Richelieu, I have no doubt that during my first battle that Wisconsin will become friends with Davey Jones. I am just hoping that while I am doing the initial systems check with no one shooting at me that see doesn't sink because of the engineering aspects of my build such as the skegs, balsa sheeting, silk spanning, inadeuquate sealing of shaft / rudder stuffing tubes or any number of things that I have done. I would never hear the end of it from my family and friend . . . a retired Sailor and Industrial Engineer that built a ship that refuses to float . . .
It's all good, Ken... As an ordained by the US Navy Electrician's Mate, I know for a fact that if anything breaks on my ship, it'll be electrical. I just see the smoke, and smile It is my... density. Er... Destiny. One of the two, anyway.
Tugboat, My wife seems to point out that I was a Masterchief Electronics Technican and my home electronics never seem to be fully working. I guess that it is the same principle as "The shoemakers children are the last to have new shoes."
Friday was a successful day in getting Wisconsin one step closer to certification. I spent Thursday afternoon silkspanning the hull. It went very well. Brian's crash course on silkspanning during the MABG May event proved invaluable. It took me a little of an hour and a half from start to finish to complete the job. After doing my research, I determined that I was going to paint Wisconsin in the Measure 22 color scheme. The lower portion of the hull below the waterline is painted in insignia red. The horizontal line up to the lowest point of the main deck is painted Navy Blue. The remaining surface area is supposed to be painted haze gray. I used Testors Model Master Dark Sea Blue for the Navy Blue and Testors Model Master Navy Aggressor Gray represents Haze Gray. I attempted to do as little masking as possible. I did not want to damage the silkspan and risk having a leaky ship. I used painters paper as a barrier. This worked well for me with verry little overspray. There is a little touch up that needs to be done, overall I am pleased with the way that my painting. Here are a few more shots of Wisconsin in all of her glory !!!
I am currently working on Wisconsin's internals. What is the best method to mount Big Gun cannons, Indiana style?
With the silkspan, 3M green or Tamiya masking take should be fine if you allowed your dope/contact cement/clear lacquer to dry long enough. Did you get the paints from their Acrylic line? Most clubs do not allow enamel paint. Mounting cannons: This is one of the most frustrating aspect of all formats IMHO. If you have enough vertical clearance, I would recommend a base plate that can be removed from the ship. This way you can make minor alignment adjustments and have room to install/tweak your sail-winch servo and rotation linkage ( line, o-ring, chain and sprockets, etc...). On the ball-valve assembly of most big-gun cannons that I have seem there are usually a mounting bracket machined on the bottom or (most commonly) a hole or two tapped for 6-32 or similar. Most I have seen have these on the side. Fabricate a bracket that can attach to the cannon and attach that bracket to the base-plate. You will want to make sure you have the barbett holes cut into the deck in the proper place, and check your alignment against that. I have only done Indiana installations in two boats, so YMMV...
Dustin, I just rechecked the MABG Constructions rules and it states that enamel paints are approved for use in our club, so I am good to go with that one. What does enamel paint do to the hull that would cause it to be illeagel in most clubs? I purchased the Strike Models sub-deck / deck kits. With there deck the barbett holes are precut so I have a general idea where the cannons are supposed to mount. One of the problems that I had was getting Wisconsin's A and B cannons set so that the sail-winch servo would rotate both turrets. I guess this is going to be a trial and error process.
On my Richelieu, I used one servo to rotate the A turret and linked the A turret to the B turret. I used 1/8" o-ring stock from Fastenall and custom made the o-ring to fit. The o-ring method has advantages in that a passing bump will not strip out gears on the servo (like a chain and sprocket setup), and is easier to install than a line and spring method, but any bump will mean adjusting alignment. Enamel paint dries "harder" than acrylic or lacquer according to the reasoning behind the rules. Like wise Latex is also banned in some rule sets because it goes on thicker. Personally, I don't think it matters as I had an Indiana BB penetrate 1/8" balsa with latex paint, but the rules are the rules...
I don't remember seeing it in MWC or Battlestations! rules, I think those clubs only use a drop test.
Dustin, Would you have any pictures of the Richelieu's A & B turret section? If so, could you post them or shoot them to me via e-mail? I would appreciate it. Ken
Ken, if you don't mind me asking ... can the file size of the pictures you are posting be crunched down a little? For some people that do not have access to high speed ISPs or have computers that are "graphically challenged", the large file size pictures can cause the page to take forever to load. The pictures won't loose enough resolution to make a difference here at RC Naval Combat and will save space on the servers handling the web pages.
RichelieuBB, What size pictures would be best for posting? I noticed that in other build blogs, folks have posted full pictures. I thought I was saving space by posting these size pictures. Perhaps I am just doing it the wrong way. I will do what I can do to help. I was hoping that more people with experience building ships would critic the progress of my build.
800px wide is the most you can cram in a post here, and you need a line break after each or you get scroll bars. Your pictures, while they appear smaller, are actually full sized images with browser tags that force them to 'scale'. So with each image, we're downloading a 2mb 2k x1.5k px image and then the browser is 'resizing' it down to whatever size we're seeing. Don't be discouraged by the annoying nature of posting pictures though, keep em coming!
Ken, I no longer have that ship, but here is a similar setup from the WWCC website: www.westernwarshipcombat.com/index.php You cannot see the rotate servo, but you can see the base and linkage between the two magazines. Here is one where you can see the servo: www.westernwarshipcombat.com/index.php
The waterline seems a bit low (from a glance it seems you have barely any penetrable area below?) and seems to rise up a bit as you approach the stern.
Thanks Dustin. It gives me a starting point. I sketched a rough draft this afternoon. Tomorrow when the contractors are destroying the rest of my kitchen, I will go out into my shop and build the first model. I will post pictures when I am done.
Nick, I agree with you. When I was doing my research on the Measure 22 format, it indicated that the hull red was painted below the waterline and the horizontal Navy Blue was painted below the actual waterline. Having been in the Navy for over 28 years, most of which was on ships, I have never seen this done. I do not understand the logic behind it.
I just went through the WWCC gallery, and there is a lot of great stuff there. You can find hull construction, cannon construction, cannon mounting, superstructure construction, general layout, and nifty tips and tricks. If you're looking for cannon ideas, Ben Lee's projects are great (see Warspite, Lion construction, Lion internal details, and Hood). Also look at Slocum's Bilge for the Kreuzer P, which has some awesome cannons and good mounting. Next, see the Black Diamond Squadron's Cerberus and Big Mamie albums for some massively over-engineered cannons. Then take a look at Dave Seibel'ss projects to see the construction of the Dutch Battle Cruiser and cannons in the Lutzow. Dave Seibel's Vainamoinen shows his method of cannon mounting and rotation, which is somewhat different that what I commonly see. Steve Reese's album on the construction of the Italia includes a bit on cannons. Finally, Sparky's projects includes a closed-breech cannon he made (I think the design has some issues, but it's still impressive, like the one-shot 10-gun secondary battery he made for Montana).
