Jake's 1/96 Type XXI

[Davjacva]

With the Type IXC work winding down, I started working on two subs, the Mobius Scorpion 1/72 (on another forum post) and this Type XXI from Dave Merriman. This is still a side project, so this week I got the enjoyment of all Morlocks of filing out all the hull ports. Working about an hour or so a day I got most of them done in five days. I used a light as a ground out the hull on the inside, then cut the ports.

[Davjacva]

Today, went over to pick up the Type IXC that's been occupying much needed production space over at Dave's while the last flat clear coat is drying. Additionally, Dave did me a big favor and did the z-cut in the Type XXI hull, did the hull cut back aft and mated the tailcone section, and ported and installed the stern tubes for the propeller shafts. Oh yeah, he also cleaned up the resin cast parts with lacquer thinner, and thought you all could use some photos of that :) For those interested, he used a diamond wheel to do the hull cut, and I was amazed at how nice the cut was.

[Davjacva]

I finished grinding out all the ports, and it went pretty quickly. After I had used a Dremel and small files on one side, Dave told me to just use the Dremel and not only willl you get it, but it'll be very quick and accurate. I wound up doing the starboard side of the tower in 20 minutes and all the ports were flawless, so I had to go back to the port side and grind them out some more to get to scale. Not in the photos, but the next step was installing the alignment pins that will interlock the two hull pieces. You start by installing the pins, marking them with dark oil paint and rub that against the opposite hull and drill out where the mark was. You do that one set of pins at a time. Once they're all done, the one hull will invariably be more 'sprung' then the other one, so you have to fill in the hole, re-drill the hull either outboard or inboard of the original hull. Doing this one pin at a time, you can slowly get the hull to conform to the opposite side. It will have to be finished up with bondo and Nitro-Stan, but you want to get it very close. Next, Dave is mounting the dual motors onto their mount and aligning them with the propeller shafts. In some of the photos, Dave is using black oil paint to figure out where the high spots are, then grinding that out, and doing it repeatedly until the motor mount is flush into the hull.

[Davjacva]

This model is getting together remarkably fast. This week, the motors and mount were installed, the WTC saddles and indexing mount and alignment pin and then the forward and aft capture lips. The WTC is about done, and now it's going to be filling the hull seams and recreating detail. This thing looks like it's small, but it's the exact same size as the 1/96 Skipjack. I guess it's just not so robust as the Skipjack and that look is deceiving. Those two little RE-14 motors really make this sucker move. Dave had 7vdc in the one he did for Joe Hoffman, I'm going to crank it down to 6vdc. Awesome driver.