5" 38 Twin Turret Cutaway DONE!

[mmarcovitch]

Sort of a milestone day… I pretty much finished all the gun house interior work. All that’s left is to drop the shield over top. That could be a nightmare, but I’m optimistic it will go okay (without breaking off any more foot rungs). There’s a lot of images today so bear with me.

First thing I did was change out those 0015" pins holding the trunnion caps with 0.025" pins. I then drilled the holes in the gun receivers to let the aluminum turned trunions set down completely. They were sticking proud of the surface when I attempted assembling it yesterday. I then found that the trunnions needed too much pressure to insert due to cement and paint inside the bearings. I line bored the bearings to match the same openings in the guns and the pins fit perfectly. After assembling I put a little thin CA into the joint to both glue down the caps AND freeze the guns at the level position. They will not be movabable.

I painted the printed 5" powder cartridges and placed some in strategic locations. One is in the right gun’s load tray and two are protruding from the powder hoists outlets in the floor pan. I made a bunch more of them and might have them on the deck randomly as they would be in action.

I mounted the fuze setters control unit after inserting the right gun’s trunnion pin as I anticipated doing.

I added the oil filters on its support and both of the cartridge chutes that direct the hot, spent cartridges out the back door onto the deck behind the gun house.

I then realized that there was no way at all that I was going to be able to drop the shield over the innerds AND STILL be able to get the ventialtion system installed properly. It wasn’t going to happen! I cut the vent unit off of the pipe that went through the ceiling girder and worked with it to install with the rest of the equipment. Even all opened up it wasn’t easy fitting it in. Still attached to the sheild assembly it would have been impossible.

I tried fitting the whole deal on the UHR and it will work okay. I’m still thinking about a way to use fasteners to hold the shield to the innerds since it would preclude having to clamp anything.

Here’s some frontal shots.

While these various parts were drying I was working on cleaning up pile of projectile racks for the magazine. I need 10 of them.

Because of the way I situated them in the printer, the slicer added a ton of tiny supports holding onto the tips of the projectiles which may not have printed well. It was a challenge to clean up and I’m not done yet. Meanwhile, the printer just finished the first batch of three powder container racks that go into the back room. I need five with ammo and four empty that will be in the background so you’ll only see their poles sicking up.

This shows all those tiny supports. For those that will be behind others removing them all may not be necessary. I got faster the more I did.

And those left to do.

I found some O’scale figures that I’m trying to populate the model. The scale is right, the garb is not. There are companies that make terrific figurines in this scale. I may get some. I can also kitbash some of these Woodland Scenics figures to make them WW2 US Navy sailors.

That’s all the work for this week. Y’all have a nice weekend. It’s finally going to stop raining so we’re going to get out of the house tomorrow.

[mmarcovitch]

Some odds and ends from yesterday’s and today’s sessions.

Continuing to print, cleanup and paint various components going into the magazine. By tomorrow all the printing for the model will be complete. While doing this, I’m writing the 3D printing book. It’s good to write it while I’m immersed in such a project. It’s keeping it real.

I’ve got all the powder cartridge racks printed. The enpty racks will be behind the vision line, but you’ll see the channels so viewers can assume there are canisters in them. Did that just to reduce the labor and resin use in making this part.

I painted the projectiles Olive Drab and will do detail painting tomorrow. I printed a plan view of the magazine to make sure I know how all these furnishings get installed.

There are 6 racks with canisters and four empty ones. Here are all six before any painting.

I painted a little detail I missed on the hoists. The upper trunk flange is black.

I also did a light check on the gun house shield. I’ve been tugging at those leads for a few weeks and wanted to make sure they were still viable. They were and they’re nice and bright. The white interior will reflect the light into the shadow regions.

I bumped the captain’s manual sight again and broke it again. I tried fixing it… again… but’s it’s a mess and no longer conforms to the model’s quality. I’m printing more of them. I also replaced another 5 broken foot rungs with phos-bronze. Hopefully this is the last of them. I’m getting pretty good at making and installing them, and that’s really a good thing. It means I keep breaking stuff. It’s like getting to know your body shop guy. It’s not somebody you’d like to know that well.

I’m going to remove the old one, but wait until the gun house is installed and safe before re-installing the new one. Again… benefits of designing and printing one’s own parts is you can make more when you screw them up.

I messaged with Ryan and we’re going to visit the ship on Sunday morning, May 19. We’ll be getting into Philly the day before. If we waited any longer the ship might be back in the water.

[tuna1957]

Bravo !

[mmarcovitch]

For most of my working (and retirement) life, my most creative ideas happen just as I’m waking up in the morning.

For a while I’ve been trying to come up with a way to fasten the gun house shield to the base WITHOUT adhesive. It was an awkward fit and I really could see how to clamp it without damage. Speaking of damage, broke another 5 foot rungs and fixed them with metal. I was able to screw the 16" turret housing on by expoxying wood blocks in various locations using small brass wood screws. There didn’t seem to be any space to do that with this model. There was not vacant floor space!

