I have to say, I have a love/hate relationship with this project.*
It seemed straightforward enough, and I was excited to try something apart from the usual German uboats and modern nuclear subs. Little did I know...
The customer approached me with this kit, offered by FX Models (www.fxmodels.com). He had the base kit plus a few extras, as well as an older D&E 3.5" watertight cylinder.*
My job? Build it up. Get it working. Make it look amazing.
*
The kit came with plans, likely based off of the first assembly of the production kit by FX Models back in 2006 (or thereabouts). The layout and components are designed around a watertight box with a large dry area. *They had a lot of old-school solutions that worked, but could be improved upon.
*
Also with the kit were a pair of Graupner thrusters, a resin propeller, a prop ring, the parts for the viewport indentations, the swim deck, and the tail cone.*
In this photo, you can*see the preliminary work needed *to install the indentations, which requires carefully tracing out the profiles into the upper and lower hulls and cutting them out, installing the new parts and fiberglassing them in place.*
The cutout for the front window was tricky and required fabricating a lower lip where the upper hull was cut out. Getting everything*to match up when assembled was a challenge.
*
I also found that getting the upper and lower hulls to mate cleanly was a lot of work. The hull halves as they came had a gap of nearly 3/8" at the diagonal line in the middle of the hull. I needed to create filler parts, glue them in, fill, sand and repeat many times until I was happy with the fitment.*
*
Here you can see the results of a lot of hard work getting things to mate up properly and finish smooth
The propulsion*of the ALVIN comes in the form of a massive, 5" diameter propeller (that's horribly out of balance, btw). The prop swivels through an arc of around 15 degrees, providing superb control.*
I elected to scrap the prop ring that came with the boat and 3D print both the ring and the rudder/hinge, which the instructions called for fabricating from wood (WOOD! Criminy.). I scrapped that idea and went with plastic.
The thrusters provided with the kit are complete assemblies that include the swivel linkage as well as the main drive shaft connections. You basically just connect your tilting linkage, hook it up to your motor, and you're good to go (that was written sarcastically. It was a lot of work to get working right!). The props are only about 34mm in diameter and really don't work well for pushing this beast of a boat around. Fortunately, if you have a good ballast system, you really don't need them.*
*
It seemed straightforward enough, and I was excited to try something apart from the usual German uboats and modern nuclear subs. Little did I know...
The customer approached me with this kit, offered by FX Models (www.fxmodels.com). He had the base kit plus a few extras, as well as an older D&E 3.5" watertight cylinder.*
My job? Build it up. Get it working. Make it look amazing.
*
The kit came with plans, likely based off of the first assembly of the production kit by FX Models back in 2006 (or thereabouts). The layout and components are designed around a watertight box with a large dry area. *They had a lot of old-school solutions that worked, but could be improved upon.
*
Also with the kit were a pair of Graupner thrusters, a resin propeller, a prop ring, the parts for the viewport indentations, the swim deck, and the tail cone.*
In this photo, you can*see the preliminary work needed *to install the indentations, which requires carefully tracing out the profiles into the upper and lower hulls and cutting them out, installing the new parts and fiberglassing them in place.*
The cutout for the front window was tricky and required fabricating a lower lip where the upper hull was cut out. Getting everything*to match up when assembled was a challenge.
*
I also found that getting the upper and lower hulls to mate cleanly was a lot of work. The hull halves as they came had a gap of nearly 3/8" at the diagonal line in the middle of the hull. I needed to create filler parts, glue them in, fill, sand and repeat many times until I was happy with the fitment.*
*
Here you can see the results of a lot of hard work getting things to mate up properly and finish smooth
The propulsion*of the ALVIN comes in the form of a massive, 5" diameter propeller (that's horribly out of balance, btw). The prop swivels through an arc of around 15 degrees, providing superb control.*
I elected to scrap the prop ring that came with the boat and 3D print both the ring and the rudder/hinge, which the instructions called for fabricating from wood (WOOD! Criminy.). I scrapped that idea and went with plastic.
The thrusters provided with the kit are complete assemblies that include the swivel linkage as well as the main drive shaft connections. You basically just connect your tilting linkage, hook it up to your motor, and you're good to go (that was written sarcastically. It was a lot of work to get working right!). The props are only about 34mm in diameter and really don't work well for pushing this beast of a boat around. Fortunately, if you have a good ballast system, you really don't need them.*
*
Comment