Scratchbuilt USS America CV-66 in 1/192 scale from plans.

[mclare]

Great pics!

I served on her during the '81 Med-I/O deployment. From April 14th to October 22nd I think? Norfolk to the Med. Palma Spain, the to Port Said Egypt, the through the Suez, to the I/O. On patrol for a bunch of days at sea. Then to Singappore, then back to the I/O, then to Perth Australia for 6 days, then back to the I/O, then back through the Suez North bound, back to Palma for 3 days, then straight home to Norfolk, and then we had to fly that night back home 5 hours to San Diego!.

[Kerry]

Sounds like my dad's tour. He was all over that area too. I forget all the stops but I know Signapore was one and about seven other places.. This is pretty cool meeting someone else that was aboard the America, not to mention pretty cool seeing a scale version of it come to life!!!!! My dad would of liked to seen this that's for sure!!!!!

[mclare]

Hi guys! It's been a while because I have been busy with work, the grandkids, and learning all about 3D models and printers. I get together with some other buddies on Thursday nights and we hang out at the 3D printing shop and this week my buddy Jason gave me a SolidWorks tutorial and we made a drill guide for drilling the pad eyes.

As I mentioned, if you are a Veteran and have a DD-214, you can get the Student edition of SolidWorks for $20.00, an AMAZING deal! But it is a daunting program with a high learning curve even if you are a computer engineer with years of experience. So be forewarned!

One issue has come up and it has been asked in other threads, and that is how to drill all of the thousands of pad eyes that are all over the hanger and flight decks. I have many pics of various flight decks and they all look the same since most carriers were built at Newport News. After careful measurements, they appear to be about 6' on center and then offset by 3'. In a box square or diamond pattern.

So the template came out pretty good and I will post the drawings up here. These are of course for the scale I am working in which is 1/192, but they will also work for 1/200 as well. You should be able to take these to any machinist on the planet and he should be able to make you one, and if you need a different scale, he should be able to re-scale it for you. On the top row you will notice a row of holes spaced closer together. Those are spaced every three scale feet for areas like around the JBD's which usually do not have eye pads. From what I noticed, (and if there are any ABH's or ABE's or whatever rate manages the deck maintenance) only hatches that are bolted down will have eye pads. Not movable ones that do not latch down. Like the bomb elevators, they latch, so I believe they have them, but the JBD's move via hydraulic rams and do not latch down, so they do not I believe. Also, as I recall there are cooling 'pads' on the cats just behind the box and in front of the JBD. They are for cooling the deck down after a jet launches with afterburners like F-4's, F-14's, or F-18's. That area is wide bordered length-wise with doubled-up pad eyes every three feet.



And the .pdf file:

http://www.michaelclare.com/America/drill_template.pdf

[Jaguar]

Impressive Michael. This information is unvaluable. i would use it if i wouldnt finished my flight deck, but for me is too late .
As i said it is a unvaluable tool. Thanks Michael

[mclare]

Impressive Michael. This information is invaluable. i would use it if i wouldn't finished my flight deck, but for me is too late .
As i said it is a invaluable tool. Thanks Michael

Thanks Jorge! I appreciate the kind words. Yeah, i knew you were done with this step, or I would have had one made for you too. How did you do yours? I don't remember how you said you did it in your thread?

[Jaguar]

Thank you Michael. I made my padeyes making holes in the sand paper with a punch and die tool. After that for the padeye itself, i used a great amount of PE five arm hand wheels for naval doors like these:





Cheers

Jorge

[mclare]

Jorge,

What is the diameter of those hand wheels and how many sheets did you nede?

M

[Jaguar]

Hi Michael:

The diameter is 2mm., i know that they are a little bit oversized but i am satisfied with the results.
About the number, only for the flightdeck i needed about 3,000, so i used 60 sheets more or less.

Jorge

[mclare]

2MM at your scale is pretty close to dead on. I recall the padeyes at about 8-9" so that is .060-.070 or so or 1.6mm-1.8mm, so you are very close.

[mclare]

Okay, so here is a 3D printed Fire Tug. One for the FD, one for the HB and a spare undergoing maintenance.

[Jaguar]

Wow, beautiful vehicles.

Jorge

[mclare]

So I had a big victory in finding the last missing pieces of the puzzle, and those are the Utility & Personnel boats. The Motor Whaleboats I found at TurboSquid, however the big Utility boats that haul cargo and men for Liberty parties, and the Captain's gig and Admiral's Barge I could not find. I stumbled across Phil Hays site:http://okieboat.com/ showing his building of the USS Oklahoma City on which he served. After contacting Phil, he pointed me to the Joyner Library of East Carolina University, because Barbour Boat Works was located in North Carolina, and they built virtually every small boat the Navy made from the 30's to the 70's. Phil sent me a link to a list of their documents, all stored in folders and cataloged, so I sent an email to the head of the 'Special Collections' section, Martha Elmore, with a list of the boxes and folders containing the boats I needed. She turned it over to her very talented research grad student Allison Miller. Thanks Martha and Allison. I indicated the drawings I wanted, and Martha is going to have a local company copy them for me digitally and send them to me.

