Posted by Mike Kozlowski (via Matty) on February 6, 2010, 17:42:02
-- Originally Posted January, 2008 --
Mike is submitting a multi-part (because too large for one post) article on his USS Boston build from the Revell 1/480 kit; Mike's installments, your comments/reponses - as well as his - all of which are most welcome, will be posted as "replies", below.
Just a couple of quick notes regarding the 8" turret update:
*There is only ONE FCS director hood on each turret, portside. I had two on mine - assumed there to be two, and I've been retired long enough to have forgotten what assuming does to one. In addition, the shot I was using to determine its position was a little misleading (i.e.; didn't have my glasses on) and I had mine positioned a little low vis-a-vis the real thing. The hood should be almost exactly halfway up the turret side.
*The Elmer's Glue weather covers will require repeated applications before they've built up enough material to accurately portray them. The Elmer's tends to shrink pretty seriously as it sets, though other builders may have other materials that don't. I may have given the impression that it was an "apply once and forget it" thing, and my apologies there. Also, if you use this method, it's likely you'll lose any space between the barrels - there should be ladders there, but even without the weather covers in place, there's not much room for the PE ladders.
"Here's the latest pics of the work on my Revell Boston:
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I decided to get the main battery turrets done and out of the way, and they came out quite nicely. The pics are of the #2 turret alongside a turret from the Revell Baltimore.
The work to get the turrets upgraded is pretty straightforward, but takes time. First, the cutting. Remove the following:
*The alleged 'floater net baskets' on the turret bustle. *The 'hoods' over the gun barrel apertures *The FCS director hoods on either side of the turret *The ladders on the turret sides
You'll also need to sand the 'cans' on the forward turret roof down just a touch. I then put a piece of thin strip styrene on the inside wall of the turret bustle, filling in the remaining openings with putty.
A bit of sprue stretching will be required now to provide the new FCS director hoods and the shell handling gear on the turret roof. Use the navsource.org pics as your guide here.
The new net basket was easy but takes patience and a bit of skill:
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Take your GMM Revell ship PE fret (absolutely necessary for any of the Revell warhorses) and measure out one 3-stanchion length of 3-rail railing. BEFORE YOU CUT IT....go out halfway to the next stanchion on either end, THEN cut. Take the partial rails and bend them 90 degrees upwards. Set that aside and then cut one more 3-stanchion section. Take the first piece and glue it to the outside edge of the second piece, with the bent sections facing towards the turret bustle face...then simply glue to whole thing to the turret bustle. It's elegant and it works. If the spirit so moves you, make a second one for #1 turret.
Now take care of the weather covers on the turret apertures. I used the tried and true Elmer's Glue method, but be advised this will not leave a lot of room if any between the weather covers.
Finally, the hardest single thing to make - the antenna atop the turret roof. I decided that just to see if I could do it, I'd make it from parts I had on hand...and it came out pretty well. It may be a bit overscale, but not too much so. Use the navsource.org pics to determine your best choices for location, height, and assembly. Note though that it LOOKS (remember that I am but a Wingwiper of Very Little Brain who needs glasses) that there may have been two different antenna designs on #2 turret, so make your own call there.
And that's it in a nutshell - any questions, comments or thoughts, feel free to throw them in this direction!! Pics of #1 will be on their way in a day or so, it needed a realignment on the gun barrels."
"Well, it’s time to actually start cutting plastic. Let us bow three times in the direction of Venice Beach, California, and begin….
WARNING Considering the age of the kit and the technology of the time, a perfectly acceptable kit of Boston can be built right out of the box, probably in a weekend or less. However, to build an accurate model, you’re going to have to do a lot of surgery, and some of it is going to require careful planning and measurement.
This work will also involve cutting, sanding, and otherwise reshaping the hull on a limited production kit that probably cost you about $35.00 of your carefully hoarded lunch money. I will also be using parts borrowed from two other hard-to-find kits (the Revell Long Beach and Monovell Chicago, so be prepared to start locating them as well, although they are not absolutely necessary to the completion of the model. Both are readily available on Ebay, but shop carefully), as well as aftermarket parts from BuStein – I mean, Matt Stein Models.
