It’s a beautiful day and I have finally reached the point of this build that I always fear…painting. I think painting is a personal phobia for me since I have messed up a model or two models over the years causing me to have to strip and repaint. Last week all the details were removed and carefully stored for priming at a later date.
I started to prep the hull for priming by roughing up the fiberglass gel coat and the deck with 600 grit sand paper. I will apply alkyd gray primer to the entire model followed by flat greens and a copperoyd/red below the waterline.

Testors Model Master paints are a good match based on swatches used on US Navy World War II Ships. A colour guide I purchased from Snyder and Short (20 years ago) will be used as an accuracy guide.

I would like to try Measure 31/20L, done by Alan D. Knox in his original build back in the 80’s but being realistic I know I am not capable of painting at this level. I will probably paint the hull and cabins MTB Green with 20-G Deck Green and a copperoyd lower hull that was typical of early PT Boats.

The exhaust on the rear was one of the features that are affected by the change in the hulls geometry. These items were purchased from John Haynes and modified with the require tubing details. Each of the three exhaust sets were fixed to a 1/32” thick ply mounting plate to be installed as a sub-assembly after the hull was painted. The plates have two alignments pins that are recessed into the back of the hull for assembly. On the inside of the hull behind the mufflers a 1/32" thick fibreglassed plate has been added to prevent water ingress into the hull.

About a year ago I made a tow hook for the bow of this model, that was typical of the late war Elco boats. I had it “tacked” on and it aesthetically looked okay and is accurate to this series of Elco PT boats. As an item that will be a detriment to water flow around the hull’s “V” nose I have opted not to put it on the model. PT boats were customized by their crews in the field, so the crew of this boat has opted to remove the tow hook to get a better fluid dynamic flow to defeat their Axis adversary in the Pacific Theater.

Two of the last major details on this model was the gas cannister and the roll-off depth charge racks. PT 596 never had depth charge racks as a permenent fixture, but I am sure they were available to mount if needed. I made one rack to mount on the left side of the hull at the stern opposite the gas cannister.

The gas canister was turned down on my lathe from a piece of ½” OD acrylic rod. The inside was drilled out and a domed head, cut on my lathe from a broken mechanical pencil was solvent welded to the acrylic tube

Numerous details such as toe rails on the forward deck and several types of deck and cabin vents were also drawn and made to enhance the accuracy of this model.

The forward 37mm deck gun was a relatively easy scratch build from styrene sheet and tube. The ammo rack was the most difficult creating the necessary detail to make it look realistic.

My Lego guy has become a valued multitasking member of this MTB crew, until I acquire some 1/24 scale crew figures for this model.

The side mounted rocket launchers were built next. I originally was going to make the six tubes on each cluster from brass and brass sheet, so that a projectile could be launched from the model. That plan changed after learning that in Canada owning firearms is not a right and it is illegal to fire any projectile horizontally without a registered permit.

It was still fun playing around with brass tube and ladyfinger fire crackers (from the US) to make a pen size scale rocket launcher. The design was revised to make lighter non-operational rocket launchers from styrene tube. The tube swivel bases went though several revisions until I was satisfied with the result.

The 50 cal machine guns were one of the most difficult parts to get research information for drawing and building. John’s casting detail was incredible, catching stuff that I never noticed in much of my own drawing research. I decided to get John’s gun turrets while ordering the cast guns to eliminate the need to use 2” PVC pipe. The turrets are a two piece assembly (upper and lower) and are a perfect match for the cutouts I made in the forward and day cabins. Although guns on the actual boats never operated in this manner, I have a mechanism created from a servo that will allow the upper turret section to rotate independent of the fixed lower section to provide a bit of animation to the model. I am not sure yet if will use this feature.

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.

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.

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.