Newbie no more - Building the Revell 1/72 Gato

[trout]

Way back when, I use to do quite a bit of model building. Here is one of my builds:

I know, enough of the chit-chat, back to the build!

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Hey! ... that's good stuff. You obviously know your way around an air-brush. And I see a seamless assembly there. That's Lee Staton quality work there, pal.

You a Wonderfest graduate or sumth'n?

David,

[trout]

David,
Thank you for the complement (especially being compared to Lee Staton)! No Wonderfest training, although I attended Wonderfest once in the early 90's. Most of my training was from trial and error, reading, talking to people, and anywhere else I can gather information. Sitting here doing the math, it has been about 45 years of building models and about the last 10 years a sabbatical. So jumping back in with this sub build has fired off all sorts of creative juices. You, oztruck, Manfred, Rick Palumbo, and many others are my inspiration today and set the goal I would like to reach for.
Peace,
Tom

[beeryboats]

Tom,
Have you had a chance to use the prop shaft die I sent you? I posted on my build that I'm looking for a flood hole pattern. I've been crawling the web for two days now. Any chance you can share where you found your pattern? I had no idea Caswell has a stick on pattern either or I would have ordered it with the darn driver kit.
Jay

[trout]

Jay, I did get the die and have not used it yet. BIG Thank you! I will be working on the shafts this weekend. Here is one pattern: <- it is there (white on white). Scott Trosper has worked on the pattern from several years ago (I believe he work on it with Crazy Ivan if I remember one thread I read correctly), I found his pattern on SubCommittee at Scott's members webpage and then another gentleman (Eric Moody) sent me the same pattern. When I looked through some of David's cabal reports, I saw this pattern in one of the pictures of David's build ( It looked like he used the pattern at one time) and David mentioned Scott's name in a post somewhere and that is what sent me searching for Scott's web page. Anyway that is the web of how I came to use it (oh and fueled by me trying to save a dollar). Maybe David or Scott could shed some light on the history of the patterns.

[beeryboats]

Great! Thanks. I'll ask my techi wife if she can print it at a usable size for me. Keep the die as long as you wish. My use for it is over for now. But I would like it back so I can use/share it again.
Jay

[trout]

Jay,
Thank you for letting me use the die, I will return it soon. If you want, I can print up the plans and send them to you. I put it into Adobe Illustrator, made sure the length was correct, then printed it using tiled printing and put a 1" to 1.5" overlap. that way i could line everything up. I really appreciate your generosity and regret that I did not offer the saw blade instead of pointing out where I got it. You taught me a lesson, thank you.

[beeryboats]

Tom, thank you so much for the bottom plan. My wife had the I.T. person for her company do her magic and emailed it back to me in a printable page by page layout. Very nice indeed! After downloading a copy of Adobe Illustrator, we couldn't figure it out. Just not my field of experience.

[trout]

While I have a little down time (there is a story behind it, but I will not bore you with it), I am looking to add some details to the deck. One of the things I want to add is the exhaust and footholds on the rear sides. I took the line drawing from the Revell Gato instructions and superimposed images of different ships, including the USS Cobia. The results are interesting (for me at least - could be my state of mind). Here, take a look and let me know what you think.
USS Bashaw SS-241

Next is USS Cobia SS-245

USS Greenling SS-213

USS Haddo SS-255


The ship is layered over the line drawing with transparency so you can see both images with the differences between top image (Real Gato or Drawing of another) and the bottom (Revell Gato Line Drawing). If you have a side view of your completed Revell model kit, please send it to me. I would like to overlay your model with their own line drawing, just to see.
Happy Thanksgiving to those that celebrate this holiday.
As a side note, I am working on more build information, but for the meantime I may be jumping around until parts/info/healing comes in.
(my observation here is not correct, if the real sub is photo'd even a few degrees of perpendicular it will shift the alignment of items on deck. So look at the above post with a grain of salt)

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

So .... why the jumping around?

[beeryboats]

That's interesting. You sure know your way around Illustrator.

[trout]

@David - You know the main reason. There are several reasons for jumping around. I am waiting on some parts and not wanting to do nothing, I am working on different things - all of which need to be done, just not in the order I would like. I am also researching for the next phase (detailing) once the core dive system is up and running. I am thinking through on challenges that I need to resolve (like WTC placement, dual SNORT install), but the main reason is I am medicated with pain pills. I was wrestling with my family, on my back on the floor, my wife was tickling my feet, the dog was pulling my hands, and that left my midsection open for a jumping attack by my son. He landed on my chest (instead of my belly - like he usually does), cracking and spraining my ribs, thankful they did not get broken (recovery can be unto 6 months for that). Apparently a sprain/crack hurts as much as a broken rib, according to the doctor. Either way, it hurts like a son-of-a-gun. The recovery on a cracked/sprain is up to 3 months. Thank you for asking. LOL - ouch, it hurts to do that.

@Jay - These were done on Photoshop, but I am familiar with Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, and most of Adobe's line of software. How's the flood holes coming along? I appreciate that we are both building in parallel. It is nice to see how you have worked through areas and how we both hit the same road bumps.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Ouch! Take your pills and do what the Doc says. Parts are ... as they say ... in the mail.

David,

[trout]

David do not think it is just you I am waiting on. I have several things on order. There are servos coming in, snort pumps (just came in), tools, screws, nuts, and LiPo charging Bag. Thank you for getting the part in the mail. You are DA MAN! (no buttocks kissing intended) LOL -ouch

[trout]

Completing the deck fastening. Following David’s direction of locking down the deck, I placed his upper deck foundation piece and checked fit. Before I drilled, assuming I know where the hole is to be placed, I wanted to mark the hole that the screw would come into the inside and see how it lined up.

I used a mechanical pencil and pushed out a long length of graphite.

Then placed the pencil into the hole were the screw would go and moved the pencil around until I felt like I had a good mark.

I do not think the photo came out well enough, but the inside of the deck there is a slight flattening or ghost of the hole on the other side of the deck. The upper deck foundation piece lined up perfectly. Here you can see the hole that Revell has placed for the rear flag mast.

Using a 1/16” drill, I drilled out the hole.

Put the screw in and the upper deck foundation. It lined up perfectly. I think David might know what he is doing.

The kit comes with a slotted 2-56 machine screw, I personally like phillips and so I replaced the screw. It is 1/32” smaller diameter head and I wanted to save the weight that David’s screw would have added plus scale wise the phillips is 2.25” smaller (tongue placed firmly inside cheek).

Following the directions and tips from the dvd, I roughed up the areas with sandpaper and CA’d the upper deck foundation onto the hull.

Time to counter sink the hole. I used a hart bur about the size of the crew head counter sunk the hole.

Placed the deck on and secured it with the scew.

Nice and secure.