Read this ENTIRE ARTICLE FIRST before you do ANYTHING, make sure you have lots of good reference pics (navsource.org has been my go-to for this entire project), plan ahead, and remember ALWAYS – measure twice, cut once.
Your mileage may vary.
1. Hit the Deck
Get the deck into place first. This is to give the hull a bit more strength for some of the work we’re going to do later. However, before getting the deck in, lay down some filler along the inside of the stem. This is a very necessary precaution. Put down a bead of filler approximately 1/8" wide X 1/8" deep along the inside of the stem from approximately the waterline up to a point just below where the deck will fit into place. Depending on your filler, you’ll need to set aside the hull for a bit to let it set properly. Once it’s set and dry, take the deck and trim off the four (boarding stair landings), and all the molded-on rails. The rails ain’t easy, especially once you get past the #2 turret – there isn’t a lot of room for even a #11 blade, and taking a razor saw to them presents it’s own unique set of hazards.
At this point, you may want to install some extra support for the deck along the inside of the hull. There are only a few ridges for the deck to rest on, and as I discovered it’s not very strong. Make your own call on this one, and then after taking whatever measures you see fit, install the deck. You will notice that the deck fit is…well, not great. Start giving some thought now as to how you’re going to fill in those seams, especially as you have to try and preserve the deck detail. For the fantail we can use plain old filler there, but along the sides and forward it’s going to be trickier. At this point, I’m planning on using thinned Elmer’s glue – it will fill the gaps, it’s sandable, and it can be cleaned up with water if you have a whoopsie. Let it sit for about 24 hours for your adhesive of choice to cure, and then we’re going to start on the serious work.
2. The Nosejob
As mentioned in part 1, the bow on the Revell kit has some problems. Fortunately, it’s not beyond fixing for any fairly experienced modeler with reasonable skills. This is not a beyond-hope contour problem such as that found on the big 1/350 Trumpeter Hornet, simply a matter of removing some material while keeping a constant angle on the stem. Remember the pics of the Boston hull next to the Monovell Chicago?
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A Head-On Look At Things. Notice how the two hulls have almost identical bows when viewed head on. (Hands courtesy of Craig A. Buffkin, callsign Cab, age 7.)
The way the bow and (side plating) curves outward is acceptable on the Boston hull, so fortunately we won’t have to do any work there. Where we run into a problem is when we look at them from the side:
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Okay, we got some work to do…
Here’s what you do:
1. Take a Sharpie and, starting from the waterline on the Boston hull, go up approximately (1/5") and then go back from there approximately 1/32" on both sides, then back down to the waterline. This is the total area you’ll have to remove. Using sandpaper – NOT a Dremel or other power tool – carefully remove this material, making sure to keep a constant and fairly sharp edge on the new stem as you sand it aft.
2. CAREFULLY working from side to side and from top to bottom, fair the part of the stem above the part you just sanded downwards so that it angles down into the new lower stem. This is the tough part, as you’re going to be taking somewhat more material off the lower end but you must still maintain a correct angle. Take a look – actually, take a LOT of looks – at the photos below to keep an idea of what it is you’re supposed to be working towards, and make sure that you have the navsource.org pics available – in my case, I just set up the laptop right next to my work area. Keep a constant eye on the (side plating), as it is very easy to sand it out of shape close to the stem. Now – remember the filler I had you put in? Here’s where it comes in handy. There isn’t quite enough material in the bow to get this done properly, and you will almost certainly go through the stem about halfway up if you’re doing this right. Fortunately, the filler gives you that little extra margin to get things done. When you’re finished, it should look like this:
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That’s more like it.
1. Once you’re done the stem, there’s just a bit more work to do forward, though not quite as tricky as what you’ve just accomplished.
The bulwarks need to have a bit more curve to them where they come down to the level of the deck, so with a bit of sandpaper take some of the angle out of them. The navsource.org pics – especially the one of Boston at Guantanamo Bay 10/1/67 – are invaluable here. Once you’ve got the curve right, take a look at the hull from the side – you’ll notice that the tops of the bulwarks angle slightly upwards going aft instead of running parallel to the main deck level. Carefully sanding fore–to-aft, get them so that they are parallel to the main deck. The bow will now look much closer to the graceful lines of the Gitmo pic (shown in Part I).
