APA project

[Fliger747]

Repairs aside, I have decided to diverge a little from Randall's appearance as she was in the early 50's during the filming of Away All Boats and attempt to portray her during the war. That changes the distribution of the 20 mm armament a little, especially on the top deck above the bridge. Looking at a number of drawings and photos there are a few more details I can add in that area, starboard of the rangefinder tower is both a compass repeater and an engine order telegraph. On the bulwark at the front there is an interesting complex bracket for a 20 mm ready box, port and starboard, and a couple of brackets for small whip antennas. Two more ready boxes litter the deck there as well. On the aft of the main superstructure on the O2 level I discovered the location of the control boxes for the winches for the booms fwd of the #4 hatch. Also there was attached to the rail between a rack for swabs to dry and air in the sun. Whether this is too small an item to portray, I do not as yet know.

Tom

[Fliger747]

The rail for the aft section of the O2 level printed fine, in scale, but at .24 mm dia pipes are very fragile and super flexible. I am printing one with larger pipes (.4 mm) which I think will still look good and will compare the two. The skinny one is currently sitting in place but not glued down. Installing skinny (in scale) rails might be problematic in some ways. For Phil's project at 1:96 it is a more practical implementation.

I sent Hank a rail file for the aft director for his Stoddard. That one, going all the way, wrapping around the platform included a band at the bottom to attach to the platform edge and make for a new edge with the appearance of stanchions welded to the perimeter.

Tom

[Iceman 29]

Yes, minimum is 0,3mm .. Not due to the printer but the mechanical resistance of the resin..

[Fliger747]

Pascal:

Thank you for adding your experience. I finally went with the rail that I printed at .4 mm dia for the pipes. It looks fine and is considerably more solid. Now attached to the ship and I like the ability to have a curved bend at a corner without a stanchion placed there.

Tom

[BB62vet]

So, based on Phil's specs. of pipe sizes, in metric terms @ 1/144 scale, the following is derived:
Top Rail - 0.23mm - maybe bumped up to 0.4mm as you mentioned without looking oversized
Lower Rails - 0.1852mm - perhaps bumped up to 0.3mm, etc. for strength
Stanchions - 0.2928mm - bump them up to 0.45mm as they should be the widest of the set

That's just a calculation w/o actually drawing anything in CAD to visualize how they would look.

Hank

[Fliger747]

Hank:

The file I sent you has .4mm pipe and stanchions. See how it looks, my experience suggests that the rails tend to print at smaller than the nominal dimension.

Tom

[DrPR]

Here is a blueprint for handrails on a Cleveland class cruiser in WWII. It is a basic BuShips drawing and was used for most US Navy ships.

The 35mm microfilm image of the original 94x36 inch drawing was scanned at 1000 DPI and is 193 megabytes - a bit too large for posting on the Forum! But after messing with it in Photoshop I managed to get a low resolution file less than 400 kilobytes that the Forum accepted.

The image is a bit fuzzy but legible. If there is something you can't read I can cut out a part of the original scan and make an image of it.

Hope this helps.

Phil

Note: If you know the distances between the horizontal rails for the hand rails in a picture you have a vertical measure for "photoguestimation" of the dimensions of nearby objects. I have done this many times and it produces pretty reliable dimensions.

The only caveat is that although the distance between the bottom rail and the deck is normally 18 inches there is usually a 3 inch high x 3/8 inch thick coaming at the edge of superstructure weather decks. So in photos the distance between the bottom rail and the top of the coaming is only 15 inches.

[Fliger747]

Thanks for the excellent information Phil:

Photo estimation is favorite hobby. I worked for years with both still and photo stereo pairs using photogrammetry methods.As always the linch pin is some known dimension. Such estimations depend greatly on being able to depend on comparison with a particular focus plane. In the event we have to surrender in many cases a few significant figures.

Cheers: Tom

[Fliger747]

One learns through the occasional "flop". Yesterday I printed Port and Starboard flag bags. Whereas these printed OK, there are a number of thin interior partitions which did not cure straight. So the mod, printing now, is to have some internal cross supports. First at bat with this one, power went out (Inconvenient for 3D), so trying again. A little iteration is improving my pipe rails, using round instead of square sections. At this pint, pleased by the occasional step forward, after all it is 2020 and we can bask in the beauty of low expectations.

Tom

[DrPR]

Tom,

"Bask in the beauty of low expectations." What a way to put it. I saw a cartoon where a character said he wanted a refund on 2020!

First the pandemic, then fires raged through western Oregon, burning half a dozen towns and villages and choking the rest of the State in smoke for weeks. Then there was the embarrassing election - the lowest point in American history since the Civil War. What else could go wrong? Well I expect any day now the Cascadia Fault will let go with a magnitude 9-10 earthquake that will level everything and trigger the Cascade Mountain volcanoes to erupt and cover the State in molten lava! The worst that can happen is the worst that can happen!

