Saturday was a relaxing meeting focused on show and tell.

Bill Smallshaw started off showing his kit bashed USS JFK CV-67.  This was the only ship in her class so Bill combined multiple kits for his final build.  In the foreground is his latest work which is the 1/700 Intrepid.  Bill describes this as "old school" in the the hull is a solid block of resin.  Nice work Bill!

Next Bill shared with us 3D resin parts from Steve_Larsen, a.k.a. Model_Monkey on Shapeways.  These parts are different.  They are printed in resin.  The result is a smoother finish than Shapeways best quality.  However they require a great deal of support as you can see.  I recommend a high quality of cutters.  The resin printing is also less expensive than the Shapeways option.  The following is the link to his site where you'll find only resin products.  Steve has purchased two of these printers and is keeping busy.  Below are PT Boat torpedo tubes and mountings.  It looks like a refinery but once the support is removed the details is incredible.  If you see something on the Shapeways page that you would like him to do in resin, drop him a line and he'll take care of you.  He printed the 1/700 Arizona memorial for me and it came out great!

https://www.model-monkey.com


Bill told us how he was refinishing some of his early builds.  He discovered some paint masks made by a company call Model Factory and available from a seller in Japan by the name of Cherry & Anchor.  They will ship to the US but it will take a little work.  Here's the mask set for the Haruna.  The material looks like a vinyl or some other durable material.  Not like Tamiya tape.  It looks like you could save a lot of hours of masking with these sets.  Here is the Cherry & Anchor web site.  You'll need to translate the page unless you're fluent in Japanese.

http://www.cherry-anchor.com

Finally Bill brought his new USS Comstock kit from Blue Ridge Models.  The detail in the casting is incredible.

For more details on the model go to this site...

https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/86d731_c4499123be5c419bb2dcacf94cddbb66.pdf

Great stuff Bill!

John next showed off his cruiser New Oreleans.  This one is complete with wood deck.  Love those wood decks!

John also finished up his 1/700 Monitor.  Wow is it small!  We've followed John on this over the last several months.  What a fun little kit!  

In the works John has added a kit from Atlantic Models.  You might know them previously as White Ensign Models.  These are resin kits with included photo etch.  This one is of the HMS London heavy cruiser from 1941.  Looking forward to seeing this one John!

John always manages to find interesting subjects in photo etch.  This one from F Star models that represents a fixed tower crane for IJN ship yard.  

Finally John brought a new glue he found from DAP.  It's not CA but John reports that it performs well.  I picked up some at Rockler and gave it to my wife to play with.  She liked it.  You can also find it at Lowes.  We'll have to play with this some more and find out where it's useful.

 Ron also told us about a CA that Rockler was selling from Titebond.  They have three different viscosities, thin, medium, and thick.  We have not tried this but it does come in a fairly large quantity.

Martin brought is a kit he picked up from Freetime Hobbies (I believe).  You can pick it up for about $15 and it includes several ships.  Martin advised that Bigblueboy produces a photo etch set for this kit.  It's also available from Freetime Hobbies for about $15.  As you can see with the photo etch it builds into a very nice and highly detailed little boat.

Roger brought in some really nice containers that he purchased from the Dollar Store for $2.00 for a set of three.  As you can see I immediately put them to work!  Nice little cases.  Thanks Roger!

I followed up on my experiment with Vallejo decal setting products.  As a refresher I used Vallejo system on the left, Solvaset in the middle, and Micro products on the right.  I placed some tape down the center of each frame as a reminder of what it looked like before I applied the clear finish.  Interestingly the Vallejo did a better job securing the decals, where the others did not protect the tape from from lifting the decals at all.

I also brought in some of the paint racks I purchased for Coherent Designs.  We found them at the IPMS Nationals in Phoenix.  The gentleman who started the company is a retired dentist.  He makes them in different designs to hold different products.  He has single holders for glue and setting solutions, and multi bottle racks for the various paint manufacturers.  My thinking about these is that they are great racks for a project.  My hope is that it will keep my paints organized for a specific build that I'm working on.  Interestingly he's started selling these to Sprue Brothers.  When I checked their web site they were already sold out.  I purchased them direct for about 40% less than the Sprue Brothers price.

If there is enough interest I can put an order together for some racks.  I'll send out a separate message to see if there is any interest.  Note that in the photo below the legs are black.  In the final product they are brass.

Here's a link to their Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/olivebranchdesigners/

See you all next time!
Dave