Over the last week I found the plans to a 80' Elco PT boat hull, and it had line drawings for the frame stations, so I decided I would practice on that hull for making the utility boats when I get those plans. It came out really good for my first SolidWorks project and I will upload a rendering of the hull this weekend along with pics of the fire tractor and the tugs I am having printed now. The next three items to be 3D printed will be the "Puffer", and the Fire Tug, and then a lot of the regular tugs. I also am going to have to scratch build the tow bars and tie down chains.

[mclare]

Okay, so here is an update for you all:



That is the progress on the 50' Utility Boats. I built that in SolidWorks from the plans I received from the Joyner Library, scanned by DPI in Greenville, NC.

The plans are great and I have them for all of the boats for the America, and also for several that were in the Navy inventory during that period, and I will probably be building 3D models for all of them.

Also, work progresses on building the 3D printer itself. I am building a "B9Creator" which is open source. I found a local company through Mark, my machinist, that can make all of the metal parts fairly inexpensively, and I have most everything ready to order once I have the metalwork in.I was right on budget of 2K-2200.00 for a printer. It is a SLA printer that uses a photoreactive 'goo' to harden, and uses a common projector to shoot the slices. I will show detailed pics as I am building it. The printer will have a resolution of 30 microns, so it should be printing very fine details.

More later!

[Jaguar]

Amazing work Michael. I cannot wait to see your first 3D boat

Jorge

[mclare]

Well guys here is an update: I have been working on the sponsons as well as the 3D modeling.

Here are a couple of pics of the 50' Utility Boat:


Better shot of the keel and prop and rudder and mounts:


It's almost ready to print. I made the prop shaft and prop and mounts all from the plans in SolidWorks. It's really been an education learning that program, and the others I have been learning too: 3DS MAX, SketchUp 2015, Netfabb among others.

So here is where I am at on the ship proper: I am working on the sponsons and planning on the hull sheeting process. I have a sheet of 2' x 6' x .020" white styrene, but first I wanted to make sure the sponsons would not present any problems and sorta see how they shape up. The plans had each deck layout and I ordered a second and third set from FDD. Like the Arcadia, the decks of the America are 8' each except the 03 level which is 12 feet. So that means that each deck is 1/2" in scale. I ordered a bunch of 4" wide x 36" long x 1/2" thick sheets of balsa and I cut out all of the sponson decks from the spare set of plans. I asked FDD to copy one set of the plans in reverse so I could cut and paste to both sides of each piece to ensure proper alignment:




Stbd side midships:


Next deck down:


Ready for gluing:


Glued and clamped:



Side on view:


This one is between Elevators 1 and 2:


Port side 03 level:


And the 02 level just under:


And glued up:


Checking the fit:



Next one down, the 01 level:


Notice the curve of the hull:


I used my band saw to cut the pieces rough:


And I notch the two boat decks:



And the glue-up:




And layer by layer you build it up:






I will square it up when I box in the sides and deck and overhead:


You can see the curve of the hull:



And it sorta in place:



So here is the finished aluminum drilling guide for the padeyes and the hanger bay openings that I had designed in SW:



Backside of the drilling guide:


So I got some triangle stock of various sizes and glued them to each deck to fill in the angles. Then the sides needed to be shaped and sanded. I started out with a small plane from Xacto, then I used a tool and trick that an old friend from 25-30 years ago taught me when I was building R/C Jets. This trick and his secret that he taught me was how to make perfectly straight and razor sharp leading and trailing edges. The secret is to get a 4 foot long by 1/4" thick by 6" wide piece of solid steel. I went to Patton's to get it and I think it was $5 bucks a long time ago. Well this bar of steel is big adn thick and heavy. You go to Sears or Lowe's or Harbor Freight and get a couple of 6" wide (or you could use 5" wide or whatever) belt sander belts, and you slice the seam out and then glue the rest of the belt to the steel. With that same glue on the first page. I this I have 60 grit on one side and 80 on the other. They are very coarse grits. I have a 6' plastic picnic table and the sandpaper grabs the table and provides a very stable surface. I just drag it back and forth being careful of the edges and sides.

First shaping:









Some rough shaping of the other sponsons:











Well that's about it for now. I'll post up more soon.

Thanks for looking!

[Jaguar]

Very good updates Michael. I like to see that your ship is taking shape. i wish to see her covered and painted.

Jorge

[mclare]

Very good updates Michael. I like to see that your ship is taking shape. i wish to see her covered and painted.

Jorge

Thanks Jorge! I appreciate the kind words!

Yes, I cannot wait to see her skinned.

[Charybdis]

Awesome work, looking forward to seeing the next progress report!

[Fungezap]

Hi. I, too, was searching the net about USS America and found this. I served aboard from 86-90. This build looks to be massively fantastic, and I sure am looking forward to seeing it progress..

[mclare]

Okay, so here is what I have been busy with.

Glassing the hull: