A very short teasing post, at Stephan's request. I managed a nice test float. She turns like her namesake, ie as a pig. Huge tactical diameter. I need to plan in advance. More to come next week.

Well, it has been a while since I added to Fletcher's build and I have not been slacking. When I left off I was starting to dealing with the dreaded detailing of her. My first dilemma was to decide whether to paint the superstructure before of after detailing it. I decided to do both. Unfortunately this meant that I often had to sand the paint away for the glue to bond, but in the end it was worth it. The entire superstructure was hand painted. There was no way in the world to spray it without over spray going everywhere and making a mess. Once it was painted, one of the first things I did was to install the deck lights. There are caged lights, see Black Shoe's Blog on his current build for excellant examples in a larger scale, that I found on Shapeways. They were made in 1/48th scale for the S.S. United States. I bought them on a whim and hoped that I could get them the work. Being an opaque printed resin I hope that they would pass enough light to work, they did. They are mounted to a bulkhead fitting that has a stem to it that allows it to be mounted into a hole in your bulkhead. I found the stem to be about 3mm in diameter and ordered 3mm ID brass tubing. I inserted the stem into the tubing and inserted a 3mm warm while LED in the other end and presto! I had a working bulkhead light. The rest consisted of locting and drilling holes for the tubing in the appropriate locations and and assmbling the lights. Each has it's own resistor to it and the are wired in parallel. I did find that I needed to paint the stem black to channel the light.
From here on I spent my time adding details. Some of the time was spent researching fittings and details that are referred to on plans but not in enough detail to start to make. One of these items was the torpedo truck. This was mounted to a bulkhead and used when reloading the torpedo tubes. I found that the USS Cassin Young museum actually had one and they kindly sent me dimensions and photographs. Another item was the sounding machine. Fortunately i had had to make two of these for my USS Gear build, so they came rather easily.
I added my Nav lights, and my mast, which again was 3D printed. The mast came with a fixed radar antenna and, besides, it was the wrong antenna. It was an improved later version than the Fletcher mounted in 1942. So, I made a fairing and, having a spare mini micro geared motor, cut off the existing antenna and mounted my new radar drive system. I made the antenna from brass rod and left over P/E sprue pieces. I could not run the wires for the motors inside the mast so I ran them down the outside. the mast already had a wire run 3D printed on it, so two more wire fit right in.
I'll stop here and add pictures.