Greg is planning to have the ribs, decking, keels lasercut. I believe he is planning to make a single run only due to setup and shipping costs, and I don't think he is planning on making extras to sell down the road, so if you want to get in on it you'll need to PM Greg about it sooner rather than later.
First laser cut parts are in. they look good. Now I just have to get to the laser shop and find out why the motor mounts were not cut (only missing part) and then resort and rebox for the folks that wanted first run kits...
Excellent looking kit! You sure put a lot of work into that design. I hope it fits together well, I can't wait to see it assembled.
Spoke with the lasercutter, motor mounts are coming, not sure when I will see them but I am hoping in the next couple of weeks. The parts are well cut. I have just started test fitting and most fits will require just a kiss of sandpaper to take the tightness out to "just right", which is good as just right will vary with the wood when it is cut. RCENGR was correct on his estimate of best gaps for fitting parts... setting it to .240 results in a .236 gap and the ply comes in at .238-ish. so just a tiny bit of fitting for a dry fit is necessary, although that is mostly to enalble parts to come apart again. It appears that two mating parts drawn to net fit with kerf cut called out will have about .002-.004 inches of interference that needs to be sanded off to make it a tight slip fit. sanding off a fraction of it results in a good "ain't coming apart even without adhesive" joint So far, I am quite impressed with the quality. I also had a chance to do a sanity check. I will do more but right now, the density of the ply is 625kg/m^3 (important since all my weight calculations are based on an assumption of 900 including sealing resin) which is right about where I expected it to be. I will be taking build pictures but at the pace I build, I expect some of the other folks will have theirs done first.
WOW!! :blink: Now that looks really slick!! Talk about clean. Can't wait to get my hands on my kit. It almost seems like cheating in a way....Hee, hee, hee, hee! This is going to be fun.....
Everything below is a dry fit. the entire kit MUST BE DRY FIT FIRST to ensure proper assembly. once properly assembled, I plan on using thin CA to hold it together until it can be reinforced with epoxy and coated. Many features, particularly ribs, are keyed such that they can not be installed wrong and have all the parts fit together. e.g. if two similar ribs locations are swapped, sooner or later a part will not fit, generally keel or the deck or the 1/4" stringer forming the first impenetrable part of the hull as you go further under water. Bevel as appropriate.... lots of that in this kit due to curvy hull form. NOTE THAT ORIENTATION ON CERTAIN PARTS IS CRITICAL. ALWAYS DRY FIT ENTIRELY. RIBS ARE KEYED. The picture below must be the AFT portion of the double keel region. the bow portion has a deep versus shallow cutout for ribs.
More pictures. you can sort of see the etched outline of the superstructure and the centermarks for all secondary and tertiary turrets. You can see the two joints I tried below. both are exceptionally tight and need a bit of fitting before putting them together. As shown below they are not coming apart even without adhesive. The deck is stiff, much stiffer than anticipated, so with the bow curvature, the underside of teh deck may need some relief slits to enable it to bend more easily. (see dremel routing attachment for best way to do this) The underside of the deck is marked with an etched line showing the required beveling. it is significant in the bow region, so do it before final assembly after the fit check. And now for useful tool #1...
Alright, found first goof. luckily this one is easy to fix with a razor saw/other cutting implement. (still smacking forhead on this, I remember when I was working on this region, software crashed, must have lost feature at that time) the stern keel needs a 1" long by 0.25in deep notch cut in it between the bowmost two rib cutouts so that teh stiffening bracket can slip in and turn the split keels into one solid keel. the bracket will provide a good template for that. will post pictures tonight
:blink: WOW oh WOW oh WOW!! This is going to be an unbelieveable "kit" to put together! Greg you have really done an outstanding and excellent job here! Truly beautiful! Soooooo what's your next project going to be?
Next up will be decent littorio superstructure parts... after that once the L is done, I am thinking about a Q ship with all the running hardware in a module that can be swapped between hulls in a few minutes, so one could make up a couple of Q's and simply swap hulls over a day and repair them all at night
Alrighty. So the next mod that needs to be noted. the 6-32 knife threaded inserts are too agressive for the plywood. either the holes need to be bored out to almost the same diameter as the insert or a smaller insert should be bonded in (such as mcmaster part number 93365A130 or 90363A017)