I was having one my normal, nutty dreams about making something or another that made no logical sensse, but as I woke I realized that I could fasten the housing to the frame beams just like the prototype. All I had to do was make them a little beefier to hold a screw. Then I brainstormed how to do that. I thought of wood, then J-B Weld, then epoxy putty like Milliputt, and finally Bondic. You can fill big spaces with Bondic. You just have to do it in multiple applications so you can effectively cure each layer with the UV light. All this noodling happened before I actually opened my eyes.

I also decided to try a test piece to see how well it would hold screws. I have some nice small ones that I wanted to use. I used a scrap base ring where I filled one of the bays between the ribs. The drill was a #58. The screw had a #55 diameter. I figured it would cut its own thread.

The Frame beams have those large lightening holes. I blocked them off with a small piece of thin styrene and then filled each side with Bondic until it was a solid. Since it’s exactly the same material as the beam, the drill should not wander.

This shows the blocking piece.

And with the Bondic filling.

I airbrushed the first coats on all the powder racks for the Magazine: gloss white on the empty racks and haze gray on the full racks. Next session I will detail paint the full racks.

I got successful prints on the replacement captain’s sights, the magazine circuit panels and the portholes.

The portholes show the limit of just about what you can do with 3D Printing. Notice that some of the locking handwheels are already gone. There’s just not enough strength to hold up. The porthole fits into a 11/32" hole which will be drilled into the styrene bulkheads. The details inside face and that will be facing away from the viewer.

With the decision made on how to fasten the housing to the base, I now had to actually see how it fit. First of all, all the angles and ledges that I had either printed in or glued on were not working. They were hanging up on all the equipment, and they weren’t needed any longer. I cut/ground them off.

I got the front and sides to fit, but the rear was hanging up. Upon inspection I found that the captain’s platform was too wide and was not letting the housing drop down pass the voice tube and a control switch on the communications installation. If you look closely at this picture you can see it hanging up on them.

The correct fix was to redraw/reprint this part with a different width. I close the lazy approach (which turned out not to be at all), and found another spare and attempted to cut it down and remake the locking arms. Almost got it. The first arm construction went well, but the second one didn’t. It almost fit and in attempting to do a minor adjustment broke the part, reguled it and broke it again. It was scrap. I just redrew a revision and will print it tomorrow. My mistake was the platform fit when it was in its final position, but I didn’t account that it had to slide down through the obstructions to get it there.

With my resistance soldering unit I could actually solder the wire while it was in the resin part without damaging it.

[mmarcovitch]

The reprinted parts including the platform are done and painted. I cleaned up the gun house shield back wall and airbrushed fresh white on it so it’s ready for the newly resized part. Painted the white rail portions of the ammo racks waiting for the final touch up, and continued cutting out the styrene wall panels for the cabin work. So in summary, work proceed apace.

Making a new manual sight was the correct thing to do and takes advantage of having the 3D printing capacity right in the shop. The old one was just a mess and didn’t belong on the model.

I tested the new platform and it slips between the comm poles without interference so the gun house can be joined to the inerds whenever I want to do it.

All the white paint is on the ammo racks. I have to do some detail and touchup on these and they’re ready to go.

Woke up thinking about lighting scheme for the magazine and how to best run all the wiring to the electrical compartment under the wood base. There is a railing on the deck in front of the gun and I may add that along with the planked wood decking. I need more information about exactly how those rails were constructed. I will just need a little bit of it, so I could make the stanchions out of brass… much stronger than 3D printed resin.

All depends on how much time I have. I want to deliver the model when we do our visit on May 19. That sets a hard date. It’s not easy for us to make the trip back East, so if I don’t deliver it then it will have to wait until 3 months or more later. I don’t like keeping finished commission models around. Once they’re done, I want them out of my hands. I don’t want anything to happen to them.

I have to get the final case dimensions and order the plexiglass and the name plate. I also have to create the AV program. I’m collecting images as I go along for it so the work will be in organization and adding all the text items. Shouldn’t take too long, but it’s another task that’s needs to be completed.

[mmarcovitch]

With the 5"38 project showing signs of completion, I’m starting to think about the engine room challenge. To get 33 knots, over 250 feet of the entire center of the Iowas were dedicated to propulsion. Each of the four engine rooms generated 53,000 hp. The engines rooms were over 35’ feet long, over 60’ wide and 25’ high. In 1:48 the model’s volume would be 7.8" long, 16.5" wide and 6.5" high. It’s not vastly large. I have general understanding of the layout, but that’s insufficient. The machinery takes up two platforms vertically, with floor gratings separating the levels. I am not planning on modeling the boilers, but may change my mind.

Here’s the four engine rooms withing the envelope of the armored citadel.

I’m aiming at engine room #3 since it was a rectangluar shape with square corners. Rooms #1 & #2 had tapered sides based on the curvature of the hull.

This is the floor plan of #3 from the 1st Platform level. There is the 2nd Platform level where part of this extends downward to. The low pressure turbine is very large and extends downward. The condensors are also very large and are at the lower level.

