1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

[jefftytoo]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

Porteous shipyard work began today by shortening a little bit the Seaview carry cradle I'd constructed last weekend (see "Jeff Porteous's Repair Yard" in the SubRon5 section), gluing together its major PVC joints, and then finally gluing on its foam rollers to finish up the project. Then I had to spend significant time reorganizing the garage just to come up with sufficient shelf space to store the lengthy beast!

That accomplished, it was back to Harder's hull. Two weeks or more ago I'd foolishly taped the hull halves together with shipping tape in anticipation of CA'ing together the inside keel seam. But, not having gotten around to that process when expected, I now found myself with a lot of shipping tape goo to remove from the outer hull. Ouch! (What a dope.) Fortunately, duct tape glue is stronger than that of shipping tape, and a few minutes with some strips of duct tape and I was able to clean off the hull quite nicely.

So now it comes time to CA the hull halves, accomplished by dripping the thin stuff along the inner keel seam and then cooking it off with Zip Kicker.




Next came the first layer of 30-minute epoxy, followed by cutting some thin strips of fiberglass…


…and laying them in over the epoxy. Another layer of epoxy was dribbled on over that, and all was smoothed out as best I could (via the narrow hull access opening you see here) using popsicle sticks and one of those small disposable foam paint brushes. Of course, the fiberglass strips shifted and balled up during this process and pretty much created a small mountain ridge along the inner keel despite my best efforts. But later, once the hull's top is fully removed and access is better, I can grind down and/or sand the seam smoother as necessary so it won't interfere with either the fit of the RCABS unit or the lead keel weights slated to be installed later.




See, I'd hoped the whole inner seam would look smooth like this.


Instead I got this ugly—but functional—mess. Oh well.


One actual benefit of all this inner hull epoxy is that it will provide more material to drill into and file out when later creating the scale keel flood holes—making the process at least a little less harrowing than drilling through delicate styrene walls only. This procedure is planned to begin next weekend, BTW.

JeffP

[boomerfunker]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

That's right, save all the "pretty" for the outside Jeff.

It certainly looks very solid and it would be hard to imagine those hull halves popping apart. Like ever.

I myself have been redoing my bridge teak decking with those individual styrene strips. It's working out really well. Quite pleased.

I'll be posting this weekend.

TomK

[PaulC]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

Cool! Looking forward to it, Tom.

I've got my stern running gear all roughed in place -- stern planes, rudder, prop shafts. Unfortunately, my camera died on me. Frustrating!

[boomerfunker]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

I have been working on my bridge area and the gun platforms as of late. I have made some progress on the deck areas including individual strips for the teak decking and a new steel deck for under the Bofors.
Taking inspiration from this guys highly detailed static build http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/vi ... 7&start=60
I wanted to try the same thing on my boat but on top of the existing deck. I think I now have a workable technique for when I eventually attack the main deck.

First thing I did was to make a styrene copy of Tiggers squarish forward 20 mm gun deck. I drew a couple of straight lines to act as guides and to keep my strips straight just like putting in a real floor. Now that it was shaped and fitted it was given a light spray of stencil adhesive and left to dry and get tacky. This gave me the ability to both hold the strips in place and also reposition them at will.

I laid the first strip along one one of my guide lines and begean working out from there using a space to keep the gap even as I went.



When I got the last one on I tweeked a few of them until I was happy with how they all looked then used my Touch and Flow glue applicator (Micro-Mark) to run a thin bead of very thin cement between the planks where it spread by capillary action with little or no mess but a very good bond as the plastic is actually melted together a little bit now. A little C/A along the trimmed edges later didn't hurt either.



Here is the original and here is my part. The holes in my piece will hopefully allow air bubbles to escape after she submerges and also hopefully won't be as visible once it's painted.The stanchion holes are brass rod epoxied in, Hopefully it will be stronger than the plastic alone. There is no way to make it really strong but hopefully after the railing is up it will withstand the odd bump or two without busting.



I repeated the process for the bridge deck. I did have more trouble with this section but I think the solution is more guide lines to keep my planks parallel and a more even coating of the stencil adhesive. I made a paper template of the area first then copied it to the thinnest styrene sheet I had. I could have done it right on the part but getting my stubby fingers in and out of there would be problematic. I will just glue my part in over the kit deck later.



I had to recreate the steel deck under the gun aft of the bridge too since I modified the profile with my previous grafting. Once it was sanded to shape I plotted out the future stanchion locations using the Nautilus Models part and reference photos. These stanchions and railings will be problematic. The Revell kit parts don't fit and the photo-etch that came with the Nautilus Model parts look too thin for my taste, though I will be using them, sandwiched into threes, on the forward platform. I am exploring some ideas now.



This is where things stand now. I started construction of the White Ensign 40mm Bofors for grins. It's a fine little kit but I found it is going to require some modifications to look like my reference photos so I have nothing to show of that yet.



Next I'll keep working up the bridge area and that 40 mil.

