The thought had never crossed my mind I must go back and add rivets and doors and windows. The pump can wait.
I did pull Bart down today and checked the motor situation out. Bought the wrong bearings for the drive motors, ordered the correct ones. Main pump and aux pump are both rebuilt and ready to go. Guns function check good. Don't think I'm going to try and re-arrange the pumps. If I did, I'd have two pumps in-line in the water channel about 3 inches apart and I don't think that will be much use. Will continue to use as-is, but will re-route gun accumulators and such to give the bow pump some more room. For the Great ReBartening in the winter with a whole new hull, I'll design her with a more traditional dual pump arrangement.
So I went against my own sense and decided to rip Bart apart. Ripped out a bunch of the polyurethane concrete sealer I used for water channel and removed some more keel and rib for new pump locations. New setup will have the pumps slightly forward from the drive motors, located on either side of the keel. Hoping parts arrive in time to finish my conversion to 22.2v brushed drive and pump. If not I will use the same brushless setup the boat as had. Also got the new lighter superstructure printed and assembled. Originally wanted to have it laser cut from EVA foam but time worked against me. Will do that for next year. Continuing NATs prep with sheeting, gun checks, etc.
I am going to attempt to use RS-545SH-3250 brushed motors. Pumping performance-wise I'm sure that it's a massive step down from the brushless motors I've been using in my boats but there is something to be said about the simplicity of a brushed pump.
true. I just upgraded to Stingers from Johnson cans. should be fun to see what happens at the next battle
Following closely on the 22.2v stuff for a future ship. For gun solenoids how are you going to run those? I'm thinking 2 12v SLA in series for 24v to be cheap on a big ship to start out with, and upgrading to 2 3s lipos in series or a solid 6s later on.
That could work. Tyng did something similar in his Barham I believe. Solenoids you can fire off of a separate power system, or get the much more common/cheaper 24v solenoids that are available. For me 6s was a bit of a failure. I had issues all week at NATs and while all of those issues can be traced back to me not doing my research on certain components used in the refit, I am going to roll back to my previous build philosophy for future construction. By going 24v I had hoped to run all brushed systems to keep complexity down and still retain some of the brushless performance, instead I had issues with overstressed electronics (once again, 95% my fault) and "that's odd" type problems that kept showing up all week. For the future, I am going to go back to my brushless systems because I know them and I had some good success with them. This winter will be spent running a lot of trials and torture tests on electronics to make sure Bart 2021 is the best Bart I can build. Once I got home from NATs Bart was gutted and the conversion process started to utilize her as a plug for a fiberglass mold. Everything that could be salvaged was removed, the stuffing tubes were cut off flush with the hull, and the hull was filled with 1" foam insulation board and great stuff big gap filler expanding foam. On top of that, standard automotive bondo was used to fill and level the surface. After numerous sand -> fill -> sand -> paint -> sand -> fill revisions I ended up with something that might work, and Steve from MD came up to help me make the mold. Mold with PVA/wax drying Steve went home after a long day making the mold. Three days later I laid the first hull, solo, and while it's an overall success it is by no means a @Kevin P. quality hull. Needs some love in spots, but I can make it work. The second hull I laid down with @Beaver and it came out 100x better than the first attempt. I might scrap the first one and just lay myself a fresh one, not sure yet. First hull before being trimmed down. In the midst of this, I've had a number of side projects going on. First was testing different pump motors and pump designs. I decided to bring over some RC rock crawler experience/technology and try some different 550~ sized 1/10 scale brushless inrunners for potential pump operation. I have been using outrunners for pumps for 3~ years now with great results, the desire to move away from them stems from a desire to move away from Hobbyking as a supplier. I am growing frustrated with constantly switching components because Hobbyking can't keep anything in stock, and while I'm never going to get away from Chinese parts I can pick from brands that have alternative vendors or are even sold in-stores here in the US. While not as small form-factor as a 28mm outrunner, these inrunners provide comparable performance and the added benefit of keeping the spinny bits on the inside. Don't have to worry as much about stuff getting caught in the spinning motor can. I tested a number of them before settling on a Surpass Hobbies 3660 2600kv for my future standard pump. Pump base and impeller testing is classified allied Super-Secret-Decoder-Ring level, so no info there yet. The other side project is my WorkBee CNC machine. I wanted to expand my ability to go from my Fusion 360 designs to actual reality, beyond just 3d printed plastic. Another email exchange with China, some selling of personal information, etc, etc, and my BulkMan 3d 1000x1500 kit was on its way. It arrived quite promptly for a china shipment, I was expecting multiple weeks and it arrived in 6 days. This 2.2kw water cooled spindle is *huge*. Massive overkill for this machine. A few days/week go by and here we are: Havent made a ton of progress beyond cutting out the subdeck on the CNC. Waiting for some free time to drive to WoodCraft and get more plywood, waiting for a build session with my South Jersey Shipyard guys who are building their boats using similar components and want to learn. More info as it comes. Til then.
