaking on the deck edge.

bughunter
The weathering is great! I like the progress.

Gary Victory
Steven, it's a pleasure watching a true artist and engineer at work. Your attention to detail and your scratch building is just super cool. Loving your progress.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks for your nice comments, Bughunter and Gary! Today I brought back the keel blocks and repaired some damage to the small parts.

Steven Van Dyck
The freighter will be painted in Ms32/16D, a disruptive camo in light grey, ocean grey and black. So it will probably be USS Callaway as on the print in my picture. Reference is showing USS Lamar in the same camo showing a side view, but that ship arrived later in the campaign.

Tyson Tu
Ooh, nice masking around the support posts!
Is it a bad sign for a ship modeler to be impressed with deck masking? 😃

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Tyson, I did long enough over masking so today it went all off.

Steven Van Dyck
The L'Arsenal railing for the Callaway is now painted and assembled.

Steven Van Dyck
For the USS Callaway I needed two double Bofors, these were made from the excellent Master Models 6x double 40mm Bofors set. It coms with its own directors, which I think are to be placed where the 20mm directors on the maquette were. closer to the middle in the tubs.

Steven Van Dyck
Uss Columbia superstructure is now painted and the wood deck added. I always use extra glue for that to avoid the loosening of the tape underneath the deck. I did not yet glue the turrets and the two superstructure top parts, to be able to paint the missing boot topping. But I wanted to show the dry-fit in the ABSD with the other ships present.

Pietro De Angelis
WOW!

Guy Rump
That is a project and a half, great progress. 👍

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, guys, it will take some time to get all details amassed now to complete all ships before weathering can start. Some stuff is now even getting ready to be painted for the first time. Now the railing is added to the Columbia hull after it got its boot topping. This is burning through my Tamiya tape collection...

Steven Van Dyck
I built 20 extra Oerlikons and 2 double Bofors, with their directors. It's becoming quite a line-up.

Steven Van Dyck
Almost all AA-guns and the Carley floats are installed on the two largest ships. In the Cleveland upgrade there are not enough 20mm guns, so I will use 2 from the Master Models set.

Steven Van Dyck
Gloss varnish has been added to the two large ships. The "62" decal is modified to a "56" by flipping the 2. The freighter got some canvas colors.

Steven Van Dyck
Columbia's hull was now in for a heavy chipping round with the hairspray technique. I used Vallejo grey paint for the barnacles and then attacked the whole of the hull with a short brush and some water. The port bow showed a fine result but the starboard side was stickier so here larger parts peeled off. Even some of the base paint was chipped. This will be repaired with some steel colored paint. The parts were the crew is working on the scaffolding are made extra clean.

Steven Van Dyck
Now the Topol is finished I return to the ABSD. The freighter is rigged with PE washers as pulleys. The work barges got WEM 2-bar railing. I included an older picture of both planes from Columbia with some paint on them.

Steven Van Dyck
In this update the rest of the pulleys ar added to the Callaway, the stern lettering for Columbia is added (but now there is not enough for Callaway too!) and the Ion figures are placed on a stick to paint them. The pilot sprue is put away for another topic.

gorby
The quantity and quality of your modelling astounds me!
It would be good if your photos were a bit bigger though, so the details of your work are easier to see.

Dominik Weitzer
great progress. how many men left the dock? so small...

Steven Van Dyck
Stille enough people are left to have three cocktail sticks full of them. I also repainted Columbia and started to rig Callaway. The format of the pictures is dictated to my host site's restictions. I have the full format pictures but they are uncropped.

Steven Van Dyck
The rigging on Callaway is continued, I now use AK thread. Strangely this is already mostly depleted on their site, so who will make the next batch? I also stole a second radar from Hancock, because I still have 2 on the Essex set. Like that I can complete Callaway with the radar she has on the pictures.

Steven Van Dyck
Now, Columbia is also rigged. First, the lines for the scaffolding are made and then the antenna wires in the mast. I used reference from USS Denver for the signal flag lines. These were excruciating to make, the wires were hard to fix to the flag box area.

Pietro De Angelis
Impressive amount of detail work, congrats!

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Pietro. This update now shows the weathering of both Columbia and Callaway with different agents. I scratched callaway's missing rudder and also composed decals for it. Columbia needed its antiskid plates darkened, but I had to shape some pencil points to be able to reach all of these.

Steven Van Dyck
The small ships needed some very small identification marks on some hard to reach locations. The easiest way was to remove the paint and show the white plastic underneath. You can't tell it apart from painted on letters. Then, all kinds of weathering could be repeated on the small ships. I also took on the ABSD that was in store since the summer, to finish the details, like putting chrome on the crane rails. Then I noticed on pictures that the ABSD should really have railings around the walls, but the nearly 3m of railing is not included. I ordered 3 packs of Aber railing, that should fit the cast marks.

Steven Van Dyck
400 holes are drilled in the walls and railings are added. The Aber railings do not match the marks perfectly, but that's OK. They match the Takom railings and like that it's easier to drill the holes between the marks.

Jörg Schäfer
An absolutely fantastic project. I'm very impressed. 👌

Shar Dipree
Wow, great project und looks great so far. Following. 👍

Treehugger
Really nice seeing people build something like this and all. 🙂

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks for the nice comments. I found 2 antennas on the pictures of Columbia in ABSD and decided to scratch them. I guess it's for radio but tit's had to tell if there is some rigging on them. I had to scratch some very thin L-profiles and even these seem a bit overscale, but ti's better than nothing.

