Thanks Stok! The aft tower is carved, albeit not very well, from one of the balsa wood blocks that came with the kit from Strike.
I noticed the Grooves carved into it and was wondering what they were about. I don't think I seen them on the 1/350 or the 1/72nd scale models but I may be wrong there. Either way it looks fine to me. I like it. I went through many blocks to try and get the towers right and the funnel caps. Didn't do so great on the caps but hey they work.
I finally incorporated the first pair of deck hold-downs into the Illinois! The hold-downs are simplicity themselves: I took a pair of inch-long bolts, cut a nut for them in half, glued the nut halves to each bolt after putting it into position, and voila! A (relatively) simple and easy way to lock down my deck, at least at the forward end. Might even prove to help keep water out forward in choppy waters. Here you can see that they are cleverly hidden in the forward deck AA gun emplacements. Eventually, I hope to put little AA guns in there, and instead of needing some outside device to twist the screws and unlock the deck, just use the AA mounts themselves. You can also see one of the notches for the bolts in the side of my subdeck in the left of the above photograph. Lastly, here's a simple beauty shot of the Illinois heading off on her first sortie of the day; you can see that I've painted my funnel caps gray, and just for fun, added a black stripe to the aft stack because I wanted to mix it up a little bit.
hey Miller7D, How do you make the removable gun mounts? I'm thing about doing that with My Andera Doria??? Nikki
Thanks Stok. I was going to try a more complicated idea with nuts epoxied into place or some more complicated-to-assemble holding system with a similar concept, until it occurred to me to simplify it with a single nut cut in half. The other benefit is that it's a quick open and quick close system, and it takes advantage of the the subdeck's structure without requiring intense modification or additional material. The magnet idea I've seen in other threads (I think it was for an I-Boat, or a similar sized flush-deck cruiser) would be just fine for the after part of the deck, but with the Iowa-class incline towards the bow, and the fact that the epoxy I used on my deck still lets it have an amazing amount of flexibility, a more rugged hold-down system is required forward. One question I have for you with your gear drive, though: do your drive shafts oscillate at high throttle settings, or do you have a smooth run throughout? The noisiest part of my ship is the main shafts: smooth through zero to half, then it starts to oscillate, but that could be because at least three inches on either shaft is left to spin in the open air of the hull, and because the direct-drive linkups are not rigid, as a gear drive would be. I'm thinking of putting some sort of secondary drive mount point between the main stuffing tubes and the motors to cut that out. Nikki, what gun mounts are you referring to? Aside from the primary and secondary turrets, which came with the ship, I haven't installed any gun mounts yet. If you're referring to the AA gun mounts I mentioned when I detailed my forward deck hold-downs, I will probably make those out of sheet metal and small rods for AA gun barrels. Something tough enough to handle being turned and twisted, as well as take a shot from a BB. I hope, at least.
Miller7D, I was talking about the Main cannons!! How do you make the removable gun mounts? I'm thing about doing that with My Andera Doria??? I was thing about putting the two 50 round cannons in then bow and the the 75round in the sturn of the boat, but i don't know yet!!! what do you thing?? She's still a great looking ship!!! Nikki
I haven't even started buying components to install working cannon in my battleship, Nikki, so making removable gun mounts hasn't even factored into my decision-making process, yet. Your best bet is to put up a question thread in the Weapons section of this forum and get feedback from veterans who have built big ships and know a whole lot more about what they're doing than I do. Lol, this battleship is my first working RC boat, ever, so I have a long way to go yet before I get guns into it.
Mille7D, Sorry, I was talking about the Removable cannon mounts inside each of the turret cover you did on your Illinois!!! I should have been more clear and that was my bad??? I wasn't trying to ask more then once, but i did and I'm sorry!!! Nikki
Oh, those. I see what you're referring to, now, Nikki. All of my dummy barrels acting as the Illinois' main guns are stuck to 1/8 inch dowels drilled into a 3/8 inch dowel just so all three guns will be visible, more or less locked into place, and easily pulled out to make room for actual cannon. When I do get my gun kits later this year or early next, I will end up removing all of those mounts (they're temporary place-holders, anyway) and likely sandwiching one dummy barrel each for A and B turrets forward between two BB cannon. The mounts I have right now have absolutely no combat value whatsoever, as the actual cannon kits will use the turret house, the barbette, or some combination thereof to remain fixed in place for combat. If I remember, I'll put up a picture of what I did for my fake guns tonight or tomorrow.
