My N Scale Ships

[delamaize]

Might surprise some of you but the U.S. Army has more boats than the Navy and Coach Guard together.

Oh yeah, between Tugs, Motor bardges, and other small boats, theis is a mess of them. I personally am a fan of the old army LARC-V and the LARC-LX

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LARC-V
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LARC-LX

[pnolan48]

Can see it now.  Remember one night off the coast of North Caroline taking a 55 degree roll to port during a storm.  Another evening I was in my bunk when we took a roll and all the bunks came apart falling onto the deck.  After the shock of gettin out from the mess, we put everything back together and went back to sleep.  they road rough but were great ships to serve on.

And they had a wooden hull and minimum steel. Was that a maintenance headache? They are very similar to the steel hulled Admirable class, and I can see how a shorter but a bit broader hull might result of using wood. Just about the same displacement at about 750 tons, 850 tons fully loaded.

I once ran across three abandoned hulks of WWI minesweepers or sub chasers. Wish I could have taken some of those massive timbers home for either resawing or chainsaw carving!

[Bob Bufkin]

The only maintenance problems concerned using brass nails.  Harder than hell to hammer into wood.  The damage control personnel used to bitch about now being issued chain saws to get into spaces in case of emergency.  Otherwise a little paint here and there and no problems.

[pnolan48]

Oops, "SMF was unable to connect to the server", and this post was lost. No recovery option. Oh well, not the first time. I'll redo it tomorrow. Um, "Try again later" doesn't work when there's no options and a blank screen.

[One of One-Sixty]

Have you thought about doing a wooden haul and build from there?

There is an outfit called Century Wings, that makes US fighter jets in 1:144 as well as the USS Nimitz

http://www.centurywings.com/model_144/uss_nimitz_1978.html

BTW, your work is amazing, would have never known that it was scratch-built.

[AlkemScaleModels]

There is an outfit called Century Wings, that makes US fighter jets in 1:144 as well as the USS Nimitz
http://www.centurywings.com/model_144/uss_nimitz_1978.html

So how much do they charge for the Nimitz and the air wing? I found some of the aircraft on British web sites for about $55 each.

[jnevis]

There is an outfit called Century Wings, that makes US fighter jets in 1:144 as well as the USS Nimitz
http://www.centurywings.com/model_144/uss_nimitz_1978.html

That is bloody INSANE, that's over 8 feet long.  Must weigh a ton. 

[John]

I was on Nimitz from 80-84

[pnolan48]

That is bloody INSANE, that's over 8 feet long.  Must weigh a ton.

I wonder if they have sold one yet. Yes, it probably weighs about 800 pounds, even with a hollow hull.

Scale ships seem to be cloaked in mystery as to the real prices, except for a number of well-established firms like Fine Art Models. Perhaps it's much like the world of fine art painters and sculptors, or less-than-museum quality antiques, where determining a value can be excruciatingly opaque. I presume, from the detail, that this Nimitz is in the upper regions of the price range. But where, exactly is that? Somewhere between $2000 and $60,000? IIRC, Fine Arts made perhaps 100-200 ships and sold them for about $6000-8000. I believe they were constructed in former Soviet Union nations by very talented modelers. About ten years ago, I started seeing models of many nations' ships built in the Far East, at prices much lower, say $2500-4000.

As One of One Sixty suggested, carving the hulls from wood is probably faster, cheaper and more accurate than building them up from styrene. That is, if the cost of the wood itself does not stop skyrocketing. A Menards big box just opened nearby (think of a store 4X the size of a Home Depot) and prices for hardwood were just outrageous. And they were not carrying 8/4 stock. I guess I'll be exploring the back woods 'round here for small sawmills.

I'm no expert in the model ship market. I just fell into building them about eight years ago, and never followed the market, as opaque as it is. But I've probably followed it more than most N-Scalers.

[unittrain]

Have you thought about doing a wooden haul and build from there?

There is an outfit called Century Wings, that makes US fighter jets in 1:144 as well as the USS Nimitz

http://www.centurywings.com/model_144/uss_nimitz_1978.html

BTW, your work is amazing, would have never known that it was scratch-built.

Man I wonder if they have an HO scale titanic! ;D

[pnolan48]

I've been to the Model Basic at Carderock, MD several times and the models they do are outstanding.  Not really sure what material the use but they are heavy.  They also do just hulls to test stability of ships.

Yeah, that's been state of the art for more than 70 years. I'm not sure of the physics of scale testing of naval vessels. I think hydrodynamics are hydrodynamics regardless of media, but never looked into it beyond air and explosives effect (or heavy metals). I know the testing there has been critical to many naval advances. Just am not familiar with how to weight a model hull to mimic the full-scale hull.

[pnolan48]

Here's a shot of the build on the Achusnet, a salvage ship when built in 1937 that worked cleaning up Pearl Harbor. Then it was a cutter until the mid-1950s, then a research boat for the NOAA out of Woods Hole, then a cutter again until its retirement as Queen of the Fleet in about 2009. It's 213 feet long with a beam of about 31 feet. The paint scheme is wrong, of course, and will be fixed.



By this time in my shipbuilding, I'd learned to paint most things before installing them. But I had no trouble sanding off paint if the hull was wrong.

Here she is early in the development of the Coast Guard Station on the layout, as an oceanographic research ship. I believe the big red container is a huge life raft.



For most of her career the Storis was Queen of the Fleet (oldest USCGS ship). Storis, a very intersing ship herself, was retired in 2007, giving the Achusnet only a year or two as oldest ship.

I believe both are still moored at Ketchikan. I missed them when they were at Kodiak Island while I was there, dagnabit.

[One of One-Sixty]

The planes can be found on eBay ranging from $15-$30 with the Nimitz just being announced earlier this year, I have not found it anywhere yet, which leaves me to believe that it has not been released yet.  I am hoping for it to be reasonable price as this will help cement my plans of doing the Philly Naval Yard, if it was in the full swing of things.

If not I'll just use them to make some small municipal airport or a small Naval Air station like Willow Grove or like an aeronautical museum.

[John]

Nimitz class would never go to Philly Naval Yard .. they are nukes, and the only nuke qualfied yard is NNSY and Newport News ..

You will be more accurate with one of the older carriers - JFK is currently there

[Bob Bufkin]

Nucs can also go into Puget Sound (the only West Coast yard allowed).  John, I spent a day on Nimitz back in the late 70's while stationed at Naval Reactors in DC.  Took a tour around the nuc power plant.  All I can say is that besides being a nuc it looked just like any other steam plant.