1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 128

Thanks Scott! I like that idea and will definitely leave it open as an option, in fact I did, as you will see.

It was a totally lousy day outside here today and a perfect day to be inside modeling, so I continued on the aft torpedo doors/shutters. I decided to make the torpedo doors open for the last two tubes, numbers 9 and 10. The image below shows the circles to make the door on the forward bulkhead. The door was the easy part. Just because the door is open doesn’t mean I could escape the valley. That’s what the green circle is. Note that it was copied from the other side.



Because the circle extends into parts of the hull I didn’t want to cut, I sliced the circle at the line shown in the image above and made a closed polyline that didn’t intersect the sides of the tube area.



I then copied this poly line parallel to the rear bulkhead. I also copied it to the forward edge but note that the circle is on the edge. The router blade exits the model.



I then lofted between the polylines…



Some times when shapes to be added or subtracted line up at a point Autocad can’t handle it, so to avoid this potential I extruded the end section a bit and joined it to the previous estrusion…



…Then subtracted the joined shapes from the model, to get a nice valley.



But the valley also extends into the hull so I had to cut it too. This was a bit tricky. I started by mirroring the needed circles from the other side.



That got them to the right side. Next I copied them to the lower tube. I could have moved them but wanted to keep the original ones in case I goofed up. The image below shows it from end on.



You can see that now they are in the right location but need to be rotated to be oriented properly with the surface.

Tada!…



Now I could loft the circles…



…And subtract the lofted solid.



A lot of trouble for a little notch, but there it is. And I redid it all on the other side.



The door was next, and I did it the same as I did for the forward ones I made open. I lofted circles, rotated them, extruded them…



…And subtracted them.



Then I added the texture to the door and extruded the inner circle into the model (magenta)…



…Mirrored the whole assembly to the other side, subtracted the extruded shape and added torpedos.



The image below shows the starboard side door with the torpedo colored red.



Here it is from the front after I lopped off the unneeded portion of the torpedo.



After slicing the torpedo, I joined everything on the starboard side together and recolored it.



On the port side I drilled the hole and joined everything together except the torpedo. Like I said, I left my options open at this point.





CHEERS!!!

[scott t]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

That looks sweet. Who says all bad weather is bad.
I think you need to adjust the rear tube-door and cover-doors.
The tube-door is attached to the front edge of cover-door. So the tube-door will not overlap the cover-door.
The cover-door would slide back the length of the tube-door. The edge of the cover-door would hang past the
stern of the boat when open.
I will try and find a picture.

ScottT

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Hmmmm....

I thought it would tuck behind like in the moving animation in the site you sent (http://amp.rokket.biz/am_1_72_gato_sets ... tspn-b-072). Even though the animation is for forward tubes, I thought the mechanisms would work the same.

[scott t]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

I have not found any other pictures yet. This one looks like the edge to the right of the
picture would slide back and not in. A compromise might be to move the door forward and
leave the door as they are.

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 129

I will have to give that some more thought Scott. Let me know if you find a good picture.

In the meantime, I found something else I am considering doing. On one of the links to the AMP site you sent Scott, there is a link to a PDF showing the locations of the “Bottom Kingstons”. The problem is that the site says that it is “a work-in-progress”, and although “it is traced from an actual plan” and “adjusted to fit frame locations on the Revell 1][/url]

I think it would improve the model to add them, but having only locations and not knowing what they are supposed to look like may be opening a Pandora ’s Box I might be best letting be.

CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 130

Hi Guys!

I’m still not sure if I am going to open Pandora’s Box and add the various “Bottom Kingstons” but I decided to go ahead and trace them…





…And project them onto the hull parts. I did them part by part to keep the file size small. Starting with Part02…





…Followed by Part03…





…Then Part 04…





…Part05…





…Part06…



…Part07…



…Part08…



…And last but not least, Part09.



I don’t know at this point whether I will go any farther than this. It depends on what my research reveals. If I decide not to add them it will be easy to delete the projections, because even though they are projectd onto the surface, they are not attached to it. I’ll let you know what I find.


CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Oh Man, I just stumbled onto this. It is old, but what a beauty.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthre ... 323&page=3

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

AND I DIGRESS

I spent over an hour looking for information on the bottom Kingston valves with very little luck. I know what they are and what they do now, but I still don’t know what they looked like on Gatos or Balaos. I think I’ll sit on it a couple of days.

In the meantime, my display for dad is progressing nicely. The planes are all completed and sent to 3Delivered.



