But wait it is one more Revell Gato...!!!

[alad61]

Yes folks yet another individual is building a Revell Gato!!

Whilst waiting on the new motor bulk head from David for my Seaview and also the financial institutions to let me spend my own damn money in particular Skill Moneybookers... Anyway I decided to start on my Gato... A little over a week ago I downloaded all the cabel reports that David did some time back and have been studying them keenly. Though I feel confident about doing the main hull assembly and splitting I decided that the instructions accompanying the fittings kit would be a more concise how to guide. I will say what most have already said... Revell have done a fantastic kit. I'm not sure how many kits they would've churned of the molds but I was suitably impressed with how clean this kit basically is. There is minimal flash and all the fine detail looks pretty clean n crisp. Unlike some other brands of mass churned styrene kits. As for the styrene itself it is a really good constancy, not to soft and not so hard that it almost shatters when you snip it from the sprue!! There is a fair bit of mold release on some of the bigger parts but nothing a good clean won't fix.

Looking at all the pieces, the manual and Davids reports I decided that I would start with the sub assemblies that wouldn't interfere/interact with the conversion part. So the conning tower was the first cab off the rank and I'll follow this with the deck guns. Already I had to rebuild it a bit due to the reason of running a lpb/snort system. So I rejigged the front periscope a bit. I filled down the front of the molded scope shaft and then using a round rats tail file and drill I adapted it to take some styrene tube to which I added some small brass tube and then glued on the periscope lens housing I cut off the kit piece. Once in place I will runn some brass tube up into the base of the scope tube that will be connected to the lpb. I tried to keep the sizing in scale but I also wanted to make sure I had a decent tube cavity for air flow too.



Then I spent the rest of the day building up the conning tower proper. I went with thin wire on the front rails as David did in one of his reports and it sure does look better than the over sizeds cotton thread they supplied. All that I need to do is weather it up some and add the running lights and then I'll start on the guns.

[alad61]

A couple of hours a night to weather the tower and with today and I finished the guns and glued them to the tower decks, I also finished the 40mm cannon too. So It's now in storage waiting for the main hull and superstructure to be done. I decided to go with assembling the model based on the USS Flasher. I've been researching a bit of history about a couple of the fleet subs and the Flasher seemed like a good choice to me out of what marking Revell supplied. For the weathering I airbrushed a thin coat of tamiya smoke aver the bolt/rivets, those panes on the sides and weld lines along with most of the recessed areas for some depth and I then misted over the light grey to blend it in before adding the pastel for the rust streaking before giving it several coats of dull-coat. All the lamps and clear sights were added last after the dull coat. With the sights normaly I would use 1200 wet n dry to very gently rub them and then do several layers of lightly dry brushed black with a soft flat brush to pick out the raised relief, but I reckon they'll be some of the first casualties from handling the boat in and out of the water plus the dull coat would have spoiled the look making them frosty.


I also added extra holes for any trapped air to escape as this picture shows. There are also some along the rear deck edge as well as through the floor behind the bulk head to access the forward machine gun.


Not being much of an expert on these subs I am working with the colour scheme Revell supplied but even they contradict themselves... The instructions for the tower super structure has those parts painted light grey but the silhouette in the back of the book shows the tower being black? Which I went with as I like the contrast if nothing else. Though I reckon in this scale the straight semi-gloss black looks a bit stark. So I drybrushed some like grey on it which came out a bit heavy even after a coat of smoke it was still a bit harsh and looks like a buch of sea gull crapped all over it... For the guns I started out with the black then dry brushed them with a brown/grey and then a lighter dry brush of a battle ship grey (no seagull poo stains for them) before I airbrushed a wash of tamiya smoke and finished of with a little bit of rust from my pastels before a couple of liberal airbrushings of dull coat applied undiluted.


Please note I am aware that the American subs were maintained more regularly than the German U-boats but I am detailing mine as though it has completed a full 75 day plus tour at sea. I am going to try not to get to heavy handed and keep it blended and subtle but no doubt I'll upset the more purist out there.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

You're doing fine. Boats back from a war-patrol were indeed rather ratty looking.

David

[trout]

This is fun watching your assembly. Even though these are kits and you would think they all will look alike, I love how each one takes on the unique characteristics of the builder. Really look forward to your finished sub. Keep up the great work. I will add one comment that David shared with me (and for me proved good advice). Be careful how much you detail now (adding railings, guns, etc.) because in the hull building and testing of my Gato, I banged, dropped, knocked, snagged, and manhandled my Conning tower and upper deck. I would have doubled my frustration with repairing my additional breaks. You might not be a klutz like me and this might not apply to you, but I offer it anyways.

