1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 79

Hi Guys!

Before I started to add the cleats to the model I decided to look at pictures to see if I could find a good one of the aft chock, which is not currently on Batfish due to the access ramp, but surely was on her when she was in service. I didn’t have to look long as I soon found a picture that Tom D had previously sent that shows the chock nicely. The picture below is a clip of Tom’s pic.



To start the process of making the chock, I started with the chock I made for USCGC Bertholf, copying it into a file that I had previously copied the outline of the chock from the plans to.



Note that since Bertholf is in 1/350 scale, the chock is too small. When I scaled it up 243% the length was right on, but the width was too narrow.



So I made a Block out of it and stretched it in the y-direction.



Unfortunately, AutoCad again wouldn’t let me explode it, so I essentially had to redraw it. The image below shows the guidelines I used to make it…



…First extruding the circles along the outer oval, then copying the outer oval out from the chock and extruding it through the chock…



…Then using the Union command to define the chock.



Next I subtracted the solid created by extrusion of the smaller circle from the chock.



With the main body of the chock complete I next prepared to make the base, which I did in 2 parts.



The red polyline was extruded just to cover the flange, and then was copied to the other flange.



The yellow polyline was moved into the interior of the chock…



…Then extruded completely through to the other side.



This isn’t exactly how it is in real life, but I made it like this to provide more support and still replicate the real deal.





Next I started the base for the light on the top of the chock. I first drew a rectangle on top and extruded it through the chock, and then copied the whole thing to the side.



On the copied one, I subtracted the chock from the extruded rectangle.



Separated the parts and deleted the bottom part as well as the entire extrusion on the original.



I then moved t he remaining part back to the original chock…



Next I extruded the rectangle up 0.005” and joined everything together, before preparing to make the light itself, which I did by extruding or lofting circles and a hexagon, as shown in the images below.







I also added the bar or cap on the top as seen in the picture, by lofting two different sixed rectangles.



I then joined everything together, including the chock.





The image below shows it on the scaled dime.



CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 80

Good Morning Guys!

Before going to bed last night (er… this morning) I opened the Part 9 – Hull 9 file…



…And copied the Roller Cleat to the two locations as copied from the plans.



Although I didn’t document it, I next created and added the padeye seen aft of the escape hatch.



I then copied the chock into position 9removing the temporary one first of course).



The image below shows the part in “Realistic Visual Style”

[URL=http://s1352.photobucket.com/user/rdutnell/media/USS%20Batfish%20ACAD%20images/BatfishBuildLog-080-pix_Page_5_zpsf4d8347d.jpg.html][img]

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Question Guys! Give me your honest opinion… Do you think that the chock is too tall? It seems to me that it may be, and I am considering changing it, but I thought I would see what you guys think first.

[scott t]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

OK if you are going to call it a longhorn cleat, you are going to have to draw it
according to Sooner rules and flip it upside down.

Go go this website for more pictures.

http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08225.htm

Zoom on this picture from navsource.org for the chock.
edit: Looks like the picture does not show. But you can go to the page listed and find it.

Scott T

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 81

Thanks for the pic and link Scott! And good idea about flipping the horns. I kind of had a hard time saving it to my computer. I thought maybe my computer, officially being an OU computer until I graduate, might reject it.

In any case, your response was timely, as it confirmed the decision I had already made to redo the chock. I started with the original one, because I felt that 2 out of 3 dimensions were good as were the extruded circles. The image below shows it with the “misc” layer turned on.



I first sliced off the light, because I wasn’t planning to change it, and put it on a “temp” layer that I turned off.



Next, I changed the color of all of the existing construction lines to green, except for the circles to be extruded, which I left blue. Lines for the new chock are in red and magenta. You can see that the new chock is the same width as the old chock, but not as tall and not quite as thick.



I then had to move the blue circles down to the new chock outline.



From this point, the procedure was the same as before. Extrude…




Union…

Subtract…



Draw polylines for the base…



Extrude and copy…





And Extrude…

The light base was also made in the same manner as before…





…Resulting in the new chock…



…Which is still tiny.



..But I think looks better than the original. In the image below, the original chock is on the left and the new one is on the right.



Here are a couple of images of the new chock on the model.





CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 82

Good Afternoon Everybody!

