I use (shockingly) marine grade bearing grease. You can get it at just about any boat supply shop. West Systems outlets usually carry it in a little tube near the section with other engine supplies. You can also find similar grease in tubes at Home Depot, slightly more expensive. The packaging may just say 'waterpoof grease' or 'marine grease' or something like that. It's blue and fairly smelly. I think any typical bearing or componant grease works, but there's something poetic about using grease made for big boats on the models. You might also want to pick up a little spray can of silicone type lubricant. Really useful for the pump motor bearings.
Yup marine grease is good stuff, I got some from McMaster-Carr, Grape Flavored judging by the color....but the Blue-Rasberry flavor Renodemona has sounds good too.
Cool thanks guys. I'll drop by Home Depot tomorrow after I'm done test driving my ship and see what I can find. I wonder if they have mint chocolate swirl...I'll be sure to post LOTS of pictures once I'm done.
I agree with the guys. I changed my lithium for the Auto/Marine grease and lubed my gears and prop shafts on Mo and it worked great. I started using it on Yamato's gears too and they are much much smoother.
Well, I learned two things late last night. One, my soldering iron is a piece of junk. Two, good things do not happen when you short out your batteries. Luckily I did not ruin it though. just enough to melt the heat shrink. Soooooooooooo...no pics today.
Soldering Iron should be in the 75-80 watt range. 100 would be even more awesome. Toss the little pencil ones if that's what you're using. Also get the thinnest gauge solder, it melts like butter with 80 watt irons.
Yup, what I had was a little 25 watt iron. In other words, JUNK!!! That and I was using a rather thick gauge solder. So not a very good combo. I was wondering, what is my max model weight? Because I noticed that with the tape that I have for the temporary siding, once it's in the water you can see the water line from the inside of the ship. So I figure that if I weigh down the ship to it's max, I can double check the bottom of the penetrable window and side the ship 4 real!
Assuming you're building to IRCWCC rules (though max weight is probably the same for MWCI as well), you can meander over to the shiplist here: http://www.ircwcc.org/sln/sl.htm and see that the Invincible has a max weight of 15.079lbs
...It's off by about 1/2 inch. What would be the best way to go about remarking it? Because I originally used a foam block and a pencil, but that was a mess and a big headache to set up to the right height. Oh, and I'm building to the ircwcc rules. Is that what you guys over in Washington build to?
The lower edge of the window is off? I like to figure out the waterline and then with a straight edge mark an inch below it in numerous places (usually at each rib) and then draw a line of masking tape under the line marks to create the cut line. And yes, we build to IRCWCC rules
Dang, I shouldn't be able to tell that by looking at the earlier pictures. (But I did). Take a roll of regular masking tape with the top edge of the tape at the bottom of your currently cut penetrable area. This will put you about 1/2" more down on the hull. I believe you will have to follow the 45 degree turn of the hull near the stern so you dont cut down to your shafts. Also, I have Invincible listed at 16.61 lbs max, 15.09 scale. Try measuring at 16lbs. This is a realistic weight that the boat will be operating at. I'd suspect you're only 3/8" off at that weight. I-boat is one ship that should be pretty close to max anways.
Max weight +10% is approximately 16 pounds 9 ounces. I recommend trying to keep it under 16 pounds because it behaves better on the water. I think 15 lbs 10 oz gave the best performance for mine. 15 lbs even was a little too lightweight and rolled a lot more when going through wakes. Ron Hunt
Sounds like it would be an easy fix. I'll just weigh it down to 16 pounds and go off of that, and just use some of my 3/8 tape (if thats how far off it is) and line it up with the bottom of the windows. If anything I'll cut it down a little extra so I could run at a lighter weight. I'll definitely have to cut it down to the 45 degree turn at the stern.
Sorry about the way late response. I've been really busy lately and have had little time to work on my ship. What little time I have had, I've spent it on my other addicting/expensive hobby; astronomy. Lucky I only have a few small things that need taken care of before the ship is sea worthy. I'm hoping to get it on the water some time this week.
I finally took my ship out a few hours ago for some testing, and it was working pretty well for the first...two minutes. After about two minutes the pinion gear on the portside motor came loose and it was about that time when I realized that I had forgotten my allen wrenches back at the house:blink:. I still had the other motor to limp on, so I went on to putting a few 1/4-1/4 holes in the siding to test out the pump I just got done wiring up, and it was working really well. Until my otter box leaked and fried the servo:blink:. But it took a while before the servo gave out. It was amazing how much water the ship would take on before it would sink. I'm going to have to change the magnet hold downs to screws because pretty much all the magnets popped off when they became wet. Would any kind of screw work? I was thinking about putting small screws up through the deck and have some nuts to bring the deck down nice and tight. Oh, and in the last two pics you can see the whole configuration as well as the water channeling. To hold the batteries down, I found velcro to be to easiest to use. With there being a gap in between the batteries, I'm able to tuck the wire mess down in between there. The water channeling is a 1/4 inch amid ship and 1/2 inch up at the bow. I have yet to put any channeling at the stern though.
