The Ship Model Forum

Underway!



...after months of talking about it, and redrawing:censored_2: much of the AotS book at 1/72nd scale, I've completed cutting the twenty-nine frames that make up the hull of my Dreadnought, and started glueing these to the keel/profile frame that will hold them in place for later planking. The above picture shows the forward ten frames in place, as overseen by two loyal, if grossly underpaid, dockyard workers. (And, yes, the orange fella is lacking one in the leg department - nothing - I hasten to add - to do with me and my coping saw!)

You'll notice that, like football, the hull is going to be a game of two halves until I'm well advanced. This is because it's much easier to work on two sub-four-foot sections screwed to the building board on the kitchen table, than a near-eight-foot monster. Indeed I'm planning to get the running gear and all the underdeck work done in the blunt end before it gets connected to the sharp end. Access won't be great once the decks are on, so I'm aiming for a near-maintanence-free installation.

Materials so far: One coping saw blade, 3 sheets of 4'-by-2' 6mm plywood, a gloop of waterproof PVA and a couple of tins of Whiskas.



The front ten sections looking forward. Each frame is three inches apart, and two mill undersize to allow for planking. Each frame is flat on top to ease hull planking when it's inverted on the building board - a camber will be added later when it's deck time. The biggest frames aft of here have a bit of "spring" (about a millimetre) but this will disappear once the planking is in place. There's no bulkheads - the only solid frames are at the very bow and stern. Water ingress will not be tolerated.

This is going to be a much slower thread than Ron's, I betcha!

Regards,

Andy, Obi and Otto

WELL , Fast or slow I look forward to your build, this section is growing faster than any shipyard I know,

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Simple but effective.

And now all the Dreadnoughts come out, hehehe. Brave to let your cats get so close!

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De quoi s'agit-il?

When it turns into something resembling a seven-foot scratching post they'll be banned from further access.

I have to say it's a lovely scale to be working to. I was very impressed by Task Force 72's models in Australia, and at this scale it's going to let me make and add enough detail-with-resilience I'll be happy with on a working model.

I considered 1/96th, since it's so popular in the UK, but the Dreadnought at that scale would be a whole foot shorter than Ron's ID, and I think the D. would be a bit "lost" on the lochs up here that I plan to sweep. (I also - briefly - considered 1/64th scale, given that much of the AotS book is draw in that or integer variations of that amount, but that might scupper my plans for a Warspite later. It would be "small canoe" in size rather than "model boat", and the logistics of moving it would become <ahem> difficult.)

Work last night: more frame joints cut. I should have photos of the two halves all framed up in a day or so.

Andy

Nice to see you making a start Andy, on what seems to becoming a brilliant build.

I would have liked to have built the Vic in 1/72 scale, but it would not fit in my dry dock, I only have 2 foot to spare with a 1/96 model and besides, it would not fit in the car.

Keep us well posted Andy. It look's like the big boys are now dominating Model Warships for a change, instead of the smaller scale plastic models.

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Presently Building - Aircraft Carrier H.M.S. Victorious 1/96

Under Construction Laid Up - H.M.S. Marlborough 1/96

The fourteen frames that make up the stern half of the Dreadnought have now been fitted and glued to the keel.

I love the shape of most ship hulls - but there's little to compare with the curves and sweep of a battleship: maximizing the block coefficient while not trying to resemble a brick. It's almost a shame to cover things like this up.

Incidentally, spot mistake #1 - I removed some wood at the top of the last frame, when I didn't've oughta. Oh well - no one will ever know when it's complete!



And now - the joys of Excel: from the plans I developed a couple of parametric equations relating to the run of the inner and outer propshafts from the propellors forward. Before drawing the frames, I calculated which ones would be supporting the shafts, marked them out appropriately, and before cutting out the frames, I predrilled the propshaft holes. (This is important - the outer propshaft holes in frame 24, for example, just peaking out in the shot below, are about a millimetre from the edge of the frame - these would have been impossible to drill neatly if the frame had been cut first.)

While forward planning like this can be a bit of a fuss, the end result is wonderful - having never done this before it's certainly something that I'd do again - and the propshafts (the outer two are fitted in these photos) slid in with a minimum of bother. These shafts will be Araldited to the frames once the aft section is bolted to the building board and the frames/keel are properly squared-up.

If there's a mistake #2, it's that the oiling tubes on the shafts are further aft than I realised: I may well have to cut a slot for the inner shafts in the foremost propshaft frame in order to get the tube and its oiler "aft enough". I'll be measuring that tonight. That's not a huge concern though: there's loads of support for all the shafts.



Finally: the view looking aft through the engine room. If all goes to plan, once the couplings are on, and given the rise of the shafts as they go forward, I think there's enough clearance to get my motors in without hitting the frames. We'll see!



