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Who is John Galt? -
Towards the end of the second world war Germany was desperate to complete and get operational her new breed of fast 'electro-boats', the Type-21 ocean going, and coastal Type-23. Wishing to illustrate how rough-and-ready these boats, being worked up for war patrols, likely to have received sub-standard maintenance and hull preservation – my display had to have the look of a vehicle where looks came in a distant second-place on the list of the Commodore's and crews priorities.
These boats were operated hard and put away wet. Those that survived long enough to gather rust and mung on the hull did so with little effort expended to clean things up. So, my model needed a ton of rust. And nothing looks like rust like... oh, I don't know... RUST!
For this model I first gave everything a nice think gloss clear-coat and then employed the Modern Masters 'rust' system: A primer to hold the iron powder paint, and a acid spray bottle to oxidize the applied iron bearing paint.
This looks like a stinking mess (and at this point it is!) but with all the iron oxidized and belching rust all over the place, it's now up to me to wipe away with various abrasives the excess rust and to do it in such a manner as to suggest how rust will respond to the force of gravity and the geometry of the surfaces it originates at and runs down from.
The sail has only received the primer at this point, but the hull has had both primer and iron paint applied and oxidized. You can see the untouched results.
Applying primer to weld beads, access door and hand-hole edges, base of ladder rungs and railing, limber holes, and other areas where rust will originate and propagate.
Meanwhile I painted the black portions of the KILO, WEBSTER, and BLUEBACK. A very, very dark gray – my stand-in for any model surface that is supposed to represent 'black'.
Removing the masking after laying down the black. This revealed some holidays in the anti-fouling red paint. Some counter-masking and touch-up with the red fixed all that.
As the red-black demarcation line was at the BLUEBACK's waterline I had to mark off and mask the upper rudders demarcation line. Back to the kitchen table-top to mark off the pencil cheat-line to the rudder.
Who is John Galt?Comment
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Sweet work.“Of the 40,000 men who served on German submarines, 30,000 never returned.”Comment
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Who is John Galt?Comment
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What all are you bringing to Georgia?“Of the 40,000 men who served on German submarines, 30,000 never returned.”Comment
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IF done in time, the 1/96 WEBSTER, KILO, and BLUEBACK (all recently assembled, but need paint and final trim). 1/60 ALBACORE, movie SEAVIEW (the Moebius kit), 1/72 THRESHER, 1/96 THRESHER, 1/96 SEAWOLF, 1/72 ALFA, 1/35 Type-23, 1/96 SKIPJACK, 1/72 SKIPJACK, and a few others, time permitting.
The objective is giving others stick-time on boats that actually work.
DavidWho is John Galt?Comment
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It's working, but just in primer gray. Got to paint it yet.
Who is John Galt?Comment
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The larger sized submarines, and by that, I mean just about any watercraft of 1/48th or larger, are big enough to realistically employ model railroad green 'fine turf' as a stand in for the waterline 'grass' often observed on boats either tied up to a pier, or recently left standing on keel blocks in dry-dock. The 1/35 Bronco Type-23 model was a perfect candidate for this treatment.
The trick is simple: brush on a slow-dry/cure adhesive at the waterline – water soluble (but waterproof after drying) acrylic 'medium' is the adhesive of choice here. Before the glue dries you simply sprinkle on railroad turf and pat it down every so lightly to embed most of it into the glue. Leaving the work alone til the glue dries/cures hard.
The majority of the rail-road turf will fall way as its laid down and patted into place, so it's a good idea to do the work over a piece of cardboard that make reclaiming of the turf that falls away an easy matter.
Note that the majority of the break between lower and upper hull halves was made at the waterline. I only had to take care of the bow and stern sections when laying down the glue as the central portion of the lower hull had its break edge at the waterline – no way to screw up with the brush there!
Once the glue had dried masking tape was used to pull away any turf not secured enough to keep it from flying away during the clear-coating lay-down – which would ruin the effort. The model was then ready for any touch-up painting and given a final well flattened clear-coat to lock down all paint and weathering agents and to give the display a uniform sheen.
Almost done with the Ray Mason Disney NAUTILUS Jake has assembled and painted. It's now in my horrible custody for final checks, dial-in, and trimming before we can declare this thing certified and ready to cruise the Red Clay Resort swimming pool looking to ram ships found to be in the service of that, 'accursed nation' (I'm looking at you, Casey!)
Here I'm putting on the final touches to free up the propeller gimbal mechanism. As the Disney NAUTILUS had no practical planes to control pitch I've elected to vary the propeller thrust line about the pitch axis to effect pitch angle changes and maintenance – needed to make this otherwise incredible submarine work in a credible manner.
Jake was here yesterday with the painted model – and he did a wonderful job too, simply beautiful and so gracefully capturing the look of the movies miniatures and full-scale sets. Trouble was – though we planned to have it in my test tank for final trimming, we kept encountering gremlins with the electronics.
After a half-day of sleuthing, I finally narrowed the search down to an intermittently working battery eliminator circuit (BEC) – it worked sometimes, sometimes it worked half-ass, and other times it would not work at all. Replaced that POS problem-child with another and all problems went away. It was not until this morning I could put the NAUTLUS in the water and set the end-points for the throttle.
While at it I reduced the sensitivity of the angle keeping device – which controls the servo that works to pitch the propeller shaft axis about the pitch plane – to keep the propeller from jumping about owing to motor and running gear vibrations.
This morning, in the test tank, with everything in the water, I got the hoped for damping effect that attenuated most of the vibration sources; this greatly reduced the inevitable twitching produced by the angle keeper in response to system motor and servo operation.
Who is John Galt?Comment
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Who is John Galt?Comment
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What type of solder do you use for any of those connections? I used silver bearing solder for struts on my party boat and rudder and melted on a hot plate. Maybe overkill but I know they are solid. For the railings I used regular 60/40 fluxed as there is no stress on those joints.
And what solder on the prop?Comment
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Who is John Galt?Comment
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Who is John Galt?Comment
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The centrifuge we spoke of in the Dive Tribe.Comment
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In which I related the horrible incident of splashing Ellie's chest area with molten metal owing to the lack of a proper spray-shield during a failed pour (continuing a long-standing tradition of my occasional banishment to the downstairs couch because of some dumb-ass move I made that caught her attention.
And I'm repeating that set-up in the picture here: Kevin and I staged the process, but without the spray-shield, to better see the disc type tool spinning in the modified blood separation centrifuge.
I've included other shots of the spin-casting process.
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