Progress on The Sir Frankie Crisp.....in LOCKDOWN!!! (cont'd)

[Ben Brigham]

The Sir Frankie Crisp had been fulfilling its destiny as a hangar queen in yet another apartment of mine. I've been carrying it around the country with me, hoping to get it going again. Some very sharp eyes and good memories out there who remember it from Subregatta 2001 which ran (terribly) its maiden cruise at the event. As with many boats out there, it’s been subject to several guttings & rebuilds over the intervening years, and recently I’ve narrowed the time-frame for its completion to, okay, this year??? Something like that.


Subregatta2001 - the skinny years

If you’re not familiar with the Crisp, it’s a thoroughly custom job inspired by the Moebius graphic novel “The Airtight Garage Of Lewis Carnelian.” The sub has no important role in the storyline other than it’s a mundane freight sub that carries two characters through a dimensional portal at the climax,….which would otherwise be a routine commute if not for the dimension they were in collapsing around them. That, and I always thought it looked cool.

The SCR ran an article on the sub’s first configuration (issue#50) and guts-wise it is now a completely different animal. What’s remained the same is a near-fanatical obsession with maximizing freeboard. Some aren’t too bothered by freeboard, others consider it the measure of a man. Ordinarily I wouldn’t judge, but in this case the Moebius illustrations show this sub as having an absurdly high freeboard, so that’s been my goal. So rather than have a ballast tank within the system, I’ve put the system within the ballast tank.
Another aspect to the guts is my early decision to keep both the CB and CG as far forward as possible. As a result, the aft section will be basically going along for the ride. It remains to be seen how big a can of worms I’ve opened by doing this. The prediction is: worms.


The Crisp MkII iteration, sporting diagonal tanks


Crisp MKIII: Just an awful idea

That’s the basic history. Fast-forward to today; 2020, the ‘Lost Year.” The rest of this post represents a combining of two recent posts from the SubRonLA Forum, so everyone (should they want to) can catch up.

One might think that having gotten laid off as a result of productions all simultaneously grinding to a halt in the entertainment industry, that I might have a few extra minutes to work on the sub.
Sadly no. What also ground to a halt is the Los Angeles school system, forcing us to home-school our 8-year-old until further notice basically. So little Kai is all over me like a fly to shit, demanding to be entertained. But I have managed to eak out a little time now & then.

I needed a lot more dry real-estate in the sub than the old WTC3.5 could provide. So I repurposed two watertight boxes from “Outdoor Products.” (“International Emergency Orange”!) They’ve been tested at 7.5’ deep reliably, but having customized the crap out of both of them I’ll be continually testing them for watertight integrity. 'Tub tests' of the motor compartment (empty of motors) show one FPITA leak which has been dogging me but I think I got it. The solution to sealing the leak involved injecting 2-part epoxy into an otherwise-impossible-to-access area and tipping the thing over, letting gravity to the rest of the work.


Crisp shown here striking a provocative pose while the epoxy sets up

I installed the mounting points for the WTC brain unit, which will be suspended over the small round WTC3.5 along the bottom of the hull, and also nest against the WTC motor compartment without touching it. (it’s busy aft) I've got a set of two registration pins and two threaded posts, probably burlier than necessary but will do the job. Needs some cleanup.



Also, if you look to the lower right of the image, you'll see a round opening where the old WTC will go, and a threaded post with an orange squishy on top. This is part of a pair of bolts that will hold down the assembly for filling/draining the ballast tank. The assembly will be mounted, modular as always, to a CF/epoxy plate with the brass bellcrank.

As mentioned, the sub uses an old Dave Merriman WTC3.5 bulkhead, the only remaining original component inside the sub. I gave the Crisp some careful thought and realized it’ll need a much higher volume of propel-farting to get it to the surface in any reasonable amount of time. So I tripled the number of valves than the original WTC offered, which will be fed by two pipes from the propel tanks rather than one. The 3-schrader propel assembly is all together, now fully functional & ready for installation onto feed/drain assembly. This was an extremely delicate task.




This is a frame I built to adjust each stanchion's height perfectly before epoxying little base pieces to them all. Detailing has to take a back seat to more critical jobs, but I wanted to get this miserable task out of the way as cleanly as possible.