Next major task...bolt the halves to the board and get plating. This is the point at which a big hull turns into acres of angst: I suspect I won't be updating the thread with photos for a week or two.

Andy

Hi Andy, what a brilliant idea to get your prop shafts in before the planking commences. Like you have outlined, you can drill nice neat holes and you can actually see the alignment that the shafts will take.
When you start the planking, you can now form the shaft fairings at the same time, resulting in a neater build.

I must try this method on my next scratchbuilt hull of another Aircraft Carrier, possibly a Colossus Class, once the Vic and Marlborough are finished.

Nice photos and very neat work.

Well done

Just one question. Is the top logitudinal support all one piece, or have you put in separate peices in between each frame?
Good idea this, for extra strength and will help to overcome flexing.

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Presently Building - Aircraft Carrier H.M.S. Victorious 1/96

Under Construction Laid Up - H.M.S. Marlborough 1/96

Exactly...This all seemed much better than attacking a pristine plated hull with four loose propshafts, a long drill, a scotch and a prayer, to my mind.



The top longitudinal strip was cut with the stem (or stern) profile and the keel, all in one piece. So while I've been dealing with a whippy four-foot long "U"-shaped piece of plywood for the last few days, with it threatening to snap at a moment's notice, the frames and glue have now locked it all together and it's stable in terms of fore-and-aft flexing.

Now that it's in place, I'm convinced that the frames are perpendicular to the keel and they can't move. All I have to worry about, when attaching the hull halves to the building block, are that the frames are absolutely square to the keel in the other plane, and that the keel is straight, but they're easy matters to deal with.

Once the hull is plated up to the gunwhale, the frames will be locked in place in all directions. At this point the hull won't be able to hog or sag anymore, and so parts of this longitudinal piece will be cut away - along with the tops of several of the frames - to allow access at the turrets and superstructure.

Thanks for the positive feedback!

Andy

Hi Andy G Excellent work , and if the remainder of the build follows the neatness of your frames then your Dreadnought will be quite a model to behold. It's good to see that you have built the shafts in prior to planking, good move. I always like to have the drive train, electrics and ESC up and running before the deck goes on. This is not always possible but it helps.
Dave Wooley

Yes: once the hull is plated I'm aiming to have the bulk of the internal installation sorted - not least because there's also turret rotation stuff and a smoke generator to fit. Given that access is going to be quite limited when it's decked, it would also be good to ballast and trial the hull before I even start on stuff-above-the-gunwales.

Minor update: midnight last night - ten minutes with a ruler and the AotS Dreadnought book convinced me to cut the inner shafts' forward frame holes in order to slide the shafts with their oil tubes far back enough...the potential cut lines were marked a couple of days ago and are visible in the photo above. The removed wood will be reinstated once the shafts are epoxied in.

This weekend: I start plating.

Thanks for all the kind words and advice so far.

Andy

Andy, you are doing a great job and have certainly done your homework, regarding getting the hull to the best possible outcome. I have had my difficulties with the Vic and if I had known what I know now, I would never have bought it as I could have done a much better scratchbuilt hull.
But one ALWAYS learns by their mistakes. Great work Andy Look forward to your progress with interest.

Geoff

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Presently Building - Aircraft Carrier H.M.S. Victorious 1/96

Under Construction Laid Up - H.M.S. Marlborough 1/96

Brief update:

It's been just over a month since I last posted, and time has been partly eaten by the usual Spring-ish non-modelling things. (I'm very tempted to concrete the entire lawn over, give up work and move the kids out...only kidding. A bit.)

However, the stern end of the build is clamped, bolted and screwed to my building board - something I knocked up for making built-up aircraft wings a few years ago: it's as flat as Norfolk, weighs about 20kg, and is a b----r to move around - and plating is well underway on this section. One good thing is that the time spent on the frames is paying off - they're all true to the keel and the right size: no desperate measures have been needed to get fair runs on the wood strips that are covering them.

No photos this time, as there's not much to show - just acres of 2mm balsa covering up the frames, bit by bit, the whole thing resembling a demented porcupine with wandering alopecia. They'll come a point very soon when I'm convinced this section is stable enough to remove from the board and I'll be able to plate the keel area. (The build here is currently "the right way up", and I have no access to the flat bottom and very limited access to the turn of the bilge.)

However, pinning the plating to the plywood is once again turning my finger tips into calloused wrecks: this is the disadvantages of pinning soft wood onto ply frames. While the end is not in sight, just yet, the hull is beginning to resemble the canoe that it appears to want to be, rather than some exotic example of post-modernist geometrical sculpture.

