The Ship Model Forum

USS Whitehurst was a Buckley class TE Destroyer Escort, one hull number lower than the famous England and built side by side in San Fransisco at the same time. Due to war time "supply chain" issues, the DE's featured a variety of power plants. The TE's used steam plants and turbines to drive generators and electric motors, avoiding the bottleneck of reduction gearing. For anti sub work the responsiveness of such a power plant greatly enhanced maneuverability.

Accumulating information, received the Al Ross AOS book on England, from England, have the movie "Enemy Below", filmed aboard her in 1957, ordered the TFD plans disk etc. I discovered the AOS hull lines are seriously in error for the stern, after I made a 3D model and it was apparent the stern was far too narrow, Awaiting further information, but constructed a hull using the waterlines for the aft section.





The transom should be about 65% of the hull beam, not 55% as seen here.



A series of Chitubox images of my 1:500 test hull.



The program I am using is capable of many things, ship hulls is not one of them so considerable legerdemain is required to get a hull that may need minor filling and sanding.

Scale? I dunnoh, maybe 1:144, 1:120? Era? I dunnoh? I drilled on this ship in the mid 60's when she was a Reserve training ship based at Pier 91 in Seattle , but WWII might be interesting. She did sink a submarine off leyte, shot down a number of aircraft, and like England, took a kamikaze off Okinawa. her damage, though less than England was handled at Pearl Harbour where her torpedo tubes were removed and large cable reels were added, allowing use as a floating power plant.

The Submarine Bugara which I have been aboard for sound tests and Whitehurst collided in Hawaiian waters when Bugara was surfacing and both met their end nearby off the Washington coast, Whitehurst sunk as a target and Bugara foundering under tow.

Don't expect quick progress here!

Tom,

Do you have the Table of Offsets for the ship? Taking lines off of hull lines drawings is problematic, especially on small scale drawings. This is especially true when trying to work from scanned paper drawings.

For my OK City model I started with paper drawings from The Floating Drydock and discovered a serious error in the resulting CAD model between the lines for the front and rear halves of the hull.

Then I ordered microfilm from the National Archives and found the Table of Offsets. I entered the numbers into a spreadsheet and saved the data as comma separated variable (CSV) files. I read these into my CAD program and it generated all the section lines automatically, accurate to within 1/16 inch full scale (0.00065 inch at 1:96). The result was a very accurate CAD model of the molded hull (to the outer surface of the frames at the inside of the hull plating). There is no way I can actually build a physical model to this degree of accuracy!

The microfilm also included the Table of Hull Sight Lines. These were descriptions of the location of the horizontal edges of the hull plating strakes. This information was used to position the hull plates in the ways as the ship was being constructed. It is impossible to derive all of this information from hull lines drawings or from the hull plating diagrams. But the plating diagrams do show the weight (thickness) and dimensions of individual plates, and that allowed me to build the CAD model plate by plate to the correct outer dimensions.

Also, the hull plating pattern on the Clevelands was not the simple alternate over/under pattern most people seem to think is the way ships were built. The bow had five vertical strakes up to the level of the top strake - which was horizontal the full length of the ship. Below this some strakes were overlapped top and bottom by other strakes, some were overlapped at the top and they overlapped the strake below them, and a few were just butted together and welded. It was a very complex plating pattern.

Phil

_________________
A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

It is interesting to see the variation in plating thickness over different parts of the hull, for a small ship generally the below waterline plating thickness was thicker. No I do not have the table of offsets and unfortunately my fairly simple 3D deign program would not be able to utilize them. More advanced CAD instruments have far greater capability but as an amateur (rank) buying one (or leasing) is not currently proportionally sensible given the earning curve. It's amazing we modelers do as well as we do considering the Model making companies often commit serious errors in producing kit runs, which must total millions in total investment. One can't be sure the actual ship is within 1/16" of planned dimensions as built.

At least I would expect drafted hull lines to be within a line width, not several feet off. Perhaps some day I will acquire and learn a more advance 3D program, the one I have is satisfactory for most ship model building tasks. Hulls? No. As far as I know NARA employees have not returned from Vacation? Good work if you can get it. Perhaps someone has an update?

I'm still in the data gathering phase, though I did print out a 1:500 test hull, from which I learned a few things. Yes, primary sources are always the best!

Tom

A printed trial hull in 1:500. Learned a few things. The holes on the deck are weep holes to let fluids escape from the otherwise closed interior. If I do print a larger hull it will be in sections without this particular issue of trapped fluids.

Cheers: Tom

Tom,

You might check to see what file types your program can import. CSV is a common format - and exceptionally simple (minded).

The DesignCAD 3D Max program I use sells for $100 (and is often on sale for about $70. It has more warts than a frog, but the most versatile user interface I have ever seen, and it does work. So cheap programs may sometimes surprise you with what they can do.

