S.M. U9 - Das Werk - 1/72 (static)

[DrSchmidt]

After the little UB1 project it's time for something bigger again. As a big fan of the German Imperial Navy submarines I instantly fell in love with the S.M. U9 kit by Das Werk in 1/72 scale and bought it right away when it hit the stores. RC Subs provides an excellent PE enhancement kit that also went into the shopping card. And now I feel like getting this boat done.

First part of the build is joining the halves of the hull. The hull is detailed quite beautifully and has an excellent fit. But I knew from other build blogs and also from the manual of the RC Subs PE kit, that the bow is much too wide., about 3-4 mm. In reals that would have meant a bow with 25 - 30 cm width (10-12 Inches). Now way. So the first thing I did was to thin down the bow line and adjust the hull line back to the muzzle door bulkhead. In the end I came up with a bow of about 0,3 mm width, about 20 mm in real. That's O.K.. After that everything was pretty much straight forward: One has to install three bulkheads and a good amount of cross bracings. I glued everything to one hull and joined that hulls provisionally to get a proper alignment of bulkheads and bracings. After letting everything set over night, I glued the two halves together. Looks good so far...

[roedj]

I, too, like the look of the "older" boats. Your work seems to be very nice but I have questions mainly on your use of the word -- STATIC.

1) Is this model intended to be a "shelf queen" and never get wet,

OR...

2) Are you, somehow, going to cram a bunch of RC stuff in there and get wet?

Captain Confused

[DrSchmidt]

It's going to be staticdisplay model. So no, it's ot going to be a functional RC model. But I'm working on the SM U1 which will be RC

[redboat219]

Das Werk 1/72 U9 in pool. Not sure if it's RC

http://www3.udg.edu/fcee/professors/gcoenders/U9.htm

[DrSchmidt]

Before the installation of the deck, I improved the hold for the exhaust mast. It's already a nice part that shows the upper side of the pressure hull, but of course it was not closed but open to deck superstructure. RC Subs offers a replacement, but I took the dimensions of the original part, designed extensions and printed them. They were then glued to the left and right of the styrene part using superglue and then the styrene between the struts was drilled and filed away, Voila, an open structure with a bit more of the pressure hull.

[DrSchmidt]

I continued with the deck. One has to glue two shafts to the underside of the deck. The shafts are made of three parts and seem to house winches or valves. I'll have to look up their original function. Nevertheless, nice detailing.







The well for the exhaust mast got its primer and was then painted in Vallejo hull red. I applied a good chunk of Miliput below the position of the mast which will be used to fix the mast with a bolt. Here I deviate from the normal installation order, as normally the mast would have been installed movable together with the well. I'll keep it fixed, so the Miliput and the bolt. Nevertheless, the well looks quite fine under the deck.









I'll also replace the stand of the kit. So I glued two M4 screws to the bottom of the hull from inside using Epoxy.





Finally I glued the deck into place. I'd had to adjust the width of the deck to be able to install it. I might have pulled together the hulls a bit too much when I assembled the hull. With all the cross bracings there is no flexibility whatsoever, so I had to make the adjustments on the deck. But that was no major issue.

[DrSchmidt]

The conning tower is made of a few, well fitting parts. The only drawback is again the too wide nose. This time I fixed it with some styrene that I filed into shape. Then the conning tower is glued to the hull....looks nice.













The stern had two muzzle doors. The kit recreates this assembly nicely using three parts. Onto the stern and this section is done, too.





The gap, originating from the re-shaped bow, was then closed using styrene sheet material and putty.



Then I continued with the first details on the deck. Some of the vent openings were drilled open and a deck panel that was not present on the original (according to RCSubs) was removed using putty.







Finally I assembled the propeller axis the respective supports and the rudder and glued them into place. Again nicely fitting parts. So far I like the kit...

[DrSchmidt]

I continued with adding the RCSubs PE parts to the dec. For the ones who love drilling....that's ine for you. All the holes in the deck have to be opened with the respective drill bits. Problem: The holes in the deck do not line up with the holes in the PE parts. That makes drilling challenging as the drill tends to deviate for its ideal track. That has then to be corrected, either by a cutting with a scalpel or by drilling with a larger diameter. When that's done one can glue on the PE panels. I used slow drying super glue to do this, as it allows for re-positioning of the panels.

[DrSchmidt]

On with the finer deck details. After the relatively large deck panels I glued some hatch handles into place. About 2,5 mm diameter and about 30 pieces. Really nothing for the impatient but worth the work....

[DrSchmidt]

I made a mistake and started some research about the boat, i.e. I asked Bernhard Wenzel, who did the CAD files for the kit, about some details and got all the shortcomings of the kit as reply. E.g. the fairing for the chain locker..only on the port side. So I filed the starboard side flat and evened it out using putty. The rubbing strakes are missing...easy fix using 2 mm half-round styrene profile. Besides that allot of PE...tons of manholes on the side tanks, PE on the aft torpedo tubes, on the conning tower, PE replacing the hinges on the chain locker, and much more....getting there.

[DrSchmidt]

continued with changes on the model to closer match the original. I'll build the later version, where the antennae masts could be set upright using a pneumatic actuator. This version of the boat hat an insulator mast for the antennae cables. I made a CAD drawing and 3D-printed it. Looks good to me. I also decided to depict the forward deck hatch open. Late decision, after the deck has been glued into place. So I widened the hatch opening a bit, 3D-printed the shaft into the boat and glued it into the hatch opening. If you do your boat, do that before attaching the deck. Much easier....









On the left side tank one can also the opening for the pneumatic actuaor for the forward antennae mast nicely hidden under a PE detail by RC Subs

The next fix were the bow dive planes. The U9 had two pairs installed on two levels (I guess to improve their effect). There was also a third attachment point, that was not used. The kit wrongly places the planes on the top two levels. The real boat had them on the lowes and the tp level, leving the middle point free. The planes didn't have proper streamlined profiles, the ones in the kit do. So I printed new ones and installed them on the correct positions. Finally the rods for the plane protection were glued into place, too.





The stern also got plane protectors and the flag pole....

[Thorbrandr]

Nice!

My wife got me one of these a year or so back. After looking it over, I got another to build as RC. Space in the hull is tight, but I found a WTC that should work.

[redboat219]

Nice!

My wife got me one of these a year or so back. After looking it over, I got another to build as RC. Space in the hull is tight, but I found a WTC that should work.

Any info or photo of that wtc?

[Alucard]

I like the detail you are doing to the sub.

[DrSchmidt]

Not for punishment, just for practice.....one drawback of the kit is the hard an brittle plastic. This results in fragile parts like the flag post or the rods for the plane protectors are super susceptible to break. I won't go into details, but those parts are now made of brass with steel interior, the flag post is pure steel. The advantage, besides better stability the diameters are now closer to the original. So no accident, just an improvement ;-). Besides that....PE, PE, and more PE parts. Lugs, steps, handles, and whatnot. Looks good....