March 1-4, 2007
I’m currently working on the Yankee Model Works (formally Blue Water Navy) 1/350 model of the USS GEARING. I’m building this (actually finishing) it for a friend. He dad served on the USS McKEAN in 1954. It was in the Gearing class. The top and bottom hull halves were already glued together and the seam was sanded smooth. He had painted the hull bottom red with a black boot top and the upper sides grey. The paint job while good was uneven. There were some surface imperfections so I sanded it down with 600 grit wet dry sandpaper. I shot the hull with some Tamiya fine white primer that I had laying around and finish sanded it and filled a few small divits.
Now I decided that I needed to add the propeller shafts – but I needed to protect the work – so I attached the two brass display pedestals that my friend had furnished. I proceeded to look at the white metal castings for the prop shafts. I soon found that I had one part missing and the rest looked pretty bad. I decided to do the shafts in brass tubing. The finished work looked much better. See pic:
I now was able to turn my attention to the topsides. There were a few resin parts that needed to be superglued to the superstructure area. With that finished I now felt that I should paint the hull. The only problem was that I was out of the Tamiya masking tape that I use. It’s on order – so I will have to put this aside till it arrives in the mail. I have also ordered the Etch Mate 3C by Mission Models. I had noticed that the photo etch for thjis model has some really small bits that need to be bent. The Etch Mate will enable me to do a much better job there.
March 5, 2007
The Etch Mate arrived and I have started building up some of the photo etch structures – the Etch Mate works great with the small bits that need to be folded. I have also molded the blast bags on the
5 inch turrets using Tamiya white putty. Still waiting on the masking tape.
March 6-8, 2007
Finished the torpedo mounts and the gun director with it’s radar screens. Still waiting on the tape. Got an e-mail that it was shipped on the 8th.
March 26, 2007
The tape finally arrived last week. I attached the photo etched props. I still need to attach the cones that are the aft part of each prop; I also attached and painted the two rudders. I then accidentally knocked them both off – they will have to be put on near the end of the build. Here is a pic with the hull, bottom, and black stripe painted – the various structures on the top and not glued yet:
Next came the photo etch railing. At present I have almost completed all of the upper deck railing along with other brass bits in the area. The photo etched railing is very nice and delicate. A lot of care needs to be taken when working with it – more than once I had to straighten a piece out that I had inadvertantly bent. I attached the photo etched parts with CA using a toothpick and followed that with a shot of accelerator.
April 2, 2007
All of the photo etch railings have been attached, and painted haze grey – same as the upper hull and superstructure. I have also panted all of the horizontal sufaces deck blue. Next I will be attaching the assembled and painted parts – turrets, smoke stacks, torpedo tubes etc. Here are some pics showing the present progress:
8/8/2011 I've found a lot of pics the the McKean which I'm posting below:
