Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

[jefftytoo]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

Today it was back to the caddy fins. As always, every step took much longer than expected. But the fins are installed now; real progress was made. They remain far from perfect. For some reason they went on curved, not true, though the fins themselves had been straight before installation. Not sure what happened there, but it's too late now. Still, you have to be looking for this flaw to really notice it. Fillets of Evercoat Metal Glaze were applied, as you'll see in the photos below. But a lot of sanding—and still some more puttying—remain to fully finish them up. After that, it's time to attach that signature nose to the main hull. Here are today's photo uploads:

Left over from last week: I sanded straight and flush the exhaust bells of the engine nacelles.



Getting the caddy fin spread angle correct.




My jury-rigged positioning jig for permanently gluing on the caddies. Little of any aspect of this hull is actually "true," so much of my Seaview work has unavoidably been eyeballed thus far. Here, however, I step up my game with with an awkward mechanical contrivance to try to get the fins mounted at regular, consistent angles from the hull—in addition to the 97° spread between the caddies discussed earlier. Again, my results were not perfect, but not half bad either.



Beginning the masking process for the fillets.


Now fully masked.


Here comes the Evercoat.


And now the sanding begins.



Fillets in. As I said above, more sanding, spot filling and cleanup work now awaits, but I'm off to a good start.


More next weekend,
Jeff

[jefftytoo]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

Took some time off work to enjoy a long birthday weekend. As such, essentially put in 3.5 of the last 4 days on Seaview and made some decent progress. Here we go...

Cutting out the sail hole in the deck for lighting wiring and fairwater plane articulation access.



Cutting out the areas behind where the limber hole overlays will go on the superstructure. Major cuts with a Dremel. Finishing cuts with a toothed x-Acto blade. Then sanded down the rough edges.


Holes all cut out.



Epoxy-ing on the limber hole overlays.



Time to see how she's looking...


Limber hole view from the inside. At this point I added more Z-poxy around the edges of the holes to make sure these overlays aren't gonna pop off.


Time to get serious][/url]


Prepping the tack-glued nose edges with tape to make sure the liquid resin of the next stage doesn't leak out.


Following Mr. Merriman's Seaview build advice, I stuffed some fiberglass down inside the manta fins, then poured liquid resin in, rolling the model all around to spread the resin evenly around the entire joint. It cooked off pretty quickly. The combination of CA topped by a lot of casting resin and even that fiberglass means these nose pieces ain't never gonna come apart! In the first shot you can see the end of the strip of added fiberglass off to the side. In the next, you can clearly see the catalyzed white resin along the nose joint below the bow windows. I was really proud of myself for not making a total mess of this process—especially after getting CA all over everything (including me!) when tack-gluing earlier and having to sand a lot of that crud off the outer hull before moving on to this step.




Now the Evercoat Metal Glaze goes on liberally all around the outer nose joint to fill in the few areas where the halves didn't marry precisely.



With blue crud sanded away and tape removed. This took a long time, was a lot of work, and even involved a whole second application and sanding job not documented here. Should come out okay though, once Steve Neill's signature paint job is eventually applied.


J B Weld-ing the forward indexing lip into place. On my boat this will be a permanent joint and (I hope) a well-hidden seam. But that forward end of the hull behind the nose will still need the robust support.



Finally the fun starts! Deck detail begins with epoxy-ing the non-skid/safety track into place on the afterdeck. This was that corrugated Evergreen styrene pattern mentioned somewhere above. Missile hatches will come next.


More next week,
Jeff

[PaulC]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

Happy Birthday, Skipper!

You just can't get enough of that Dremel can you?

[jefftytoo]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

Thanks for the birthday greeting, Paul...!

Spent most of today (Sunday) puttying and sanding with not much to show for it—except for a few additional minor (and disappointing) setbacks. However, there is the following to report:

I finished sanding/smoothing the caddy fin fillets. They turned out pretty well, I think.


I started the process of fixing and filling the removable, eventually manually articulated mini-sub bay doors. Long way to go on them yet.



Started some more necessary Evercoat fixit work on the trailing edge of the caddy fins and the nacelle tail fins.


Rewarded myself with some fun work][/url]

More next time,
Jeff

[jefftytoo]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

Tonight: Deck hatches!




Later,
Jeff

[greenman407]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

Jeff, are those missle hatches plastic? Where did you come up with them? Looks real good. Keep er coming.

[jefftytoo]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

Thanks, Greenman. Those missile hatches actually came with my Teskey kit lo those nine years or so ago. I think Rick cast them up somehow—they look and feel more like resin than styrene, and they're too irregular to be tiddlywinks or other manufactured toy or game pieces. Actually, they seem slightly too small and a bit too thick to be "scale," but they'll still do nicely, I believe. I'm committed now, regardless. Thanks for following along!

Jeff

[jefftytoo]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

Took a vacation day from work Monday, the 23rd, to make it a three-day boat-working weekend. As usual, Saturday was occupied by life maintenance, but I've been hard at it since then.

Sunday involved a lot more assorted puttying and sanding, so not much to show for it here. However, I did re-spray the inside of the nose—essentially the bow window wall only—so it'll be ready for later Observation Room installation, and also so Steve won't have to do it. Of course, you won't really see the backside of the window wall when you look through from the front, but the Voyage movie and color TV pilot showed these film set walls to be beige-y. I chose a small can of flat "sand" color which seemed to work well enough. Again, it won't really matter, since most of what you'll see of the O.R. through those bow windows will be "wood paneling," but I wanted that front wall surface to be a light color so it'll better reflect the eventual overhead white LED lighting to help illuminate the room overall.