Elevation views of two rooms show equipment from different points of view. I was wondering how the 53,000 hp thrust is captured and transmitted into the ship’s structure. It’s not a simple thing. The prop thrust is captured by the all-important thrust bearing, but where does it go from there. I am assuming that the massive vertical beam that’s attached to the ship’s structure by massive gusset plates is where the thrust enters into the ship proper and propels it forward.

This view gives a good look at the size of the LP turbine.

This project won’t be started for a long time, and will be on a separate thread if and when I do, but I just wanted to give a teaser of what could come.

[mmarcovitch]

Yesterday’s work and today’s are in this post. Bunch of odds and ends. Got all the ammo finish painted and ready to install. Mounted the new captain’s platform installed and it works. The gun housing drops right in place. Continue working on the styrene sheet stock cutting the partitions for the magazine. I somehow lost the cut ends of the sighting telescopes which I wanted to glue into the sighting blisters. I took the drawing of same and made a clipped off versions. I’ll print them tommorow. Once they’re finshed I’ll glue them in. Then the housing will be ready to install with the scews.

Speaking of screws; I decided that if it would work to hold the gun house together, why not do the same on the UHR. To that end I added Bondic filler to the bottoms of the four legs of the ring frame. The screws should hold it down nicely, and again, I’ll be able to take it apart should the need arise.

I power my LEDs with the CL2N3 LED drivers soldered into a small circuit board. When I was doing this for the 16" project my first attempt had their polarity reversed. I soldered together another one. That “bad” one was sitting on my bench since them. Today I successfuly de-soldered and removed them. They all survived the ordeal when I tested each one. They’re not that expensive, but they’re not free either. I will use them again.

I finished painting the magazine circuit panels.

Here’s the new platform glued into the rear of the gun house shield.

I drew and printed the correctly sized magazine entry doors. On the magazine’s outboard side is a narrow passage. On the port side (towards mid-ships) is “Broadway”, the 300 foot long wide corridor that goes from turret #2 to #3 and has entry to all the magazines, four boiler and four engine rooms. The view of my model will be from outboard looking in.

I didnt even attempt to 3D print the door dog handles knowing now that most would break off. I did made a tiny hole in the drawing whcih the print did pick up as a guide for the drill. I used phos-bronze wire (0.015") for these handles. I did not put them on the non-viisible side.

I’ve started cutting all the walls beginning with the magazine. I’m using a fairly heavy stock for these walls thinking (probably wrong) that the magazine’s walls would be thicker than you’re average partitiion. Still don’t know about the ceiling detail, but have an idea of how to do the roof girders.

Lastly, I got more serious about how to run the wiring and did those Bondic thickening areas to prepare to accept the screws at the bottoms. The Bondic is transparent and will be very unobtrusive.

I suspect things will be going quickly from now on. Building styrene structures goes pretty quickly, and there’s not much more drawing/printing to do except for building the railing and what I do with the ceilings.

Whoops! Forgot to hit REPLY yesterday when I was copying the post for another forum, so I’ll add today’s fun to this one.

I’m going to try and make cable railings like the real ship has. In 1:48 scale, theoretically, I should be able to. So I designed and printed the stanchions. I think they’ll be strong enough. They should really be brass, but that’s whole other deal and I’d probably go with solid rails not wire. I also printed very tiny turnbuckles. They printed perfectly, but do not have the structural integrity to handle even applying the wire to it, as seen here.

The eye broke off almost instantly.

I did thread some magnet wire through the eye on the stanchion and it’s quite strong.

I made two that also have angle braces to withstand the tension of the wire. In fact, I made a whole lot of them.

I also printed the telescpe ends for the sighting scopes and painted them semi-gloss black. I purposely did not paint the lens face. I’m going to apply All Clad silver to it overcoated with transparent green to simulate a coated optical surface. I drilled them so I could hold them with a toothpick during the painting process.

Then I went back to cutting wall pieces. I’m using some 3/32 aircraft ply for the main deck. I’m going to plank it and wood glues to wood better than to styrene. There will be a little lip glue to the front edge so you won’t be able to tell it’s wood. Started cutting out the openings for the access hatches.

[mmarcovitch]

I was having a problem with my new 2024 upgrade load. Extensions were not working and attempts to uninstall them to reload new one was failing. I was on the phone with Tech Support for almost an hour yesterday, but we couldn’t figure out what was going on. We were removing all the non-working extensions from the Plugins folder in the User Library, but they would keep loading everytime were restarted SU. I contacted my genius MAC guru daughter in law. She said there may be TWO Library Folders being accessed. Turns out that Windows programs ported for Mac, sometimes create 2 Libraries; one in the Root/Library/Applications Support path and another in the Root/Users/Library/Applications Support path. Both had all the old extensions.

We were only removing the ones in the Users Library, not the Root Library. When I followed her instructions and found the other library folder, I was able to fully delete all the errant extensions and reload them through Sketchup. This time, they loaded correctly and found all my licenses. I let Tech Support know about this. If it happened to me, other MAC users must have experienced it too.

