Thanks to everyone for attending the last meeting.  As usual we covered a lot of ground.

We talked about our T Shirt order.  I will be getting together with Blake to get our order set up.  I think we'll be able to get an order of both Blue and Gray ordered.  More to come on that soon.

The meeting started with another great presentation from Sam on the history of Japan leading to the Pearl Harbor attack with helpful pronunciation from Martin.  Same shared with us some very good books.

The first was The Samurai by Stephen Turnbull.  Now I'm wishing I had seen the exhibit at the Art Museum when it was in Denver!

The second book was Japan 1941 by Eric Hotta.  Another book recommended by Sam to help understand the reasoning that went into (as it says on the cover) the Countdown to Infamy.  

Looking forward to your next presentation Sam!

Sam also suggested that those of us working on our dioramas or Pearl Harbor projects bring in your work to the next meeting.  

Next Jerry showed us a magnificent new kit from Orange Hobbies.  It's a 1/350 Natick Class Large District Harbor Tug YTB782.  Here's a photo of the prototype.  She was in service from 1965 to 2012.  Nice run for a hard working boat!  Below photo credited to Navsource.

This little kit nearly caused Hugh to stray from 1/700 but he came to his senses soon after.  Orange Hobby castings are flawless and everything you need is included.  Although I think I may add some N scale railroad horns to replace the 2D photo etch parts.  Otherwise she's perfect!  These kits are just now coming available.  Leave it to Jerry to have one before most online retails have any to sell!

Next I had a few things to share....

From Model_Monkey at Shapeways I picked up the 3D printed 1/350 Fairwater Balao class submarine sail for the AFV Gate kit.  I will have to do some minor deck repair where the original sail should go but this piece will build a very convincing and highly detailed Balao class sub.  You can purchase these in 1/350, 1/200, 1/180, 1/144, and 1/72 scales to fit various Gato class kits on the market.  

I also brought my Flyhawk Models kit of the USS Ward in 1/700 scale.  This is my entry into the Pearl Harbor build.  I decided to use all the crazy parts that come with this kit.  More on that later.

Finally I shared that I enjoyed listing to the audiobook "The Cruel Sea" by Nicholas Monserrat.  It's a terrific novel about escort destroyers in the Royal Navy during WWII.  I'm thinking about different diorama options for this 1/350 scale kit.  I also bought the DVD based on this book.  It was mostly true to the book with a lot left out.  It cost me a whopping $3.00 on eBay.  I'm happy to loan it out to anyone interested.  But these little Mirage kits are really nice.  It was a nice follow up to the flush deck destroyer Martin shared with us from the same company.  If you haven't read the book or seen the movie it's time well spent.

After the meeting I met Clint Curry who told us about his HMS Victory model that he had on display on the other side of the basement.  Clint is another Tin Can sailor from the USS Kennedy.  I'm hoping he'll join us and share some sea stories.  If you get an opportunity to see his Victory it's well worth the time!  I stole this photo from Rocky Mountain Shipwrights web site.  Nice work Clint!

We will have our meeting after Thanksgiving, November 26th.  We had a really good turnout last year at this time so let's go for it.  

Hi all,
It's time for our ship club meeting this Saturday.

Location:  Rockler Woodworking
Address:  2553 S. Colorado Blvd., Suite 108, Denver, CO  80222
Time:  October 22 (this Saturday) 10:00

Before I get to the meeting agenda I want to make sure that we get to Blake's project.  He's been working hard on a T-Shirt design for us.  This would be through Custom Ink.  It will be silk screened as well.  If I understand correctly we have the option of long or short sleeve.  We need a minimum order of 6 per color of shirt to justify the silk screening.  Below are the designs Blake worked up.  Personally I would like to see the logo on the front and back raised up some.  I do like the color but we do have an option for a gray shirt as well.

What I would like to do for the meeting is get a count on how many you would like.  If you would like blue or gray shirt.  If you want long sleeve or short sleeve, remembering we can mix long and short sleeve in the same color.  And do we want logo on the front only or the logo on front and back.  My vote would be for front and back logos.  Blake, please correct me if I have that wrong.

by the way, that's the USS Colorado on the back.  Love the design Blake!  Let's sort this all out Saturday.  If you're not going to be there send me an email and I'll keep you posted on what we come up with.

There are opportunities for discount.  I have about $25 that was sent back to me by Custom Ink on the last order.  I'm pretty sure by mistake.  It was all a bit confusing but we can put that money towards this order.

If we have enough interest here is a breakdown of discounts depending on volume and design..

Shirts with Colorado logo only(either front or back)

15 shirts $16.26 ea.

25 shirts $13.74 ea.

Shirts with life ring logo on chest & Colorado logo on back.

15 shirts $22.53 ea.

25 shirts $18.57 ea.

Blue shirt:

Short sleeve (Royal)     Quantity____

Long Sleeve (Navy)      Quantity____

Gray shirt:

Short sleeve  (Ash)       Quantity____

Long sleeve (Heather)  Quantity____

Thanks for your hard work on this Blake!

Okay, on to the agenda....

The Gator Grip glue is in and I'll be bringing it to the meeting. With shipping it worked out to be $5.60 per bottle. Please bring exact change.  :-)

Sam will be delivering a two part presentation to compliment the anniversary of Pearl Harbor build we've been working on.

1.  How the Japanese arrive at the decision to attack Pearl Harbor

2.  How the US arrived at the decisions that led there.

I always learn something new during Sam's presentations.

Jerry Beasley is going to have something special for show and tell relating to ship cases and lighting.  

