Oh where, oh where is my HMS Repulse?

I belonged to the South Coast Battle Group back in the late 80's/early 90's back with J.C. White and Dean McWilliams. Unfortunately I was in the navy at the time and subject to their whims, which resulted in a divorce, assignment to a ship and then to the opposite coast. Enough History.

I would like to find and return home my first major ship, the HMS Repluse. SCBG was a Big Gun ship. It's transport box was well decorated with the silhouette of the Repulse on the top and the Union Jack on both sides. The main decks were held down with 4-40 screws dressed with a small brass tube that made them look like ship's bollards. All main guns were armed and operational, and she had port and starboard torpedo tubes aft amid ship. She was built with WWII torpedo bulges vice WWI slab sides.

I left the boat with J.C. and Dean when I got transferred to the East Coast. If anyone has any information on where this old girl resides today.....I would love to learn any information to it's where abouts.

 

remember i had seen it sold on ebay there is an old post around here somewhere...

 

Years ago Mike Deskin sent me hull cross-sections for Renown and Repulse, both in WWI & WWII (when the two were quite different).

Rob Clarke, a former NABS member, made a WWII Renown hull but the mold quality wasn't great and he made only one hull, which had lots of gelcoat defects. I patched it up and sold it about 10 years ago.

I liked the two ships but realized they'd be worse battlers than my HMS Courageous despite the extra turret and 0.5 combat unit, because they were longer, had the same rudder area and would have a gigantic turning circle.

I did a major purge of ship plans last week and got rid of plans for hulls that wouldn't sell well. Mike's Renown Class cross-sections went into recycling along with the rest.

 

My 1991 Repulse was an old school all wood build with epoxy used to level the bottom. Below are pictures of the insides of my original Repulse. Too bad you got rid of those cross-section plans as I will be rebuilding a Repulse as soon as I find a good example of 1/144 scale plans with the refit torpedo bulges of the WWII period.

While I would love to have my original Repulse back (that would be a pipe dream) I think it would take a small miracle after so long. I still have my original building notes, so this second Repulse will be a better and badder Big Gun ship. HooYAAA!!

 

You can order 1/144 plans from Profile Morskie in pdf format.

The owner also keeps posting 'last chance' notices to buy paper plans in several scales, or booklets of many ships that contain 1/200 and 1/400 plans. This happens a few times a year so I expect another such notice soon.

I just had 1/200 Profile Morskie booklet plans for a Spanish CL and HMS London blown up to 1/144.

 

Ordered paper plans in 1/144 from Profile Morskie, so we'll see what those look like if and when they arrive. Right now mail going anywhere is pretty sketchy. Mailed a birthday box to our daughter in Europe. Went via Japan? Sat in Japan for several weeks before finally making it to Europe after about a month from the time we mailed it. Ordered a new fishing rod & reel for wife back in July. It's out for delivery today?!?!? And no it wasn't a custom job, just an old fashioned Ugly Stick combo. Totally missed the fishing season. Grrrrrrr.

 

Pre-COVID, Morskie paper plans delivery times were typically measured in months (some sporadic reasonable times) - I made that mistake once but now go for the pdf plans - might be worth checking if you can switch your order if you want to build soon

 

I too had to wait for months to get PM paper plans in the past. Now that the plans are produced by a second company they seem to arrive more quickly. I got the recent order of booklets with ship plans in 4 weeks, which is a great improvement.

 

Morskie sent me a 1/144th scale paper set for Idaho that was in reality 1/127th.

that was *aggravating*. Luckily I had it on PDF and was able to go to the local print shop.

 

Let's hope I don't have those same problems. I bought the plans through PayPal so if they (Morskie) send me the wrong plans then I should be able to get that corrected. Hope-A-hope!!

 

just make sure you get the PDF and you'll be fine. and when it comes time to print those, work with the printer using known measurements to be sure the scale is proper.

 

Laser cutting can be frickin slick!
I'm thinking of mocking up my ribs etc on the next boat using poster board and running a dry fitting to see where I want all of my equipment and such to go, then going back and drawing them out in Fusion for a laser cut.
This doesn't make too much sense til you see how I build wooden boats. I get that. I don't cut out the interior of the ribs til AFTER I finish getting them fitted, and get the stringers in place.
cutting out the core is the last step before I glue the boat together. It enables me to do 'Trick shots' like what I did with the rudder tray, and leaving stobs in the core of the hull to hold my battery tray in place.


With the little bit that I know in CAD, I could do all this stuff on the computer and just *Poop out a boat* that would have taken me six months of hand-fitting.
Yes. Six months. I spent Jan 2019 to August 2019 with a hand saw, files, and the like getting super-tight fits on every single piece of the boat before I used a single squirt of glue.
I'm weird. well aware.
I get that some people could avoid the poster board step, but those people are either mutants, or willing to spend more money on screwing up plywood than I am.

Bottom line, if you want to learn CAD, know where the nearest laser cutter is, and you have the PDF... here's a Fantastic chance for ya!!

 

I totally agree with the poster board, my next ship I am thinking of using poster board and beded Styrofoam to make the ship shape to make a plug mold. The poster board is a doller or so and the beded Styrofoam was free. From a furniture stores dumpster

 

Well my plans finally arrived last week!! YEAH!!

So I now have two sets of really nice plans for the HMS REPULSE 1941 and PINGUIN (Raider F) 1940/41

Now to get the shop up and running, WoooHOOO!!

 

Will these be for big gun?

 

Yes, it will be Big Gun and I plan on adding as many secondary batteries if I can fit them in.

I just wonder when we'll actually be able to fight again. I'm not in a rush right now as I'm working on putting together my shop so I can start building.