1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 47

Hi everyone!

Continuing with the periscope shears, the next thing I did was the access plates, which were made similarly to the plates on the extensible mast. I located a plate and bolt.



Extruded it into the shear, did an intersect command, moved the resulting edge out 0.06’ and copied the shear back. I also prepared the bolts for inserting into the plate…



...And then moved them into position.



Next I copy/rotated the plate/bolt assembly 90 degrees, mirrored the two plates to the other side of the shear, then copied all four to the other shear.



I did the remaining rows of plates at the same time, following the same procedure.







About this time Autocad skitzed out and for some reason started bogging down. I looked at the file and somehow it had gotten to 100M. IKES! I tried shutting it down, but it wouldn’t close and I was forced to do a hard shut off. IKES again. I deleted the file opened the one I had saved after the first row and redid it with no further problems.







CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 48

Good afternoon guys!

I didn’t have much time to model today, so I thought I would do something easy, so decided to do the eyelets sticking out from the second platform on the upper periscope shears. As usual I started by drawing the shape where it needed to go.



I did the port side, mirrored it to the starboard side and joined them.



I then drilled out the holes by subtracting the extruded circles…



…And joined it to the shear base.





Hopefully I can do some more tonight.

CHEERS!!!

[scott t]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

The space between the windscreen and the forward periscope mast does not look like
the right amount of space. See side image compared to drafted image.
Still looks way cool.

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 49 – 4/26/2013

Man, what would I do without you guys?!

Scott, when I first read your last post, I wondered what you could be talking about, thinking I used the plans so it must be an illusion. Then I looked at the photo/model comparison you included and wondered what was going on, I mean, I used the plans.

So, I opened the plan drawing and copied lines drawn at the forward edges of the bridge and lower periscope shears, and the circles at the center of the periscopes.



When I did this, lo’ and behold, it was indeed too far forward. I have no idea how this may have happened, but at this point it was a fairly easy fix. In the first image below, the shears and extensible mast have been moved back so the shears are in the correct position, with the red vertical line being where it was, and the vertical magenta line and red circles being as copied from the plans. You can see that it looks a lot better, although I am not totally satisfied with the extensible mast. It may be a bit too far back.







THANKS SCOTT!!! I’m glad you pointed this goof out. Keep the critiques coming whenever you see an issue.

CHEERS!!!

[scott t]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Looks right now. Good job. I knew something was short because there is a dashboard that the compass
is mounted on that would not fit in the space previously shown.
I hate to pick at this but believe the rear deck is round and not pointed. I don't have a
picture of it though so a road trip to get that dimension will have to happen. Let see who makes a trip to
the Batfish first. You might be able to contact the museum website for more information.

Great fix!

[scott t]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Hate to do this but looked back at update 10 page 2 where you had put this illustration which shows the periscope
mast base circles overlaping. I would leave it till you could see it in person and decide.
Also shows location of dashboard with compass.

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Good Morning Everybody,

Wow, what a last couple of days. I can usually squeeze in an hour or two of modeling somewhere in my day, even when I am busy, but man, even with an all nighter I was still barely able to get everything done. Perhaps I’ve been modeling a bit too much? Naaaaawww!

Scott when I said I wanted critiques, I meant it. Good and Bad. Your last 2 posts are just what I want, and obviously need. Like I have said on a different thread, modeling is an enjoyable, often challenging exercise of getting from Point A to Point B, with Point B being the desired state. The way I look at it, if I do something wrong, I have simply moved my Point A, and since I am not in a race, it just adds another, often more difficult challenge getting to the ultimate Point B. Since I have zip, zero, nada ship or submarine experience, and am not the most observant person in the world, I need help from you more experienced keener eyed guys to keep me on line, even if it means doing a U-Turn.

As for the rear deck being rounded and not pointed, I think you may be right. Here is an image of the plans.



The trouble with the plans of course is that they are for Pompanito and not Batfish and therefore are not 100% accurate. We know that the forward end is wrong, and I think that the aft end is wrong too, because I think the platform sticks out to far . Some pictures from Tom appear to confirm this assumption and the pointed shape, at least for the bulkheads.