There’s still a bit more surgery we have to do, though none of it is as detailed as the bow work. First, there are two small holes for hawsers that need to be drilled through at the top of the stem. That’s followed by four vents on either side of the hull at the waterline (See the navsource.org pic library on Boston for location), and finally the garbage chute in the transom. The garbage chute is something that usually doesn’t end up on most models, but it’s a distinctive feature on the Boston’s transom. I used a small engraving cutter in my Dremel for each of these tasks. The last thing you need to do is fill in the openings for the four deck extensions that you took off back in the first step.
3. Going Bottomless
Sadly, IMHO there is nothing that can be done with the Boston hull beneath the waterline – it bears only a vague resemblance to the real thing, and Matt’s hull prostheses are still in R&D. The only real option, especially if you’re looking for a contest entry, is to take off the hull at the waterline. I recommend the following procedure:
1. Mask off the hull above the waterline with blue painters’ tape. This tape is tough, sticky without leaving residue, and it gives you a bright, clear line to cut against. It also has the benefit of providing a bit of extra strength along the waterline to prevent any scratches or cracks as you cut.
2. Once you’ve masked it off, take your Dremel with a small, THIN cutoff disk attached running at low speed, and carefully remove the lower hull. When that is finished, remove the tape from the upper hull and hand sand any remaining material up to the waterline. When this is all done, your baby should look similar to this:
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That’s what I’m talkin’ about.
At this point, I recommend that you set Boston aside for a bit, enjoy an adult beverage of your choice, and put on the ‘Victory At Sea’ soundtrack for further motivation...
"Yes, it’s IMHO – but I think that the most elegant, purposeful, and deadly looking warships the modern USN ever commissioned were its 1950’s missile cruisers. In the space of just a few years, the USN put to sea with the Boston class (Boston, Canberra), the Galveston class (Galveston, Little Rock, Oklahoma City), the Providence class (Providence, Springfield, Topeka), the Long Beach, and started on the Chicagos (Chicago, Albany, Columbus). These ships, mostly based on WWII CG and CA hulls (Long Beach was the only new build) were beautifully designed and have a unique appeal all their own to the modern ship modeler.
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The Lady In Question – USS Boston CAG-1 (Photo courtesy United States Navy)
The problem is that the model companies have never really agreed. Boston and the Galveston/Providence classes were on the shelves quickly, as was Long Beach (Chicago, probably Monogram’s loveliest ship kit, came out at the very end of the Box Scale era, but more than a decade after the ship entered service), but the kits have been in production only intermittently since then, and with the exception of some beautiful – but expensive – resin kits, not genuinely available for years. The one everybody wanted was the old Boston, which was available through the early 70s but had disappeared since then. Unlike the Providence (or Galveston, depending on the box), it was pretty accurate though it brought a lot of pieces over from Revell’s Baltimore class CA kits. It even had a marginally accurate hull, at least above the waterline. And since it was box scale, it worked out to 1/480 scale – big enough to have fun with, not so big that it would take over the house. Well, our prayers were answered in the spring of 2007 when Revell of Germany released the Boston as part of a 3-ship set. Mine showed up within days of the release, and I decided that I was going to make this beast the best I possibly could. What follows is how I did it.
First things first: open the doggone box. You get three kits in there, two of which are actually worth building: Boston and the seaplane tender Currituck. Well, we know the Boston is staying, and I found a good home for Currituck – which, with some PE and TLC, can become a unique and outstanding kit on its own, especially with the well-scaled Martin PBM that comes with it. However, the third kit is the awesomely bad Revell USS Nautilus (SSN-571). You do get decals (decent quality but lousy graphics) and the classic Revell flag sheet – which is very well printed, by the way.
What do you get? Well, the Boston is molded in gray plastic, and the moldings are very crisp with almost no flash. This is the kit I remember from the old days, flaws and all. I suspect the molds may have been cleaned up considerably, because every other pop I’ve ever seen of the Boston had enough flash to build a couple of escort ships. I’m going to take a brief but important detour for a moment to take a look at the Boston, the kit it came from (Revell’s long-lived Baltimore class CA), and what was probably the best Baltimore hull ever molded, Monogram’s Chicago from the early 70s.
