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.

[Davjacva]

Haven't posted due to some hickup with access that seemed to resolve itself, so am catching up from last December...and the sub regardless is now finished so time to catch up on the work. Have to complete the box so it can travel down and run at Cohutta. I have two sources of photos (phone and camera) and I've tried to delete duplicates. This set shows Dave recreating the lost detail around the torpedo tube shutters. I took it home and then cleaned up the work then primered it. These are not in order.

[Davjacva]

With the first Type XXI that Dave did for Joe Hoffman, he removed a lot of the detail (Dave's work on this forum from last year), and he wanted to keep it on this one, so here we're recreating it, cleaning it up, and re-primering again. Additionally, fixing hull alignment and imperfections between the hull pieces. The weld seams were recreated with CA and baking soda, shaped, then followed with NitroStan, sanded and then re-primered...again.

[Davjacva]

Now it's time to trim. Of particular note: Dave's dunk-tank bought the ghost last week, so he's got a new one getting delivered any day now. After practicing on Joe's, Dave had this one almost immediately dialed in.

[Davjacva]

The boat is now fully operational and it's time to paint. A while ago, after primering, I've switched to base-coating in a dark color, here we have flat black. With this thin hull it helps out a lot and you immediately see any missed spots. Next is painting the upper light gray, then masking that off and doing the dark gray lower hull. I used Tamiya sky gray and Panzer gray for those. I then pre-shaded the lower hull with both a light and dark tone of the original color then gloss coated it.

[Davjacva]

To trash the lower hull, I mixed up an acrylic mung coat. I figured these XXI's operated in the Baltic and North Sea so I gave it that treatment. I stippled the mung coat on, hit it with a heat gun and let it dry. I then came back and did a grass skirt of pretty dead algae, then did some dings on the port side where probably a tug hit it (love battle damage). I then started working on the upper hull. Light gray is a tough one to bring out some color on when the paint is supposed to be not that old. So I stressed it with lighter and darker shades, did some salt drains and a little rust, then treated everything with a filter to bring the colors together with nothing looking stark.

[Davjacva]

Its now done, I haven't finished the transport box yet, and it doesn't have proper scopes or snorkel, those'll have to wait. I'll get some proper photos later.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Beautiful!

[MFR1964]

Looking good, i can't wait to see some pictures in action, mine has also hit the water but needs some more foam for the trimming.

Manfred