[alad61]

Thanks Tom & David.

I'veseen some boats with weathering somewhat "over stated" but it is easy to do, over state that is.... Tom I know what you mean about being a klutz... I debated about how far to go with the conning tower sub assembly. As for the rest of the boat any final weathering and parts detail will be after it's been trimmed & ballasted.

[alad61]

Well Im not sure how much further I can go with the build now. At least till the sd, fittings kit, template etc turn up, which should be around the 10th or so in May. I have been following Davids cabal reports as far as sitting the hull up. About the only thing left at this point is splitting the hull and gluing on the superstructure and filling any imperfections. Mmm that really contradicts my first sentence. :biggrin: Sorry for the "usual suspects" photo line up. I just want to chronicle as much as I can in case some one spots a goof or a way I can improve things.

Something I do with breaking kits out of boxes is to go through the pieces and sprues, bags or box looking for those pieces that break away during shipping etc. once collected and checked I use a glad zip-lock bag to keep them in as well as others that fall off the sprues during normal handling. and for larger kits like this one I then place them in a plastic tub for easy access. The tub also double as a wash basin for the parts too.



Keeping as close to Davids reports as possible I cleaned out the rear hull piece to make sure nothing would obstruct any moving parts later and I also trimmed back the bow plane bearing sleeves as suggested by the report too.


Then it was all glued together and left overnight before I marked out all the areas to be cut away... I should note here, before someone points it out, that I had not put in the hull foundation supports till after all the cutting out was done. They are now installed glued and tape applied to pull in the hull. When it came to gluing the hull I tend to work in stages. I glued all the pins with a slower setting solvent and I then work on the hull seam with the pro-weld a few inches at a time and hold them tight till little nodules of melted plastic are squeezed out of the seam. Once the whole piece is done this way I let it dry and sand back the glue join. Again its a slow process but quite often you can have a join that needs little or no filler.



This picture is after an hour cutting out the waste sections by hand. The only time I used the moto-tool was on the bow piece and to remove the blank end sections on the main hull pieces. Everything els was removed by using a razor saw and No11 knife to scribe and remove the cut outs. Old fashioned I know but it's what I am comfortable with. In fact that's how I will be splitting the hull!!

With all that cut away plastic I didn't see the sense in carving up one of my thicker plasticard sheets to stabilize the joins int the superstructure deck. Another trick I picked up was to keep all the shavings from the scribbing as they can be used to fill any miss matched seams and then melted inplace with the liquid glue. That way you get a cohesive fill rather than an adhesive one form super glue and backing powder.





I'll be honest and say that I'm rather nervous about splitting the hull as it's a long cut and it'll be a world of hurt if I screw it up!!!

[alad61]

Just a thought... As this will done as a mission or at sea boat just what was and wasn't seen on the decks? I imagine a bit of stuff such as rails etc would have been stowed in the various lockers but what about other rigging etc?

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Stop *****ing and cut that sucker! You jump out of perfectly good airplanes! ... this should be childs-play for you.

Nothing on deck but the fixed cleats, closed-chock at the stern, deck gun, and jumper-antenna foundations. Fill the square holes in the deck where the stancions went.

David,

[trout]

Yep, I remember cutting my hull and the Song "The First Cut is the Deepest" kept running in my head.....

There were so many changes on the Gatos, How crazy accurate do you want to go? What time frame? Wartime vs. Post WWII?
The railings did appear to be removable, but I have not seen a picture with one without them. There was a picture of a Gato emergency surfacing somewhere, I should look at that again, if I can find it......
Here is a section of the Balao detail plans for the railings



And things like making the Jackstaff raise and lower, that is a detail I will not do.


So, it is up to you. We will help which ever way you go. I like David's idea of not using the railings, but I am crazy and going to put them on (working on a way to make it removable, if wanted). You decide the details you want and I (and others) will help dig up what I (we) can.
Peace,
Tom

[alad61]

Stop *****ing and cut that sucker! You jump out of perfectly good airplanes! ... this should be childs-play for you.

Tis true... and I know how that ended!! LOL

Tom as much as I like the rails as dressing the hull I came to realize after all the handling of the hull this week end I reckon leaving them on is fraught with disaster...