I didn’t get much modeling done yesterday. The time I had to model was spent mostly looking on navsource.com for good pictures of the aft torpedo loading hatch and slide. A 2 hour search looking through practically all of the Balao class submarines turned up just 6 photos showing that area of the ship, none of them spectacular. The images below were clipped from the pictures I found.

The first picture shows the hatch area with what looks like a wooden slide.



The second picture provides a decent shot of the hatch area from aft...



…As does the third.



The fourth picture provide an OK shot of the slide cutout but is not of good enough quality to decipher the hatch details.



The fifth picture provides perhaps the best view of the forward side of the hatch on the two ships adjacent to the subject of the photo.



The 6th and final picture provides perhaps the best view of the forward side of the hatch and slide, and is without doubt the best picture of the lot as it shows downed airmen being rescued by Tang near Truk in 1944. The feeling of the moment is palpable.



I also looked through my plans again and on the “compartment-access_ss405-s1601-68974_5400-12-0257” drawing found decent shots of the area as shown in the image below.


With these plans and the few pictures I have, I could probably design the area sufficiently for the scale I am modeling, but Scott says he may have pictures of the area from a recent trip he took to the Razorback in Arkansas, so I am going to wait and see if he does before attacking it. In the meantime, I decided to add the DPMH (whatever that stands for and is used for) on the aft end.

The image below shows the DPMH in red. The shape shown was copied from a similar shape that I had previously made for Greenling.



After copying the shape I extruded the outline 0.006”, and made nuts and bolts which are 0.006” diameter circles and hexagons circumscribed about it.


Next I extruded the nuts and bolts…



…And joined everything together…



…Before copying it to the model…





…And joining it to the model, as seen below.



Here it is with the prop guards on…



…And with hull section forward added, from three different angles.







CHEERS!!!

[tom dougherty]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

The round object at the stern is the aft access manhole for maintenance purposes. I would say that that DPMH stands for Dive Plane Man Hole.

The "wooden slide" above is the torpedo loading skid, to load the aft torpedo room through the angled hatch. They went through that hatch one at a time, nose first, lowered by block and tackle. A similar hatch is forward for the forward torpedo room.

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 83

Hi Guys and thanks Tom!

I was thinking that the MH stood for manhole, but couldn’t come up with Dive Plane. You learn something every day.

Also I thought that the wooden slide might be a torpedo loading skid, but it seems so bulky and cumbersome. The one on Batfish (as currently displayed) is metal, with wooden slats on the underside when in the deployed position. It looks to me like, when not in use, it would rotate about the hinge at the bottom to be flat with the surface, blending in with the wooden deck. The one I referred to looked too big for that. At some point did they abandon the ship stowed version for large ones kept in port since that’s where they would load torpedos?



Anyway, looking at pictures of a ship you are trying to model is always an experience; at least I have found it to be so. I have perhaps said this before, but it never ceases to amaze me how different ships of the same class are and how much they change over time. While looking at a bazillion pictures last night, trying to find out what the aft torpedo loading hatch looked like, I noticed how different the wooden decks were from ship to ship. Not so much the material used, I couldn’t tell that from the pictures, but the extent of the deck that it covered. I was looking at this because I am considering installing “wooden” decks. But more on that later.

The other thing I noticed, this time from the Compartment Access plans, is that I had missed an access hatch on the forward gun platform (center of the image below).



So, I added it last night before turning in.



This evening, I continued thinking about the torpedo loading hatch so I import the Compartment Access plans into AutoCad and scaled them to size.



I then copied it up out of the way, cropped it to show just the Main Deck plan view, aligned it with the coordinate system and the existing tracings from the Deck plans. I traced the Torpedo Deck Skid outline. It looks offset in the image below because the plans are warped, but it is centered on the centerline.



I cropped the plans I had copied, to include just the profile view, and traced the outline of the loading hatch and drew a centerline perpendicular to the end.



 
I then moved and reoriented my coordinate system and copied the hatch I have been using in position.



Next, I drew a circle at the base of the hatch and another larger one at the other end of the traced trunk…



…And lofted them.



Then I sliced it, using my trunk tracings as the slice line. Note, the green line is the deck level.



At this point I copied it over to the plan view…



…And drew a 0.005” radius circle on the end of the tracing of the deck skid and extruded it along that tracing.





Just for the heck of it, to see what it would look like, I copied the loading hatch and deck skid parts to the model, and was pleasantly surprised how it looked.