Steven Van Dyck
Columbia is now glued to the deck. This update shows some of the things that had to be added before this important phase. All needed to be coated matt first. The figures below the hull needed to be added, so did the ship's propellers and I also wanted to put the PVA glass in the windows without the ship's superstructure impeding. The crates got a wash and a drybrush creating some variance. I found out too late that Veryfire did not cast the keel completely straight, so this will show in the front 1/4 of the wood blocks not touching the keel. If this was for me not a reason to exclude the ship from this dio, other people should at least leave off 2 pontoons and keep 8. This is not visible on the Columbia in ABSD-1 pictures, but it is with some of the other light cruisers like Cleveland. When the ship was fixed, I started to place steel wire mooring lines, but these proved too stiff to wind around the chocks. I had to look for a softer material, it needed to be malleable but had to keep its shape. I found some softer brass wire for the rest of the lines.

gorby
The detail is mind boggling! I think this is the most fascinating projects on Scalemates at the moment.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks for the nice words, Gorby. This week I added the rest of the mooring lines and now I started to add the rolled ends of these lines. I went for a better wire and found 0.3mm soft brass, that can be knotted around the chocks without messing up the ABSD railing. Some chaps suddenly started to scrape the stern.

Steven Van Dyck
Pre-painted rope coils for the ship deck are added. Now I ordered 3 sets of Mastertools chain, because too little is included in the set. To provide 32 anchors like the real docks in the pacific, one meter and a half is needed.

Rui
This is absolutely brilliant work. 🏆
I didn't really get a good sense of the scale until I saw a couple of pictures where an hand or tool or both are in the frame. Gives one a real understanding of how small the details are like the workers painting the hull. I would need a microscope to work at that level 🔬

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Rui. I repainted the cranes grey and also added the windows with PVA after some matt coat.

Steven Van Dyck
40 pieces of Type B Mastertools 40mm chain are added to the dock. These are only glued to the deck edge and the base. This was the last obstacle to add the rest of the water paste. The Kingfishers got their interior painted green and the canopies added, but one set of roundel decals for the tail is lacking. I can't find this size anywhere so this might have to be painted on.

Steven Van Dyck
The water paste is added to the wooden base plate in 2 consecutive layers. The product starts as a bright blue but then turns a lot darker. The second layer was applied in a wind-swept design. The Higgins boats were full hull and needed a perforation in the base. Only a few locations still need extra product, so I consider it a success. The bay water was probably more ultramarine colored but that all depends on how much sunlight there is. I bought decal paper to replicate the missing roundel on the planes, this will be a first for me.

Shar Dipree
Looks gigantic. and the tons of details, impressive. 👍

gorby
Very impressed with the water effect...and the dio as a whole so far.

Dietmar Bogatzki
Agree with all above 👍

Rui S
Great paint job, not to speak about all the other impressive work 👍

Dominik Weitzer
i'm speechless. thats outstanding work.

Jv
Impressive

David Taylor
Well done Steven.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks for the nice comments. All the figures have been set, the planes needed a small decal so I printed this.

NLAWScametovisit
this is so cool!

Steven Van Dyck
The diorama is finally ready for the contest of IPMS Antwerp tomorrow. Some objects in wood have been scratched from the Cleveland deck set and I reversed the planes. An extra matt coat for all the figures was done to hide the glue marks. I'll try to provide a review in the topic comment.

gorby
WOW! That is one of the most spectacular builds I have ever seen on Scalemates...or anywhere else come to think of it. Remarkable result.

Matti Thomaes
Super result, looking forward to seeing this wonderfull project in real life,

Pietro De Angelis
Absolute masterpiece!

Jörg Schäfer
Fantastic.

Shar Dipree
Phenomenal. 👍👍👍👍👍

Roland Sachsenhofer
Simply marvellous - a masterpiece!

Neuling
I agree with everyone above. 👍👍👍

Thomas Bischoff
I have nothing to add - the result makes you speechless. A stunner for any exhibition! Hope to see it once in real

Rui S
Excellent, I agree with Gorby 👍 Amazing result. Congratulations.

Michael Kohl
Quite a few of those massive project jump as tigers and end as rags. Not this one. Impressive perseverance. Five stars alone for that. But what flabbergasts me most is the amount of detail despite the scope of the project. You can zoom in at any point from any perspective and marvel at the modelling resolution. Top notch.
Wish you save travels to the exhibition and a lot of encouraging feedbacks there.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks for all your nice comments and likes, they are a great incentive. The ABSD achieved Best of Contest and Best Ship at IPMS Antwerp, plus a gold medal. Some material benefits were also included, like € 200 in prize money and the Revell Premium Edition LPD21 for best ship.

USS New York (LPD-21) (Revell 05118, 1:350)

gorby
Well deserved. Congratulations.

Neuling
Well deserved indeed. Congrats! 🙂

Jörg Schäfer
Congratulations.

Guy Rump
Superb modelling, congrats! 👍

J35J
Masterpiece! Amazing work👍🏻

Gary Victory
Wonderful work Steven, a real labour of love and detail on your build. Truly awesome work Sir.