The Ship Model Forum

I had briefly considered covering the boat, but ready for war the boats were probably not covered, needed on short notice for plucking aviators out of the drink and whatnot. As it turns out there was a reward, the generally accepted value of a Naval Aviator was considered to be 5 gallons of Ice Cream! I'll probably do the straps which hold the boat inboard from slices of tape. Divining the method of rigging the boats, standing and running, may take. bit.

Hank:

You are good at riding the edge on what works, I know for my part that it often takes several iterations. I still haven't got the LCVP's hanging from their davits on the ARL. I initially thought that the DE and Fletcher davits were the same but apparently not. Wonder why they changed the forward one? An advantage of home printing as opposed to sending things out, we can approach the edge of what works more successfully.

Rigging the davits may be yet another adventure!. Replacing kit parts as you are on Stoddard does put you into a bit of exploratory territory. That and you have two boats to hang!

Best regards! Tom

Fliger747 wrote:A tendency of printing is we can live in the model design world and not pay enough attention to the engineering aspects of what we are building. Yes we can design and maybe even print something that may look nice but won't survive even assembly and handling. With experience we Ian some understanding what we can get away with.
Tom

Tom,

Very true! Perhaps a possible explanation as to why kit manufacturers have parts that are lacking in detail and quite oversized - in order to compensate for the assembly & handling aspect of constructing the model.

I know I try to incorporate as much scaled detail as possible - sometimes this works, sometimes not. We usually find a happy medium.

Hank

As it turns out The DE and Fletcher davits for the MWB were somewhat different. It appears that the DE's used two of the aft type davits with the tapered round base. I have trial fitted the assemblage and hung the MWB with success. I made lifting eyes fro the MWB by taking a brass wire and closing an eye in the end, secured by solder, then drilling and CSA'ing in place fore and aft. I made J hooks to match and attached them to the pull sheaves of the davits, hooked the boat into the davits and slid their bases into the davit bases. Surprisingly it worked. One could print. detailed block and tackle, but I am not sure that it would survive the at sea rigors of model shiphood.

A tendency of printing is we can live in the model design world and not pay enough attention to the engineering aspects of what we are building. Yes we can design and maybe even print something that may look nice but won't survive even assembly and handling. With experience we Ian some understanding what we can get away with.

Tom

So far pretty happy with the davits, interesting that these ships during the wartime only carried a 26' MWB on the starboard side. Actually slinging the MWB from the davits a challenge yet to be resolved.

Phil:

I just finished a Douglas Reeman Novel about operations aboard a RN Fleet Minesweeper, you should be pleased to have successfully escaped the peacetime sweeping community. The scenes in the Channel on the open bridge in Winter, part of an invasion fleet and on and on. Sailors getting W/T message that their home was obliterated, no survivors! Tough times. The common use of alcohol on board, quite a contrast to USN practice sine who was it? (Josephus Daniels?) SECNAV early in the last century.

That and the usual results of the uncertainties of such wartime operations.

It was a constant move to the search engines to penetrate some of the particular RN slang.

Cheers: Tom

Currently working n the 26' MWB Davits, as far as can tell a similar setup to that used on the Fletcher Class DD's. I already have some printed 1:144 MWB's, a cooperative project between Hank Strub and myself and already printed in various scales for other projects, 1:192, 1:144 and 1:120.

Tom

Tom,

Extremely nice!!! the b/w photo is quite apropos. The model is quite convincing!!

Hank

This gives an entirely new meaning to the term "portable generator."

Nice model.

Phil

Current progress on electrical armament, sometime logistics being the most important aspect of operations. Re printing the electrical cabinet, a little wider. Again not exact specs fro this unit.

Tom

The Cable Electrical panel just forward seemed to print fine. I didn't have too much goo data on this unit. It appears as if Whitehurst had some additional cabinet s added Portside later in her career. The starboard side appears to have some transformer insulators enclosed in a screened area. As an experiment I drafted the CAD file to effect a mesh with 0.5 mm openings on a 0.75 mm spacing. Surprisingly this printed perfectly and gives very much the screen effect, however it's very flexible and one of the three sides was not straight. I stiffened this up a little with paint and added a small reinforcement of PE at the top with success. If I was gong to re print this I would add a reinforcement rim at the top. Going to give it a repaint to airbrush the 20B top without using tape masking.