Behold the copper 'steampunk' Propel tanks. When this project first began, there were rumors of PVC tanks rupturing due to propel chemically attacking the PVC over time. So copper became the fashion, and it’s easy to work with.
I started an exotic side-project for the tanks where I hope to have a little glass level tube for viewing, like on the old steam furnaces in Victorian basements, so hopefully I'll be able to see how much Propel’s in the tanks rather than guessing. Will it work? I have no idea. I worry about the glass strength. We’ll see.



To my horror, the new electrical connectors for the lead/acid batteries didn't fit underneath the existing acrylic "roof" over the battery bay. My overarching "stem-to-stern" policy forced me to drop %#$&!!-everything and get this task done. Again, a serious FPITA process but I got nice results after a few tries. (okay, five)
In case anyone cares: "dry" thermoforming common hardware-store acrylic in a kitchen oven will give best results in ("the magic numbers") five minutes at 350 degrees F, or maybe just a tad under five minutes. Bubble-forming in the acrylic will occur with either excessive time or temperature, but seems to be sensitive to time moreso than temperature. I got plenty of unwanted bubbles in 6 mins at 300 degrees.



Due to global shipping problems, my preferred source of waterproof rubber bellows for pushrods has been completely closed. All of their inventory has been locked up in containers at the pier in Guangzhou for the last 2 months. So I started looking for alternatives.



So fyi: here's a rogue’s gallery of alternative rubber bellows, available in varying sizes.
The smallest one is from Que-T on Amazon,(37mm, part# A070615, 10-pack) is just too small and doesn't have the adequate range for average-size servos. (probably fine for minis) These are likely also locked up at the pier, should you want any.
The next size up (absent, substituting for the bellows here is its accompanying aluminum collar) is from PerfectPlaza on Amazon (9mm x 52mm) and is ideal for most of our needs, but happens to be...yes... stuck on the other side of the pacific for the time being.
The next one is a close equivalent. It's available from various old air-cooled VW parts websites (Mid-America Motorworks, in my case) and is meant for the heater box cables for VW buses. (Part # is 353-331, and that's a VW part number still in use!) They're ideal for most of my needs, maybe even a bit longer than the absent dude next to it in the image.
The next two sizes up are absurdly large and probably useless to everyone. (available from McMaster-Carr) But I include them here for comparison purposes.
Y’know, I have one extra of each of these big ones in case anyone's interested, and they weren't cheap! But they're of no use to me so they are available free to any Subcommittee member, fcfs, no hozies.

That’s it for now. Follow-on updates will be a lot less wordy.
BB

[wlambing]

Thanks, Ben! Fun to see! Keep at it!

B^)

[jefftytoo]

So impressive, Ben. Such engineering! Such devotion! Such tenacity! Very impressive work all around, even though half the time I have no clue what you're talking about. But that's MY fault. Congrats and keep at it! So happy to have you and the Crisp as a lovable new part of SubRonLA! Hang in there, Jeff

[salmon]

Ben, look forward to meeting you pond side in LA and seeing the Crisp.

[Ben Brigham]

Hi S, both I and Sir Crisp will be at the next legal meeting, rain or shine, operational or not.
But I'm busting my butt to get the thing working asap. Cross fingers & toes. Ouch.

[Ben Brigham]

Hi All,

Just a quick update; after a successful tub-test on the motor compartment integrity, I moved the Crisp over to the big testing tank (aka: pool) for the 7-foot-deep certification.

The test was technically a bigass FAIL. I got about 1/8th cup of water in the compartment, which was otherwise empty for the test. Not a total 'crushing' flood but still a fail.
However, I was able to find the source of the leak purely by accident.

Here I was, testing my recent sealing efforts, when my GoPro in a waterproof housing caught a stream of bubbles on the way up & out of the pool. The bubbles were coming from OUTside the hull. (!)

(You're looking aft at the tapered end of the hull. The big openings port & starboard are holes I cut to access the hull back there for fixes. Hiding behind the big orange box is a lower area with the propshafts & dogbones, which is part of the orange 'dry' section.)
What I believe happened is that while on the way down (or spending the requisite 10 minutes on the bottom & under pressure, the water dripped in & collected, equalizing pressure between the motor compartment & ambient pressure. Then on the way up, the air expanded & streamed out.
....and the only possible place it could've emanated from is the portside propshaft hull egress. (looks like a tiny bit starboard as well)

These egresses had originally only been meant to mechanically fasten the propshafts to the hull. At the time, both sides were intended to be 'wet'. But after the redesign, the interior was intended to be 'dry' but I had never bothered to go back & re-seal the areas properly. (get it? 'PROP-erly'?? HAH! Oh, I kill me.)
So it's back to the shop for a quick fix.