They have been printed but are being cleaned. They should be ready tomorrow, or the next day. Because the planes are being displayed in-flight, I decided to make the propellers spinning.



The propellers have already been printed on clear plastic and according to Thomas, they look good, although I haven’t seen them yet.

The base, a pine wood plaque that I found at Michael’s for $6, has been drilled, using a template I made, and has received two coats of Min Wax Dark Walnut stain. I say coats, but I rubbed it on with an old soccer sock and I did it twice because unfortunately I didn’t follow the directions and use a pre-stain conditioner. As a result, the wood soaked the stain up irregularly and it was really blotchy. So, I sanded the hell out of it and applied another coat, but wiped it off almost as soon as I applied it. This got rid of most of the splotches as you can see below.



Next, I will spray on a couple of coats of sanding sealer, with sanding between coats, and then spray multiple coats of lacquer, with sanding before and between coats. It would be started already, but I spray outside and it needs to be above 50 degrees, which it hasn’t been for several days now.

In the meantime, I found and ordered 1” diameter Air Force insignia tie pins ($12.53 delivered). They arrived Friday. I think they will look nice on the display.



I also had some decals custom made. I have made my own decals before and considered doing it again for this project but to print white decals you have to use the white decal paper and I personally don’t think it makes for as good of decal. Since both the AC-47 and U-3A have white decals I decided to see if I could find somebody to print them for me. I got on-line and found a company called “Cedarleaf Custom Railroad Decals” owned by Stan Cedarleaf. I sent them to him Sunday. He sent me the layout below Monday with my layout rearranged a bit to get 2 copies on one sheet. The gray letters on the right will actually be printed white, but are shown in gray for identification. The star on one of the T-34 decals is covered in the JPG Stan sent, but he says it printed correctly. He mailed them to me Tuesday. I should have them by the weekend.



The cost was $36.50 and included shipping. A little steep perhaps, but worth it I think, for two reasons. First, aligning number decals at this scale is difficult and can be frustrating. Customizing the decals allowed me to combine the numbers I wanted into a single decal, greatly simplifying their application. More importantly, it allowed me to add some personal graphics that are definitely not available on the market.

I definitely used a lot of modeler’s license on the decals. Not knowing any of the numbers of his actual planes, I made them up. Every number represents an important date in his life, family member birthdates, his and mom’s wedding date, and the “55” on the T-28 is the year he entered the Air Force after graduating from the Naval Academy. I also added some personal graphics.

In several pictures I have seen of T-28’s, there is an insignia on the tail, which in real life is probably the squadron insignia. On my model, it will be the Sugar Bowl trophy. This represents my dad’s participation, as starting center and nose guard, in the Naval Academy’s victory over Ole’ Miss by a score of 21-0 in the 1955 Sugar Bowl.



B-25’s were notorious for their nose art, but dad said that the trainer he flew did not have any. My model will have a bust of “Bill”, the Naval Academy mascot. I only hope that this doesn’t offend anybody, but I guess it is less offensive to some than the nose art of WWII.



The last personal graphic I made will be on the AC-47. From January, 1966 to October, 1966, dad flew an AC-47, “Puff”, in Vietnam. According to his memoirs from his time in Viet Nam, the natives often referred to the AC-47’s as dragons because of the tracers that looked like a fire breathing dragon. The Air Force Times even called them Dragonships, so the guys called her “Puff” after the kids TV show “Puff the Magic Dragon”. Dad’s detachment commander, Lt. Col. Carter, even had him design and fabricate plaques for the entire 4th Air Commando Squadron, of which he was part of. A dragon is a key feature of the plaque, as may be seen below, and dad says that they were all hoping that their call sign would be “Puff”, but for some reason SEA came up with “Spooky”. The nose of my model will have dad’s patch, rather than the Spooky ghost seen on some AC-47s.



I apologize that this has nothing to do with submarines. I just thought you might be interested.

CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 131

Good Morning All!

This past weekend I decided to go ahead and add the Bottom Kingstons by “etching” their outlines using extruded and lofted 0.004” radius circles. Now, I know that the plans I used from the AMP site to locate the Kingstons are for Gato class submarines, and the locations were most probably different for Balao class submarines, but after hours searching the Internet, they are the best I could find. I hope that you purists out there can forgive me but I thought that including them, even if they aren’t in the correct locations, was better than omitting them.
The first two images below show Part02 with the Kingstons etched into it.





The process was a little more tedious than I thought it would be. The image below shows Part03 with the projected polylines for the Kingstons on it.



