If any of you read my Engine Room thread, you’ll remember that I started talking about the next model for the Battleship New Jersey Museum & Memorial; the Steering Gear System including the Rudder. When I delivered the Engine Room to the Ship las December, my nephew and I took many pictures of this space. And like the engine rorom project, the success of the project was predicated on obtaining accurate engineering drawings on which to base the model. John Miano, that wonder fellow who sent me the engine rooms drawings has done it again. Last night I got the drawings needed to start the project. He had already sent me a few including detail drawings of the inboard propeller, but I needed much more.
I now have the complete set of profiles for the rudder. The rudder—which I thought was a gigantic casting when I saw the ship in dry dock—is built like an airplane wing with formers and a welded skin. There is a very large hub forging that is the rudder mounting component. I plan on building the rudder as it in the 1:1 world with some part cutaway to show how it’s constructed.
John originally sent drawings he made of the constructed rudder. And then today he sent the entire set of formers and castings that make up the rudder, plus a nicely dimensioned drawing of the steering system. While there as dimensions missing—mainly those concerned with the equipment sizes themselves—there are enough meausurements of the overall siting and foundation that I can scale the rest nicely in SketchUp.
Before these drawings arrived, he did send me accurate drawings of the 17’ 6", 5-bladed inboard prop. I’m only modeling the starboard side. The port side is essentially identical except for one strange aspect. The starboard side machinery is located off the ship’s axis to the aft, whereas the port side is parallel to the centerline. Otherwise, they’re the same. They are not mirror images. They are identical. I originally thought I could model the ship next to a mirror, but the reversed image wouldn’t be correct.
This is what I created with just the propeller drawing and plans that I previously used in the engine room project. All those square edges on the prop will be hand-finished after 3D printing. The geometry is correct. I was mainly concerned at that time if the parts could fit on my printer. They can in 1:48.
Here are some of detail drawings of the rudder assembly. I’m noodling how to create the rudder. If I made it out of styrene, I can cut all the rib profiless on my Silhouette vinyl cutter. It can’t cut through the styrene, but it can accurately scored for snapping or cutting with a knife. It could also be constructed out of ply ribs and balsa skinning a la a model airplane wing. I’m not sure how the cutter would work with ply, but it could work with balsa ribs. It will be time for experimentation. The rudder is essentially an airfoil the creates pressure differentials that help in creating steering pressure. The central hub is a fabricated part out of forgings and that would be 3D printed.
And here’s the main drawing.
Notice the different in angle of the starboard (bottom) and port side machines, and notice on the elevation drawing that the floor is not level in that part of the ship and the foundation accounts for that and levels it out.
This is what the machine looks like for real.
All the exterior walls are armored. The partition wall is not. The armored side walls are angled away at the top following a similar scheme as with the main armor. However, unlike the main armor, this is a structural part of the space. You can see the scalloped weld straps at the bottom edges.
With the drawings and hundreds of images I made during my December visit to ship, I believe I can do a respectable job. I still need some framing drawings from John Miano with the goal to frame that area of the ship as I did under the engine room. It’s more complicated in the aft due to the compound angularity of everything.
For animation I’m going to use a heavy duty RC servo driven by an Arduion MicroController. I don’t know how to program these clever devices and was starting to look at YouTube tutorials. Then one of my genius grandkids suggested to just ask ChatGPT to write the program setting out the parameters I want it to meet. I want the rudder and machinery to turn to port 35º wait a 10 seconds, return to center wait 10 seconds, turn to starboard 35º and back to center and pause for a minute and then repeat.
It produced a perfect program in about 2 seconds including what terminals to connect the servo to on the Arfuino and offered to provide more instruction if you need it. It was my first application of AI and it was pretty darn good. There’s no reason I have to learn a programming language for an application I probably only going to use once.
I also am developing a walkthrough movie of the engine room based on photo realistically rendered screen prints of moving through the model describing the machinery and their functions. After writing it and getting Ryan Szimanski’s go ahead, I wasn’t happy about me narrating. So I sent the script to ChatGPT, and instructed to just one paragraph aloud as a test. I also told it what kind of voice I wanted and what the end use was for. I wanted something like Gregory Speak… i.e. deep and authoritative. It read it perfectly.
Now I have to be able to capture the audio output of my laptop for input to the movie soundtrack. My genius daughter-in-law had a solution for that in an app that captures audio on screen in a Mac. I’m all set to produce a perfectly narrated soundtrack for the program. It will be put up on YouTube and played on the monitor near the model in the ship.
Say what you will, this tech is astounding, and I’m not afraid to apply it.