The reason I mentioned the Table of Offsets is that is does give the design dimensions, and you can use that to check the drawing dimensions. But if you can't find the Table of Offsets you just have to get by with working from drawings. And in most case any error from line width will be insignificant at modelling scales.

By the way, there are often errors in the tables. They contain thousands of numbers that the draftsmen had to copy from the engineers' notes. Give that a thought. First of all, the engineer's handwriting might not be legible, and second the draftsmen were not infallible. In the Cleveland blueprints Table of Offsets I found several errors. They are not obvious just looking at the numbers in the table, but they stick out like a sore thumb in the CAD drawings. Because the numbers are listed as feet, inches and eights of an inch in the table, all errors will be multiples of these three units. An error of a foot creates a big point sticking out of the side of the hull. Eighths aren't so obvious, but they are large enough to be readily apparent when inspecting the hull surface.

Phil

_________________
A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Phil:

What design program are you using? The one I am using is quite good for ship fittings, superstructures, weapons and whatnot and I have gotten reasonable proficient with it. But hulls? No. It's not capable of doing plating for instance.

Cheers: Tom

I'll make a brief comment here. Mr DP is not welcome to post on my threads, he is invisible to me here and should go work on his own project.

I use DesignCAD 3D MAX - we started using it at work in 1988 when it was called ProDesign.

I don't know that I would recommend it for new users. The program was purchased by Imsi Design maybe 15 years ago, and they also sell Turbocad, a more expensive program. They haven't done much to improve the program, but it does now export STL files, although they do have some errors. But the Microsoft 3D Builder program repairs the files (mostly) and they work fine for printing. It also imports and exports Sketchup files and several other file types.

The program doesn't have specific hull forming functions, but you can stretch a surface over a set of template lines. So if you have frame or station lines you can generate the hull surface. For individual plating strakes or plates you must create the template lines and form the individual surfaces for each part.

The biggest drawback for the program is the display routines. They are the original Windows 3 program that has been patched and patched with patches on the patches to get it to work with each successive new version of windows. Things like rotation of the view of a shaded drawing are extraordinarily lethargic. Imsi fired the US programmers that created the program and farmed programming out to Elbonia. It seems to me those guys have introduced at least as many bugs as they have fixed. Also, the program is not parametric - there are very few ways to change dimensions of parts after they have been drawn. But this has never been a problem for me.

The good points are the absolutely best user interface that I have seen in any program. The designer was a genius! It takes far fewer keystrokes and cursor movements to draw things than in any of the other half dozen CAD programs that I have used. The other high point is the free User Forum. Al lot of very experienced users monitor the forum and can answer newbie questions and provide tips on how to do things. But essentially no direct support from Imsi, which is probably good, since they have their heads up a warm damp place.

It is pretty much a full function CAD program at a bargain price. But the rendering capabilities are very poor - no reflections or shiny materials and rudimentary shadows. You can get an idea of the program's capabilities in my USS Oklahoma City thread in the Virtual Ship Modeling section of this forum and in some of the posts in the 3D Printing thread in the Scratchbuilding part of this forum:

viewtopic.php?f=27&t=70810&hilit=USS+Oklahoma+City
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=344762

I have also posted a lot of DesignCAD CAD model images on my web site:

https://www.okieboat.com/CAD%20model.html

Phil

_________________
A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Thanks Phil!

I am more interested in producing 3D objects than shiny renderings. I worked in the flight sim world for a long time and I believe that the 3D artists used some form of 3D max. Actually on some old computer hanging around the homestead I might have it installed. I remember trying to make a working buzz bomb at one point. It was interesting as one could integrate moving landing gear, flight controls, doors and whatnot as well as working instruments. Generally this required a team, airframe designer, instrument creator, painter for skins and a flight dynamics person, that was me. My friend Milton Shoup did all these at one point but eventually steadied on the parts he enjoyed and worked with the rest of us for the final creation.

I have Delft Ship, but so far it leaves one at sea for just starting a project!

I may fiddle around doing some superstructures parts for the little hull. Not sure how much can be done with printing at 1:500. Maybe nothing, maybe a lot!

Cheers: Tom

as an interesting experiment I printed 3" 50 and Quad Bofors in 1:500 for the DE to see how they might come out. Pretty well actually, though I have as yet to cure and de platform them. Apparently Meta and Twitter have an automated process for de platforming, I'll have to look into this. So I might try this in 1:500 as fun experiment.

Tom

At least NARA is functioning for acquisitions.... Anyone has any information as to their functioning otherwise, back from semi permanent vacation?

!:500 Quad Bofors and 3"50. I was rater amazed that these printed as well as they did from unmodified larger files. Macro photography makes everything look like crap and these need a little trimming and airbrush rather than brush painting. The 3" 50 is a serrate barrel and carriage. A mistake at this scale since it's very difficult to align them properly. Maybe I'll try joining them and printing.

