Thanks! The foamie glues together with superglue easily. When you go to change something you have to cut it off as the glued foamie will rip. How's that for glued? I used blocks of blue/pink foam for large areas to give them structure. I just built the foamie around them. I punched holes in it for portholes and glued chunks on for doors. There is a basic frame of wood on the bottom for attaching things and fitting with the ship deck. details are simple too. Just cut basic shapes and glue them. I used goop to secure details to the wooden decks. It comes in different colors but my store didn't have grey so I went with white and painted it with latex paint. Thanks to Brian the big gunner who showed us his superstructure at southeast regionals. Now the live testing begins!!!
Some good tips for me, too, since I'm a class 1A rookie building a ship way above my station that will eventually be fitted out for combat. None too soon, though, so you Axis boys can stop salivating over all that juicy freeboard to perforate.
My secret evil plan is that when you arm it and put it on the water, I will have grown a beard to absorb the saliva without issue
By that point you'll have finished drooling over your own handiwork and will be able to shave it off, heh.
Howdy all; some fruits of recent (small) labors: getting some detail work done. Nothing fancy, sadly, just the dummy barrels for the main turrets. Here's a couple of pictures, enjoy! Top View: The materials used aren't anything special: typical 1/8 inch inner diameter brass tube for the main barrels, and then shorter lengths of larger diameter tube for three layers of outer jacketing, to fairly closely resemble the actual monsters.
And now for an update on the other Iowa-class battleship currently in production. Got my outer shafts epoxied into place, and started adding more material to the skegs so I will have a flush base from under the hull out to the ends of the skegs, adding extra protection for my main drive screws. Here you can see the skegs themselves (already painted before I decided to add detail to them), my outer shafts, and the detail I'm adding to the hull around the skegs themselves.
Thanks! After making this post I covered all the bare wood with marine epoxy and later today it all gets painted, most likely.
Gotten a lot more done to my USS Illinois; painted all the dummy barrels and turret housings, and done a lot of work on the superstructure. The next major hurtle to cross is getting the electrical system in so I can get it on the pond and start sea trials, which is my main goal for this year: an operational (for showboating) battleship. Once I get the drive system sorted out, then I'll start worrying about a conversion for combat. Here is a picture with Ethan Cosgriff's largely completed SMS Scharnhorst and John Marino's in-progress IJN Yahagi, taken at the end of our build session yesterday.
Thanks Stokamoto. Below the waterline for my boat is Krylon's dark blue or navy blue; I forget which. Above is pewter gray. As for Ethan still going to NATS, not sure. You can also see from this photo that I've waterproofed the deck with an epoxy-based glaze coat, and will later be applying the same material to the subdeck and internal wood work.
After getting some helpful tips from the veterans on the board and after conferencing with Ethan and John, my local partners in crime (their ships can be seen to either side of mine in the picture a few posts prior), I've since purchased an electronic speed controller, two 550 motors, and started wiring them up in parallel. After wiring up the starboard motor (with the correct polarity for rotating inboard rather than outboard), I've completed a somewhat successful drive test, if you can call just taping the motor into place and direct-driving one of my shafts a successful test. It did spin the shaft, and while it made a horrible racket (evidence of the shaft needing lubricant), the important thing is that the motor did drive the shaft. All that needs to be done is for the motors to be mounted, the rudders to be aligned and the servo horn adjusted, the wiring run and dogged down, and then to get on the water. Soon there will be two functioning Iowa-class battleships afloat!