[mmarcovitch]

Not much time in the shop since I was spending hours fixing up all the nonesense with my software. Besides the SU extensions challenge (all fixed now), I ran into a problem with CorelDraw and Mac Sonoma. While I could print directly out of CD with tiled pages so I could print full-size plans even thought my printer could only hand letter-sized paper. Mac changed Sonoma so CD no longer prints at all, let alone tiled prints. I would have to buy CD 2024 to have a fix, but I don’t want to incur that cost if only to get it to occasionally print over-large images.

So I did some more research and found a web app that takes over-large PNG files and coverts them to multi-page PDF files that can be printed out of Adobe Acrobat Reader. Adobe also can print “poster” objects, except…. that feature is grayed out unless you subsribe to the Pro edition. Seems lilke I was getting caught at every turn.

The app is PosteRazor. You upload the PNG, define how you want it tiled and it downloads the formatted PDF. No charge!

Like I said, I produce oversized plans a couple of times a year. I don’t want to have to spend hundreds of dollars to just do that. I’m a hobbyist, not business and I’m on a fixed income and, while I don’t mind paying for the software, I don’t like getting hit becasue it no longer does a basic funtion like printing.

So I was able to create full-size, Scotch-taped-together, prints of the decks and elevations I’m going to need to finish the superstructure and lower deck compartments. I bought more styrene sheet to finish the job, I also came up with another way to do a scale railing.

Instead of trying to coax magnet wire to behave better, I’m going to use E-Z Line Lycra thread to make the “Cable” hand rails. I also re-printed the stanchions so the turnbuckles are not integral with the end posts. All the stress will be direct pulling and they will do just fine.

I added a flange at the bottom to control how deep they sit into the decking. I also changed the angle on the brace, so it too would sit nicely.

I reprinted the magazine access doors to enlarge the bosses for the locking dogs. They were really tiny and not giving good enough purchase to the phos-bronze handles.

With all the plans done, and enough stock on hand, all that’s left is to turn all of them into walls.

I got the final base size from my friend and drew the correctly size plexiglass case. i will order those pieces this week. I also created the nameplate that will go onto the base.

I created a QR code label to direct folks to one of the build threads I’m doing, so if they so desire, can see all the gory details of creating such a thing.

And I have to do the AV program. If I don’t get it done by the delivery date of May 19, it’s something that I can sent later through regular shipping channels. The model can’t. I have to hand-deliver that.

[TDahl]

@mmarcovitch

…so I could print full-size plans even thought my printer could only hand letter-sized paper.

For future needs, you might look into having a service bureau print large sheets for you. If you can pick them up in person (to avoid delivery costs) the cost might be acceptable. Back in 2016 I used Staples to print five or six black-and-white C-size (17"x22") sheets, and the price was about $2.00 USD per sheet. That was a lot less expensive than I was guessing it would cost.

By the way, for the past year or so I have been watching many of curator Ryan’s videos about the USS New Jersey posted on YouTube. They are quite interesting.

[mmarcovitch]

Tom, that’s a good idea. I only need large plans a couple of times a year, and if I can get good accuracy by taping together the sheets, I’m okay with that. That said, Louisville is a big enough town that there are services to do what you suggested and I will keep it in mind going forward.

Again, a short session. Between taking walks with my steadily improving wife (up to two miles now), and a haircut, got less than an hour in the shop, but I did do something. Finished putting all the multiple sheets together and now have a full set of plans for each deck. The reaons these are so important is the openings for the hoist trunks.

And I found that my relief cuts that I drew into the splinter deck are not aligned with the trunk. It was the way I decided to create the modules. I will have to cut them by hand anyway. The plans are very close to the actual size of the objects.

I cut the door openings old school using the Dremel with a carbide router. I had tried to use a brad-point drill bit to cut the corners, but it tore out on exit and destroyed the piece. I also got very nice prints of the slightly modified Magazine Access Doors. These have bigger dog bosses so I should get a more secure attachment for the wire handles.

Here’s another example of plans all taped together. I have circles drawn for alignment tubes that will keep all three decks in registration, again for those trunks. It must have been fun building the real ship figuring out their pathway through decks and bulkheads as they wend their way from magazine to upper handling room.

I hope to have a longer session tomorrow. I did order the nameplate and have final measures for the plexiglass. I know from experience that it takes on day to do the electrics, one to do the outer case, and I have probably 10 or more hours to finish the model. I should be done by May 18.

[mmarcovitch]

Construction has begun on the Magazine proper. I should say, construction, then de-construction, then construction again, and another de-construction and so on. Yesterday I go the Mag’'s walls done with all of their cutaways. One set was supposed to be three walls with identical cutaways. I first tried to use a jewelers saw to cut them laminated together. This wasn’t working. I then resorted to using the Dremel with carbide routing bit. This was a multi-step process: Routing, small drum sandings, hand sanding, and some more power sanding.

