Custom carriers from OOB's and painted pieces

Completed Shoho. This started as a black OOB Akagi bought on sale from HBG for a dime, seen on pages 1 and 4 of the thread.  There’s an orange mini sub under the aft flight deck that even has its own tower.  Gun deck under front of flight deck between the pillars.  The one thing that bothered FJO was that the stern should be pointed.  The profile is spot on, and the deck guns are about as accurate as they can be.  Best viewed by right clicking and opening in a new window.

When this piece was photographed above it hadn’t yet been dull coated. When it was sprayed, it was in low light and lead to an overspray, which dried white and made a re-paint necessary. This is how it looks after the re-paint:

I clarified the descriptions in the previous pictures of the Shoho in progress to make it’s origin more clear.

While FJO is finishing up some radical mods on the Takao sculpts to make some Mogami cruisers, I’ve been adding squadron letters and cockpit canopy details to some aircraft.  I’ve got to get a pic of the Mogamis, but here are some aircraft with letters from I-94.  The Hurricane is a 1/500 print from Shapeways with the landing gear removed.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Thanks guys.  For the cockpit canopies I use a .005 pen.  Paint the canopy & coat it with clear flat lacquer over the silver so the pen takes, then after the ink dries give the canopy another shot of clear dullcote.  Don’t use a brush to coat the ink with clear- it will smear the dried ink.  Use the spray dullcote.  The grey canopy Stuka was the first test cockpit but the rest are silver.  Flap lines are drawn in on the Stukas with the .005, but the Shapeways Hurricane has them molded in, so those lines are dark washed before the plane is painted.  I got the 1/500 Hurricanes from SNAFU (https://www.shapeways.com/product/TFK4LDQWH/1-500-hurricane-w-gear-x4-fud?optionId=63261413&li=marketplace). If you get them you have to be careful or the landing gear breaks off because they’re so small.  The one pictured was the first one I removed from the “tree”, and one snapped off with a little pressure.  I super glue coated the others to strengthen them, and that worked really well.  We’re using the planes for “Check Your 6!” also.

The decals are I-94 for the letters and roundels, Dom’s Decals for the fuselage roundels.  Can’t tell you how happy I was when I found the I-94 letters on HBG’s site.  I’ve been adding letters and other markings to what’s been painted so far aircraft-wise- fighters, tacticals, bombers, and even paratroop planes from HBG.  Some fighters and Stukas have 16-18 decals on them.  For instance, a Stuka has 2 letters, the German cross, followed by 2 more letters on the fuselage, so that’s 10 decals right there.  Add the tail and upper and lower wings and that’s 6-8 more, depending on which model Stuka.  It takes a LOT of patience to make sure the letters are lined up and even, but it’s worth the effort.

Thanks, LHoffman.  My pal and gaming partner FJO is the ship master.  He puts insane amounts of time into each ship in an effort to make it look like a named ship in the IJN.  Not above taking a saw to a piece and adding some putty, as seen in previous pictures.  He even bought some of those 1/2400 aircraft from GHQ to put on HBG’s IJN Nagara light cruisers, the Kongo battleships, and Takao and Mogami cruisers (yes, he’s modded 4 Takao sculpts into Mogami cruisers, even putting 4 of those 2400 scale aircraft on the Tone, complete with launch catapults).  I’m overdue to get some pictures of the finished ships.

I finally got some pictures of some of our recent (and not so recent) finishes, and shots of some make-overs.  I’ll start with a set of Japanese Ki-57 transport planes from HBG and IJN Akitsuki DD’s from the '41 set.

The Pearl Harbor versions of the Zuikaku & Shokaku with their later war versions (from the first picture in the post on page 1).  That the Zuikaku camo version is an out of box Shinano really bothered FO, and that’s what started the whole “chop off this tower and swap that one in here, and maybe add a little putty here for more deck guns and cut away under the flight deck” ideas.  All of these started as Shinano sculpts (and the one still is).  The side view picture is the same ship on the left top & bottom, and right top & bottom.

We really liked HBG’s Nagara light cruisers and bought 2 sets (3 are left to paint).  While researching paint schemes, we noticed the real ships have a plane on a launch catapult. So FJO made launch catapults for some Nagaras and bought a carrier from GHQ for the planes and antennae towers, and put planes on some of the launch catapults.  Little GHQ aircraft ended up going on a lot of other IJN ships, too.

The IJN Takaos from earlier in the post got a face lift (top picture), and 4 unpainted ones were modded into Mogami class cruisers, with launch catapults and a recovery crane (bottom picture).  The Tone has 4 little aircraft on it (bottom picture).

We have 3 cruiser types in our house rules- light cruisers, cruisers, and heavy cruisers.  These IJN Heavy Cruisers are 1st Ed. A&A Battleships that FJO painted as if they were Japanese warships, adding a lot of detail that’s not in the sculpt, both with paint and by adding left-over guns from the GHQ carrier.  There’s no historical basis for these ships and there wasn’t a schematic available to make the sculpt Japanese, so he just winged it.

The IJN Kongo class battleships.  They have a launch catapult molded in, so of course they got planes.  We just got a mixed set of 2 Nagato battleships and 3 Fuso battleships from HBG (yes, they’ll split their sets of 5 for you) and will be using the Fusos for heavy cruisers. The Nagatos will be added to the BB set. And here’s a better picture of the Yamato, showing some wear as the red primer pokes through. You may have noticed some ships camo’d with an orange and yellow curved stripe- those are from a camo fleet, the pattern found called “Fleet of Fog”.  Google it to see what these ships were based on.