Today I wanted to detail the lower level of the bridge. I had already sanded off all the detail, some of which was over-scale, and I was ready to try my hand at adding naval PE. In my ignorance, I assumed that adding PE to a ship would be the same process as adding PE to a plane. Boy, was I wrong. There are a series of vertical ladders, three on each side of the structure, that I decided to add first. After a fun-filled hour, I had not succeeded in getting any of the ladders to attach themselves to the structure. I was getting dangerously close to throwing things, so I took a break to find some Youtube videos that might be helpful. The first thing I learned was that you need some special tools to have a fighting chance. The first is a length of wire fitted into the end of an old Exacto knife handle. This becomes your magic applier for superglue. The next thing I learned is that many PE parts for a ship won't attach using the methods I use for planes. This is especially true of the doors. The doors are made up of three connected sections that fold together to make the door. You have the front of the door that you fold and glue to the back of the door, creating a door with both an inside and outside. Cool. This is, in turn, connected to a very fragile open frame. If you want the door to be open, you simply glue the frame to the model and the door will be open. If you want it closed, then you glue the frame to the door and then glue the whole thing to the model. Simple, right? Nope. The frame forms an open area that requires thick superglue to attach. If you use thin superglue, like I did, the door will promptly pop off the model. What the video recommended was to put a drop of thick superglue where you want the door, then add the door. The thick superglue will make contact with the door, which doesn't sit directly on the model, and hold it in place. Then you take your magic wire glue applicator and run a bead of thin superglue around the frame, and the door is stuck. Anyway, you get the idea. It took all afternoon to add the ladders, doors, and handrails to this one small part of the model. Hopefully the rest will go faster.
I also wanted to figure out the camouflage for this ship. I went to Navsource online and looked at the photos of every APD converted from destroyer escorts (there weren't that many). About half of the ships had post-war photos in light gray paint, so I ignored those. Although these ships wore many of the various camo schemes the Navy used in WW2, it appeared that most of them wore one of two camo schemes: an all-Navy Blue scheme or a green splinter scheme. The green scheme is very complicated, so I took a vote and the Blue scheme won. In this scheme, the vertical parts of the ship are one dark blue color and the horizontal parts are another, darker blue. I hope I can prepaint some of the subassemblies before they are added to the ship.
Cheers, everyone.
9 attached images. Click to enlarge.