I reprinted the doors and added all those little handles. That took almost an hour.

That brings us to today. I was anxious to get started gluing walls together. Maybe a bit too anxious. I didn’t make one mistak, or two. I made three. It’s my ADHD kicking in.

All the walls had angle stock glued to give more strength. It sure did! When I needed to take things apart (with more to come… unfortunately), they were very difficult to take apart. I have a steel plate with special magnets for building model structures purchased from MicroMark years ago. This is a good use for it. I got the first wall glued in nicely.

I then glued in the second wall. Only much, much later I found that I glued it in reversed. Remember those three walls with the same cutaway, well… the outermost wall opening should be on the left (looking at the wall). The result is the cutawys don’t align as I wanted them to do. And there’s a little partitiion wall which you now see its exposed edge. My first dumb mistake by not paying attention to my own planning. It’s not a critical error because I kind of like that you see on both sides of that little wall which shows the door to enter the magazine.

I then glued it all up and found my second screw up. I put the rear wall in upisde down. I noticed this when I took a picture and saw the door sill was now very high. It’s supposed to be 16 scale inches, and it was more like two feet. I ripped it out and re-glue it correctly.

I got all the walls in and then found two more errors. The first doesn’t matter much at all. For the left blank wall I used a piece that was almost exactly the same size, but cut from the wrong thicikness stock. It’s also not as perfectly fit at the “real” one. I’m not doing anything about it. The next one is more seriious.

In this image you can see the rear door sitting much to high on the wall.

The fourth screw up is I forgot to cut the openings in the front of the powder room to include the spaces for the scuttle doors. These are an esesntial part of the magazine and I printed them. I’ve thought about how to modify the wall without ripping it out, but am coming up short. I think I have to make a new one and reinstall. DOH!

I want to put in some ceiling beams and cobbled one by hand to see how it will work. I was satisfied with it, but crafting them this was was taking way too long. Besides, they have lightening holes to pass piping and wiring, which was much harder to do in styrene. Answer: Draw and 3D print them.

I don’t know the spacing between them and asked Ryan if he can provide that. Speaking of Ryan. He’s geting his 15 minutes of fame. He was mentioned a lot in a New York Times article this week on the Battleship New Jersey’s makeover. It a big …. Deal.

I put some furnishing in the magazine and took some pictures. They look like my drawings. When painted and lit, it will be interesting.

In this next image looking in the front, the large opening into the powder room should have the scuttle doors in it. Now it’s just a big hole.

It should look like this.

Had an “interesting” experience yesterday. I was using the 0.015 carbide drill to make the holes for the dog levers on the reprinted doors. These tiny drills are ground on the ends of 1/8" carbide shafts. I reached into the special box they come in, only to have one impale itself on the second finger of my right hand… DEEP… all the way in. I ranked my hand off and the drill came out of the case with it. Then I shook it and the drill flew onto the floor. Hurt like heck! When I looked at the drill, it was missing the bit part. Was it in my finger? I swept the floor to find since they always break when dropped, but couldn’t find it. Meanwhile, it’s not hurting any more, Tungsten Carbide is effecetively inert and won’t degrade in my finger, so we’ll see what happens. It was very surprising!

[mmarcovitch]

Another problem solved! Whew!

I went to sleep last night working through the various ways to fix that wall without ripping anything out. I came up with laminating an new wall on the front with the proper cutouts for the scuttle doors. Actually, it looks like the powder magazine walls are very thick and may be filled with concrete. Doubling the walls thickness isn’t so far fetched.

To do this I traced the cutaway on the existing wall and matched what I was opening on the repair so they would look okay. I traced the scuttle door and between router and sanding got a very nice, close fit; much better than my previous attempts.

I glued the new all in place with good old Testor’s tube cement since it gives more working time. The cutaway needed some fine touching up and I was able to reach through the front wall’s opening with the Dremel Flexishaft and cleaned it up.

The new opening give less view than before, but those doors had to be there. They are an essential piece to isolate the powder from the rest of the ship.

I printed the first set of long roof girders. Ryan answered me by suggesting the spacing is the same as the ship’s frames = 4 feet. I’m going to enlarge that for a couple of reasons, mostly to ensure that the hoist trunks have a straight shot out of the magazine, and not cast too many shawdows from the ceiling lighting. Prints are essentially perfect. Sure beats cobbling them together by hand.

Asked for a quote for the Plexiglass, my friend’s putting the laquer on the base, and the nameplate is ordered. If I get the plexiglass by end next week, I will finish that on time. Takes one work session to build the case.

I’m also making a good start on the AV program.

[mmarcovitch]

The end is near… in a good way. The nameplate is finished and ready for pickup. The plexiglass is ordered and will be ready on Friday. I got the 2nd deck compartments glued up and ready for paint. I had to modify the wood decking. I’m reprinting a modified ceiling beams, and changed my strategy for the hoist trunks.

