The day cabin was made in a similar way to the chart house. Mounts for the radar mast were added after the radar mast (that was a challenging part to build) was fabricated.

Again printed CAD patterns were like gold in making the parts for the day cabin. The 3/16” strip frame around the bottom was fabricated around the raised deck coaming before the cabin side sheets were added. A flag locker that mounts the between the two cabins was salvaged from a Tamiya Military Miniatures pack I found years ago at a yard sale with the thickness trimmed back about 1/16”.

Some small details need to be added after this cabin is primed and painted.

The rear accessories platform was built next based on a flat pattern drawn from Al Ross’s drawing details. I made a small error in locating the engine room vent, but epoxy and micro balloons were a good fix for this error. The original plan was to open up the deck below this opening and add a CPU muffin fan for air flow. The removeable deck and cabin details fit really nice.

Now I will start to build some deck armament to try something just a little different. I believe one of the last weapons I built on this model were the roll-off torpedoes and racks because I was hoping to create operational torpedoes. That issue is yet to be resolved.

The first gun built was the single 40mm Bofors Cannon which mounts on the rear deck access. This was a real beast to do but while researching I found John Drain’s site PT Boats.com and used his original build as a guide to model mine after. I also had elevation and top views of this gun from reference sources that aided in creating this weapon. Using my reference sources I drew the gun full sized and scaled it down to 1/24 to create parts for the model. Some detail I know was neglected. I have tried to minimize weight where possible, so metal parts used by John Drain on his gun were minimized and the gun was built mainly from styrene and brass tube. I used methylene chloride (toxic stuff!) to quickly solvent weld most of the styrene parts together.

This gun took a long time to build. It’s not perfect and it has a lot of individual parts. It can be taken apart so that every subassembly can be primed and painted before final assembly. Again many parts on this gun were made and re-made numerous times. The barrel has a sprung recoil mechanism and a small laser LED fits in the barrel housing really nice and projects through the brass tube in case I wanted to use that as a working feature to harass ducks. CAD really paid off in helping to draw and fabricate this gun. Lots of 3D printed Bofors replicas are available, but my build predates this technology and is unique compared to the readily available 3D prints.

A servo will be mounted below deck to rotate the gun. I have not determined how to convert this to an elevating gun barrel yet. It does look pretty good on the rear platform in it’s stow position.

After the challenge of working on the Bofors gun, I decided to back off a bit and work on some deck features. Unfortunately my ambition got the best of me and I took a crack at the radar mast. This was drawn in detail with AutoCAD using the drawing shown as a scale reference.

The drawing shows the three masts used on the Elco boats, the one on the right being the subject for my build. I found a few challenges making this part, but my second attempt was successful. I used a micro gear drive, I think made by Robbe or Graupner inside the mast box. A heat shrink linkage joins the brass radar dish with the motor. It rotates at about 30 rpm on a 3 volt power supply. Staggered holes for vertical mast pivots were drilled into the day cabin and the mounts were also staggered on the mast post so it folds down diagonally on the day cabin (when the boat is in port). Like the Bofors, the mast is assembled in numerous pieces so that it can be disassembled for painting.

A radar mast support, shown in the last photo above was also built to support the mast when folded down.

Since I was into day cabin details, my wife thought I should do the dinghy on the day cabin roof and the carly float on the chart house..

The dinghy was an easy draw in CAD, and is complete with keel, bulkheads. It builds just like the actual row boat and looks pretty cool. I have a similar version of this dinghy that I recently built for an Egrete Tugboat that I started back in January 2023. As shown the day cabin details with the dinghy look reasonable.

The carly float was a bit different. I found two versions of this item in my research. The first had a circular float cross section, The second had a rectangular cross sections. Further research put the rectangular cross-section as the version common on these boats. I made this by alternating grain layer of 1/8” thick balsa laminated together and sanded smooth. Someone told me that on the actual PT boats these were made of balsa, although I have no idea if that is true

A mounting rack made from 1/8” thick balsa was added to the chart house after completion of the carly float. Oars for both boats were stir stick construction. Some additional rope detail needs to be added to the carly float after painting.

I took a bit of a detailing break and decided to start building deck details. How complex could it be to make ammo boxes and deck vents?

Started by building most of the details on the rear platform. The Bofors gun rest I held off on until I could verify the geometry.

The 40mm shell rack went through two builds as I acquired more information about its construction.

The two deck conical vents are the only items from the fittings kit I ordered from Dynamic that I have used to date on this model.

The life raft stowage container (shown) went through a couple of builds because of it’s not so rectangular geometry. The 20mm ammo box was quite simple. One was made for the stern platform and a second at the front where the 20mm gun is located. Most of these details were made from .020 or .030 styrene sheet.

The roll off torpedo racks proved to be extremely challenging when acquiring detail and determining if it is possible to make them operational.

John Drain at PT Boats.com was a great help to me when I inquired about the laser cut 1/20 scale racks that he was selling for his 1/20 scale Elco model. I asked him about the possibility of scaling down his racks to 1/24 scale and he responded very quickly and provided me with some really nicely cut plywood parts for my model.

Shortly afterward I noticed that he has put the 1/24 racks on his site, and I hope he has been successful selling this product to those modelers who prefer to build models at one of the standard architectural scales (1/2” = 1’, 3/8” = 1’, 1/4” = 1’…) like myself.

John Drain’s 1/24 racks that he created for me are meant to be used with a torpedo release, triggered by a magnetic switch in the tube. I installed micro servos in the rack that will release the rack arms and allow them to roll off the racks into the water. I am not sure if I will ever use this feature but it is installed in the event that I have an engineering inspiration for operational torpedoes.

The initial plan for torpedoes was to make them from 7/8” OD cigar tubes (shown) which are absolutely perfect OD at this build scale.

Not being satisfied with the tail geometry I bought torpedo tubes and several other details including a 20mm cannon, gun turrets, 50cal guns, deck lights and rear exhausts from John R Haynes (www.johnrhaynes.com), after reading the article in the September 2006 issue of Marine Modelling International about his 1/24 scale semi kit that was built by David Semper for the magazine article.

To get these parts done, the plan was modified to include non-operational tubes provided by John Haynes. They look decent on the roll-off racks and who knows, maybe someday I can still create operational torpedoes since I still have half-a-dozen aluminum cigar tubes and John’s tail sections which could be hollowed out on my lathe to suit electric prop drive components.

John Haynes was extremely helpful providing me with numerous part and model details that were difficult to get accurate drawing details for fabrication. The qualities of his parts are exceptional requiring little effort to deburr and clean-up the castings. I was really disappointed a few years ago while checking his site during the Covid days to see a note on his site that he is no longer selling fittings. I hope everything is going well for John.

John Haynes provided me with castings for the 20mm gun that eliminated a lot of tedious detail work on the barrel. A few additional details and a gun base provided an exceptionally model to add to the Elco.

I deviated from the true accuracy of the 20mm gun used on the actual boat by adding rear shoulder slings to the back of the gun which I will justify as a "crew-made" modification.