my favorite store, battlers connection, has yet ot have a ship kit or even a hull kit for the USS North Carolina. anyone have the parts that make these kits? hopefuly for a REASONABLE price
i've noticed Battlers is very unproductive. i'm sure in terms of processing orders their great, but they dont update their website or sales line much.... for years they've had certains ships "coming soon" yet nothing has come of it...
That's because Charley had a lot of issues with work, etc over the past year... now that he's got 2 people helping him, I've had no problems with orders (2 orders in the last 3 months). As far as new toys... this weekend, Charley showed us the prototype of a new gearbox for Bismarck/Scharnhorst/etc... For people with large ships that drive only the center screw. It allows two 550 motors to drive one shaft. Very nice CNC-machined out of some kind of composite. Looks different from their past gearboxes (not that those are bad, I have probably 6 of them) more like a jet aircraft part because of all the slick machining. So yes they had some trouble in the past, but it's picking up again. Charley is mainly doing R&D, and Rick and Tim are doing production. The parts I got were made by the new team, quality is still good. As far as your request, Pew^3, Grey Wolf Squadron sells sets of the secondary turrets and at some point soon will have the mains as well. Realistically, though, even if I started cranking out NC hulls, they'd be close to what BC charges because you have material costs plus time to make the hull.
well i know that battlers connection sells the the triple turrets for the NC and secondaries that fit SOME of the US battleships.
LOL Nope I myself am slowing a bit as I prepare for the move to the new workshop. So this summer I can be fully productive in air-conditioned comfort with all my tools in one 20x20 space.... ahhhh.... At the battle this past weekend, I got requests for: -"generic US BB turret" ie-one that'll do for NC's and SD's -OS2 Kingfishers (trying to get an acceptable result before the May battle, for those wanting one) -SOC floatplanes (pre-OS2 scouts) Bonus surprise... One of the guys made an Arizona main turret and asked if I'd cast them for him. I will be getting it from him at the May battle (1st weekend), cleaning it up, and then I will have those available for Arizona/Pennsylvania guys.
what exactly is it you do tug? i mean, is it normal that if people make something you'll cast it and sell it or just doing that for a friend?
Good idea Justin, I think I will... I make molds of various pieces-parts for the hobby. Normally I make the plug for the mold myself, but if someone makes one and wants copies, I'm happy to oblige. An example of this is: Frank is giving me an Arizona main turret he made. I will check it for accuracy (no offense), add details if warranted, and then make a mold from the plug (the turret). I then send Frank a set of Arizona turrets, and a couple extras. If you (or anyone, really) wants to make a plug of something for our boats, I will do the same deal. The provisos, stipulations, and boilerplate are: Can't be something sold by someone else. I will take original works from people and cast them, but no Swampworks or Battler's Connection or Basin Shipyards, etc parts will be copied. Not the least reason for this is several of these people are friends (Greg @ Basin, Charley & Rick from BC) and I wouldn't cheat them of fair trade for their time and effort. So now that I've said that: If you have a homemade turret for HMS Inedible, USS Blueshirt, or FS Surrender and want nice copies from battle-damage resistant materials, I can help Everybody after you will be charged a reasonable fee for my time and materials. The plug-maker gets a set free in return for their time and effort.
>The plug-maker gets a set free in return for their time and effort. IS that all future sets as well? Like if i make the Iowa primaries & sent the original off to you; would you continue to replace lost or damaged primaries?
Great! just what i was looking for! There is a guy that does the same for hulls, i've already enlisted my convoy in his arsenal so i get a free fiberglass hull..... i've been wanting to to do some turrets and whatnot for my other ships but never wanted to spend so much money on mold materials and knowing my luck ruin it all. Can you post a link so i can bookmark it, this summer i'll try to pump out some stuff.