Here’s the fully built 2nd deck compartments. I added corner bracing to help hold it square. It’s rather flexible. It won’t be when fully glued to the decks on top and bottom, but I want it to be stable as possible, so that goes well.

I’m adding mounting blocks for the styene armor deck below, and the wood main deck above. For the styrene armor deck, I’ve glued styrene 1/4" sq. stock. For the wood main deck, I’m going to glue in 1/4" sq. basswood blocks using CA, so I can get a better adhesion to the wood decking.

After further analysis, I changed the positioning of the 2nd deck structures which changed the shape of the main deck. The cutout portion in the right rear was now too small. I’m good at doing “Board Extending” and had not one chance to do it today, but two. A twofer if you will. When I measured for the first extension, I hadn’t positioned the cabins properly. I needed to add more. Luckily, I had more of the ply, and used epoxy to hold on the biggest part, and then med CA with accelerator to glue the smaller piece. I filled any gaps with CA and then went back with Bondic. When all was hardened I sanded it flush. When finished the repair will be invisibe.

I had to make relief cuts on the lap bracing so they cleared the styrene compartment walls.

Here’s the modified deck properly fitted on the cabins. I also did the cutaways on this structure. The reason for the cutaways is just to show the pathway for the ammo hoist trunks. I’m not doing any detailing of these various compartments. They are not the focus of the model other than to show that the magazines are not directly below the gun mounts.

Things are moving quickly. I have to put in the lighting for the magazine before I get any further. I changed the scheme for the hoist trunks. Just like on the big gun model, getting the hoist part to thread through all the decks and bulkheads was just not working when I mentally constructed the model. As in the big gun, I’m separating the hoist into pieces that will glue in seperately between the decks and buikheads. The viewer doesn’t care if they’re actually contiguous, just that they’re there. For their passage through the Splinter Deck lattice, I’m just going to remove the lattice completely, rather than try to cope in a precise path. You won’t see it and it greatly complicates the installation.

There’s still a lot to do, but I’m on a roll and all the critical path items are on track. There could still be nasty surprises, but hopefully not as heart-stopping as I had with the final asembly of the big turret.

[mmarcovitch]

Work continues.

I glued in the screw blocks in the 2nd deck structure and then drilled and applied small, flat head, brass screws. I’m not going to use any glue to hold the parts together. This way, it can all be disassembled should some catastrope happen. I got the lighting installed for the magazine, and that was a significant step. I’m ready to do the painting of the remaining structures and building the real wood main deck. That could take a couple of days. I need a full day to build the showcase, and at least a day to bring it all together. Tomorrow I will build the power supply board. There are only four lighting circuits to be powered.

I was originally going to glue the styrene Splinter Deck floor to the Magazine, but seeing how well the screws worked on the main deck, I chose to add wood blocks to the magazine upper wall edges to capature the screws. I won’t be doing this for the splinter deck, but will use epoxy instead. This part of the model doesn’t have any functional components and should never have to be disassembled.

It took me literally three attempts to layout the lighting circuit on the Magazine celing. I was working with the structure upside down on the work bench and just couldn’t get the orientation right. My first attempt was completely wrong. My second only partially wrong. Finally, I got it correct and was able to first use 3M transfer tape to adhere the thin ply to the styrene and then apply adhesive copper foil ciruit runs. The fun didn’t stop there.

I tested the Surface Mount LEDs before installation and again after soldering them into the circuit. I mark the + and – polarity so I can solder them in correctly. Works great, especially when I pay attention to it. In this case, the first LED was in correctly, but I reversed the second. So they worked when I applied power individually, but didn’t when I applied power to the circuit. LEDs are Diodes, and therefore, block current from the opposing polarity. In my desoldering I overheated them and they were scrap. I replaced them and my test rig failed. I had salvaged some CL2N3 LED driver chips from a previous project, which I had tested and they worked okay. My test rig has an unprotected 12 VDC lead for protected LED circuits and another with a CL2 in the line to apply 12VDC at 20ma for the unprotected LEDs. It was failing and over-drove the circuit blowing out all three LEDs. After redoing the test rig and applying all new LEDs, I got good tests on all circuits. With 12VDC applied, I’m limited to 3 LEDs in series since they each drop 3.3 volts. A fourth LED would be 13.2 volts which doesn’t work with a 12 v power supply.

Here’s the bare circuit. This will all be painted ceiling color and won’t be very obvious.

I used Bondic as a cable clamp and combined the negatives in parallel, but each positive circuit will go to its own CL2N3 driver in a little circuit board below the base. I scuffed up the styrene where the Bondic was going so it had more grip.

I installed a 1/4" brass tube to act as a wire conduit for these wires and those coming down from above. I have drills sharped to drill plastic. It’s a much sharper angle than standard 135º point angle. They don’t grab on exit and can drill plexiglass and down shatter the plastic on exiting.

[mmarcovitch]

Big day! It was the kind of day that gave me confidence that the model will be completed on schedule. Only had one catastrophe which I sort-of corrected. We were supposed to have wild weather, but itw as sunny and warm so painting outdoors worked fine. I had to prepare some stuff before painting. I joined the gun house shell to the base and continued working on the wiring harness.

