1/350 Uss Halyburton FFG-40 Full Build 

Yes, you are correct. How ever the Perry class appeared to have two different types from my research

That I really couldn't tell you. I know there is the long and short hull which really isn't that much of a difference in length other than the extended few feet aft of the rear helicopter landing deck. The most knowledge I have about modern day US navy ships is the decks which the missiles are launched from like you see on the Arleigh Burke class the Spruance and the Ticonderoga class ships. They are called 8 cell decks which are usually seen in groups of 4 or 8 side by side. A very large company in Chicago called US Industries manufactured them from start to finish back in the 80's when the ships were being built. We started out with all of the armor plate steel which was all machined to government specifications then all of the hundreds of parts were welded together in special fixtures. They went through several machining processes before they came to the very large planer mill that I ran. I had to machine all of the hatch openings and all of the areas where all of the opening mechanisms went. I had to keep all of the tolerances in tenths of a thousandth of an inch. There was basically no room for errors and the openings once the hatches were in place were basically air tight. Once all the machining was done they went to our paint shop where they were placed on a very large painting fixtures and painted according to government specifications. After that they were shipped out to the shipyards for installation on the ships in the configurations that you see. We also manufactured all of the above ground MX missile launchers from start to finish as well. I have many photos of all of these in different stages of completion. Just to give you an idea of the size of the machines and the size of some of the work we did the largest machining job that I had to do was a 90 ton solid steel casting. It was the main ram for very large pile drivers which were used for driving off shore bridge pilings and also off shore oil rig pilings. We had overhead cranes which were 100 ton capacity and when these large parts were lifted to be set up on my machine no one was allowed in the area except for me. I practically had to be almost underneath the 90 ton piece to make sure it was set properly on the setup blocks which I had placed in specific locations. Our overhead cranes operators were very good and I had a lot of trust in him every time we made one of these lifts. We had our own safety crew which spent several hours inspecting the chains every time we had to make one of these lifts and they always had to let me and the crane operator know that everything was okay. We had a hookup man that would hook up the chains and once he was finished he had to clear the area. Once we made sure the hookup was good we would make the lift. If things didn't look right to the crane operator he wouldn't make the lift. As for me I was the only one in the area making sure the part was straight and level and was precisely placed exactly where I needed it to be. The lift took about 20 minutes and it was the most nervous 20 minutes for me every time we did this which was 50 times. Shortly after we finished all of these government jobs in the early 90's a Japanese company bought the company and 6 months later shut the doors putting about 600 employees out of work. I had 20 years with the company and I moved out to a small town near Dixon Illinois where I owned some property and landed a job at a CNC machine shop which I spent 22 years working at and decided to retire from 3 years ago at the age of 60. At this company I mainly helped design and machine prototype parts for other companies and they would test them out in the field and then we would get together and see what changes would need to be made. I also did all of the programming for the machines as well as setting up the machines to run the jobs. I enjoyed working as a machinist all my life and it never felt like a job to me. I still get calls from the last company asking me for input whenever they have a problem. Anyway thats enough of my rambling and nice work on your build. Have a great weekend.

@@JimPaulJr Thank you Jim. Getting to hear/read stories like this are what makes doing videos so cool. Hope you have a good weekend too.