USS Kitty Hawk CV-63 Trumpy 1/350

[themongoose]

Oct 3, 2023 19:07:25 GMT -5 buddho said:

A tremendous amount of work here, and the results are outstanding. My brother was stationed on the Kitty Hawk..he was an ET on the Hawkeyes.

ET = electrical tech?

[buddho]

Oct 3, 2023 20:20:03 GMT -5 themongoose said:

Oct 3, 2023 19:07:25 GMT -5 buddho said:

A tremendous amount of work here, and the results are outstanding. My brother was stationed on the Kitty Hawk..he was an ET on the Hawkeyes.

ET = electrical tech?

Yes 🤓

[Medicman71]

Man this is going to be an awesome build. Can't wait to see more.

[themongoose]

Time to get back to work! All my mandatory builds are done and i can focus on the fun stuff now. I’m going to turn this thread into the sea base wip and use Perry’s Large and in charge Big Stuff Group Build for the carrier itself. To a degree that will make this more manageable…
So today i did some boring priming of tow motors and pallets and crates. The real accomplishment was finishing up the barges. These are just pink foam pieces with a sheet of plastic over them. I made the flat round cleets for the lines, bought the d-rings and twin bollards, and made the hatches from pe and some styrene bar stock. Now all they need is the life preservers to go on those bare stands i made.





Used a tried and true technique for the deck, i stippled mr surfacer 500 on it and then painted it black to give that antislip look to it. Long weekend ahead so I should get lots more done.

[406 Silverado]

Good to see you back on this one Chris!! Your effects on that decking are coming out very well man. Looking forward to watching the magic unfold with this build bud.

[themongoose]

Midday update, you can’t have a super carrier come in the dark without a bunch of Porta potty‘s 😂🤣🍻

[armornutii]

  Dang Chris, not sure what Navy you sailed with but they never gave us porta potties pierside. In fact the only time we had TP was when we were underway and cleaning or restocking the head was the only thing to do.

[themongoose]

Dec 29, 2023 15:10:11 GMT -5 armornutii said:

  Dang Chris, not sure what Navy you sailed with but they never gave us porta potties pierside. In fact the only time we had TP was when we were underway and cleaning or restocking the head was the only thing to do.

Must be tons of perks on Guam, look at all the blue!

[armornutii]

Dec 29, 2023 15:50:46 GMT -5 themongoose said:

Dec 29, 2023 15:10:11 GMT -5 armornutii said:

  Dang Chris, not sure what Navy you sailed with but they never gave us porta potties pierside. In fact the only time we had TP was when we were underway and cleaning or restocking the head was the only thing to do.

Must be tons of perks on Guam, look at all the blue!

   Well alrighty then LOL, Guess I went to the wrong harbors LOL.

[themongoose]

I’ve got the dock “almost done”…almost in that i’m still not sure if i have it light colored enough. I got away from the grey concrete and went more tan. Then lightened it up with white Flory wash. I like the green algae around the sides. Need some reds and rust colors plus some black based on pics I see. Planning to work on that tomorrow. For now i locked it down with AK matt varnish.









While things were drying i worked on the fork trucks. These big dual front wheel ones from LeArsenal are beautiful. 3D printed, there is r shift lever inside that i can’t hardly get a picture of it’s so fine. A negative to this is that all the handles for the pallet jacks they print have broken 😞 .. before i even got them separated even!

[themongoose]

Halfway thru the holiday weekend and I’m about 3/4 done with the dock. Definitely a model in and of its own here. So this is what it looks like just laid out roughly, nothing is glued down yet.










I’m working on chain link fence today. Also, i think it needs some tire tracks all round, thoughts guys?

[armornutii]

   Well used piers often had wear marks, ie tire tracks, stains, chips, watermarks, just part of the enviroment. Heavy equipment lays down rubber like NASCARS at Talladega, with heavy loads anytime they turn rubber is scrubbed off and ground into the concrete. This is very cool Chris, thanks for sharing your amazing work.

[themongoose]

I’ve been struggling with how to do this chain link fence for a week now. Watched a bunch of youtube videos from tabletop war-gamers 🤓
So, i was looking at this 60mesh sieve i bought a few years ago to do screens on the Enterprise aircraft carrier and thought, hey that may work in this scale. Let me know what you think 🤔

[kyledehart5]

This is all very cool! I think your chain link looks like scale chain link.

[themongoose]

Dec 31, 2023 10:32:08 GMT -5 armornutii said:

   Well used piers often had wear marks, ie tire tracks, stains, chips, watermarks, just part of the enviroment. Heavy equipment lays down rubber like NASCARS at Talladega, with heavy loads anytime they turn rubber is scrubbed off and ground into the concrete. This is very cool Chris, thanks for sharing your amazing work.