So "2021 Bart" as mentioned in the above post turned out to really be 2022 Bart. NJ Kevin who accompanied me to 2020 NATs as a rookie got hooked and wanted to build an Iron Duke for 2021. I wanted to build an ID with him to be able to point out things/improvements/aid him in his own build. So the Emperor of India became me 2020 build, but my "do a ton of testing for Bart" still was accomplished with the Duke as the mule. I've standardized on the 2400KV Tenshock inrunner as my pump of choice. They are $40 each so a little pricey, but they work well, package well, and use a 625ZZ bearing top/bottom for easy maintenance. 80A speed control, either Hobbyking F80a or amazon "Readytosky" 80A. For drive ESC I am using either Hobbywing 10BL60WP or 10BL120 which is then potted in epoxy per standard practice. Guns are my V3 design. V3 takes V1 and V2, combines them, and adds some "lazy" fittings so I don't have to fiddle with bending tiny brass tube to make 90* fittings to feed gas. Theres also some evil sprinkled in for extra fun. V1: OG Bart Guns. My first ever cannons. Hence, V1. Solenoid direct mounted. Steel brake line magazines/uptubes. Big tube gas feed for breech and magazine fill. Tight tolerance stainless Silver soldered (poorly) foster breech barrels. Breeches drilled by hand with a 5/16 bit, not endmill. Fittings on guns hand bent tiny tubing. Accumulator tanks with check valves. V2: My EoI Guns. Refinement/Downgrade of V1. Copper instead of steel brake line. Small tube breech bypass and mag feed. Solenoid remote mounted with big tube gas feed to cannon. Breeches milled with 5/16 bit using drill press with shitty stationary vice. Gas fittings on guns tiny hand bent tubing. Gun barrels tight tolerance stainless tubing retained with Loctite 680. V3: New Hotness Bart guns. Solenoid direct mounted. Copper mags/uptubes but may swap to Cupronickel. Big tube breech bypass and magazine feed. Breeches milled with 5/16 endmill using drill press milling vice and special 3d printed jigs/alignment tools for pretty darn good breeches. Gas fittings are Clippard/Etc 10-32 threaded barb fittings. Gun barrels tight tolerance stainless retained with Loctite 680. Accumulator tanked + Check valved. You don't need a blow by blow on me building Bart 2.0. So theres gonna be a huge picture dump here with maybe a caption or two if I feel like it when the boat is finished in a few days. All I need to do right now is float it to find the bottom of the windows, finish the main wiring harness, and test the guns in-boat.
And now, in no real particular order, the Bart 2.0 picture dump: Bart vs NC: Getting an idea of internal layout here. Also pictured is the auto-sink system. Dual bottles/dual regulators. Guns feed from the opposite turret, just like Bart 1.0. Repurposed the little 4" gun "pedestals" as latches With NATs being in Michigan this year, a float system was a 100% necessity. Hole for float and showing off stern gun + loading. Measure never, drill 3x. Heat sinks for pumps, drilled top plates for easy upper bearing lubrication. Showing off neutrality stripes on B turret, and letting deck seal set up. Hon hon hon, la flamme de guerre! More pics later, gotta cut the other side tomorrow and sheet it. First battle is in 4 weeks in Georgia.