I didn’t use screws to hold the armor deck to the underside of the 2nd deck cabins. I glued it, and I’m going to glue the Splinter Deck lattice to the underside of this part since there’s not good place to put the attachment blocks on the Splinter Deck. When the glue set it was ready for paint. I printed the now-fragmented trunks, and painted them metal color, mostly so they’re show up when people peer into the spaces to see their path.

While all this was drying, I started to put the gun house together. It just about fit, but there were still some problem areas. All of the fit problems stem from one error that I suspected, but didn’t take any action about. The sub-floor under the GH frame was too far back…about 1/16 (or more) rearward. It may have been a drawing error. Some things about the shield design changed throughout the various iterations of the project.

This error caused a lot of troubles that didn’t really appear until now. For example, it pushed the sight scopes rearward. This put stress on the sight checker’s scope, which decided to break off when I was working on another fit problem. Oh… and I also broke off two more resin footrungs. I think I’ve replaced half of these already. Getting very good at it.

The scope broke out here…

And this is what the chunk looked like. Even with my resin mix with Tenacious (a flexible resin) small cross-sections are still very fragile.

I had a spare that I used as a guide on how this thing went back together. I got it into place with Bondic, but it’s aligned poorly. There’s not much I can do about that since it’s the base position problem that’s causing the alighment problem.

I didn’t want to remove the shell to get it fit better. I had some difficulty with the screws not establishing solid threads and removing them would basically make them useless. I’m hoping that it won’t be so noticeable.

Another problem caused by the plate position: the front frame girders were sticking out beyond the base plate and were distorting the front lower edge of the gun shield. I power sanded the excess to make it flush with the base plate so the front panel was no longer distorted.

Similarly, about a 1/16" of the base plate was sticking out behind the curved rear wall. After taking this picture, I sanded that off too.

The gun house light circuit is now combined with the UHR light circuit with all the leads dressed and ready to go further down into the model. They are running down the back of the UHR, nestled into the veritcal support beam, and won’t be very visible. I joined the negative leads from both circuits since the negatives will be on a common bus.

Here’s another image of the gun house in place.

Tomorrow, I will airbrush final coats on all the parts, and do detail painting on all the various hatches. Then I’ll get to building the main deck superstructure and planking the main deck. With that the model will effectively be complete. I’m looking forward to doing this last part since it’s just traditional model making and shouldn’t cause too much anxiety. This gives me three to four more days of solid work time to get it all done. I have a couple of doctors appointments next week, but they’re not long ones.

[mmarcovitch]

Happy Mother’s Day to all for which it is appropriate!

Several things are going on. Almost done the model proper. All the major painting is done, have to finalize the electronics, and produce some more graphics. Deck to cabin attachement is nearly complete. Both the main deck to 2nd Deck Compartments, and Magazine Ceiling to Magazine are now held with screws. All linoleum is finish coated. Gun house is finally ready for joining to UHR and everthing is filled that needed to be.

However, I have a major glitch with the plexiglass. I took a small risk ordering the plexiglass by measurements given to me by my friend Bryan, the base builder.

I picked up the Plexiglass on Thursday and the base arrived in perfect condition on Friday.

When I tried the plexiglass on for size, the front/back and top were about 1 1/4" too short!!! The sides were fine. What the heck happened???

Went back to my drawings and realized that when Bryant gave me the measurements they were shorter than what I had on my drawing. A red flag should have gone up, but instead, I adjusted my drawing, and then measured the plexiglass with this new measure. That was wrong! I should have called Bryant and asked him to recheck.

I called General Rubber & Plastics here in town and asked them to cut three more piecces to the new measures as taken diectly from the (CORRECT) base and they will rush the job. If it comes in by Wednesday, I will be okay. Thrusday may not work since the acrylic cement takes 24 hours to fully cure and I don’t want to risk it coming apart during handling.

So what went wrong. Bryant is a perfectionist (like I am sometimes), but it was his error. His ruler’s end is not the start of the measuring and he forgot to add the difference. Ergo, he measured the correct base and got an incorrect answer. The worst that can happen is it cost me an additional $50.00.

I got most of the detail painting done on the three new Lower Hoists. They came out very nicely.

I masked the edges and brush-painted the linoleum color on the magazine and visible floors on the 2nd deck. And with the apparatus fitted. I may not use my roof beams. They are going to impinge on the hoists. My hoists may be a tad over-sized and my beams are definitely over-sized. Regardless, they will be hard to see.

I will call General Rubber tomorrow and get a fix on delivery. Shouldn’t take to long to cut 3 peices of 3/16 plexiglass. They mill it will a CNC machine so the edges are just about ready for gluing. I hit them with some light sanding, chamfer slightly the gluing edge and they’re ready to go. Should only take 1/2 hour to make the case once I have the correct stock in hand.

