First off i'm new to the forums and to the hobby. I see that the common practice for the hobby is either fiberglass hulls with balsa windows or thin balsa hulls. I'm thinking about experimenting with taking some armstrong industrial vinyl floor tile and heating it up with a heat gun and running it through a pasta roller to thin it down to the scaled thickness. I realize that this might make this build not qualify to participate in any battle groups. But if I'm not mistaken they perform a drop test and if it is penetrated would it really matter ? I think making the belts this way would be more realistic. What's your thoughts guys and gals ?
How would you patch the holes from combat? And after patching, would it pass the test? Don't forget the ships sit in the hot sun for a while, would this cause the vinyl to change shape?
I'm not sure that would be a problem because I would skin the hull in that area with the thinnest balsa wood I can get at hobby lobby the glue the belt to that. Then of course the paint will protect it to a degree from exessive heat I think that will be enough to prevent worpage.
Not sure what problem your trying to solve? As far as realism, the "armor" is nothing but. Unlike the real world we want to allow penetrations and the current balsa setup does that very well.
It's not really an issue I was just wanting to try something different as an experiment. And I just think that it would simulate a ships armor belt with a little more realisim.
The current rules allowing stringers do that pretty well. Best advice is to build a ship that is acceptable under whatever club rules you'll be playing under, battle it for a year, and then think about changes.
I think I will build a test hull with the armor layout and build my first build to the club rules and then blast the test hull and see how well it does. One of the pasta rollers at walmart can go as thin as 0.05 the ship i'm planning to build is the dunkerque which has a belt that is 8.9 inches thick so I divided that by 144 and got a thickness of 0.061 which should be able to be made. I'm also in oklahoma and as far as I know there isn't any battle groups close by.
The objective is the vinyl composition can be used in place of balsa wood on a large portion of the hull and is significantly cheaper also and you wouldn't need to use as much sealers and polyurethane. And is still able to be penetrated easily
Good luck, please post some pictures and results of the process. You may find that replicating the behavior of good quality balsa when shot to be tricky (poor quality balsa on the other hand is very easy to replicate, but who wants that), I think there is some interest in a high performance and easily repeatable material for hull skins. Edit: While a high performance and repeatable sheeting material would be nice, dont think it is going to be meaningfully cheaper than balsa. The cost of balsa to sheet a ship is in the noise compared to the cost of the ship and the cost to attend events. (Travel,Hotels,Meals,etc)
Well its just an idea at this point I plan on performing a few ballistics tests on the vinyl first if I build a ship that has a 12 inch belt in 1/96 scale the 1/8 thickness would be spot on.
Bb's might have a difficult time passing through it. But the bb's would cause damage to the belt allowing a follow on round to pass through it. Not unlike what would happen to an actual armor belt if it struck by a smaller caliber she'll. But I though the larger battleships mount guns larger then a common bb in which case they should be able to pass through it. Just like the larger battleship shells that's why I think that a composition vinyl belt would add realism to an extent.
Nathan, do your own thing and best of luck. Now that you have your goal, write up how you are going to test if you really want to get meaningful feedback from this crowd. Okie is fun, went to high school in Stillwater back in the day (and that was a long time ago).
I would do testing before building a ship Easier to control external factors if it's vinyl on a square window, more consistent results.
I'm going to build a sectional model of a hull and then conduct some tests at some point I need to purchase a few guns that's used in rc warship competitions that way I will be using the actual guns to ensure that I have accurate results.