Tom

Printed version two of the cable spools and the small platform midships on the spools port side. I beefed the electric framework up considerably which came out well. Frameworks if printed small often are quite rubbery which is not the desired result. Printed overnight but I haven't fetched and cleaned yet is the electrical panel located at the forward end of the spool setup.

In the printing it was necessary to have a number of drain holes because of the complex hollow of the cable drums. I already replaced the SL Radar dome, which worked out much better hollow. An advantage of printing is being able to replace parts or easily change the design. Hollowing the SL took only a few minutes.

Tom

Version one of the cable spools sitting on deck, where the torpedo tubes were normally located. Portside in the middle of the spool arrangement there was a small platform with an inclined ladder leading up. Not sure what the purpose of that was. Forward of the spools was all the transformer equipment, connected to the engine room below. This equipment a little uncertain as no real dimensions except as scaled from photos and the allowed deck space for it. Even so it may be that the several DE installations were not identical.

I'm currently reading through yet another Douglas Reeman RN novel of WWII. Brits loved their open bridges, Sitff (frozen) upper lip and all. The DE's had a Britt open style bridge (They were involved in the design) which was good for sky view, an important scenario in air defense. Whiteherst might have been "White Hearse" after she lost 40 dead being hit in the Bridge by a Kamikaze. England (her shipyard twin) suffered a similar fate but was not ever repaired, due to the end of the war

I have been working on the cable spools, which she carried after her Pearl Harbor refit after the Kamikaze damage in early 1945. Being a Steam -Electric power plant she was easily converted for ability to be a floating power station. The steam electric propulsion was selected to avoid the necessity of using gear reduction boxes which were a production bottleneck. It did have some operational advantages in allowing very quick changes in thrust and direction and with the twin rudders, a great turning circle. All assets for anti-sub work of the day.

I had an issue with the domed SL Radar, which had split and would have been happy to leak resin down the mast. This was I think avoided as the model sits where she gets a little sunshine every day. So printed another one last night, presently cureing, fully hollow.

Tom,
Your grating looks 'GRATE' -

While a bit tedious to create, these do add a lot of detail to otherwise plain pieces. Very nice work indeed!

Hank

Open bridges suck!

My first ship was a small minesweeper with an open bridge and it was no fun standing a four hour watch in blowing gales with six inches of cold sea water sloshing back and forth on the deck. My feet were soaked and very cold!

The second ship was a modified Cleveland class cruiser. These ships originally had open bridges, but when they made the guided missile conversions someone came to his senses and enclosed the bridge. The heated dry bridge made watch standing much easier and greatly improved efficiency, morale and alertness.

Phil

Printed grating for the gun crew of the 32 mount on Whitehurst. Printed with water washable Frozen Rapid Black, which I like for its sharp detail. Originally (take 1) I printed this in two pieces to be able to slide in on either side of the 3" 50 mount. However it turned out it was easier to pop the gun off the model and print as one piece. There are advantages in not over glueing pieces and parts. Will try airbrushing this later with Trucolor 5N deck blue.

Tom

Pulled Whitehurst off the table and did some measuring and head scratching for the grating around the 32 mount. Because of the great sheer, the 31 and 32 mounts had a grating to level out the working area for the mount crews. After looking at Hank's great "grates" for his directors it occurred to em I could do this and add the grate to Whitehurst via printing. The second edition looks good and is now curing. Rather than split the grate (1st edition) I found it more expeditious to pop the mount of fit's mount and consolidate the grates. I think it will work well. Going to try out some Trucolor 5N Deck blue on these.

I also printed a deck grate for the bridge, but not totally happy with this and will probably re design. Reading some of Douglas Reeman's WWII novels ov the RN, the USN DE's were largely inspired in design by the Brits and have the much "beloved?" open bridges.

Tom

Post Script: Starting to work on the midships cable spools!

The duo of "cans" will relocate back to the studio as guests tend to toss hats, mittens and packages on the table with disaster an eventuality. The cost of shipping a completed case to Alaska runs in the hundreds of dollars so I may instead make one of the wooden framed one's which I have the skills, tools and materials to construct.

Cheers: Tom

Tom,

I'll be curious to see the cable reel and equipment in place once you've got all that designed/printed. Quite an interesting small boy, to say the least. And Yes! this time of year can sort of deter from a lot of modeling, etc.

Hank