Oui, working on that! lol here’s where it’s at so far…

[handiabled]

Agreed the chain link looks the part great! The dock details are coming along fantastic

[themongoose]

A very productive holiday weekend was had here! The dock is all set now. I pulled individual strands off the sieve and coiled them around a nail to make the razor wire for the back fence, made a couple electrical boxes, created the potable and fire water supplies, and maybe a natural gas supply (not sure what the yellow one is on the dock as it wasn’t marked in the 1 close up pic i have). Then lastly i made up the gangplanks for the mooring pilings. I just sat those on for effect since they will be one of the last things added after i glue the dock in place, which won’t be till the ship is complete so it’s out of the way.

[armornutii]

Jan 1, 2024 21:05:09 GMT -5 themongoose said:

A very productive holiday weekend was had here! The dock is all set now. I pulled individual strands off the sieve and coiled them around a nail to make the razor wire for the back fence, made a couple electrical boxes, created the potable and fire water supplies, and maybe a natural gas supply (not sure what the yellow one is on the dock as it wasn’t marked in the 1 close up pic i have). Then lastly i made up the gangplanks for the mooring pilings. I just sat those on for effect since they will be one of the last things added after i glue the dock in place, which won’t be till the ship is complete so it’s out of the way.

   Yellow bottle on the dock is a fire extinguisher, HALON I think is yellow. If it is a cart, towed it could be a nitrogen cart. LOX are usually green. So long way around I think you are looking at a fire extinguisher.

[M1Carbine]

Mongoose - Wow nd WOW! bookmarked!

-Bob

[themongoose]

Thanks guys! Glad to have you along Bob 👍
Perry i bet you’re onto something. I’ll start with that as a google search and see what i come up with.

Tonight i’m setting up the 1st layer of waves. I’ve been practicing an improvised technique for this. With the base being so large a typical paint brush no longer works for anything realistic it seems…plus it was going to take frik’n forever!
I started with the foam brush used for applying wood stain. Lay it flat on the surface and pull up to create the wave pattern. Pull up slow and you get large wavelets, pull up slow and you get little ones that look closer to calmer water. The affect can be magnified by adding more or less acrylic gel medium. For the wake from the ship and the tugs i added extra gel medium and pulled up slowly. I also used the side of the brush to know some dollops off to be more sporadic waves that broke off the wakes.



Now that still seemed to show some patterns reflecive of the brush length. And i wanted some round areas to the side of the tugs like i saw in several pictures. I tried with the brush but it just didn’t look right. Fortunately this idea hot me while it was still wet, i dampened a ball of sea sponge and gently tamped all over the base. This i think looks pretty good 👍








This has to dry for a day. Then i can apply the toilet paper and white glue to the wavetops and create some patterns in the waves around the tugs. Then if needed some more gel medium can be added. Last will be a final coat of gloss varnish but that will wait till the ship is in place and the edges are closed up.
I’m pretty excited about how this looks! It’ll all be clear by tomorrow but the color now gives a solid idea of the pattern and how it will looked painted up and wave crests added.

[themongoose]

Here it is 95+% dry

[deafpanzer]

Love those little fork lifters in action!!!

[themongoose]

With travel and taking our daughter back to school i’ve had a slow modeling week. This week i finished up the layout and placed the barges in the water. What ended up taking all week was figuring out how to make the oval boat “fenders”.
After a couple failed ideas i landed on some beads that i could modify.



Then I used plastic wood putty to fill the gap. The toothpick has a purpose btw, these fenders have a rod thru them that the ropes loop thru so i’m planning to cut off the toothpick to make the rod end.




Then sand with a dremel 1st, 400 grit sanding stick, then 800 grit finish. The 2 lines ended up looking like they belonged there under primer compared to the mold lines on the real thing.




And here it is all put together!

[tcoat]

Fenders from beads!

[kyledehart5]

Somehow I missed that wave update. That is awesome!!! And the fender beads too!! What an amazing idea. You’re doing great on this. Can’t wait to see the ship fill this thing out. Going to be an awesome scene.

[handiabled]

Now that's thinking outside of the box for a wonderful result! I usually dig around the "junk drawer" for things with the correct shape of what I am looking for.

[deafpanzer]

Lovely work! It keeps looking better and better every time you post an update!

[themongoose]

Jan 15, 2024 7:29:45 GMT -5 tcoat said:

Fenders from beads!



I have got to learn how to post a gif like this. They are so much more effective than words sometimes! So funny 

[Green KreationZ]

The bead idea is ingenius. Hats off to you!

[themongoose]

Jan 15, 2024 22:26:26 GMT -5 Green KreationZ said:

The bead idea is ingenius. Hats off to you!

We can all thank Hobby Lobby! 😂 i spent about 30 minutes walking around and looking for inspiration. I actually bought a few other oval shaped wood beads and they ended up too big. On the 2nd trip upon returning those i ended up finding these and deciding i could pair them up. Sometimes it’s crazy the effort you end up with for something that’s a small part of a larger diorama 🤔