I really want to deliver this when we’re at the dry dock tour. It’s a perfect time to get it there with the renewed interest in the ship with all the news coverage it’s been getting. It would be great to have it sitting next to the big gun when it reopens in June. If I miss this date it will have to wait until we drive back East again, and that could be as late as fall. Meanwhile, it would sitting around here risking something bad happening to it.

[TDahl]

Looking great as usual. I hope the SNAFU with the case pieces is resolved in time!

@mmarcovitch

…the acrylic cement takes 24 hours to fully cure…

What type of cement do you use? I have made a number of small shelf units and boxes and such out of 3/32 or 1/8 inch clear acrylic sheet and I use a very thin plastic model maker’s solvent such as Tenax 7R which comes in a cylindrical glass bottle (my favorite) or Testor’s thin solvent which comes in a black plastic bottle (not the gel tube cement). I don’t know how long either product takes to “fully” cure but they are solid to the touch in 10-20 seconds and very secure in a minute, when applied to a tight joint where the solvent wicks between the pieces via capillary action.

[mmarcovitch]

Tom, thanks! I use special very low viscosity cement made for acrylic. Yes… it does set up very quicky (and is very unforgiving when you get sloppy0, but it takes 24 hours to reach full strength. Since this is going to get bounced around in a car ride, I want it to be good and solid before I go.

Made substantial progress today, and I’m feeling pretty good about finishing the model (at least) on time. Finished all the detail painting on the reprinted lower hoists so they’re done. Build the LED driver board with 7 parallel circuits. 6 are dedicted now, but I’m thinking of adding some light into the 2nd deck cabins showing the hoist trunks and one over the overhang where I may be placing the nameplate. If I don’t put it there, it will be adhered to the back wall of the showcase.

.

Since I’m already paralleling some of the negative leads before they even get to the circuti board, I don’t need very many barrier terminals. I DO need a separate positive circuit for each 3-LED series sub-circuit.

The bottom is not very neat because it not really a printed circuit board. It’s more like a bread board. The positive ends of the CL2N3 driver chips is a common bus, but the output side goes to each circuit individually.

I finished crafting the final wall structure; the sample of the superstructure that resides next to the #4 gun mount. I needed to make precise holes to accept the 3D printed porthole assemblies. It’s a pretty big hole and I attempted to grind a plastic-pointed drill with the 100º drill point angle. It didn’t work and grabbed and tore my test piece. I reverted to making my “Poor-man’s Punch” scheme.

It goes like this:

1. Grind the tail end of the drill you want to use with a diagonal flat surface.
2. Lightly grind the diameter to remove any burrs and give a sharp edge/
3. With the business-end of the drill, create a hole in a piece of steel, aluminum or brass that will serve as the die side.
4. Reverse the drill in the drill press with the punch-end in this newly formed hole to align it with the drill press spindle.
5. Lower the chuck while loose over the punch and manipulate it so it is as vertical as you can get it.
6. Clamp the die end (over a block of wood with the same hole) and clamp the drill press table.
7. Tighten the flute end of the drill in the chuck without disturbing the geometry. Note: the drill really isn’t symetrical and clamping it in a 3-jaw drill chuck is optimal. You’re not going to turn the drill on, just press straight down
8. Place the plastic on the die and punch the hole.

I laid out the hole locations and scribed circles of the correct diameter to use as a guide when positioning under the punch.

This was the test!

And here was the actual run. The plastic doesn’t pull away when you raise the tool. Real punch presses have stripper plates that sit between the punch and die to remove the part from the punch. Since it’s just plastic, it’s not hard to remove the workpice.

Here were the pieces punched for the portholes.

And assembled.

And now with the portholes installed.

Notice there is a raised lip around the porthole which is exactly as I wanted it with the 0.040" plastic sheet I was using.

This is the back side with won’t be viewed by the public, but all the porthole details are there.

Tomorrow, this new stuff gets painted. And I will start on planking the main deck. Should take a day. More painting needs to be done on some of the decks. Final assembly should be on Wednesday and hopefully building the case.

I finalize the AV program, but don’t yet have the digital picture frame. You can get 15" screens for about $100.00 and I’m trying to convince Ryan to spring for this one thing.

Here’s a sample of the visuals i created for AV program.

[DLT_CAT]

Great work! Very impressive!
A few tips for you. Weld-On #3 or #4 is the best for welding the edges of acrylic you can also use #16 it is thicker but for a display case #3 or #4 will wick quickly. You can get it on amazon or the place you are getting the acrylic probably has it too. i prefer to use a syringe to apply it rather than a squeeze bottle that comes with if you get a kit. Weld-On #3, #4, and #16 also work in HIPS.
When cutting holes in 0.040" HIPS (High impact polystyrene) I use a brad point drill bit. Go slow and in reverse to score the plastic. You may go all the way through it in reverse and should get a clean cut, but you can try in proper direction to get a clean cut without tear out. Bonus tip, a CO2 laser cuts HIPS fast like a hot knife through butter. It does give off some fumes, so make sure your ventilate.