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Cruisers Of the Heavy Kind: Boston(top), Baltimore(middle), Chicago(bottom)
Without question, Revell started with a set of Baltimore molds, but took it from there. The foc’sle is changed, as is most notably the stern – the Pittsburgh (for such is the kit I have), as well as the Helena and Los Angeles (the other Revell releases of the kit) had a rounded transom – but Boston had a square transom, and this is accurately reproduced here.
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Fantails – Boston(left) and Baltimore(right)
The two kits scale out to about 1/480 using a LOA of 673’5". I suspect they may be just a touch narrow in the beam, but it’s hard to be sure with the measuring gear I’ve got here at the Kozlowski Labs. Let’s look, though, at the Monogram Chicago, with it’s beautifully molded hull:
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Beantown vs. Chitown: Boston(top) and Chicago(bottom)
One can see why the Chicago hull is so well regarded – note the sharp plating and armor belt lines. The problem here is that the Chicago comes in at 1/500…just about an inch too short to be used with the Revell Boston/Baltimore deck, and with the rounded transom to boot. The Chicago hull also has a much more pronounced ‘knuckle’ on the foc’sle, which is absolutely correct. Note also that the Chicago has the correct sheer running aft from the foc’sle, whereas the Boston does not. Finally, the sides of the foc’sle should have some sheer in it as well – but clearly doesn’t. The weapons are…well, a decidedly mixed bag.
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The Main Battery – the 8" turrets from the Boston kit.
The turret you see above has already started the mods necessary to turn it into an accurate replica. As it comes off the tree, it’s got three huge square bumps on the aft face, which bear no resemblance whatsoever to these:
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The real turrets will please stand up: Boston in overhaul during the early 60s (Photo courtesy United States Navy)
From the pic above, the structures on the aft turret faces appear to be racks for holding life jackets – any thoughts on this are welcome - and notice that whatever they are, they’re shaped differently on each turret. But in any event, they gotta come off. In addition, the turrets have no sighting hoods (visible just behind the barrel weather covers above) and the cylindrical objects on the forward top of the turret are way over scale. The weather covers, by the way, are almost unrecognizable as such and they’re gonna have to go too. The good news is that the barrels themselves are quite nice and just need minor cleanup. Both turrets are missing the antennae and handling gear that are visible on the real thing, but that’s all doable. The final call is that the 8" turrets are more than salvageable with a little work.
The 5" DP mounts and the 3" mounts are another story entirely. They can be made to at least resemble a standard 5" DP mount, but it’s going to take a lot of work. The 3" guns at least approximate the real thing, but they are basically just blank shapes. The Terrier missiles are actually quite accurate, if a little thick. The launchers themselves are good, though with no detail. The missile directors are the Mk25s that Boston was commissioned with, and actually aren’t too bad, just requiring a little detail to be added to make them quite presentable. Needless to say, of course, there are NO electronics represented at all other than rough radar-like shapes.
The deck and superstructure are another mixed bag, but they veer much closer to reality. The deck is laid out quite accurately, though there are problems with huge box-like moldings on the turret barbettes that simply don’t appear on the real thing. The fairly large areas of wooden decking are also represented, but they look to be slightly overscale with raised edges. The hatches and vents around the Terrier launchers are not represented at all, but that can be fixed. The standard molded-on rails are there, and can be easily removed with a good old #11 blade. For some reason, there are a couple of points where small sections of deck protrude over the side – I’m not at all sure what those were supposed to represent, but they definitely ain’t on the real thing.
The superstructure is pretty accurate, though there is NO detail on it at all. The vents that are on the stack are fairly accurate, and can be used as is. The gun directors are basically just approximate shapes, and I suspect they are a mite underscale. The bridge and flag bridge are there, but they look closer to the as-built configuration (open bridge with galleries) than the Boston conversion. One very pleasant surprise is the prominent lattice mast forward of the stack – considering when this kit was designed, it is very well done and flash-free, if just a little on the heavy side.
So – that’s where we stand when we open the box. Again, considering the age of this kit, it’s not that bad, but it can be made a whole lot better if we’re willing to do a little work – and I’m willing. Next time, we’re going to do the surgery necessary to get the hull display worthy – it’s a fair amount of work but all quite basic. Till then, hang in there!"