I started with the forward most Kingston on the port side. In the image below, I have already added the first 3 segments.



The process is as follows for each segment… First I oriented my coordinate system correctly. After a segment had been added I could simply use the “Face UCS” command which orientsd the coordinate system so that the x-y plane is parallel to the face you select. I selected the face on the end of the “tube” as shown in the image below. Starting out was a little more difficult. I had to use the “3 Point UCS” command. I found and selected an end point on the extruded lines (which become a series of splines once projected) for the origin, then a point a short distance up the line for the x-axis direction. The direction of the y-axis wasn’t important so I simply picked a point perpendicular to the x-axis. I then used rotated the coordinate system 90 degrees around the y-axis. This aligned my x-y plane perpendicular to both the spline and the surface.



With the coordinate system aligned properly, I next drew a 0.004” radius circle. Initially I picked the end point I started with to position the circle. Later, as shown in the image above, I used the center of the face to draw the circle. The next step was to extrude the circle using the projected splines.



I then joined the new segment and recolored it all green to make sure that the join took (sometimes it doesn’t).



I repeated this process over…



…And over.



In the wire-frame images below, I have aligned my coordinate system and drawn my circle…



…Initiated the “Extrude” command…



…And selected the spline as the “path” for the extrusion.



Here it is in Conceptual Visual Style, before joining and recoloring…



…And after.



This process was repeatedly until there was only one segment left.



For the last segment I used the “Loft” command between circles on the two faces, again using the spline as the path. The image below shows the completed shape with all 23 segments.



Unfortunately, due to the fact that the shape of the hull is not uniform as you move fore and aft, I couldn’t just copy the shape just made for the next Kingston. Instead I had to repeat the process. The second Kingston also had 23 segments, but as you can see in the image below they are not the same as they were for the first one.



The third Kingston also had 23 segments but they were different than the first two.



The fourth Kingston on Part03 was the first circular shaped one. It consisted of 20 segments.



The fifth Kingston on Part 03 was a larger circular shape, with 30 segments.



The sixth, and final Kingston on Part03 was rectangular shaped, but still had 33 segments, plus spheres with radii of 0.0041” at the corners. The extra 0.0001” is to assure that there aren’t gaps at the corners.



The image below shows the six Kingston shapes, looking up from underneath the hull.



Fortunately, even though the shapes could not be copied, symmetry was once again my friend, so I mirrored the Kingstons to the starboard side.



The final step was to etch the Kingston outlines into the hull by subtracting the shapes from it. The results are shown in the last 2 images.





Although they are probably not in the correct locations, I think they look good on the model and add some character to the underside. It may take a little time to complete the remaining parts, but unless I decide to do the guns (which I am considering) the Kingstons will be the last feature I add to the model.

CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

I Digress Again

I apologize once again for getting off topic, but the plaque for my dad’s display has been finished (on the 2nd try). I used Minwax pre-stain wood conditioner, Minwax Red Oak Wood Finish and Minwax Polycryllic, and although it isn’t perfect, I am happy with it.



Also, my custom decals have arrived…



…And I received notice today that the planes and props have been shipped.

CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

More digressing...

The 3D printed planes for my dad’s display arrived today.



AC-47 “Puff the Magic Dragon”



B-25 “Mitchell”



T-28 “Trojan”



T-29 “Flying Classroom”



T-34 “Mentor” (with cat hair)



U-3A “Blue Canoe”



CHEERS!!!

[salmon]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Russ,
What a great way to honor your father! Thank you for the digression.
Peace,
Tom

[scott t]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Those are very cool.
I am guessing you printed in the hole for the mounting rods, so
you did not have to drill them.

Scott

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Thanks Tom and Scott,

I wasn’t sure if I was breaking some forum etiquette by posting wingie things, but I thought that somebody might be interested in seeing them.

I think dad is going to like it, and I don’t think he suspects anything, even though I have been asking a lot of questions When did he fly? What did he fly? What color were the planes he flew? Did the B-25 have guns? How many hours did he fly?

You are right Scott. I did incorporate the holes in the parts. The rods are 1/16” = 0.0625” so I extruded 0.063” diameter circles into their bellies. The fit is snug, but not too snug.

I sprayed a coat of Rust-Oleum plastic primer on them today. Tomorrow, when I get back from watching the OU-OSU ice bowl at my parents’ house, I’m going to spray the aluminum planes and probably start on the AC-47 camo.

Man, I’m missing Greenling!

CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

I forgot to ask last night Tom... How is your 3D printer working? Are things going better?