Within a reasonable scale, yeah. Free replacements would be for the original guy who made the plug(s). If you sold the Iowa to my friend Effluvio Schmuckatelli, any replacements for him would be sales, not free. I don't mind doing it, I just don't want to be taken advantage of (you can understand how someone might abuse the system). I might ask you to pay shipping, but let's hope it doesen't become a big thing, as I'm trying to make them pretty tough. Special secret info on this below: For the great big turrets, I'm developing a new method of laminate casting that allows me to lay up a fiberglass liner, then cast the hard rubber onto that liner so you get the BB-bouncing ability and detail with the black rubber, with the structural strength of the 'glass. The problem with just doing them out of the hard rubber is that the big turrets tend to droop a bit in the center, especially when hot. Doesn't hurt anything but appearance will suffer. Also, if you have any attached detail (like AA guns) on the turrets, they'll droop too, making the effect worse. I started researching this when Mark asked me to do the 1/96th scale Yamato turrets. The rubber would probably droop 1/2" in the center on such a huge turret, totally unacceptable for a scale model and the flagship of Nihon Kaigun in our hobby. So my long-term plan for battleship turrets is to give them strength, detail, and BB-bouncing capability, whilst still leaving plenty of room for putting cannons in them. Figure that our Termite armor is 1/8" thick. The turrets will have at least 1/8" of hard rubber over an 1/8" fiberglass in all directions. Should be pretty battleworthy. And even thought you're using 1/2" of the turret width for the structure, on a NC you've still got almost 3" of width for guns. Other big BB turrets have as much or more room, so I don't think that'll be a problem. This post has been way too long, so I'm going to run off for a soda now ps- Anyone making a plug for a turret, etc, will be credited by name on the website unless they say they don't want to be
Sounds great TUGGY! I think you should post that offer for the plug makers on your website. I think that makes this an awesome deal. I know I would never want to take advantage of you like that, just because I wouldn't do that to my friend. But I know how other guys might just do that. You might want to have setup like: 10(or whatever) free replacements per season, if damaged part is returned. --AND-- 5(or whatever) free pieces per season, if damaged part is lost (that way people are covered if the turret up and floats away.) You might also have a warranty like that for everyone else too; it might boost sales. (Much less quantities though) Like 3 replacements / season if damaged part is returned and 1 replacement / season if part is lost at sea. Of course, you would need a sales DB of some sort though.
In a perfect world I see the price of the parts as rewarding my time and effort, plus the cost of materials. If someone saves me a bunch of time and effort by doing the R&D and making the plug for me to cast a mold from, then I feel like rewarding their effort. Building up a supply of plugs (molds wear out quicker than one might think) will allow me to serve the battling community, not to get rich I wouldn't extend the courtesy to buyers, just to people helping me out. Not that I don't like everybody, but I wouldn't be able to afford to stay in business. Realistically, 5 or 10 turrets per season would make me wonder what someone is doing to lose that many. I've lost like 1 per year since I started. Maybe I'll just cast them 2 sets with a guarantee of one more "on call"... Do people really lose that many turrets?
I am with you on that tugboat. I generally play it by ear on a case by case basis as far as warantee/etc replacements and will usually cut someone a deal at the very least as long as they are straight with me. (I.E. "I dropped it and ran it over with the truck" will generally get a deal (at least) whereas "uhh, it broke, I didn't do anything to it at all" (when it looks flattened) will generally not be so warmly responded to.) Unfortunately for most of these things those of us making components on a part time basis do not make enough profit on a single unit to cover the cost of materials on another one... Unfortunately we lack the volume to get anything cheap. If we could get a lot of ~1000 cannons made at a time we could almost certainly dramatically reduce the cost. (same goes with hulls, if several dozen or hundred of a particular were desired in a single order, the hull cost would drop dramatically if sourced correctly)
As far as prices go, I think that for the volumes we use (as you say, pretty small in the big scheme of things), we get pretty good prices. Not great, but acceptable.
I'm not the greatest scratchbuilder but if you have any requests i could try to build something for you, torp launchers, turrets, etc... also, could you post a link? google search came up empty.
And as a random aside Tugboat, if you have any need of it I do have a CNC mill that could be used to make the initial plugs, depending on complexity. That is how I make most of my molds right now.
nevermind, found the site. i tried it before, typing the url in, and nothing came up.... not quite sure why. but after i googled grey wolf squadron 144 ship it came up and the link worked
Glad you found it! It's in need of update, but that's coming, along with some form of online shopping. If I was going to post requests, I'd say it'd be turrets for ships. Other stuff, if the bug bites you to make something, email me or pm me on this website. Thanks, Greg! That's really cool of you. Always wanted one of those, someday I'll get one. How do you program it in terms of "machine, make THIS shape..."? Most of the plugs are pretty basic, and then I add cast-able detail to them. Really big turrets (1/96 Yamato) are very basic (the rangefinders are separate pieces), and then detail is added after casting.
