The ribs are all glued in now. A test fit was completed. The halves align very nicely with no gaps. And for today's installment of "HOW BIG is that ship" here's a picture of the Hood with my 1:96 yard oiler. That's right, these are the same scale.
The deadline for having the Hood battle ready is the 27th of September. Of course I'm just doing the hull, so I need to get it done and on to Matt to install the internals. Hopefully I'll get my part done in the next week. This weekend I got the stringers installed and the hatch frames on. Well, almost all the stringers. I only had 24' of stringer material on hand, I have go buy another 8' to finish it. I have the bow sheeted. Normally at this point I would be done sheeting the ship. The inside looks a little better. After a little trimming I coated the interior with epoxy to seal it and reinforce the glue joints holding on the plywood.
That's a very impressive ship! I've always been a fan of the Hood. I'm not in a great position to offer advice, but I will anyways: I would use the transfer pump, and have it transfer from the rear to the front. The water should go as rearward as it can, which is the middle of the ship for the front half, hopefully keeping he ship relatively even. Also, it would probably be most effiecient to use a high volume positive displacement pump, with a geared down low kilovolt torquey brushless motor. Much of that might be wrong, and what is correct is probably obvious, but I just wanted to make sure you considered it. That's my 2 cents, good luck sheeting it!
Sheeting it is one of the tasks for next guy. I have no desire to try and wrap 1/8" balsa around that bulge
Hey Mark, She's looking great? If she makes TF-2 I was wondering if we can get a photo of her setting in my lap with mikey's 144th scale Hood Nikki
You know, sheeting might not be all that more difficult then doing it with 1/144 scale version......the bigger size might make it easier because what would be a tighter turn on the bulge in the smaller scale is now a bit bigger. hmmmmm I wonder....
Awesome work Mark, I have a little practice sheeting 1/8" around bulges, my 1/96 Ramilies (may she rest in peices).
I was able to get the stern sheeted and sealed tonight. It took 4 pumps of West Systems epoxy just to seal the inside!
Mark, I don't think I'd have the courage to build something that huge. Keep up the good work. Beaver P.S. Do you ever plan on offering this as a laser cut kit?
Well the worst part is over... sanding. I glued in blocks of poplar to fill in the first bays at the bow and stern. I did the rough sanding of the blocks with a 4 1/2" angle grinder and an 80 grit pad. This is the first time I have used the angle grinder and not only did it take off the wood fast, it was surprising easy to control with just one hand. Following up with a palm sander with 60 grit got the finer shaping done. All in all, it was about 3 hours to complete the sanding. And now I have this funny little tingle in my hands that comes from holding a palm sander for two hours. When I assembled the hull, the halves matched very well, so just a little sanding was needed to get the final shape. That was a bit of a relief for me, I was worried that I would need to do some major blending. Tomorrow I plan to sand off the final filler and fiberglass the bottom.
Beaver - of course it's available as a kit. Since it has been cut out once, it can be cut out again. I don't expect to sell any, so I won't stock it. But if anyone is willing to wait a week or two to get it cut, they can have one. It won't be cheap either (as compared to my other kits), $200 plus at least $30 shipping. It's not building a ship this size that intimidates me - it is getting the fully ballasted ship in and out of the water that scares me. Right now the hull weighs about 12 lbs - only 1/9th of the final weight. Although building a ship this size really consumes a lot of CA and epoxy, so you have to anticipate that.
Either way I can relate to the amount of sanding your doing and yeah the palm tingles after a while. Worse is the Oscilliating cutting tool which makes my entire forearm tingle. I try to be very patient with the sanding. Like to have music on or a talk show on the radio in the background to keep my mind off the boring sanding. What you have there is amazing.
Not that I'm building anything huge, but if I was, it would have ballast tanks to blow dry using CO2 to make the recovery easier.
And having ballast tanks instead of ballast would make transportation much easier. Will you be able to take it apart under water, and bring up each half separately?
Ballast tanks are good, although they will only reduce displacement by about 1/3. I suppose you could take the ship apart to recover it, but I can't hold my breath long enough to unscrew 6 bolts. It would probably be easier to remove the batteries, which are held in with velcro, and then bring up the ship. I'm not sure how much the 2 6volt 36 AHr batteries weigh, but it is significant.
You could in theory make the entire bottom hard area a ballast tank. or multiple tanks to keep balance. it would be an anti list device as well.
