Sterling American Scout WWII Cargo Ship

Vfordyce said:

They look like an L-shaped piece of lead. I do like the fact that they have some ridges like the real ones have. On the hatches, make sure the rectangular supports for the hatch covers line up with the hatch holes. Mine don’t fit. I’ll have to remake them.

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Thanks for the advice on the hatch covers, I'll pay extra attention to that detail.

A magazine article on the kit shows these custom peaked hatch covers. They've got real fabric covering. I don't know how common peaked hatch covers were but they look nice in spite of the poor quality of the photos in the magazine...



More about the magazine article in the next post...

While assembling the bulkheads, I discovered that one piece was missing. It wasn't a problem because it was a mirror image of the same piece on the other side of the same bulkhead, so I traced the one I had and made a copy out of 1/8" balsa. And when doing the shears, another piece was missing. It also was a mirror image of the same piece on the other side so I just made a new one.

The other day another Scout kit came up on eBay so I made an offer that was accepted. I bought it just in case other parts might be missing later in the project that weren't so easy to duplicate. This other kit seems to be untouched and complete, including the optional hardware kit. Unless my current kit is missing a part I can't reproduce, I'll leave this second kit intact and once I finish my model I'll sell it since I don't need two of these ships.



A few interesting things about this kit compared to my other one - notice the lifeboats, one is on top of the fitting kit box. They're carved balsa. The lifeboats on my other kit are vacuum-formed plastic. There's also a brochure from United States Lines promoting trips one could take on a cargo ship. All of the wood parts are still in the sheets they're stamped from, so it's unlikely anything is missing.

The kit also came with two magazines with articles about the Scout.





I'm finishing up a home project tomorrow morning so hopefully I'll be able to get back to ship construction in the afternoon.

Added a plywood base today. It's shaped to accomodate the wider bottoms of some of the bulkheads resulting from shortening the bulkheads.

Why is the hull on the table saw? Because about 60% of the hull is straight and the sides are parallel, so I put the hull on the saw to set the rip fence to the correct width; this way the sides of the plywood will be straight and parallel.



Cutting:



Then I traced the outline of the bow and stern portions of the hull - I traced at the outside edges of the bulkheads, which because I shortened them at the bottom, are wider than the balsa base. Rough cutting on the bandsaw:



Final fitting of the plywood to the hull; an angle die grinder with a 30-grit sanding disk makes quick work of finalizing the shape.



A view of the plywood base showing how it's wider than the balsa base provided with the kit. The plywood is as wide as the bottoms of the shortened bulkheads.



Because the deck pieces aren't a perfect fit I decided to glue them in place now so I can fair everything together before sheathing the hull. I also added some longitudinal 1/2 x 3/4 pine stringers inside the hull to stiffen the plywood; since it's only 1/4" plywood and is a bit flexible the stringers stiffen it so the assembly won't flex. Everything clamped and weighted:



The next step will be final fairing of the hull followed by sheathing.

jscherb said:

Thanks for the advice on the hatch covers, I'll pay extra attention to that detail.

A magazine article on the kit shows these custom peaked hatch covers. They've got real fabric covering. I don't know how common peaked hatch covers were but they look nice in spite of the poor quality of the photos in the magazine...

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More about the magazine article in the next post...

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That would be cool to have a copy of.

Vfordyce said:

That would be cool to have a copy of.

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