My thoughts are Allies need more sidemounts. So placement is kinda like what beer you like(you just need more). I'd go with a 15deg bow gun in b depressed, sidemounts in c and d depressed and deuce de pumps. Get ready to patch. Jeff Lide Winner of Axis Spirit Award on Monday best twin bed jumping acrobatics most handsome trained in classical maracas survived traveling with Johnny
More casemate work. Tracing the outline of the casemate deck to the pattern paper. Pattern taped to the 1/8" ply for cutting out. Rough-cut pattern is fitted to the hull. The back side of the sub-deck is traced onto the casemate deck for final trim. Gluing the the assembly together with Titebond II. The assembly warped a bit during drying. Here it's getting warped back. Starting to look like a Barham! To bad the whole row couldn't be over 1/2" off the side... Next step is to bond the assembly into the hull and then onto the starboard side.
I have two of the old hulls with the rounded bulges, they are cut in two different ways. The first one I bought already cut with a 1/4" deck in areas with two stringers. The one stringer is used for the casement deck level, you need that one. The second is at the top of the bulge, pretty close to your top line. The other hull I cut myself. I moved the bulge stringer to the outer most part of the bulge. ends up just under the waterline, pretty close to your bottom red line. The second hull is a much better cut. I found that my first ship takes a ton of ram cracks on the bulge. Any little bump has to be checked as the balsa has no support on the outside and pushes in very easy. The stringer on the outer edge stops these cracks as ships bump into the stringer, not unsupported balsa. Don't bother with a 2nd bulge stringer keep the main deck 1/4" in the casement/bulge areas and 3/8" in front, back and at the middle section where the casements disappear. With all the wood you are adding you need the thicker deck for structure. I have no issues this way with sheeting. One piece of balsa works just fine. Sheeted both ships yesterday 3 people working on them took about 4-5 man hours total. Easy stuff.
Indeed, Moltke (my current 'active' build) has been aging on my bench for at least 4 now, and before that, it aged in the boat cellar for close to a decade I think. I have several other builds currently aging. Ships are like a good mead, you can't rush the matter.
Good mead and good ships, sounds good! The Admirals' away next week visiting the newest grandkid so I plan on getting some hours into the Barham. Might even be able to float test it by the end of the week (without windows cut) to check performance.
Latest McMaster delivery, a nice sheet of 1/16" thick fiberglass for the decks. Started working on the starboard casemates. I think after all this scale effort this will be my last IRC boat. The next one will be a nice simple Steampunk PC!
Subdecks are in! Started testing the electrical systems. Believe it or not, there's a fully functional propulsion, steering, and pumping system in this mess.
unless you are doing a hack job on a DD then it takes. 4 months. but nice ships take lots and lots of time and this one looks very very nicely built.
