As I said before I love the look of the Lexington battlecruiser and have pretty much gotten my 1/144th boat as far as she can go without guns. (I may arm her up to fight some other rule set if I can do so. Otherwise she'll just be an exhibition fight boat.) It seems I have caught that bug where I can't have just ONE boat sitting in the shop. For the time being while we wait for someone to start building 1/4" cannons commercially I have settled on my next project. Stephen at Strike is mailing out to me today a pair of 1/96th plans for the next Lexington class battlecruiser. Hopefully my experience building Lexington will pay dividends and reduce the head banging I do this time around. Not to mention give me some new challenges to overcome. Right now I am planning on some form of ballast tank to lower her dry weight, and compartmentalizing the internals as much as possible to prevent damage. Seeing these two on the water together someday is going to be like watching that old movie Twins. Lexington Class Battlecruiser (1/96th): Length: 109.25” Beam: 13.13” Displacement: 110lbs Speed: 33sec Armour: 1/16" Guns: (8) 1/4" Main Battery, (16) BB Secondary
A few shots of the first six pieces of wood cut. Three parts to the cap, two end forms, and a keel. I used Oak for all of them. 1/4" in the cap, 1/2" in the ends, and laid a 1.5"X 1"' piece wide ways down as the keel. I laid a few 4"x4" jacking timbers down to help flesh her 3Dness ( if thats even a word ) out some. Old Sara is shaping up to be the Christina Hendricks of the R/C World.... and yes, all my boats are redheads! The stern is still a little rough. I need to figure out the slope to get the ribs in the right place ect. And then cut the bow/stern notches into accept the cap. Then I will start the process of adding ribs. I will bolt the bow/stern post into place so I can remove them as req to cut notches and the likes. Only thing that is going to get any glue right now is the two forward cap pices bonded up to make one. This will allow me to start fitting individual ribs into place. Once they are all cut and laid up proper its going to be a glue party to get everything set into place and clamped. Lucky for me Home Depot has nice ones for a buck a pop.
Christina Hendricks? Not quite. I'd say more the Nicole Kidman type (long and lean). To be a CH, it would need to be....bulged. Alot.
Still plugging away. I'm at that slow point where I have to work out the frames on paper before I start cutting. Since she's a 9 foot boat and only came with 13 frames..... I'ma need to do some free handing and double that up. The painful part was transferring where the mid-rib was to the plans, figuring out how wide a frame at that station needed to be and then going from there. The drawing the rib went pretty quick. I got the forward half and then some done. One shape works for 3 of the ribs. ( A little over a foot worth of model.) One feature that is going to make the build WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY easier is the fact that the turn of the hull where it is bulged is right at the 1" mark below the waterline. One stringer there to attach the sheeting to, and another above it for the top of the belt and I should have a pretty solid structure longitudinally.
Where the bow keel and main keel come together. (The stern keel joins the same way.) This will let me break it down to fiddle with it at less than 9' at a whack. Once everything is set for glue I'll mix up some resin, set the ribs/keel/cap square and let it all set at once. You can see some overhang between the C rib and the main keel. I'll sand this into shape once everything sets up. B and C ribs slotted into place for the time being. I'm having a dickens of a time drawing up the inbetween ribs and getting them to print at the actual sizre paint says with the built in "rulers". I'm likely just going to freehand the in betweens and photocopy my heart out. I also need to add the slots to tie in the cap and ribs. But at least I've got some sawdust in the air after having to take a few weeks off for my back.
Tug. Was that really a question? If I get so infirm that I can't lift her out of the water I'll spend three months building a rig to do it for me. But thats three months I'll have something to do! OF COURSE I want a bigger boat! I caved in and am skiping the MS Paint aided frame drawing. I'm working with pencil and ruler now and have gotten more done in half an hour at my kitchen table then I did in two weeks trying to donk with this stuff on the computer. I think come the weekend I'll have all 26ish frames drawn up and ready for cutting.
Where I ended the day. Tomorrow I'll do all the fancy measuring I need to to cut the stern keel to the right shape to place the remaining frames where they need to be. I guess I'm screwed when I ask to see the DNA to prove she isn't mine. ( I got a little sloppy with the file digging out the keel slot and knicked my finger)
Everything forward of the stepdown is in place and drying now. She's got a nice little rake in her bow. And yes, that is a chainsaw on the stern holding the deck down. Tomorrow I'll get the last couple of ribs cleaned out and the deck segments joined together. I'm at the point where the debate about filling in the bottom is coming. Given the volume of the hull I'm thinking the old spray foam-Bondo-fiberglass route.
For perspective, my "flock" of three boats. 1/144th Lexington, 1/125th Blue Devil Fletcher hull, 1/96th Saratoga with glue setting. I haven't triede it yet but I think I can fit the Lex inside Sara now I've got her cleaned out. My handy dandy tool I stole from someone when I marked out the frames to be opened up. Scrap of wood, a pen, a dowel, and some superglue. Worked like a champ.
And she looks even bigger when I opened up the cap rail. The cross braces correspond to the space between the barbettes. I will use a removable bracket which will slide under and up onto the bottom of the cross brace to act as mounting points for the cannons and turret drive trains. Got tired of the hand file and Dremel. So I kicked up my sander a notch. BAM! (4.5" wheel with 40 grit) made opening up the cap once I rough cut it out a lot easier. It just ate 1/4" oak ply up.
Finally got back on my horse. The lower solid stringer and top of the belt are in place. Going to use this three day to foam and Bondo the hull. I'm going with a full fiberglass shell. I'll cut windows later IAW the applicable guidelines. One last look at her frame clean. Port side prepped for foaming. ONE can of foam expended. MacGiyered rig to hold the wax paper close to the bow to allow the foam to stick to the ribs.
Tug, Most frames are at least TWICE the distance apart as they are allowed to be. I'm using the frame to basically build up a one off fiberglass hull. Once the entire hull is glassed and the foam is removed I'll be able to better back my sheeting by having a fiberglass "rib" in between the wood ones. This will also allow me to Bondo my way out of horrible woodwork and get a symmetrical-ish looking hull with nice clean gel coated lines. Once the hull is glassed up I'm going to removed the midkeel and fill in the bottom with weights and leveler. I'll cut off the ribs along the bottom, locking them in place with a layer of sealer like I did on Lexi, along with anything else like motor mounts I want recessed into the deck.