[PaulC]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

Wow, that is very nice, Tom! I like it. I guess I'll need to follow your lead on this. It look so much better than the kit parts. And should release air from below as well. Pretty exciting.

[salmon]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

Tom,
Do you have a scale? I am curious if the styrene came out lighter than the cast one. That would be a great benefit!
Peace,
Tom

[PaulC]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

Salmon, did you have to shorten the cast metal prop shaft struts when you put your boat together? When properly in place, they are too long to fit in the stock indentation for the kit struts.

[salmon]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

Paul,
I made a hole large enough for the shaft to go in and adjust.

An area I messed up on was the angle on the horizontal plane. I did not make the inbound shafts to come in enough, so I had to have my shaft longer to be able to install the bearings.

So watch out for that!
Peace,
tom

[jefftytoo]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

Wow, Tom, your scratch teak decking looks FANTASTIC! Hand salute and BZ, bro'! And Paul, your stern is going together wondrously. I'm so envious of both you guys.

As for my own efforts this weekend, here's my overall comment:

HOW COME NOTHING EVER GOES AS PLANNED?!

I did manage to start my keel flood hole project today, but things went quickly awry.…

First, for reference, I shot a lot of photos of the flood holes on my Fine Art Models 1/96 USS Cod. This was easier said than done, since I was shooting black holes against black paint in poor or uneven light. A lot of brightness and contrast tweaking in PhotoShop was required to actually make these holes visible on-screen and especially in printouts. This effort took far longer than anticipated, but I eventually did get many worthy reference shots printed out. Only a few appear below. Anyone desiring copies of all of them need only contact me.

With this shot, note the underside of the bow planes as reference. Note also how two of the holes are actually receptacles for the raised sound heads.





WHY did I do this since, like many of you, I do own the Nautilus Models' stick-on 1/72 keel flood hole template? Simple]Cod[/i], I could only assume Fine Art was accurate below her waterline too. I believe they not only worked from EB plans when creating this amazing miniature, but with their company based in southeastern Michigan and Cod actually on display in nearby Cleveland, I'm sure she got a very thorough going over for research as well. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this included divers going over her side to map out and measure the size and configuration of her entire keel flood hole pattern. I'm just speculating about this, I admit, but what is undeniable is that Harder was an EB boat and so was Cod, so I'm thinking their flood holes are gonna be the same (or at least VERY similar), even though separated by 33 hull numbers (a lot of THEM quite-different Portsmouth-design boats built there and at Mare Island, as you guys well know).

Ahem. I digress. The point here is that once I'd flipped my Cod on her side to get a good look (something I hadn't done in many years), I found that her flood hole pattern was indeed UTTERLY DIFFERENT from the one depicted by Nautilus' template. By the way, Kisler, the holes also featured longitudinal gratings as you can see, so I'd been wrong in assuming the pattern was simply open holes only—though because I've heard there's disagreement among knowledgeable sources over whether said grates were actually added postwar, I defer to others better-informed on this issue while I consider how I might make or get grates to go into those holes.…

Anyway, not only do I now feel the Nautilus template inaccurate by a wide margin, I also find ITS SEPARATE SECTIONS DON'T EVEN FIT the hull as shown in their positioning diagram! This is because the kit hull's weld lines (used for alignment) don't match Nautilus' instructions—rendering the entire Nautilus effort useless as far as I'm concerned. I'd hoped to somehow still use their appliques with my own pattern transferred from my Cod photos, but now I see that won't work either.

So now I get to START OVER...and I'd planned to tackle these flood holes first because I thought they were gonna be easy!

My new plan]http://i1143.photobucket.com/albums/n637/jefftytoo/IMG_4836.jpg[/img]

It's now gonna be a long, arduous process. (See again my statement at the top of this post.)

JeffP

[salmon]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

Jeff,
I found two major types of patterns.
This one, researched by Scott T from actual plans:


and the template by Nautilus part number 72-701

Does the first one look like your original pattern?

[jefftytoo]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

Salmon,

Your pictured one is closer to the one on the bottom of my Cod, but still not the same. Still, SS-263 (Paddle) was an EB boat only a few hull numbers away from Harder, so might indeed be more accurate than Cod's pattern. Hmm. Sure wish there was a way to be absolutely sure about this stuff. Regardless, I think the Nautilus template's pattern remains a non-starter at this point.

JeffP

[jefftytoo]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

BTW, hey Scott, think you could e-send me a copy of that Paddle keel plan?

JeffP

[salmon]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

I have created a set that will overlap and fit on the Revell Gato, it is a PDF. If you want it here it is:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vqke20zkms3ktmv/X5DqmG7Dzh

[jefftytoo]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

Salmon,

Got it—many, many thanks! Am considering my next move....

JeffP

[salmon]

Re: 1/72nd Revell Gato Wolfpack

Your welcome, glad I could help.
Unless you are a glutton for pain, which I seem to have a knack for, do not CA the pattern down (long story).

It took me hours to clean up and then I re-did the welds with CA and Baking Soda. Which turned out pretty cool, learned a new technique