[Ben Brigham]

Hi All,

After finally conquering the aft motor compartment leaks, (no easy task!) I began to really hammer out the proper wiring for the Brain Box as well as the ESC/ballast WTC. In both cases their design had been evolving in a 'whack-a-mole' process, trying to commit to decisions while also trying to keep alternative options open, which is of course a ridiculous approach. So I made some decisions, and epoxy really has a way of making someone commit.


This is the Brain Box, with new waterproof connectors installed and wiring cleaned up around the new receiver. (thank you Ralph!!!) There will be three leak detectors active in the sub, one in each dry space, and will activate a light and a siren topsde if any circuits were to close inside.
That skinny tube will house the antenna in its own dry space, and allow it to be threaded in & out by way of a 1/16" bungee cord from the Brain Box. It's the least-worst way I could think of meeting all the demands of the design: keeping a dry wire, keeping the tip up in the tower for good reception, keeping the receiver removable from the Brain Box in case of a disaster.


This is the revamped ESC/Ballast WTC, not the sort of name that rolls off the tongue, does it? I was holding it in my hand after completing it, and the name "Jarvik-1" came to mind. So that's it's name. Seems appropriate. Looks like it got pulled out of the chest cavity of a victorian-era cyborg.

The existing ESC behind that copper heat-sink is a low-confidence component in the sub, actually.
It's a Tekin Titan (car!) racing ESC meant for only one motor, and so its power output has been simply split across two Graupner 500E's. It was a dumb setup. So I've begun to future-proof the Crisp by investing in two Mtroniks SUB10 speed controllers, one for each motor. In so doing, this will finally fulfill the true potential of my Robbe F-14 Navy Transmitter with the dual throttle sticks for channels 3 and 4. The plan is to get another stubby WTC section and create a "Jarvik-2" with the new ESC's included. This is another situation where the modularity really pays off.
The Trottle Jockey offered by Nautilus Drydocks was tempting, but was determined to be superfluous. I'll have manual control of each screw, which I prefer. And anyway, the CG is so hilariously forward as it is. I expect I'll be able to turn on a dime without the need for jockeying.

Those are the big, "sexy" improvements. There have been tons of little tweaks happening in parallel. The stanchions for example; I abandoned the old idea of CF/Epoxy stanchions since the duplication process basically sucked. So I pulled out the propane torch & sat down in the apartment courtyard, ....looking not unlike a meth-cooking vagrant,.... and heat-bent my collection of brass stanchions to a pretty accurate, consistent curvature. The torch-heating really helped with the softening/pulling process. I never thought I could get consistent results this way with such tiny pieces.
Now, thanks to Steve's brass-etching-guru/colleague Eliot, I'm on the correct path to prepping the Crisp's 'wintergarten' for painting.


Progress for the forseeable future is expected to be fairly fast & funkily furious. The target for a 2020 re-launch is still on, still have six months remaining! I don't know whether Korbel offers 'brut' champagne in those tiny, tiny bottles when that happens but will check.

[scott t]

Looking good Ben.

[Ben Brigham]

Hi all,

Just a quick update.
Progress is screaming along like a banshee, though it's mostly little stuff that isn't particularly sexy; new connectors here, wiring figured out there....
The one major image to share is of the wintergarten mockup which I got accomplished today. (guys, am I using the term "wintergarten' accurately? I'm referencing what the U-boat commanders used to call their aft gun deck area with the rotundalike railings)
Nothing's been glued down yet, gonna solder the pieces together first then remove it for safety. But this is more or less what it's going to look like. (still tweaking the railing design transitioning from the ladder)



That is all. Hope everyone else is making progress on their fishes. I'd love to see updates.

BB

[salmon]

Every time you post, I get excited for us to run together. Look forward to seeing this in person. Keep up the great work you are doing!

[Ben Brigham]

Thanks, S! And likewise! Let's all stay healthy & safe for the next Yorba Linda shindig, whenever that might be.
Running or not, I'll be there.