I have no idea what Me DP posted, but as I have commented before, he is not welcome here and continued posting is solid evidence of trolling.

I am currently as experimentation printing this hull in 1:550 vertically as opposed to horizontally as I have been experiencing curvature on drying and curing. So far the vertically printed hull is going well, doing it this way I could add the bilge keels which would not work out with the hull horizontal. A few more hours to go, it does seem the hull sprinting a little faster than the originally prognosticated time. If I do this again I'll try a .05 rather than a .035 mm layer thickness as there is really no detail. My primitive program certainly does not allow the capability of Pascal like weld lines and rivets on the hull surface. I'll have to look into the 3D max, I might have had it on some long dead computer as I remember trying to make a buzz bomb (flying) for flight sim.

Simple Duck Duck search has a cheapest price for 3D Max at $179. I presume 3Ds is a different program?

Cheers: Tom

I like the vertically printed hull, but as sometimes happens with smaller objects, some of the vertical supports like to meld themselves into the hull and require a bit of cleanup.

I did find out that NARA has BOGP for Whitehurst circa 1947 (on paper), Record number 153715090. Whether or not anyone is there besides the acquisitions SWAT team, who knows. This BOGP would likely be after the post Okinawa kamikaze damage when she was modified at Pearl harbor with the cable reels replacing the torpedo tubes for use as a power station.

Cheers: Tom

The vertically printed hull was the best of the lot, if I were to do it again I would take greater care with the clearance of the supports, strange to see it hanging there off the platen like an Australian Flying Fox (fruit bat). Some parts print OK in this tiny scale with the file reduced in the slicer by 3/4, some do not. 3" 50's, 20 mm and quad 40 seem to be OK but depth charge racks, no and the ready racks for the K guns, though the K guns printed OK. Learning a few things in working in a for me, tiny scale (1:144 seemed small). I mat still do a larger version of Whitehurst as further info arrives but for various reasons not having time for a high project at the moment. A 1:144 hull could be printed in 4 sections as I did with Caine, perhaps even one in 1:120.

Still running around and doing parts for other projects. Perhaps my best creations so far is the 5" twin mounts with I have done for Missouri and Alaska in 1:192. With an earlier printer I had some band shifting that had to do with shaft binding and one of the Alaska mounts has this in evidence, so printed a couple in the latest run.

With 3D printing getting better and better, nothing is ever "finished"?

Cheers: Tom

1:500

Putzing along, I am beginning to think that doing a pre model has valuable lessons. Here she is in shipyard primer today with current progress. I currently have no idea how I am going to do the lifelines, not PE! A few construction issues but I have lots of extra parts!





The current Idea is to do her in Post Pearl Harbor post Kamikaze refit with the power cable spools replacing the torpedo tubes.

I have a great plethora of WWII USN ship part files that I have generated which makes construction of this little trial vessel proceed more quickly from weapons to bitts and anchors. Each scale has it's challenges and this is no different. I don't want to use PE for lifelines so that will be a challenge. I have a couple of extra hulls which i can experiment with. I did a model of this ship some 35 years ago using just a few basic tools but the lifelines were done using fine steel wire for stanchions and an old girlfriends long hair for the lines. Suitably nearly invisible. However the resin isn't all that easy to drill for the stanchions. I don't know if the printed stanchions such a I used for the ARL and DMS will work or are too flexible. As I said, I have a couple of hulls to do experiments on!

Surprisingly I received a reply from NARA and the Whitehurst BOGP, so I should expect a further action within a couple of weeks.

Currently I am holding off on applying rudder and prop/shafts. I have printed suitable props by re scaling from the DMS and will probably use piano wire for the shafts. Head scratching about the struts at the moment. Mast, a bit tiny for doing a hollow printed mast with a steel cores I have done earlier and probably will do some sort of brass affair for rigidity and strength, with printed accessories. Inclined ladders, I got away with them in 1:192, but 1:500? Another head scratcher. Whitehurst, after serious damage from a Kamikaze strike at Kerama Reto (seems like a lot of my ships share that location) was repaired at Pearl Harbor and large Cable spools replaced the torpedo tubs and she was though still rated a DE, useful as a power station at advanced bases. Hopefully the NARA data which is post war, will reveal some info on these. The available photo data is not exhaustive.

Cheers: Tom

Looks marvelous, just marvelous.

Cured a few minor errors and repaired a couple of 20 mm Orlikons that I had obliterated by looking at them. Re arrange some bitts and chocks after comparing photos to the England drawings in the AOS book. Added a couple of rafts just forward of the aft 40 mm quad. Amazingly I can print an in scale vertical ladder but more surgical quality nippers and more precise tweezers needed. Need to explore the slicer to see if for these small items I can greatly reduce the size of the supports. One Orlikon short at the moment. The ones under the O2 level overhang are umm, inconvenient to maneuver into place.