I have carved and planed the hull to its maximum beam/circumference. My planing technique leaves a lot to be desired as it is not as straight as I hoped for. I marked where the hull narrows down and the stem and stern. I will drill some holes to align the tail fins and sail, then carve/sand down the stem and stern.
Ken Pugh
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Ken,
This will be really neat to see. I've always wanted to carve a modern sub.
Garet
I wanted to make alignment pins for the tail surfaces. It would have been better to do this while the hull was still square, but I didn't have a drill press then. I mounted the hull in a vise and carefully aligned everything and drilled the holes. They looked okay at the time, but I later found they were off. I will have to glue the tail pieces on without reinforcement or re-drill the holes. Big disappointment either way.
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Using my cheap Harbor Freight sander I roughed in the shape of the hull. Later I used a palm sander and sanding blocks to get rid of the nicks and get that poplar nice and smooth. Poplar sands to a nice, hard, finish.
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Now that the hull is finished she needs a superstructure. Using the top view I cut out the superstructure outline and used this for a pattern.
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I gouged out the bottom so the superstructure would fit down on the hull. Because I had some gross conceptual errors cloggin up my brain, I did not do this correctly and dug out too much. Oh well, that's one of the uses for filler putty.
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Now the superstructure is glued into place. I lot of shaping is yet to come along with lots of detail carved into the superstructure.
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This is going to be a great build Ken,
can't wait to watch it progress.
Kenny
She definitely looks seaworthy from where I stand. Are you carving the tube doors into the deck area? What is that elevator/tailplane I see in the background?
The parts in the background are from the monster Hellcat, 1/16 scale. The tail is bigger than some of our wings. The submarine is 18 inches long.
Ken Pugh
The superstructure is shaped and I started carving in the detail. Part way through I decided it just didn't look scale so I filled it all in. I not only considered actual scale calculations, but I remember the days I looked down on the ship from the submarine tender and you just can't see the grooves. There is a slight color shadow on the missile hatches, but otherwise this is one smooth baby. It has to be to be quiet in the water, which is what it is all about. So, no scribed detail.
From here I cut up the plans and made the smaller parts, such as the fairwater planes, stern planes, and rudders.
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Ken Pugh
Back into the vise she goes. I need her stable so I can get the stern pieces to look square and in the right place. The sail is glued on and she looks like a submarine. The stern should be thinner but I am not going to try to go through sanding all that down and circular.
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Ken Pugh
Looking good Ken. Yours is the first modern sub we have seen so far.
It's been a while since I have posted and progress has been slow. I have been having troubles with my disability the insurance company says I don't have. Doing better now and chomping at the bit.
It's time to install the stern planes, rudder, and fairwater planes. The stern is in a cruciform arrangement and will show off any misalignment. I will use pegs to keep the planes in place. The toothpicks are to align the drilling of the holes and check that everything is okay.
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All the planes are in place and she really looks like a modern sub now.
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Modern submarines tow a sonar array behind them. This is the main sonar equipment. On the older boats, there is a housing to stow the towed array. This is what is going on next. I soaked the piece of basswood overnight. The bending would be tricky because it is not with the grain.
Borrowing ship modeler techniques again, I placed the piece on the hull with wood glue and nailed it down with brass nails. These will be removed later and the holes filled.
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Left to its own devices, this piece will pop off in time. The solution is to use another ship technique, treenails. Treenails, pronounced "trunnels" are just wooden pegs that hold the wood in place.
The best way to make them is with a drawplate. The one pictured is a piece of junk, but it is the one I have. You can get them from jeweler's supply and pay a lot of money for them. Another place to get one is from this guy.
http://www.byrnesmodelmachines.com/drawplate.html (http://www.byrnesmodelmachines.com/drawplate.html) Everything he sells is absolutely top notch handmade machinery. You can buy anything from him in confidence.
Don't be tempted to use dowels with a drawplate. Dowels are usually made of garbage wood. Use strip wood and turn it into a dowel. I drilled the holes to fit the treenails and inserted them with wood glue.
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First treenail is in place. Continue this process along the housing.
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When all the treenails were in place I cut them flush with a Japanese saw. Great tool. After plenty of sanding, shaping, and filling, all is well.