It’s all in the transition, which I agree, I didn’t get right. I think I will try again.

As for the shears, all I can say is that I flat blew it. When I saw the overlap, I assumed that it couldn’t be like that and as my dad told me when I was first learning to drive, “Assuming will make an Ass of u and me.” I should have looked at the plans again before changing it. Still, I agree that since slicing it and moving it is fairly easy to do, I should leave it and wait until I actually get to see the boat in person. My guess is you will win that race as it will be at least a month before I can get out there.

Thanks again for the critical eye!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 50

I revisited the aft gun platform on the fairwater last night but was too tired to post it. After 5 hours sleep I woke up and was wide awake, so I thought I would go ahead and get up and post what I did.

I started the process by slicing the existing platform extension off. I did this by tracing the forward outline, creating a polyline and extruding it to make a surface…



…Which I then used as a slicing surface to slice off the extension.



When I did this, some of the detailing items that I had protruding from the fairwater bulkhead were sliced too, so I had to use the solidedit command to separate the items before deleting the extension.



I then rejoined the sliced detail items back to the fairwater.



This is where it got somewhat difficult. I thought it would be just a matter of rotating the side profile shape around a center point, but unfortunately it wasn’t that easy. When I tried this there was a big dip in the side profile due to the shape of the bulkhead, so by trial and error I discovered that I had to gradually flatten the profile shape forward to aft. I eventually settled on the shapes shown in the image below…



…Which I lofted, using the semicircle as a guide.



Next, I extruded the end sections into the fairwater…







…And joined the three new sections to the fairwater.









I don’t think that it is 100% accurate, but it is a much closer representation of the actual shape than what I had. Thanks again Scott!

CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 51 – 4/29/2013

Hi Guys!

Well, I lied when I said I was going to wait until I went to Batfish before deciding what to do about the periscope shear positioning. Instead, I decided to put it back to the overlap, like shown in the plans, and like I originally had it, before second guessing myself.

The first thing I did to accomplish this was to slice the masts above the lower support bracket off the base, and separate the red bar with the holes in it (sorry, I don’t know what it is called). I then sliced between the shears.



I then sliced the lower part of the aft shear from the forward shear and then sliced it at the base…



… Separated the parts and joined the base to the forward shear.



I then joined the parts of the aft shear.



At this point I had to remove some of the existing bolts, so I copied the circles and hexagons that I had saved on a misc layer to the location of the 3 center bolts on each shear.



I then scaled the hexagons to 1.05, lofted them and subtracted them, leaving the center nut and bolt on the forward shear.



With the extra bolts removed, I moved the aft shear into position, using the center of the middle circles for alignment, and prepared to make the new “common” bolts.



I then extruded the new nuts and bolts…



…And joined them and both shears together.



Next, I added the bottom flange as shown in the plans…



…And joined it to the shears.



Last, I plugged the old antenna hole and drilled a new one. I also redid the attachment points on the lower shears although you can’t see it.



Now where was I?

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 52

Hi Everybody!

After once again fixing mistakes I made in my design (thanks to Scott kindly pointing out my blunders), I continued on the periscope shears. I decided to add the grabs, so I copied and pasted the grab from the grab drawing I previously saved into the upper shear drawing. The vertical red lines in the images below are the centerlines of the shears. The horizontal red lines are reference lines for attaching the grabs to the shears. The first grab was positioned vertically using photographs.



I also used pictures to locate the top grab, which was copied from the first one.



There are 5 grabs on each shear, and since the rungs are most likely evenly spaced, I copied the grab and reference lines to the midway point and then copied it twice more to the midpoint between this mid grab and the end grabs.



In the oblique angle image below, you can see how I did all of the previous steps on a plane to the side of the shears.



This allowed me to then move the grabs to the correct position using the reference lines. I moved them in pairs, as shown below.





In the pictures I have, some of the grabs are bent and twisted, and I thought about replicating that, but decided to make them undamaged, so I went ahead and attached them.





CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 53

Good Morning Guys!