Before proceeding further, I saved the drawing, and then resaved it as a new file, in case it didn’t turn out as hoped. I then extruded an ellipse through the deck…



…And subtracted it…



…Creating a nice recess around the hatch.



I then sliced the excess protruding from underneath the deck.



I then subtracted the extruded deck skid lines from both of the hull parts it intersected. The remaining images show my first stab at it from different angles. Note the slight variation in color between the two hull parts in the first image. I decided to start doing this to make it easier to decipher where one part stops and another one begins.









I must say that I am both surprised and happy with the way it turned out, so unless Scott has a picture of one that shows mine to be way wrong, I will go with what I have.

CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 84

Greetings All!

Well, I guess the camera gremlins got to Scott’s camera because he can’t find them. He did send me some pictures he found on the net however, and here are two of them. Thanks Scott!!!





The pix show that my replication of the hatch is fairly accurate, so I am going to keep it. However, it would be kind of cool to display it open with the skids in place. I could make the cut in the deck and make the skids separate, either out of plastic or PE. I have even considered the possibility of modeling it with sailors putting torpedoes in the ship on both ends. For now though, I am going to go with what I’ve got.

So, the next thing I did was add the padeyes(?) around the aft escape hatch, which I started by drawing 2 circles on a line radiating from the center of the outer ring.



I then reoriented my coordinate system, drew a polyline for the centerline of the padeye…



…And extruded one of the circles along it.



Next, I mirrored the completed padeye to the other side.



Then I rotate/copied one of them to make one of the forward padeyes, and mirrored it.





The last step was to join them to the deck.



The next thing I did was to make the hole seen in the deck near the hatch, which I assume, is used to attach a hoist to load or unload gear, supplies, etc. into and out of the ship, like the one currently installed over one of the forward hatches.



I did this by drawing a circle in the approximate location of the hole, using pictures for reference,…



…Extruded it 0.03” into the deck and subtracted it.





CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 85


Hi Guys!

Looking at pictures of the marker buoys on Batfish this evening…





I noticed that they had the same shape as the messenger buoys on Greenling…



…So, I opened my Autocad drawing of the 1/144 scale Greenling Plans and traced the outline of the buoy (I had deleted the old guidelines for some reason)…



…And copied it to my Batfish Compartment Access plans drawing.



To locate the aft buoy, I used the picture from Batfish and this picture cropped from a navsource photo of Aspro.



I then copied the buoy to the forward position to the starboard side of the forward escape trunk as seen in the first picture in this post.



At this point I copied the aft buoy from the plans to the model.



I then drew a 0.01” radius circle on the end point, and since the deck slopes slightly at this point, prepared to rotate the buoy to be flat on the deck. I should perhaps mention that I solicited help regarding the forward buoy being raised on the Submarinemuseums.org site and was informed by Jim that the raising was a post-war mod.



I rotated it and extruded the circle but then decided that I needed to make the buoys deeper than other items, especially since I am contemplating some sort of “wooden” deck. So instead of extruding a 0.01” diameter circle, I swept a 0.01” wide and 0.02” deep rectangle…



…Which I subtracted from the deck to complete the buoy.





CHEERS!!!

[scott t]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

I think the eyes should be in the inner circle on the hatch. The outer surface should probably be flat for a rescue
chamber to seal to.

[salmon]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

I did a test print of the fairwater of the Batfish and here are a couple of pictures.

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Oh Man what a great way to start the day! Thanks for the pix Tom! And for pointing out my bone headed move on the hatch padeyes Scott!

I don’t know how I did this. Especially considering the fact that I used the aft hatch for reference, where it is even more obvious that the eyes are in the inner ring. DOH!!!



The part is cool Tom. It appears that it came out OK in places and maybe not so good in others. It looks like I need to redo that aft platform again. My patch doesn’t seem to mate with the existing surface very well. Also, it looks to be fairly grainy but it’s difficult to tell how bad it is in the photos. And I can’t really tell how the hatches came out. In any case, it is still pretty exciting for me to see one of my parts printed.

Unfortunately, I can’t do anything about any of it until I get a grant pre-proposal sent out, that I should have done yesterday (or last week, or any time between), because it is due at midnight tonight.

Ugh!!!

[scott t]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Cool Tom, submarine part shaped Tootsie Roll Candy. Is that 72nd scale?

Scott T

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Yes it is.
Mmmmmmm. Tootsie Rolls.