Keith Bender
1/426 USS Arizona BB-39 (Revell Monogram)
This is the classic Revell 1/426 kit from the 50's. I must have made a half dozen of them over the years including dioramas of how she sits now with the memorial above. When GMM put out their PE set for this kit I had to give it one more try and trusting Loren Perry's handy PE I knew I could make this a special model.
Now at the time of construction five years ago the Arizona color was still a very heated subject, dark gray or blue dark gray or blue etc... So I decided to make it just after her last overhaul in Jan '41. I know she was still prewar light gray with natural teak decks.
Work on the hull started by removing all the molded on rails, paravains and their lines. With this done I glued the halves together then started rebuilding the shaft struts. The kit struts have only one brace holding the shaft in place but they should be a "V" shape. I left the stern basically alone after that but it could use a major fill in around the shaft area. The hull is too shallow there and looks kind of sunk in.
Next was to remove all the rails from all other parts. The entire job took me 6.5 hours to prep the kit for building with PE this time around. The ships boats are basically a nightmare right out of the box. These all received a complete reworking. The main guns needed some TLC too. I filled in the lower ends of the face plates with plastic sheet then bored the barrels. The fire control top were fun little items to build using the PE. What a difference it makes. One thing that was getting under my skin was dealing with all the superstructure parts as how they were molded to fit. they all break at the mid point on each bulkhead so everyone needs to be filled. There are allot of ladders that need to be placed and many ladder wells must be cut into the decks that don't exist out of the box.
One thing I never finished was the Kingfishers. I started to make masters to cast but became tied up with other projects and they were never finished. One day I will make them. In all I have to say this is still one of my favorite kits from the days of old, Pre PE and Trumpeter 1/350 days.