The Cruel Sea
Last meeting I overheard one of you sea dogs talking about the book, The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monserrat.  I needed an audio book for my commute to work so I picked it up.  This is a fictional account of British sailors and their adventures escorting convoys.  I immediately got hooked on the first ship in the book which is an early Flower Class Corvette by the name Compass Rose.  Doing some research I learned more about these escort destroyers and decided to pick up a 1/350 early war flower class.  This one is from Mirage but there are also offerings from a couple other companies, L'Arsenal and Iron Ship Wrights.  This is injection molding and more affordable than the resin products out there.  White Ensign Models has a very nice photo etch set for this class so I got that as well.  I'll bring them to the meeting to show you.  Mirage makes quite a few of these ships in a variety of configurations.  The one I chose was the Anchusa... but trust me she will be K-49 Compass Rose.  

As always...

• Bring anything to share with the group, finished, in progress, or something that you're adding to your collection.
• Bring any challenging issues you're having.  Let's work on the problems together.
• Bring ideas for meetings.  Hugh was suggesting a discussion on dioramas.  What do you think?

Greetings all,
After a short distraction fixing up my garage and preparing for winter I'm ready to start my Pearl Harbor build.  I'm putting together the Flyhawk Models 1/700 USS Ward and Japanese Ko-hyotek class two man submarine.

At this point I think I will put this in a case with both vessels on stands out of the water.  I'm thinking the Ward higher than the submarine.

Make no mistake this is a tiny build.  There are very few plastic parts and three frets of photo etch!  Also included are a few resin pieces.  Should be fun and I'm hoping to be creative with the base.

Here is what I'm working with...

The USS Ward is from Flyhawk and the Ko-hyotek submarine is a single part in a Tamiya I-16 &
I-58 kit which is actually quite nice itself!

The hull on the Ward is excellent.  It's a perfect fit.  The propeller shafts are a bit thick so I may modify those a bit.

Here's the instruction sheet and kit box.

And here's our Tamiya submarine.  I think we can modify these to give them a better look.  Anyone have any midget sub propellers in their parts box?

Should be a fun one and doable in the remaining time.

If you're still building send me some photos and I'll upload them into our blog.

I apologize for the late follow up from our meeting.

We started the meeting off going back to Patriots Point with a terrific tour of the USS Laffey from Roger.  I can't tell you enough how much fun it was walking around Liffey with Roger and also with Jerry as they relived their experiences on the sister ships USS Borie (DD-704) and USS Ticonderoga (CV014.  Hugh also provided us with photos from his travels with Sam.  Special thanks to Roger's wife, Peggy, who saved the day with the images!  Here's the link to Patriots Point.  If you can get back there it's well worth the visit.

https://www.patriotspoint.org

USS Laffey

Vietnam Experience Exhibit

I told you all that I contacted Brandon at Free Time Hobbies to see what the status was of the 1/700 Normandie.  A number of you have purchased this kit.  $250 but it's a big chunk of resin with all the parts you could need.  Except of course all of the after market figures that Free Time is producing.  :-)  Brandon told me that they have made a couple of changes on the hull and photo etch and are waiting for the new parts to come in before they ship.  I noticed yesterday that Brandon has the Normandie on pre-order on his web site.  This is a remarkable kit.

John of course never disappoints and provided us with a good discussion on using Tamiya and Vallejo washes to weather decks.  These are interesting washes.  The Vallejo is water based and Tamiya is an "acrylic" or alcohol based.  The Vallejo wash will work great over a Tamiya paint base color.

I brought back my project working with water color pencils.  Starting with the wood deck.  The base color was Tamiya XF-78 Wooden Deck Tan.  Correct me if I'm wrong Victor.   If you can imagine the 1/3 of the left side was covered with a clear gloss (Future), The middle section was coated with Micro Flat, and the right 1/3 was the basic color with no top coat.  I added combinations of complimentary colors but also through in some black on the right 1/3.  I was really pleased with the result.  

The other test I made was on the 1/700 U-boat.  I did not find the water color pencils very useful as a wash where you want a color to get into panel lines, flood holes, etc.  There are better choices for that.  I did find that it creates a very soft effect much like a filter.  It's very forgiving.  If you don't like it then wash it off with water.  

The other technique I tried was adding rust colors.  Again, very easy to use and forgiving.  I experimented with using salt.  Water color artists use salt to draw the paint.  I dabbed on some wet color and then sprinkled salt over it.  Made for a very nice effect.  Daniele made a very good point.  The traditional salt method would call for you to spray the base color over the salt and after it dries knock the salt off.  This gives you the effect of rust bubbling up underneath the paint.  

I followed through on the pencil scriber.  Modelers have been using needles in pin vices for a long time as a good scribing tool.  For this test I used a .75mm mechanical pencil that I got from Target.  I bought a couple of different sized straight pins from Michaels.  The larger pins worked perfectly in this mechanical pencil.  No drilling out of the pencil was required.  What I really liked about this setup was that it was very comfortable to hold and easy to control.  Better than a pin vise by far.

I compared it with my favorite scriber which is from UMM Models.  I still like my UMM scriber the best but this is an excellent choice as well.  

I have a bunch of these needles.  If you guys want to get the pencils I'll be glad to bring you some pins.  But make sure you tell me or I won't bring them to the meeting.  

3D printing continues to amaze.  Bill brought in his 1/72 torpedo tubes that he bought from Model_Monkey on the Shapeways web site.  I was blown away by the detail and the quality of the print.  The walls are amazingly thin so you could model these empty with a very realistic look.  I sure wish I had these when I built my PT-109.  Let's see if Bill succumbs to the dark side and builds another Revell PT boat!  

I'm going to follow up later with some information about the shirts Blake worked so hard on.  Look for a follow up posting in a couple of days.

Thanks for a great meeting guys!