by Peter Van Buren
1/350 USS Saratoga CV-03 (Trumpeter)
My Trumpeter 1/350 Saratoga, with Gold Medal Models' photoetch set added, along with some of the new prepainted Eduard figures.
A few thoughts:
The biggest issue for me on this build was the deck, obviously the most prominanent feature on any carrier. I really liked the look of the darker wood deck on the Sara, and wanted to do it justice. This lead me to the Nautilis Models laser etched wood deck. The problem (for me) was that the Nautilis deck was in fact made of real wood, which it turns out is not the same as 1/350 scale wood. My key, unrecoverable error here, was in not properly sealing the wooden deck before starting to paint it. Being a plastic and resin guy, I used an improper wood sealer such that subsequent paint applications ended up enhancing the 1:1 wood grain in the deck, rendering the thing useless to me. I tried to strip the wood down and start over, but the oil-based paints I used acted as stains on the unsealed wood and the thing was ruined. A real loss to me, not only in cash but in appearance.
I then shifted over to the plastic deck that came with the ship, which is what ended up on the finished model you see here. To simulate the wood look, I again experimented with oils. I first laid down a coat of Tamiya Buff as a base, then, after that cured nicely, used a wide, rough paint brush to paint across the deck. I layered various browns and a little yellow, allowing each layer to fully dry, hoping for the look of individual boards, or at least the suggestion, while not masking and painting board-by-board. The photos of the ship don't seem to show the boards and instead present a more unified look, which is what I was going for here.
Once upon a time real sailor men whittled ship models from whale bones. Then wooden kits came along, followed by plastic and resin such that folks with some super glue and a spray can can now end up with a decent model ship without having to first kill a whale. My point is that all of us in our modeling use the work of others, who design kits, make decals, pour resin aftermarket parts and the like. On the other hand, this would not be much of a web site if we all just bought fully finished models from someone else.
Using prepainted figures seems to fall somewhere in that gap. I kinda like to paint the little guys myself, and I also like the convenience of buying a rack of them prepainted and ready to use like any other photoetch part. I just feel a little... cheapened... doing it. I mean, I wouldn't want to buy the aircraft for my Sara prepainted, or the island prerigged, but with the figures it somehow feels so right while seemingly being so wrong.
After painting the base, I drilled four holes and stuck four bolts through four matching holes in the bottom of the hull. I then wrapped the base in saran wrap for the remainder of the build and had a sturdy, hands-off way of working with the hull while it remained well-mounted on its own base. Once done, I just tore off the saran wrap and she was ready to display without me having to handle the finished ship with its delicate rigging.