Continuing on the periscope shears I decided to put the fixtures seen on the support brackets in photos, starting with the lower fixture on the lower bracket. I started with a circle…



…That I extruded down what I thought looked to be the right distance.



A similar procedure was followed to make the lower part of the upper fitting…



…And the upper part of the fitting. A bolt was copied from elsewhere and placed in position on the fitting flange.



I couldn’t tell from pictures how many bolts there are, so I used 8. Who’s counting, right?



After joining the two pieces, I copied the antenna to the side, subtracted it…



…Moved the antenna back and joined the bolts.



Moving up to the next bracket, I noticed that the one I had roughly made was too large on the end, so I sliced it apart from the rest of the shears and drew a polyline where I thought it should be. The other parts of the shears were temporarily transferred to another layer and turned off.



I then sliced the platform end off and extruded the polyline.



I joined the new end to the existing part and like before subtracted the antenna and the aft periscope.



I then moved the remaining parts of the shears back to the correct layer and the new bracket to them.



Moving to the top bracket, I used extruded circles to make the support fitting as seen in the pictures as best I could…



…Joined the pieces to the bracket, and in the same manner as before, subtracted the antenna…



…And moved the copied antenna back.



I’m not sure that I like it, because it may be a little too big, but I can always change it, I’ve had a lot of experience at that.

I next focused on the ring between the shears, that I have probably been told what is, but I if so I don’t recall it. After first drawing what I thought appeared to be the right diameter circles in the correct locations, I extruded them and subtracted the inner one from the larger one.



The bottom support structure was GROSSLY approximated with an extruded rectangle with rounded edges and another rectangle with rounded edges subtracted from it.



I then joined the 2objects and colored them the same as the rest of the shears assembly.



It looked a little small to me, so I scaled it to 1.1, which matches the pictures better.





Once again, it is not perfect, but without the aid of plans for these parts, I think it is good enough for now. As usual though, if I learn better I will change it as needed.

CHEERS!!!

[raalst]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

It certainly has more detail than will show up in actual 3d printed models of it.
I'm very curious how it will come out !

Keep up the good work. this is a new method of building...

[tom dougherty]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Nice work!
I just noticed that the current "as is" photos you are working from show Batfish with the lookout stations on the periscope shears were apparently deleted when she went to AGSS status. During the war, she had shears near her rear periscope, and the searchlight platform did not exist as such. As I believe you are doing Batfish in her current configuration, it is just an interesting side note.

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Oh Man!
These are awesome photos Tom!!!

They are the first pix I recall seeing where the supports extended past the antenna to the new/old "SD mast".

I really like this look, but as you have pointed out Tom, and as I have learned in my brief modeling unpaid career, the secret to modeling an accurate model is to pick a specific time to model. I would love to model her when she sank the 3 Japanese subs, but it is so hard to find enough pix to get everything right, and since Tom (AKA Salmon) and Scott have sent me so many AWESOME pix as she is now, and I can, and will, get to see it myself, I thought that the current configuration would be the easist to model. But, and it's a Bertha but, I'm not set in stone so I really appreciate and love, the "interesting side note(s)" you provide. Even if I don't include them, I thank you for sending them.

On another mote, last night I completed the long cylinders on the port side of the shears. I don't know what they are called, but they look like they were associated with the hydraulics needed to raise and lower the periscopes. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to post them, and I am currently on a train to St Louis and don't know I will get around to posting it.

The good thing about that is that I will be going to the shop that printed my Greenling model and meeting the guy who actually did it (and hopefully buying him an appreciation beer). The bad thing is I wont be playing with Batfish for a few days.

Once again I can't thank you guys enough for all of the input you have provided!

This brew is for you!
Cheers!


CHEERS!

[tom dougherty]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

last night I completed the long cylinders on the port side of the shears. I don't know what they are called, but they look like they were associated with the hydraulics needed to raise and lower the periscopes.

The periscope hoists are all internal. There are thin tubes that carry electronic lines to antennas, etc., running along the exterior of the shears. Are those the tubes you are referring to??