Also managed to scribe in the faux bow planes. I decided long ago I didn't want articulated ones; I know they're not necessary for functionality, and besides, I've seen movable Seaview bow planes elsewhere and I think they ruin the look. (To each his own.) Aficionados among you will recall that on the later TV iteration of the Seaview (the deBoer and Moebius versions most of you have been modeling, in other words), these planes are angled into a sort of trapezoid shape on their inboard sides. However, for my own First TV Season version (the same miniatures and footage as used in the movie), Seaview closeups show ovoid/elliptical bow plane scribings, so this is what I've reproduced here. Check out the minefield sequence of the movie or some First Season close passbys if you don't believe me.





On to Monday (today)][/url]




Also finished up—at least for now—work on the Mini-Sub Bay doors. My original attempt to fit them using Evercoat fill around their edges (seen somewhere above) didn't work at all, so beginning Sunday I shifted to thinly machined strips of Evergreen styrene CA'd into place and this worked much better. These installed strips were then smoothed in with Nitro-Stan body putty. I drilled tiny holes in the door edge corners and bay openings and used assorted-size watchband pins as tiny hinges. These were available from the local watch repair place for cheap. Of course, nothing in this trying door assembly actually fit or worked as I'd planned—the tiny drilled holes broke through and had to be Evercoat-filled, the spring-loaded hinges wound up being fixed in place with glue, etc. In other words, the whole thing was a wasteful, time-consuming pain-in-the-butt…but at least these messy results are on the keel and won't be seen much. In fact, the doors will be removed during running anyway (only put in place for static display), and I suppose even sloppy Mini-Sub Bay doors are better than no doors at all. Once again, I'm counting on Steve's luxurious paint job to divert undue visual attention. They're not quite as cleaned up as I hope to eventually get them, but these pix will give you an idea][/url]



On to the cleats! Yes, I know it's sacrilege to you filming miniature purists, but long ago I'd decided to "upgrade'" my Seaview by adding detail from the full-size deck set, plus extrapolate deck detail not shown but which would exist on a real submarine of the era. As such, before running out of steam tonight I managed to install four of what will eventually be eleven cleats (again, some were shown regularly on the show, others will be strictly my speculation), plus a capstan. I'm even considering installing a chock back aft, but haven't decided yet. Installation of these goodies is laborious and tedious. All white metal parts (these came from Floating Drydock in proper 1/96 scale) first have to be etched, then carefully drilled for brass rod installation. The rods go down deep into the deck presumably to keep the tiny parts from popping off while on patrol. CA alone just ain't enough.

Anyway, here are a couple pics of the first few cleats. I'm using rollers and standards positioned just like on a real boat. Capstan too. Lots more to go. Oh, I don't believe you've seen that I've also installed that famous sonar dome on the foredeck. Lookin' good now that the hatches and safety track are in. The newly added details are already making it start to look like—omigosh—a submarine. About a zillion grab irons, seen on the 17-ft. miniature, are next, after all the cleats are in.





More next week,
Jeff

[steveneill]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

Jeff all excellent work my friend.

Steve

[jefftytoo]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

Sincere thanks, Steve! That means a lot to me. She'll be in your capable hands very soon, buddy—just a couple more weeks...

Jeff

[Guest]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

Nice work. A tip for you, getting defined edges with polyester fillers is tricky, because the fillers tend to be a bit soft and fragile for that sort of work. I find epoxy based putty like Milliput fine white are MUCH better for that sort of thing. It sets much harder, and is tougher to work, but you will end up with a very good result. Also you can sculpt with epoxy by dipping the tools in water (or use a little saliva) and moulding it to shape- this saves a lot of sanding and filing later on.

Another thing I do is make up my own fillers using resin and silica, this is much tougher than normal polyester fillers which are designed chiefly for easy sanding over large areas. I only use that for making very small localized repairs, or repairing gelcoat failure.

[jefftytoo]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

All good info.—thanks! Actually I'm a big fan of Milliput, though haven't had much luck with the white variety. I was afraid the Evercoat Metal Glaze might be too soft in this application, but was/am in a hurry and wanted to try it. I may live to regret that decision, but so far, so good. Thanks again!

Jeff

[jefftytoo]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

Another lengthy, frustrating two-day work session. But my handoff deadline is fast approaching, and I'm so far behind where I'd like to be at this point that earlier today I even gave up my annual attendance at the Memorial Day Submarine Ceremony at Seal Beach's Naval Weapons Station in order to keep working. Thankfully, it'll be held there again next year, and believe me, I've given our honored lost submariners plenty lot of thought in recent weeks. I do hope anyone reading this had a pleasant but likewise contemplative Memorial Day holiday.

The good Seaview news]Arrggh![/i] So][/url]





Yes, I did get a little carried away with those grab irons. But as I say, the miniatures showed some, the deck sets others—I simply elected to represent them all. They'll look much better when painted.

Another interesting note for you purists, and I just noticed this recently]Seaviews[/i], all show their deck hatches facing forward. But the full-size sets show them facing aft! Nevertheless, I chose to face mine forward as seen on most versions. But I'm guessing this additional inconsistently (in what is certainly a long line!) can only be explained by the Art Director enjoying too many martinis and cigars in one of those easy chairs on the Observation Room set between takes!

Next it was time to re-tackle the sail. You may recall I'd overly sanded my original and had to order a replacement from Mr. Merriman. It'd had obvious trouble in the molding process however, and came to me misaligned and in need of repair. So, before making my second attempt at installing acrylic deadlights, first I had to do significant puttying, sanding, re-scribing and even replacing of portions of the two watertight doors. Here are shots of the process, still in progress.






More next week,
Jeff

[steveneill]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

Looks great Jeff!

Steve

[jefftytoo]

Re: Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard

Thanks, Steve! Can't wait for you to get your mitts on 'er!

Jeff