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OK! It can be done. I wanted a Portsmouth built, Tench Class boat. All that available is the EB, Gato.
The anchor has to be moved to the port side, for a Portsmouth boat. And it's not as hard as I expected. Just cut it out, as close as possible to the edges of the well, leaving a tiny bit of overhang. Then use it as a template, to mark the area to be cut out of the port side. Cut out the area, on the port side. Then glue the anchor well in place. Use the part cut out of the port side to fill the hole left by the anchor well in the starboard side.
Once it's set, filled in the openings around the edges. (I use sprue melted in Tenax-7R as filler.) The curves, of the parts, aren't quite right, so you'll need to add a little here and sand off a little there, but it's not that difficult.
As for a Tench bow, it's a matter of building up the bow, with layers of filler. (You have to do it in layers because the filler will soften the plastic under it, if it's too thick.) Then sand it to shape.
For me, the hardest part was waiting for the filler to harden up. It can take up to 24 hours for it to harden enough to sand.
The last thing to be done are the torpedo tube shutters. The scalloped (dished in ) Gato shutters weren't used on the Tenches and some Balaos. You have two choices. 1) Fill in the scallops and rescribe the relief. Or 2) cut out the shutters all together and build new shutters. I'm doing choice 2. Kind of. There's word that somebody may be releasing P/E shutters, so I'll wait a bit, before putting them on.
Mike K
The anchor has to be moved to the port side, for a Portsmouth boat. And it's not as hard as I expected. Just cut it out, as close as possible to the edges of the well, leaving a tiny bit of overhang. Then use it as a template, to mark the area to be cut out of the port side. Cut out the area, on the port side. Then glue the anchor well in place. Use the part cut out of the port side to fill the hole left by the anchor well in the starboard side.
Once it's set, filled in the openings around the edges. (I use sprue melted in Tenax-7R as filler.) The curves, of the parts, aren't quite right, so you'll need to add a little here and sand off a little there, but it's not that difficult.
As for a Tench bow, it's a matter of building up the bow, with layers of filler. (You have to do it in layers because the filler will soften the plastic under it, if it's too thick.) Then sand it to shape.
For me, the hardest part was waiting for the filler to harden up. It can take up to 24 hours for it to harden enough to sand.
The last thing to be done are the torpedo tube shutters. The scalloped (dished in ) Gato shutters weren't used on the Tenches and some Balaos. You have two choices. 1) Fill in the scallops and rescribe the relief. Or 2) cut out the shutters all together and build new shutters. I'm doing choice 2. Kind of. There's word that somebody may be releasing P/E shutters, so I'll wait a bit, before putting them on.
Mike K
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