I was wondering on the matter of torpedo bulges, and does anyone have any clue how to make them or what rules would apply to them? (for biggun of course) They were like a small secondary hull starting just above the water line and then proceeding below it, so if a torpedo bulge had a set armor and the ship had a set thickness of armor could you not have two layers of armor? For info on torpedo bulges try www.wikipedia.org making older ships a bit better
If you model the armor belt or a buldge, you get to add a stringer. Search for rules on stringers... Laminating layers of armor is a no no, but if you have a glass hull and forget to put the stringer in, you could overlap an 1/8, but it will in no way be better than having the inpenetrable stringer there. Some clubs have restrictions on the number and location of stringers... be very sure before cutting your hull Mike
The outer surface of the hull, bulged or not, is what gets the balsa layer. I can't think of any clubs that it gets a ship a second layer of balsa. On the plus side, if you have a sharp change in the hull shape (like at the top of a bulge or an armor belt), you get a stringer which is allowed to be solid (1/8" high strip of wood the length of the bend). As far as learning about boat parts... This is a forum with a bunch of naval history buffs
Well there was no offence intended in my post, I figured that there might be some people new to the hobby like, me who have just heard of them for the first time. But the idea was not lamination of the balsa, it was merely to build an actual torpedo bulge on the ship, by making something like a small second hull filled with water, that must be penetrated before, the actual hull is penetrated. Granted that this takes up more room than the impenetrable 1/8 in (more like ½ to 1 in), but it is also lower on the ship, probably in a spot rarely hit, and yet remains penetrable. Another quick side track, what about torpedo nets, does any rule set provide for them? (The old WWI ships got to have something going for them)
I know this is out of topic, but Tugboat did you do any reasearch on spring cannon, koiter said you did and I cant seem to find it anywhere.
I didn't find any research on them I'm DOING research on them Starting with torpedo launchers for 1/96 Battlestations!, as we have more room to play with things than our much-more-numerous brethren in 1/144. Someone did some experimenting with an airsoft gun necked down to a smaller caliber; those seem like they have potential. The problem with power is not that it'll be too weak, it's that it'll be too strong (has to pass the foam test to be legal). Fitting torpedo bulges as an extra 'hull' onto a ship is not part of any rules set. Part of the issue is that if one wants to argue that ships that had them deserve the extra protection, then every ship that had thicker armor, or some other special quality ha a claim to enhanced protection. This leads to the guns getting more power, because the whole point is to sink the other guy, and you need more power to penetrate all the extra protection. Fast gun BB cannons already hurt like getting stung by a wasp, so I'm not playing if they get meaner I think that PreDread's forthcoming 1/72 rules set will factor in torpedo nets, but no one else does. I'd concentrate on building a good solid ship to a set of existing rules, without adding fanciness until you get your ship running reliably. That's NOT a slam in any way. More ships (veterans and rookies alike) have been sunk by reliability issues than anything else. In my humble opinion, WWI ships have the maneuverability factor going for them; They're short in relation to their length, and very turny The WW2 ships are generally faster, but can't turn as well.
I find WWI ships rathe improperly armed for their length, or some of them at least. There really hard buggers to arm too, the guns are al over the place. Pleas let my now how your reasearch turns out
When you say improperly armed, what do you mean? You're doing big gun, so you can arm whichever guns you like. When evaluating the gun layout, it's good to keep in mind the design philosophy of that navy at that time, to see if it goes with how you want to operate. Once the navies of the world figured out that putting all the guns on centerline let them put more oomph in the battleline, things changed dramatically from the earlier layouts. Several late WWI era ships have all-centerline gun layouts...