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Excellent build Ken. You have a really fine ship there. I never looked closely at nuclear subs before so this is the first time I have notice this tunnel feature. Looking forward to the completed project.
I don't know what ships actually have this feature. Of course, getting any info about modern submarines is next to impossible. The propellor is so secret that nobody can make a scale model of one. One scale feature I won't be putting in this model is a large dent on the starboard side of the superstructure just aft of the last missile hatch. Apparently it was from a sharp knock from a tug just before I joined the ship.
Another interesting feature will be the turqouise color of the antifouling paint. All pictures I've seen have shown the standard rust red color antifouling paint, but when I saw her lifted out of the water in a floating drydock, her underside was not red. That floating drydock was quite an experience. My maneuvering watch station was as a line handler, a job I loved doing. I was a nuclear reactor operator so I was a rare bird amongst the line handlers. Having them shoot lines at us from both sides was fun, but hauling in all that line was quite an ordeal. You start with a line no thicker than cord and slowly work your way up to the actual lines that will tow the ship into the drydock. We had quite a pile of rope on that tiny deck before we could finally rest. It wasn't very fun watching that line get so tight that water sprayed out of it and the tell-tales were very taut!!! Scary experiece. My station was just in front of the sail and there was nowhere to go to get some steel between me and those lines.
We had a tug tied to the aft end of the ship. They cast it off a little too late and it banged into the wingwall of the drydock just after it was set free. Tough little rascals. I'd love to get some drawings of the tugs we had there and build one of them. They were good little friends.
We pulled it into drydock, pump it out high and dry overnight, then the next day began preparations for going home. The ship operated out of Scotland. We left before dawn the next day and the wind was blowing so hard through that drydock that it was good having a seabag to keep my skinny butt from flying off the brow.
Ken Pugh
Ken,
Excellent job on the Kamehameha! I just got a book from the library about the WW I submarines built in Washington State and British Columbia. There are even a few drawings in the back.
Wow, what a story. I guess you've seen the infamous "Synthetic Line Snapback" training film (it was film, not video when I saw it). I had a similar scare with taut lines when they had lashed two landing craft together to enter the well deck of an amphibious ship at sea in moderately rough conditions. One of the lines slipped, and the remaining line was stretched so tight that it shot stinging drops of seawater flying out and made an awful groaning noise. I was way too close to the line at this point, and several others started to dive for cover, but the Marine standing next to me (a Harvard man, as it turned out!) jumped up, ran forward, threw himself halfway overboard to grab the loose line, then lashed it back in place.
That incident made it easier when a Gunnery Sergent the next week made me yell, "I wish I was a Marine!" when I was the first non-Marine to finish a particularly difficult climb up the side of a building. I still can't believe I did that.
Garet
You better believe I saw that movie. Scared the crap out of me. The submarine was towed into the drydock by the lines that were shifted to different winches as it moved up. The whole time I was looking at that thing trying to plot where I could stand at a 90 degree angle in case it gave way. I trusted our lines but had no faith at all in the lines on that floating harbor duck.
Of course, the crazy people were the divers underneath the submarine checking to make sure it was lined up with the blocks. My logical mind knows that the sub was not going anywhere in a hurry and they were much safer than I was standing two feet away from the cleat with those lines, but I wouldn't trade places with them.
Since we had nuclear weapons on the submarine and the tender, there were Marines everywhere providing security. Our guys had M14 rifles and .45 pistols. They had M16s and M60 machine guns. One day one of our idiot seaman had just been relieved from quarterdeck watch and he thought it would be a good idea to point his finger at a Marine as if it were a pistol. Every Marine on the tender drew down on his moronic butt and took him in custody. Everybody from the Captain on down reminded him how stupid he was.
Ken Pugh
The control surfaces have now been touched up and have a better shape. I gave them their airfoil shape before gluing them to the hull, though I think it would be easier to glue blanks to the hull then shape them. Learning as I go.
There is some detail work to do on the starboard stern plane, but it will be delicate when finished. I think I will do the screw first. Have not decided yet whether the screw will use the wood hull conical section or if I will cut it off and make a new one out of brass. If I can find a good way to glue the blades into the wood and get a strong enough and accurate enough joint, I may do it that way. Otherwise, I will probably make a new screw out of brass and solder on blades. Either way, it is going to be a pain.