2021 has to be better!

Phil

[Fliger747]

That's what they said in 1939... It is a good time to squirrel away and learn 3D design... My second set of Flag bags came out quite nice as did some other 04 level rails I printed and a set of Inclined Ladders. The short and convoluted rails on the superstructure will come out nicely printed. I am less certain about those long runs of main deck life line. In 1:96 one is more able with present technology to print rail in scale sizes. in 1:120, a nice scale, they are better very slightly overscale. Of course one can do even better details in 1:1.

Hank has informally challenged name to try a Stokes Litter. Hmmmm.

[BB62vet]

That's what they said in 1939... It is a good time to squirrel away and learn 3D design... My second set of Flag bags came out quite nice as did some other 04 level rails I printed and a set of Inclined Ladders. The short and convoluted rails on the superstructure will come out nicely printed. I am less certain about those long runs of main deck life line. In 1:96 one is more able with present technology to print rail in scale sizes. in 1:120, a nice scale, they are better very slightly overscale. Of course one can do even better details in 1:1.

Hank has informally challenged name to try a Stokes Litter. Hmmmm.

Well, geez! With those topics at hand, who can leave this thread alone??? I'll agree with you both re. 2020 - but, it ain't over YET! I'll leave the underlaying reasons for that statement for you to figure out...! We could just be on the precipice of a disaster waiting to happen depending on a few key outcomes.

Tom - Yes! The Stokes Litter would be a coup of sorts in 3D world. So, not knowing all that much about what's available in terms of media that will suitably print on existing 3D printers, I wonder if there is some type of plastic media infused with powdered metal particles which, when cured, would provide the strength in extra fine parts that are lacking in available plastic media. As I recall back in the 70s, I think - there were some (dubious) products available in the guise of "plastic weld" materials, etc. With today's high tech, perhaps a resin infused with extremely finely ground steel particles - would that be a viable answer?

Just curious,

Hank

[Fliger747]

Last night I had printed some rail for the 04 level etc, but didn't cure it before hitting the sack, just sat it on a heating air vent to dry thoroughly. That seemed to yield a much stiffer product, it's curing now. Hopefully not brittle? There may be some optimal curing process for such delicate items, let you know what I find out. I did make an inclined ladder, I think my paper ones look equally good, with wire rails, but those are tedious to assemble!

My technique (evolving) currently is to draw the plan view of the rail, with the bends etc, rounding the corners etc as appropriate. Then extrude the line into a round section, currently in 1:120 a diameter of .4 mm. I then copy the form, move it down a scale 12", copy again for the third rail etc. The stanchions are extruded as round sections either drawn as .4 mm circles on the top rail or as a separate item and moved into intersection. To aid installation I am currently making a pad of 1mm diameter at the foot. They look huge on the drawing, but are almost invisible in practice.

Cheers: Tom

[Fliger747]

Current status of the pilot house. Note the Engine Order Telegraph just to the (ship) starboard of the rangefinder tower. I haven't seen the location of a probably voice tube, but with the compass repeaters and other instruments the ship could be conned from here.

[Fliger747]

Printed rails for the area on the O4 level aft of the stack.

[Iceman 29]

Nice job Tom!

[Fliger747]

Superstructure from abaft.

[DrPR]

Tom,

If you want a challenge try to make the inside of the links of the chains open! Many years ago I visited the KayDee manufacturing plant where they made N scale (1:148) railroad cars. The plastic injection machines were about as big as an 18 wheeler truck, and they were popping out tiny railroad car shells. The railings across the ends of a caboose had gaps with short chain sections across the gap, and the molded parts had open chain links with no flash! It was amazing work.

On US Navy ships it was common practice (in the 1960s and 1970s) to cover the chain links in canvas. It gave the Bosuns mates something to do. I don't know if they were doing this in WWII, but when I get around to my OK City model I won't have to worry about open chain links.

Phil

[Fliger747]

Phil:

I'll assume you did some Westpac Cruises? In Hong Kong etc one sees these carved stone lions in front of banks and public buildings. The favorite is to carve a ball rattling around inside the lions open mouth. I think to do the chain links shouldn't be too hard, one can "move" each chain link (or halves) into correct position and move on. You would be printing a number of objects flying in formation, but not touching? That you can move one object through another makes this easier, though a number of links and link halves could wok as well.

Not something I have tried as yet. The free program I am using for 3D doesn't have the capability (as far as I know) do do faired hulls.

Making a convincing canvas cover might be harder than the chain links?

Tom

[Neptune]

Awesome work there Tom! Looks very sharp, it's all those small details that really make it stand out.