As for this weekend... It saw me take the knife to the hull with some reasonably good success too!! Studiously avoiding the mini buzz saw on the moto-tool I scribed the hull split. The first coarse of action was to lay down about 5 layers of tape as a guide. I then used the sharp side of my No11 to carefully follow the edge of the tape a couple of times to score it. Then I used the reverse side of the knife tip to scribe the cut going slowly and keeping the blade as 90 degrees to the hull as possible. Over all it took just on 2 hours to complete the task with the exacto. for the front and aft vertical cuts I used my razor saw. I have to admit that even though I was expecting the forward and aft sections of the hull to spring up a bit it was still a bit of an OMG feeling for a second or two... Apart from one section I need to fill the cot on the whole is pretty good with an average of just over 1/32 of a gap along the hull when the forward and rear sections are held down. The added bonus is that the cut is below the waterline and with the hull eventually to be painted black it should all be good...



Rather than use filler to bring the cuts closer on the aft section I added some plasticard fillet which I lathered in liquid glue to soften it and when it was sanded and trimmed there is virtually no groove to be filled.:wink: I did the same up at the bow where the superstructure meets the cable tow. I also set a screw in place on the upper aft superstructure much like the Seaview to hold it all down and I did what David did in his cabal reprt with the skeg foundation by holding it in place with screws. The last thing was to use the kit propeller pieces to act as templates to drill out the shaft foundation holes.




The rest of the week will be working on the seams etc. Something that never occured to me when I ordered all the stuff from Caswells was to add on the DVD set. But I am finding Davids cabal reports and other posts here very usefull and I reckon I'm just clever enough to do the job with out the DVD set... Maybe...The Titanic :wink:

[trout]

Great work Alec! Very clean cuts!

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Good work. And a 1/32" kurf is not enough lost material to worry about. Well done, sir!

David

[alad61]

Another week worth of work seemed fairly successful. I reckon I am getting as close to the end of the grunt work on the basic hull now as I can with out the sd and fittings kit. I deviated a bit from Davids advice on what was on deck for mission runs in that I added the forward & rear flag poles, aerial foundation Along with the hydrophone and breather. Time will tell with handleing if these additions were a good idea but I like the look it gives, simple as that. So with those added all that left for the superstructure section is priming and painting. I'm very happy with the way the two hull sections sit and I found I only needed to add fillets to the top section which help a treat in getting the lower hull to conform with the top so I lucked out there as to not really needing to add filler to bring it all together. I have also decided that I will paint weather up the top section mostly due to the size of the beast and the limited space I have in my work space.

Ok, some picks of whats been done. The first are cleaning and filling the seams and rail mounts in the deck and forward superstructure. One way that I use to fill and fix some troublesome seams is sanding the area then working the styrene dust into the area and adding the liquid glue to melt and weld it together...

Then adding the bog and it's here I took Davids lead and used masking tape to keep the filler from going places I didn't want...

The first run of filer in the rail support holes and then another pass of a a finner filler to take up the areas that had some shrinkage etc...


Somehow I had lost the forward gangway ladder so I knocked up a new one. So much for checking and bagging loose pieces :(

The next couple of nights I finished off the skeg and prop shaft mounts and drilled and preppaired the rudder and forward dive planes.


I need to fix the shaft hole in the skeg with some bog as I went a bit askew with the drill...Scuba Diving


Tomorrow it's off the hobby store for more brass rod and wire and then I'll start painting up the top superstructure section... As for today I'm off to run the Seaview with the new motors. :biggrin:

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

The 'breather' was part of a ventallation system added to the mueum boat from which the Revell guys got their documentation -- not a fixture on active, commissioned boats. Drop it.

And you'll break off those flag-staffs in no time, I can assure you of that! Make the deck mounted passive sonar head removable -- and make its vertical element from metal, the base of which slides into a metal insert placed into the deck.

Give us an after-action report on that SEAVIEW run, Alec.

Good stuff! You kit-assembling machine, you!

David

[alad61]

You think they would have mention about the breather in the booklet and so make it an optional piece... So off it goes then. I do agree with you about the flag poles but I can't bring myself to take them off and as for the hydrophone I am considering using a small piece of brass rod as the thing is pretty flimsy, more so than the flag poles. I may even do the same for said flag poles and the antenna foundation? I like Toms idea with the magnets on the rail foundations but a klutz like me would still end up doing damage to them with handling and storage. When the primer was dry on the top hull section I sat the conning tower & deck gun in place and it looks mighty fine without the rails to clutter it up more, not to mention they'd be more crap on the decks to catch weed, reeds and stuff out on patrol. Mmm so why, I ask myself, am I leaving the flag poles in place then??? Short answer I like the look.