H-39 Hull (Was: Indiana Hull)

Ah, good. I was given some good-natured grief about Edgar Q and some more about doing the long-rumored 'making a one-off Pommern hull' howto by someone seeing both projects in my shop recently.
Mod Note: This thread was formed by splitting posts from another thread and discusses the possibility of Tugboat doing a tutoial on how to build a fiberglass hull based on the H-39.

 

RE: Indiana Hull LOL... I have no plans to work from!

 

RE: Indiana Hull Bring them and I'll look at it. I think given the size that it'd be most cost-effective to do it as a scratchbuilt fiberglass hull, similar to what I'm doing with Pommern. Bigger but easier than Pommern (no casements).

 

RE: Indiana Hull
No, it's a lot different. Not any harder to do, though. Trick is, someone else will have to make use of the hull; my back won't handle the weight And all I'm doing for the howto is the hull itself, no internals. This'll work out well, though; Mike B's bringign the plans this weekend, and I'm off work Monday after lunch for cardiologist appointment, so I can drop the plans off before seeing the doc, and get started on paper that night. How long is H39? I've never looked it up, just know it's bigger than Bismarck.
Edit:
I remember in Crocodile Dundee, where he sees something totally crazy for the first time, and he says 'JAYSUS!' (Aussie accent a little?)
So, I looked H39 up on Wikipedia 76" long and 10.125" wide?!?!? JAYSUS! Is there anyone actually mad enough to build one for combat? What formats is it legal in?

 

RE: Indiana Hull
Treaty, I think my local group it would be valid for, maybe Battlestations if you built it in 1/96. Think theres one in WWCC too.

 

RE: Indiana Hull LT/1300 should jive if you're using the full displacement numbers and not 'standard' displacement.

You should visit us sooner too. Atleast one captain in the area has expressed that he may have an extra bed available if that simplifies things.

I'll see if I can remember how I was splitting threads and de-hijack Alex's.

 

Topic has been split.

 

Major difference: Edgar Quinet is a wooden hulled warship, built in a relatively traditional fashion. The scratchbuilt fiberglass hull method I use is a lightly-modified form of the method Bart Purvis put forth in his HowTo article that I read a long time ago on the MWCI site:
www.mwci.org/howto/QuickFiberglassH...ssHull.htm
Basically, in my method, you get something long and straight (I like angle aluminum 1.5" on a side, or thereabouts), and you cut frames from paper, glue them to cardboard, then hot-gule the cardboard frames onto the vertical straightedge (the angle-iron). From there, you hot-glue strips of 1/32" balsa or 1/64" plywood to the frames. On big wide sections like the sides of Vanguard's hull, you can use big wide sheets of wood. In tighter spots, you use more and narrower pieces. The bow and stern are carved & sanded from balsa block. Once it's all hot-glued together, get your strips of fiberglass laid out, and put on your nitrile gloves; after you mix the epoxy, you fiberglass the hull exterior. I like to get 2 layers of medium 'glass, and a single layer of fine stuff. Let it sit and cure for a day or so, or at least overnight. Then take it off the straightedge and flip it over (right side up, now). Next, you go in and gently yank out the cardboard frames. I like to pull the hot glue blobs off the wood, too. If some of the wood comes off, it's okay, it has already fulfilled its purpose here. Lay in a few more layers of 'glass, maybe some 'glass matte if you've got it (in strategic locations). Let that cure and whammo, you've got a hull.

That's the short form, skipped some of the details, and I'll hit those when I'm posting pics of the instructions. But that's the jist of it. Bart's method has the advantage of you ending up with a subdeck already in the hull. I had trouble getting it to work with ships that had a lot of curve in the deck, so I do it such that I end up with a basic fiberglass hull that I can add a subdeck to.