Plating may be finished in a few weeks: at that point I'll post photos of the two hull halves, and later illustrate:

1/ How they're to be (invisibly) joined.
2/ The treatment I'll be using to toughen up the hull plating on the inside of the hull: no grp or expanses of body filler in this build!
3/ The method of toughening and plating the hull exterior to match the original plating diagram. Time consuming - but loads more fun than the balsa bit, and you end up with a hull that looks real and rivetted, not a car-showroom-like expanse of polished smoothness.

Now, back to work! (While naturally stopping by to take sly peeks at the Victorious and the other builds on this forum that look so good. I will get there one day.)

Andy

Hmmm...my normally automatic log-in didn't. The last post was mine, naturally!

Andy

Read with enthusiasm Andy, I am eagerly awaiting more pictures of your build, as no doubt everyone else is. It will be interesting to see how you go about your hull joining with the riveted platework, something that will be different to most other builds on here. So far you seem to be getting closer to finishing, what I always think is the long slow part of the build.

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Presently Building - Aircraft Carrier H.M.S. Victorious 1/96

Under Construction Laid Up - H.M.S. Marlborough 1/96

Certainly eager to see the new pics!!!
This is going to be one hell of a ship (considering the smoothness of those frames!)! Woohoo, another new thread to follow every day!

Regards
Roel

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The merchant shipyard

...And I only noticed this thread tonight !!!
I really like the way you built your hull sections... I think I might give that method a try in my next project, as I´m having some weight problems on my own, ´cause I´m using solid plywood bulkheads......who knows ???
I also like the scale you´ve choose...

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That's ok! It'll be around for a l-o-n-g while, the speed I'm going.

Wow! Many of them? Or just a few? My last build, an HMS Lion at 1/100th, used some solid bulkheads, but when it came down to it they weren't exactly where they could/should have been. Perhaps it's through seeing the freedom that glassfibre hulls give you, in terms of placing components and maximising access, that I took this route of "no bulkheads" on the Dreadnought. Is it inherently riskier? I dunno...much later in the build, I may add bouyancy if I think it warrants it: there's certainly enough room for it!

The situation at the moment - I've all but finished balsa-skinning the "blunt" end. It's off the board and as stable as anything - no warps or unpleasantnesses - and I'm pleased with the quality of the woodwork: it's not going to need much in the way of sanding. I'll put up some photos in the next couple days or so, before I set to and start doing the "sharp end".

Meanwhile, the steel plate expansion diagram (which is a bit tiny in the AotS book "Dreadnought" that I'm using) was scanned at a frightening level of dpi, and printed out to cover three sheets of A2 paper, with little loss of quality. I'll be using this as a guide to the outer plating later. Got an Excel trick up my sleeve that I want to try.

Now for two words of warning:

1/ Since I'm really delving into the book, I'm finding some of the captions for the illustrations are <ahem> misleading. I had fifteen minutes of "this can't be right" last night, before I realised that the diagrams for the shaft brackets and a-frames are drawn at 1/96th, yet labelled 1/48th. Not blindingly obvious when you're looking at a bit of the ship that's got no clear human scale to double-check against: and a little confusing when trying to work out what scale they're actually drawn to. It's happened on a couple of other pages too. I wonder if the second edition of the book amends these errors?

2/ There are one or two parts of the Dreadnought as detailed in the book which are somewhat unclear - I can think of several ways in which they should be organised. One is the area around the mainmast, the other is the framing of the boat booms and how that relates to the superstructure. For these, I'm going to be referring to photos and the hordes of model Dreadnought pictures that I've found online, both on this forum and elsewhere. Hmmm...How did we manage in the olden days?!

Andy

Just look for yourself on the "USS Manila Bay in 1/72" thread...

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Oh yes - that thread. I'm really enjoying it. Apologies for not connecting your name with the build. (Which looks lovely at the moment.)

Hmmm (thinks and checks) - it's 1/72nd and about the same size as my Dreadnought...wow! It hadn't struck me so far. Maybe it's the thick 8mm ply bulkheads that you used, but it felt, from the photos, quite a bit smaller. Now I know it's about 2.16m long I'm really impressed. (Would it be awful to urge you to consider using the hull as a plug for a glassfibre hull for R/C??!)

Hmmm (thinks some more) does my Dreadnought come across as the size it is? Looking over the previous photos, I'm not sure that it does...it dominates the living room, but looks merely so-so in the photos. Right, with that in mind I'll definitely get some pictures this weekend of the whole thing, with a scale for comparison.

As to the status of my build, the stern is planked - all finished, but not sanded - and the bow half goes on the building board tonight. I sense a trip to the model shop this weekend for another eight sheets of 4"*40" 2mm balsa.

And how would I do that, just for curiosity ???



Can´t wait to see those...
By the way, didn´t Dreadnought had an all rivet hull ? How do you intend to tackle that ???

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