Thanks George (@gblair), Tom (@tcinla), and John (@johnb) for the responses.

George, it mainly comes down to cost. I've spent far too much this year on models and supplies and I need to be more sparing in my choices for purchases. I reasoned I could do the 20mm weapons with some frustration as long as I took my time. I did however also purchase the quad gun mounts as the PE and kit parts are really not up to the task.

They also have 5" x 1.1 single mounts in 3D, but the detail set has this built up from a combination of resin and PE and it looks pretty good. So I will give that a go first.

Tom, I went looking for the Gorilla Glue you mentioned but couldn't find it. There was Gator's Grip Acrylic for PE, is this what you meant? If so, it is probably similar to Ammo Ultra glue which I also use for PE. Do you happen to know if it is thin as there are some applications where thin is needed?

John, yes, I switch back and forth between the ship , the Twin Mustang, and so far to a lesser extent, the foil covered Thunderbolt. I have been after myself to spend more time on that P-47 .

I've seen the Gorilla Glue at Home Depot / Lowe's that you mentioned George (@gblair). My understanding was that glue expands when exposed to water vapor and would not be usable for PE. Perhaps there is another product from the same manufacturer that I am unaware of. I'd be happy to check it out.

I did purchase some Gator's Glue (not Gator Glue) from Michigan Toy. It's an acrylic glue and they have regular and thin blends and it is designed for PE. We'll see after it arrives. It's probably similar to the Ammo Ultra Glue (which is far too thick for many applications).

I'm still waiting on the Gator's glue to be delivered, but I replaced my CA glues with newer bottles and that has helped some. After several days of intermediate work, I have some more work done on the Hangar structure. When looking at this work with my normal vision, everything looks fine. Even when viewing with my head magnifiers, everything looks fine. But boy oh boy, when I take close ups with the camera, all the little errors pop out. Maybe there is a blessing in getting older so that you can look at your completed work and still feel like you accomplished something worthwhile! 🙂

One thing I am glad I did, was not installing the main deck edge railings. There were several times when I had to rest my hand on the deck edge when installing these guns and if the railings had been there, well, they would have been damaged.

I've received the smaller whaleboats, but they still need to be cleaned up and painted. I also ordered quad gun mounts for the aft deck and the forward superstructure, but those haven't been delivered yet.

Definitely dxcellent job so far, my friend @clipper!

Great work done, Carl @clipper
It is because you tell us this is your first ship build, but it does however look like you have been building several of them already.

@clipper, to me you're much more than a middle of the road modeler, Carl.
The way your models look and how you are trying new techniques, taking this ship as an example, makes you definitely a more than average modeler. For sure I'm learning a lot from your builds. Thanks for that.

It took me several days dividing my time between modeling four different projects, working on my real boat, doing chores, and dealing with other things, but I got the main gun turrets built up and two of them installed. The third will be installed later once I build up the main super structure.

I had a bit of a problem with one of them when painting. For some reason, the clear coat cracked and it looks bad, so I am going to have to try to clean them up with destroying the PE parts.

Building the gun turrets required first building 15 life rafts (5 per turret) from PE and resin detail bits from the Flyhawk set. Although they look a lot better than the kit parts, I wish they were 3D printed as they would have looked better. These parts required having a PE mesh CA glued to the bottom of the resin raft ring and then glue a set of PE ropes on the topside. The mesh is the same size as the inside of the rings which meant that they very easily fell through when trying to place them into place to glue. It took me about an hour to build these up.

The turrets were initially assembled using the kit plastic barrels so I could make sure the barrel bags were mounted straight. Then I removed the barrels and glued on the brass barrels from the detail set. These look a whole lot better.

Life rafts were added, then the assemblies painted and two of them installed.

Next up is the smoke stack deck which includes two smoke stacks and 6 single mount cannon assemblies. These assemblies have to be assembled from multiple PE, resin, and turned brass parts. Fun stuff! 🙂