[Ben Brigham]

Hi all,

"Yaaarrrr! I hate the sea, and everything in it." -Capt. McAlister

Things were going gangbusters for a while there. The Brain Box (containing all the really expensive 'dry' stuff) passed its watertightness test, and so it was the Jarvik-1 to enter the tank next.

https://youtu.be/clhZlBk8rR4

I was seeing some seepage in earlier tests, so I positive-pressured the compartment to see what I could learn. There appear to be three leaks so far counted, and this particular one has me stymied. (the other two are a breeze) I'll be tearing the thing apart first thing tomorrow, but in the frame-by-frame it looks as if the air is emanating through the wall of the TC-85 end cap. There may be some hairline crack there but it sure doesn't look like it. How a crack could have happened I have no idea.
It's sort of ironic that the WTC 3.5 section, ostensibly the best purpose-engineered device in the sub, would fail a water test. Cats & dogs living together, I tell ya.
In a convoluted way it's good. This is an excuse to accelerate work on the Jarvik-2, with two motor ESC's and a slimmer design.

[Ben Brigham]

Okay, here’s an update from the quarantined sub pen.



Making some progress! The ‘Jarvik-1’ (WTC containing ballast servo & ESC) finally finally! passed its water integrity test after some draconian measures involving silicone. I have installed it into the hull with the full understanding that it sucks and is basically expendable. I now have all the parts necessary to build a much better one. But rather than slow down progress on other, more critical tasks I’ve dropped it in as a placeholder. There but for the grace of Poseidon. It’s self-contained, so there is no risk to other parts of the sub.


In parallel with the Jarvik-1 problems was another jesus-I’m-such-an-idiot moment where I discovered that, whereas the Brain Box DID fit inside the hull, once all the wiring got connected to it along both sides there was just no way. So I bought a new watertight box & relocated all the connectors topside. New improved choice of connector design, too, and so sexy!


Complete, soldered, pickled & ready to rock, the wintergarten railings are just sitting here waiting to get painted & installed.


The aft planes needed a little guidance help, so I added in this acrylic piece. Works lovely. The top cover plate swivels and locks with a detent, so I can remove the pushrods whenever necessary.

Here’s a crazy question for the group; I’m wondering if any of our SC brethren know of any 3D-scanning process where I could put my sub on some kind of scanning table, fire some frickin’ laserbeams at it for a while, & output a digital version of just the hull in 3D software.
Reason I ask is that since this was a sophmorically-attempted hand-carved hull shape, there ARE asymmetries in the hull curvature in spots. (gasp!) So it would be nice to, say, scan one side of the hull & "mirror" the other side, stitching the model together (which I can do once digitized) in order to get rid of all those asymmetries, and maybe fix a couple other things along the way like building in a bayonet system for better hull access.
I know similar equipment exists for high-end car restoration work, (scan the old part & 3D-print a plastic version to be lost-cast) but I don't know what the resolution of that system is and have no connections at all in that field. Any suggestions more than welcome.

All for now,
Peace out.

[salmon]

I am not an expert enough or have actually done any high quality scanning to say for sure. While we did scanning at the school, it was lower quality. I do know of high quality ones, but could not even consider that an option here because of the price tag. If anyone has to reduce their income and get tax benefits or feels moved to donate to our school, it would be a write off, please contact me.

Your solder work looks top notch cannot wait to see this running in person.
Peace,
Tom

[Ben Brigham]

Thanks Tom!
One of the 'Jay Leno's Garage' shows had a rebuild shop with a hand-held scanner. Humblingly cool to watch this hairy-knuckle garage dude just zap an old, dented valve cover and have a digital version pop up on the screen instantly. Maybe Jay will buy one for the school, heh.
The soldering was actually quite simple, barely an inconvenience. The stanchions were bought online at a model boat shop which had an AMAZING inventory of anything you could possibly imagine. How the hell someone is able to turn brass to make some of that detailing I'll never know. the stanchions were pre-drilled, had to drill them out just a bit more after the heat-bending process to get 1/16" brass rod threaded in there. It wasn't hard to do, seriously. I'm a novice, yet this was pretty straight-forward stuff. Just look at all the crap I've screwed up on 'til now.
I veered away from the illustration a bit in the stanchion design, opting for a two-tier railing setup instead of the single railing in the illustration. I just...it just...had to have another level.
Getting really sick of the primer-grey hull. I know it's important to hold off with aesthetics until subs gets functionally working. But it's been a couple decades, and the new airbrush is in the cabinet quietly taunting me. I'm going crazy over here....