What's this?! Another project revived?! Huzzah! Yes, battleship Illinois is back on the ways for continued work towards combat. On the way to her eventual combat debut sometime this decade, more and more details are being added bit by bit as I go along and have time to devote to the ship. Let us consider the below photograph: The last photo I posted in September 2011 showed pretty much what you see above, but with a few key changes from then to now. Firstly, the forward fire control tower has been installed above the bridge deck, and the aft fire control station has been installed on a proper tower, this time precision-carved (sort of) from solid wood with very careful application and control of a power mitre saw. I wish I would have taken some video of the process, because I am ridiculously proud of this tower and how sharp and angular it looks by comparison to the balsa tower I tried to carve with a sander and a dremel ages back. Nevertheless, it was an extremely dangerous procedure, and I am very please to say that no one was injured for the sake of a nice-looking piece of detail. Another detail is that the anchors have been more correctly positioned to reflect their properly 'catted' appearance on actual Iowa-class battleships, which is to say at an angle to imply that a longer piece of the structure is locked into the bows. After watching 'Battleship' in theaters (I still say it was a good movie; I thoroughly enjoyed it, at least), I was inspired to make that change to the ship for the sake of accuracy and an appeasement to my own internal Bishop of Canon. The angle isn't as strongly detailed in the above photograph due to the focal point used for the image, but in a following image, all shall be made clear. But first, my aft fire control tower! (Details still pending) It isn't perfect, but I'm not concerned with fastidiously assiduous accuracy; it just needs to look good. And it does. Now for the anchors: Here you can see the anchor structure more clearly, especially where I need to touch up the paint. I've also left considerable material on the wooden portion of the anchor, rather than grinding it mostly off with the dremel, which was mostly a concession to not wanting to rip off the pieces due to a slip of the tool or getting to carried away with what I was doing. In the future I may attempt some sort of improve anchor that looks far more accurate and also integrates into the bows better (I rather expect these glued-on anchors to be shot off or rammed off in combat--one nice thing about Iowas is the height of their bows; should be above the muzzle height of most of her opponents!). My next piece of detail work is attaching the rangefinders to the individual gun houses for the main armament. I've been puzzling over it for a year and more how to go about that without just gluing the blasted things to each gun house and calling it a day, and each time I almost went ahead to glue them on I came back to the same problem; one good shot from another ship and that rangefinder is gone. Also, if by some terrible chance Illinois rolls onto her side when (or if!) she sinks (or worse, capsizes), the way she comes down could determine what details survive the sinking, and glued-on little pieces aren't likely to remain attached if she hits a rock or log or something. So, I finally came to the only real solution: drill holes into the rangefinders and the gun houses and apply them that way. As precisely as possible, I plotted all six drill points on all three gun houses (one pair per gun house) and drilled them sideways with a mounted dremel, which is yet another gift from God to the hobbyist; seriously, if you're looking for a versatile means of mounting your dremel, get the Dremel Workstation. I've had mine for almost a year and it's been wonderful. Here are two of those rangefinders in my ersatz painting studio; you can see the 1/8th inch drilled hole in the RF that will eventually be affixed to the starboard side of a gun house. All six should be painted and in place by next week if I stay on top of things. This next photo is more a testament to the build quality of the Strike Models Iowa-class hull than anything else. Late last year I build a carrying device of sorts for the Illinois that would let me move it from my truck to the water and back again safely and efficiently, and also allow me to lift the ship from the water in awkward places. The battleship carrier worked beautifully several times, until earlier this year during our freak warm spell in March, the carrier fell apart as I was moving the ship from the water to a pond-side deck/sitting area. Illinois tumbled from the carrier onto the gravel 'beach' while still laden with all of her batteries and ballast that keeps her trimmed to the waterline. She only fell one foot, or it might even have been less than a foot, but it was a heart-stopping moment, and I feared the worst. After all, these hulls are gel-coated fiberglass, and if hit the right way, they will break. After examining the hull, all I found was this external damage to the gel coat, but inside the hull was a discoloration, in a sense, of the pink fiberglass structure that suggested there was more to the hit than meets the eye. Sure enough, on a subsequent cruise, I determined that there was a slight leak from that point. Out came the Loc-tite marine epoxy and I applied a good amount to the inside of the hull only to restore watertight integrity, with great success. Eventually, I will grind down and smooth out the jagged edges and cover them with some sort of epoxy compound so that it just plain looks better. That almost-hole in the side of my ship has no business being there, especially as it's far too low to be considered penetrable area. However, even though that ugly gash is ruining the overall beauty of my ship, the damage could have been far, far worse, especially falling onto rocks while in motion from a decent altitude. If nothing else, it is one more statement to the strength and durability of Strike Models product. If the fiberglass had been thinner, or no gel coat there to take some of the initial impact, I might be budgeting for a replacement hull or planning some sort of massive cut-and-patch job that might not even work. And on that note, here's a lovely bow shot of USS Illinois in 'drydock'. (I love how that can of spray paint in the right side of the image gives the ship a sense of scale)
gelcoat as ablative armor. Never considered that before. Good to know it has a purpose in life! Looking good!