Thanks! Finished cutting the hull today. Blah. Can barely feel my hands from the oscillating tool. Tomorrow is clean the hull out from the dust, sand any blobs etc from glue runs that may have occurred during construction, prep sheeting, sheet, internal armor and then full system test with the boat "complete". Should be ready in plenty of time for Georgia regionals Feb 11.
Boat looks TO GOOD TO SHOOT I think a float is a good idea. We have had to search for boats in 3' of water A thought, I like to make my float line about as long as the lake is deep. (a long line and tie a "half-hitch" to pay out the water depth) A long line can foul other boats, also when you bring your boat to shore you may have 20' of line + float dragging behind you Build threads are a great resource. Way to go
We are ready for war. Need to float it and find the actual water line, I had guessed when I cut the windows based on my previous Bart and 3D models of the hull. I erred on the side of caution, so if anything I have slightly too much cut out. She came in at about 37 lb as shown in the picture. Not too bad considering the first one was overweight by 4 lb. This is with probably 4 lb of lead acting as her center two bilge keels. Yes center two. Bart had four bilge keels. The outer two I made out of 3/8 by 3/8 square wooden dowel to hopefully act as a little bit of a ram bumper. She passed full system check with everything installed in the boat. Ready to tear stuff up in Georgia in 3 weeks. Also got the auto-sink system installed and functional. View: https://youtu.be/fenmpDOONyg
I learned a lot of information at the Georgia battle this past weekend. Bart 2.0 works pretty well, there is some things that I need to change but overall I would say that the boat is about 90% of the way there. The automatic pump circuit worked basically flawlessly all weekend. The pumps themselves were a little lackluster. Need to test them on the flow bench versus the other pumps and see if there's a restriction someplace with the 90° outlet I made to go right up and out of the boat. The vertical outlets are also amazingly annoying. Even though they are legal and within the allotted 10° of vertical they still end up raining all over everyone on the shoreline with their 40 ft fire hose columns of water. I am going to rework the pump outlets to come out of the rear deck step like they did on Bart 1.0. The guns worked pretty well. A turret was the Superstar as it always is with this boat. B turret needs the gun mount reworked there's a little too much leverage on one of the barrels which makes it difficult to tweak. Also need to check the Piston height on one of the B turret guns as it hangs up occasionally. The stern gun works, but the rate of fire is lackluster. When you hold the button down you can actually hear all of the BBS getting blasted up towards the magazine cap. Might need a stronger magnet on the Tee. With the current prop and gear arrangement the boat is at 100% forward endpoint to just barely eke out a 23 second top speed. Acceleration is quite underwhelming. Turning is A+. It will sit still and rotate like a Bismarck. But I would gladly sacrifice some of that turning performance for the ability to accelerate quickly and stop instantly like Bart 1.0 had. Going to try switching the props aside for side once it's not 20° outside to test at the lake. Also have some cast kort props from some Chinese eBay company that I'm going to try out once they get here. Also going to step down gear ratio from 1.9:1 to 1.5:1 to try and get some additional shaft RPM. In terms of ease of use. Gun loading through the barbets always easy. What has now become difficult is the bottles live under the gun deck so the fact that you can load the guns without taking the deck off doesn't matter because you need to pull the deck off in order to get to the bottles. I might rearrange the internal components a bit to try and get the bottles under the main center deck hatch which is supposed to be the main hatch you take off to maintain the boat pond side. The boat also lacks any test switches. I haven't been the biggest fan of test switches since Bart 1.0, when the BC micro switchboards I bought failed upon contact with water basically immediately. I saw a different technique used which I really like using a very simple on-off sliding switch on one leg of the solenoid wiring to turn solenoids on and off as a way to not only tweak guns but also for damage control if you are about to launch the boat and one of the guns is jammed you can turn that solenoid off to conserve gas. I am going to retrofit this system into basically all of my ships. The other thing I learned at this battle was that my float system does not reliably deploy. I have some lighter density foam which is more buoyant. I'm going to make a new turret float using that foam and I'm also going to use some 3D printer Bowden tube to help guide the spool of Kevlar line out of the boat. Considering the depth of the pond for Nationals this year, a reliable float is going to be crucial. I didn't really take many pictures as I was too busy enjoying the weekend and battling, I'm sure that @bkoehler and his wife took plenty. I will update as I work on the boat more.
