Sterling American Scout WWII Cargo Ship

[jscherb]

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.

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...

 

[jscherb]

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.