She's a beauty alright. I need to bling mine too and was wondering how I was going to do the section for the anchors. I had similar fates of destruction with my Yamato sliding off a compost bin and sriking the rudder and prop shafts and the worst one , same ship was when I just finished painting it , I turned my back and then heard an awful crash , turned my head in time to see the hull and the table it sat on fall over and hit the driveway , which is inclined. The hull bounced then rolled several feet till it left the driveway, cleared the sidewalk and ended up in the street. Lucky for me I did not have the superstructure on the hull at the time. The way teh hull hit it bounced and rolled to land upside down in the street gutter. Only the tip of thebow and the sides were scraped up. No balsa damaged as the armor belt ridges deflected or absorbed the impact. Talk about sweating bullets.
Oh forgot to mention a few years later from that incident again another refit of the hull I was returning from the shipyar with the Yamato in the car(hatchback) . I was stopped at a light with cars ahead of me then suddenly I was rear ended by another vechicle which the impact caused Yamato to shoot like a torpedoe between teh bucket seats and hit my dashboard. The dual sidemounts were ripped from their mountings in their barbettes and I had a nasty scrape on my right arm.
Did a little work on the Illinois this weekend: got the gun house range finders installed, finished painting the aftermost rangefinder tower, and started working on my official forward deck hold locks: I'm scratchbuilding some 40mm AA mounts that will fit into those two forward AA positions; when I glue them to the screws themselves, I'll have a hopefully durable way to lock and unlock my deck. I'm using sheet aluminium for the AA position and them 16th inch brass tube for the gun bodies and then I think it's .025 guage music wire for the gun barrels themselves, which I think will be reasonably to scale. The plans sold with the Strike Iowa-class (or at least my copy) are really light on detail for the 40mm positions, which is fine because there are a plethora of reference photos on navsource.org that have helped out nicely. Pictures will be up later tonight.
So, a night late, but not a dollar short... This is a photo of my first scratchbuilt 40mm gun emplacement for my forward deck locks. The plate itself will be affixed to the bolt hiding in the gun tub and be the means by which I engage and disengage that particular lock. Another view: Here is the armored citadel top piece being test-fitted, in a sense, before going into final paint: The citadel I cut off of a 1.5-inch dowel and then with my dremel fixed in place on the handy workstation I mentioned a couple posts back, I sanded it down to shape. This is how I keep my dummy barrels in place so they don't slide around or fall out while on maneuvers: And finally, this last photo is something of a joke, at least to me. Mostly, the reason I even tried to do this was to see if I could, how difficult it was, and so forth. Yes, that is a replacement blade on my starboard screw; I had a connectivity issue later determined to be a loose connector for my motors one day at the pond, and when I brought the ship in to check it out, I set it too close to a plant without realizing it, and when I throttled up, I heard this awful "SNAP" sound, and when I investigated I noticed the missing blade. Efforts to recover it were unsuccessful, sadly. So, using a scrap piece of aluminum sheet I ground it down to the appropriate size and fixed it in place. It isn't fixed into place very well, mind you, and I fully expect it to fall off while under way. Again, this was just to see if I could do it, and also the reason I'm looking at ordering a pair of BC 5-blade propellers.
For a very pretty and efficient prop, have a look the Raboesch A-type 4 blade. I run them in HMS Rodney, to great effect. I used to run the D-type for more thrust, but found they were more prone to weeding. Don't know if the BC ones suffer the same way. A prop full of weed is a useless blob, and when you only have two pushing the ship, it can be fatal.
Thanks for the tip; I'll look into them. These are Strike Models 1.5-inch 4-blade props, and I've run in some algae-filled waters without any detrimental effect, but that was because I was careful to maneuver around the stuff, as well as avoiding known areas of subsurface weeds. However, no two ponds are created equal... heh.