Ken Pugh
Now for the hard part, how to make the screw and what should it look like. I will not say whether I have seen one before, but I did find a picture of one with a cover fitted and that is what I will use as my documentation. That's my story and I'm sticking to it! The screw is a very secret part of the submarine.
I can say it had seven blades, scimitar in shape, and it rotated clockwise when viewed from the back. Since it has seven blades, I knew I needed a template to guide their location.
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I plotted out the blades and cut a hole to match the position on the hub.
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Cut a groove around the hub to seat the blades. Blades are made from cardstock.
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On my template I drew an inner circle for the hub and an outer circle for the max diameter of the screw. In these circles I drew the blades. I then drew several candidate blades until I found one I liked, this I cut out of cardstock. I then used this blade as a template to draw more than seven blades, in case I dropped one. Using the good blade as a template assured uniformity. I then cut these blades out and glued them in the groove at the location marks. I used a glue that has a little flex to it when dry. The blades were coated twice with CA to harden them, though they are still very fragile. It would be better to make them of metal shim stock but I wanted to use a simple, easy to find material.
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The hull is finished and has a coat of sealer. Also note the little stub near the bow. The is for a particular piece of sonar equipment and is made of bamboo. Any time I need something small that protrudes, I use bamboo because of its toughness.
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The hull has a coat of primer and the surface is close enough. The base is just something I found at the craft store that was close to the right size. It is coated with cherry stain. The posts are scrap aluminum tubing. Later, they were cut down in size.
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When originally built she had red anti-fouling paint. Sometime later this shade of blue was used. All I know is when I put her into the floating drydock, this is what she looked like. The bottom coat is on and I used a device for ship modelers to mark the waterline location. If you can't find one, something make shift can be used. The base is coated with polyurethane. The waterline was masked off and the black topside color was painted. The sub is completely hand painted, as the real subs are. They may not start out that way, but untrained squids painted her every day she was dry afterwards, inside and out.
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The completed picture. The name tag was made from the scrapbook papers you can find in a craft store. It is a 12x12 sheet and is metallic. The great thing about this paper is the color goes all the way through the paper, so no white edge when you cut it. I cut it to 8.5x11 inches to fit in my printer and printed out my label. I then cut off the top part and can now shove it in for more passes. I will keep doing this until it is too short to use.
I tried to coat with PolyCrylic, but the black paint started coming off. Everything was cleaned off and another coat of paint applied. I then used polyurethane and everything was fine.
She is built from poplar, bamboo, basswood, and cardstock. It took 14 hours to complete.
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Ken Pugh
Outstanding results and the envy of any submariner. You can certainly be proud of this one. Congratulations on an excellent build.
Lou
Thanks a lot, Lou. Lots of pride in the old girl, even though she is no longer.
Ken Pugh
Ken,
What a wonderful model! You are right about everything being hand painted. I wouldn't have guessed about the blue paint, but I usually stayed top-side. ;)
I did find some of these subs are still lurking around (though not the Kamehameha; I looked):
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/oceaneer99/2460346907/in/photostream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/oceaneer99/2460346907/in/photostream)
Garet
Wow, what a neat display. The Kamehameha was scrapped in Washington in 2003 so I guess she wasn't needed for that monument. I'd like to see that but my getting there is next to impossible in what's left of my life.
I have no idea what the deal is with that paint. It was definitely a surprise for me. They started pumping her out at night and when I got up the next morning and went outside to look, I was shocked to see a turquoise blue bottom. It almost looked more like a coating whereas the red just looks like paint. Maybe there is some sound absorbing characteristics I don't know about.
I think the LA class boats were black all over because they had anechoic tiles that looked like rubber. I was never on an attack boat, but when I was based in Groton I got to see some.
I may have to make a model of the USS North Carolina, one of the new Virginia class boats. She was here in town in Wilmington, NC for a christening ceremony, but she is not accessible to the public, not even for pierside viewing. I can understand it, but when you'll let politicians see it, you can't be too concerned about security. It is amazing how many secrets our politicians leak to the press and never bat an eye at it. I guess I just have a different idea about patriotism than our betters.
Ken Pugh