The skegs look great and should work well. Boy, wish I had seen these skegs before I built mine. They look great!
It looks like your skegs are actually starting after the hull begins to curve up towards the stern, rather than remaining flush and level with the keel as is detailed in the Iowa-class plans and in the reference photos available at navsource.org. Are you building the skegs to a perscribed plan length to better position your drive shafts? I made it a point to extend the depth of my skegs on my USS Illinois all the way to the level of the keel to make sure that there's flush material all the way from bow to skeg end to better protect my drive shafts and rudders. Just curious as to the reasoning behind the skeg placement.
The skegs are in the scale location. But at the leading edge they are very thin in order to sit flush with the bottom of the hull. I intend to lay a thin piece of aircraft plywood over the bottom edge of the enitre skeg, and it will then be sanded down so that it butts up against the hull where it starts to curve up. The leading edges now extend about an inch further forward than the cut in the hull skin. At this point they are keyed in to make sure that the skegs are in the right position.. I will post some more photos soon. This is my first attempt at building a ship with skegs. And the skegs that are in place are actually my third attempt at making them work. Originally, I simply cut them to shape, and was going to mount them to the hull with screws to some wood slats on the inside of the hull for strength. But I was concerned that they would get bent, or broken off if someone sat the ship down on the skegs. Now the skegs extend into the interior of the hull, and I can strengthen the inside parts as much as I like. So the outside will look pretty much as it dows now, but with a thin strip on the lower edge to make things flush with the bottom of the hull. But on the inside, there will be a built-up wooden plate, with cross-pieces. Mikey
That makes good sense... my skegs are relying on the firmly-placed driveshafts and the heavy epoxying job that holds them to the hull, lol. We'll see how they hold up, mine at least; yours will probably just give up and take on the qualities of the fiberglass around it rather than trying to be wood
Looks great. Perfect. NIce work!Mine started out like that but I thickened them up with pink foam and fiberglass matt to make them super strong. These look really strong so you should have no issues there. Clean nice work.
Thanks. We have not had her in the water yet. But we plan to have her set up for the waterline where it is at. So I am not sure how heavy she will be. Here are some internal shots of the skegs, and the rudders. I had to skip the clean-up, as we are running behind schedule for getting this monster on the water for the battle in less than two weeks. Mikey
I like how the skegs are inside the ship as well. They will be handy for mounting the rudder servo(s) to.
Progress was made on the Ohio superstructure this weekend. Now it won't look like an aircraft carrier for its shakedown cruise.
The Superstructure looks great. Maybe one day I will build a Montana and then I can use these photos as reference. Nice work!
If you want a good source to use when constructing a Montana, go to this website: http://www.motionmodels.com/ships/bb/bb67.html The pictures of the model on the website are what I used to help interpret the plans and they have lots of detail. I didn't use foam for the superstructure, I used 3/4" poplar wood. Sides are cut 1/4" thick so that the interior is hollow. I didn't take any pictures when I was putting it together, but you can look at the pictures of the 01 level earlier in this thread to get an idea how I did it.
I remember that site. There's an official model of that ship too but it doesn't show the 2nd funnel being taller than the first. Is your 2nd funnel going to be taller than the first one? I think the 2nd funnel being taller takes the look away for sure howeve it is interesting. Either way it's a great looking ship. Motion Models version is the most detailed version I have seen yet though. Your plan doesn't show the rear funnel being taller though.
The second funnel is shorter than the first, by about 1/4" - 3/8", which follows the plans I had. I looks like it is considerably taller on the plastic model. Side views I have from other sources show the back funnel as either even or slightly shorter than the front stack.
This project looks great! I would urge caution referencing that website. It doesn't look very accurate, the aft stack and the bridge area in particular look off. The Montanas would have reverted to a separate wheel house from the armored conning tower arrangement such as seen in the North Carlonias. This is confirmed in the various pictures of the official models and even the offical painting. I do think that the squared off bridge arrangement as seen on the Iowas (starting with Missouri) is better looking from pure aesthetic perspective! Either rate I hope this project is still active and love to seen and recent progress photos.
There are some battle photos of this monster in the photos section on this site. Xenia, Ohio November battle thread, and the fall regionals Xenia, thread. Mikey
