Ray Mason Nautilus Build

[Davjacva]

Bright and early this morning, went about gluing down the superstructure to the upper hull finally. This brings about the fruits of a solid two weeks of work pretty much daily to get here today. Pretty much normal model building after attaching all the external pieces. Haven't figured out exactly how I'm going to paint it. Every time I get to liking something, I get a different take on it and throwing that idea out the window. In the movie, the scene where Kirk is throwing the bottles overboard, the hull surrounding him is ideal. I'd have to use hairspray probably to recreate it. Little problems, it'll come.

[Davjacva]

This week's 'Flail-Ex'. Re-creating the limber holes and surface detail on the superstructure. Tomorrow hopefully this will be permanently glued down. Every meal is a banquet, every model is an adventure...:)

[Davjacva]

Post mortem: Among the photos above is a photo of my TAIG lathe. Merriman gave this to me back about 2003. I recently rebuilt it and replaced the crossslide and put a DRO on it. I have another crosslide that has the taper fixture attached. I don't understand how people can get along without a lathe...sometimes even a mill. I've done a lot of projects with it, and it's saved projects that were missing or needed additional items. I've turned some 1/16 gun barrels and a ton of other stuff with it. I thought about getting something bigger, but for what we do, it really gets it.

[Davjacva]

This morning started at 8am and worked for 8 solid hours. I swear, an hour would go by and it seemed like 5 minutes. Anyway, today was spent correct the forward fit of the hull, then...we scaled the limber holes, drew them in, made tools, cut them out, sanded and painted over it all. Figured out where the panels are going to be, and cleaned up aft where the body filler wasn't supposed to be. Tomorrow, get to spend finalizing the fit so we can eventually glue the superstructure down. Still have to complete the detail on the forward sides though. Does anybody read this? Later.

[Davjacva]

Continuing work with getting the superstructure fitting correctly (52 steps back then one large Evel-Knievel leap for man-kind...something like that). Now that we've straightened out the sides, we can get the fit-up to the hull going. This is the 'wax on the hull, Bondo on the superstructure part' along with the CA glue/ baking soda to correct hull parts that all you sub people do in your sleep right? Anyway, making a mess.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Wet-sanding, cleaning up parts, Nitro-Stan filling, again, again, wet-sand, primer paint, blah, blah, blah. This is where its at today. Getting really tight. This week will be spent getting the gaps filled, then re-creating the detail...then the sucker's going to get mounted. I'm enjoying every damn minute of this :)

Thanks for the visual. Now for a long lava-soap brain-scrub to get that out of my head!

[Davjacva]

Wet-sanding, cleaning up parts, Nitro-Stan filling, again, again, wet-sand, primer paint, blah, blah, blah. This is where its at today. Getting really tight. This week will be spent getting the gaps filled, then re-creating the detail...then the sucker's going to get mounted. I'm enjoying every damn minute of this :)

[Davjacva]

Reshaping and re-glassing.

[Davjacva]

First glassing after cutting and re-positioning.

[Davjacva]

These week at the zombie-fest train-wreck. Hard to see but there's a big benefit afterward. The sides of the superstructure are concave, so here they are being corrected by being cut and pulled/positioned inward. Then they'll be glassed and size-fit to the hull via oil paint and a Dremel tool. Then the sides will be Bondo'd sanded, re-glassed, Nitro-Stan'd, then primered. Then this coming week they'll be re-sized positioned again, then the detail will be re-created.

[Davjacva]

Fun for today continues with the dive plane linkage work, and moving to the superstructure work (also known as the forthcoming crime scene).

The dive plane operators got their linkage tabs soldered on and the interlocking linkage today. There's a magnet with a threaded portion for fine adjustment on these rods. Pretty simple.

The upper superstructure was attached today with hardware and strong-backs in order to provide a solid base for the forth-coming work to correct the mating of the superstructure to the hull. Unlike other Nautilus's, where the upper superstructure is actually a part of the hull, here we get the joy of taking an imperfect superstructure and mating it to the upper hull, and you notice...there's a gap. Out of this whole project, this is the portion I've been dreading and kind of had a mental block on about it. So I took up my crosses up the hill to Merriman who has a plan. Nuke the entire planet from space and re-build...not quite, but I've been on this sheet of music before. Well, after getting it mounted, it all may not be as rough as all that. Yes, we're going to have to recreate a lot of detail, but it's getting 'old hat' and the sub is starting to look the part. I absolutely hat seeing screws exposed, and all of these will be buried into the substrate or hidden. If you look above with the Skipilus, the forthcoming work is revealed with the gap between the superstructure and upper hull, that is the next mountain to hurdle (lions, tigers, bears and mass destruction of detail, oh my!!!).

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

The Skipilus (reached a stopping point and the mind wanders...).

I'm outta the shop for five-frig'n-minutes and you pull this ****!

David
I Send E'm to School, Buy E'm Books, and What Do They Do???... They Eat the Teacher!

[Davjacva]

The Skipilus (reached a stopping point and the mind wanders...).

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

... You forget to mention that my poop don't stink!

[Davjacva]

This week, the planes are put in place and the control linkages are created and installed. So in typical Dave fashion, he'll do one, the say, 'I hope you took notes, do the rest', and leave the shop. My first thought is,
'We get to play with fire alone...' Anyway, the last shots are of the sub hulls together with the planes at neutral, and last ones with the planes in rise. Tomorrow we should get them connected and oriented for mating with the WTC.