Custom carriers from OOB's and painted pieces

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.

Hard to say, really, LHoffman, since there are many being worked on at the same time in various stages of preparation or finish. Consider: Most of the little silver dots on the decks to represent deck guns are built up layers of pigment, so the flat surface of the sculpt is broken up with little bumps.  On average, 7-10 applications of pigment make a deck gun bump, and each layer has to dry before the next one is applied.  FJO has a series of pictures of the making of the Mogami cruisers, so I’ll have to get hold of those to post.  Those 4 took a few weeks, but they weren’t worked on every day.  And they had to wait for the Pearl Harbor versions of the Zuikaku and Shokaku to get finished.  Those, I know, took a long time.  The towers have been replaced, the hull was cut away under the fore and aft flight decks, both have hand drawn & painted hull illustrations port & starboard accurate to the schematics, the decks are hand painted (not decals), putty has been added to each side of the flight deck and then sculpted away to make more deck AA guns and place them accurately according to the schematic.  Like I said, those took a long time.  Over the coarse of 2 months at least, while other things were going on, like the Kongos getting base colors.  FO called as I was typing this, so I asked about average time per ship.  The answer, after some consideration of research, amount of modification, and detail, was 8-15 hours per ship, at about 5-10 hours per week.  Given what’s been done and what I know of the time so far, I’d say if we had the real number of ships and time and did the math, it wouldn’t work out to the estimate.  Either less hours per ship or more hours per week, I’d say.

And thanks, I think, for the compliment, Nowhere Man.  Remember, ours is a 2 man project.  I only get to spend an hour or three during the weekdays painting, and maybe a half-day on the weekend.  So 5-10 hours per week for me.  I’m doing the aircraft (mostly so we can play “Check Your 6!” with the lego flight stands I made) and FJO is doing ships (so we can use them for table top “Victory at Sea” also).

Thanks, guys.  I was impressed when I saw the lifeboats, too- they’re better in person because they’re built up with lots of layers of pigment so they look like they’re molded in on the sculpt (well, they actually are on HBG’s Nagara light cruisers).  I’m trying to up the level of detail on the aircraft I’m doing for our set to match FJO’s IJN level of detail.  I especially like the top down view of the 1st edition battleships to see the detail he’s added.  Years of experience?  FJO has been a professional painter for a few decades now (see brief description in opening post), and we’re both in our mid 50’s & started painting our D&D miniatures back when we were in high school.

I’ve mentioned one of the 18 decal Stukas in another post, as well as HBG’s JU-87G Stukas that I like so much, so since these are done I thought I’d share some shots of them.