The Kit:
The U.S.S Oregon Is a 1:250th scale card model designed by Roman Detnya and can be purchased at The Digital Navy web site (www.digitalnavy.com). Digital Navy has several offerings for the medium to advanced skill builder. They also have several free downloads to try before you buy. I would highly recommend that you build a couple of the free ones before you spend the money on one of their kits. I received the printed "Buff Scheme" of this model. When you purchase the model you have the option of buying the kit on CD or getting it printed for a slight cost increase. The purchased product ships in three different color schemes. The model as I received it came on 13 sheets of card stock and one sheet of heavy gloss paper. Instructions were printed and included several good construction diagrams for parts placement. The nice thing about Roman's models are you can build a great model with what ships with the kit, or you can add some extra "deck tackle" and see the model really come to life.
Construction: (Part 2 of 2)
The Bow
Continuing on with the construction of the model, I started by adding the various deck components to the bow. On the bow I had to recreate the deck hatches and the anchor guide posts from scratch because the originals were destroyed during my Son's previous alterations. I added dark metallic chain for the anchor chains and I added some dark thread to the winches to give them a more realistic look.
Typically speaking I tended to bounce around quite a bit on this model as there are so many pieces that I'd whip out some of the bow components and move to the stern or the gun deck while the bow pieces were drying. I'd then go back and finish installing the bow pieces I'd previously created. I just wanted to mention that because I'm presenting each section, but not necessarily in the order of completion. Most of the deck hardware pieces were repainted to hide the cut lines and glued seams.
The Stern
Moving to the stern of the ship I mounted all of the deck hardware here. The "gangplank" on the stern was also scratch built because the original was damaged. The two square skylights on the stern (under the deck gun barrels) are shown in the diagram but don't have a corresponding space for them marked on the deck. I visually placed them using the diagram as a guide. I also wrapped the winch drums here with dark thread for the look of cable on the drums.
Gun Deck and Bridge
Next I installed the 1 pdr and 6 pdr deck guns, the four search lamps, the cranes, and the various life boats. The life boats positions aren't documented in the diagrams. I placed the two steam powered boats in the inboard rear boat mounts as this position or the forward out board mounts were the only two positions they would correctly fit in. I chose the rear inboard purely for aesthetic reasons. The large row boats went into the forward out board mounts. There are four small rowboats (w/tiller). Two of these go in the rear out board mounts and the other two are hung mounted in the davits. The four long boats (small boats with no tiller) occupy the two inboard mount positions. Since there are four boats, they are stacked two apiece on the inboard mounts. I checked several navy archive pictures to be sure they looked semi-correct. I also scratch built a stair case to go from the flying bridge to the pilot house bridge. This item was missing in the kit but I did find a good picture of it on the Internet so I added it for completeness. A note on the deck guns: there are 10, 1 pdr deck guns and four 6 pdr guns that are in the gun deck. Making these is painstaking. I think it took longer to do these than any other part of the model. The 1 pdrs look ok but a little buff and gray paint will spruce them up quite nicely. I used small paper clips for the barrels so I wanted them painted to get rid of the shine. the four 6 pdr gun barrels are rolled and glued. You need to roll these really tight or you might knock the gun breeches off their pedestals when you go to insert the barrels into the breech block. (I know because I did, and it's a real pain to fish the breech block out of the gun deck to fix it.) Hindsight being 20/20 I might wait to install the breech blocks and do the barrel/breech assembly all at once. They do fit through the deck walls with a little wriggling.
Rigging
With most of the deck components in place I felt comfortable with doing the rigging. Here was another area that you'll need to get some information or use your imagination. The kit as I received it has no documentation on how the rigging is supposed to be run. That's not a big deal because DigitalNavy has several good photos of the completed model on their web site to use as a guide. I also went back to the naval archives web site because they have several good pictures to template from. I chose to use a minimalist approach while applying the rigging as an over rigged boat looks cluttered and detracts from the overall appearance of the model IMHO. I also added the four 1 pr guns to the middle crows nest. The lower nest had a piece position marked on the deck but there was no piece in the kit that I could find and the build diagrams didn't show what went there.
Deck Railing
For those of you that have been paying attention will have noticed in some of the pictures that I had started to apply a hand railing around the stern main deck. I stopped temporarily on this because I was running out of time to get this review submitted and I wanted to show what was possible with this kit. In this picture you can clearly see the rail installed and painted. I think this adds a nice touch to the model and will really bring a sense of completion to the model when I finish it.
Conclusion:
I can't stress enough how much fun this review has been. The Model was a joy to built. The few item I noted throughout the review are thing that are easily corrected so I wouldn't be overly concerned about "glitches" in the design of this model. I think Roman Detnya has made a product that the average builder can turn into a good looking model and an expert builder will turn into a piece they can be proud to display.
Summary:
| Model: | U.S.S. Oregon BB-3 |
| Kit: | DigitalNavy |
| Designers: | Roman Detnya |
| Availability: | www.digitalnavy.com |
| Scale: | 1:250 |
| Difficulty: | Medium scale:6 out of 10 |
| Number of Parts: | Approx 1000 |
| Instructions: | English Instruction sheet |
| Diagrams: | 3 or 4 good parts placement diagrams |
| Fit: | Excellent |
| Coloring and Artwork: | Good, I changed hull color to a darker shade of red. Some parts needed to be painted to look correct. |
| Printing: | Ink jet printer Good |
| Resources: |
Return to the Main Page