Thank you, and that sounds like a plan. Realized tonight that spent a lot of time putting those spiffy duck under constructions in the wrong place. They’re not through the hold floor. They’re one level up in the diamond plate crew floor. Much easier place to construct them. I’ll plug the wrong ones and build the right ones when I’m constructing the lower crew floor. Easy mistake to make. My lower floor plan was of the crew floor, not the hold, or both. Either way, it was hard (for me) to locate the height properly.
I checked with Ryan and the duck unders have no walls, just a floor. I travesed those steps, but didn’t pay attention to their construction. I asked Ryan the other day to tell me their construction and he told me about no walls. While the construction is now easier by far, it’s complicated by having to deal with the flooring while doing it. All the catwalks and flooring represents the most craft intensive aspect of this build and and also the most ambiguous. We’re making a visit back to Philly at the end of June and I may take another shot at visiting the engine room to clarify any of the outstanding issues. The model, as best as i can project, won’t be done until sometime in the Fall. I was thinking about filling in the openings in the hold floor, but you won’t see it so I’m going to leave it alone.
This is how it should look. When you walk down the short ladder you will see the supporting structures holding up the crew floor.
I finished wiring the main steam pipe’s LEDs.
I received my micro-LEDs and tried it on the scrap control panel. I figured a way to fish the wires through the slots and out the bottom. That said, I’m rethinking doing on the good one. There right hand slot is very narrow and the wires may not fit. I thought about removing the top, wiring it up and then gluing on a flat piece of styrene. It would be very bright with three LEDs. I may just light up the central fixture and it will light the whole face. That’s doable.
I’m also modifying the upper framing that’s going to hold up the entry stair. That 3D printed frame is very flimsy and bendy. I was going to solder up a new frame out of brass angle, but reconsidered after finding that it was $8.00 USD for just 12" of the size I needed AND there’s only one vendor who makes model-sized brass shapes. There used to be a company in Chicago called Special Shapes, but the’re no longer in business. Instead, I have a piece of brazing rod (Sil-fos) that’s just the right size to epoxy to the existing frame to reinforce it AND it will provide a solid base to solder the suspension wires that will hold up the catwalk. In the #2 ER, the stairs come down right over the Main Reduction Gear. They don’t fasten the catwalk to it, but hang it from the ceiling. I did the callout before changing to reinforcing the existing frame.
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Instead of building the entire frame out of brass with materials I did not have, I chose to build a sub-frame out of some flat brazing rod stock that was close to the width of the resin i-beams. I have two tools that facilitate these kinds of projects: a fireproof soldering pad that easily accepts pins to hold parts, and an American Beauty Resistence Soldering Unit (RSU) that heats the soldering zone using low voltage/high current to heat just the spot between the electrodes. With it I can solder literally next to a previously soldered joint without re-melting that joint. It is what’s used in manufacturing those fancy brass model locomotives.
I also have a MicroMark miniature chop saw with an abrasice cutoff blade that made quick work of cutting the bronze rod with nice square ends.
I used the resin part to position the parts as I pinned them to the solder pad. This image is near the end of the job.
I have the Tweezers handpiece and the single electrode. I have never used the single electrode. It has a carbon contact point and then a large spring clip on the other lead. It’s supposed to be used to solder heavier parts, but my unit doesn’t have the amperage to really make use of it. The tweezers, on the other hand, are fantastic. You can use them as the two legs of the circuit, as I did when soldering these parts, or as a clamp to hold the parts together while applying current to create the heat. The real benefit is you clamp the parts, hit the trigger, heat and solder, and then release the foot switch while still holding the parts in the tweezers until the solder cools. It does with one hand what three would be needed with a traditional soldering iron. This is the most expensive tool I own, but it’s irreplaceable in solding difficult-to-solder asseblies. It came in very handy to solder the power leads to the tracks on my model railroad.
After it was all soldered and cleaned up—sanded some of the high solder joints—I epoxied the frame to the resin frame. It provided the strength I was seeking. It’s not perfect, but I was more concerned with strength and a good structure upon which to solder the catwalk hangers.
Underside:
Other odds and ends:
I had to make the PCVC water pipe that I’m using to look like the actual prop shafts. The 1:1 shafts are 32" solid steel with an 8"bore to lighten them a bit. I printed some plugs, epoxied them in place and will sand them off flush with the pipe. I will then fill any remaining gaps and sand again. The shafts will then match the shaft eminating from the main reduction gear.
The last thing I did today was attach the separately printed valve wheels onto the main air ejector print. I realized that I didn’t print the steam lines that run to this appliance. I will do that shortly.
I’m designing the entry hatch now that I have the framing on which to fasten it. I’m not sure about the hinging since my photos don’t show it.
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Had a follow up appointment with my ophthalmologist from the Amaurosis Fugax. Everything looked good. Tomorrow, however, my internist has ordered an angiogram CatScan of my head and neck just to make sure that the plaque in my right carotid is the only thing to worry about. Never had one of these, and I don’t know what to think about it. I have no cerebral symptoms at all, and cognitively, as can be seen by what I do in my retirement, isn’t showing any signs of trouble either. I’ll keey you all informed.
So without any shop work I finished the design of the entry hatch, and sent it to the printer. Right now the printer is making the main steam pipes to the turbo-generators and the main air ejector. The former was a print failure that didn’t get redone, and the latter I missed printing at all.
I’m choosing to include more flooring of deck 3 that surrounds the hatch. It lends more context for it and further stiffens that cantilevered system.
Till tomorrow….
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Just curious. How does the hatch close with the railings on the inside extending about the hatch?
The upper part of the chains are flexible and sort of fold up when the hatch closes.
The hatch prints came out perfectly. I will have to either cut the girder structure or some of the counter-balance spring so the hatch can settle down. I can cut the girder without problem if I don’t cut through the metal sub-structure. My girder structure and the real one are not the same.
If you look closely, the spring is actually fully formed.
I spent some time today replicating the hand-drawn graphic on the main reduction gear. I have to wait until I paint the gray base paint to match that for the decal’s background. Other wise I would have to hand trim all the lettering out of the white decal paper. Not going to do that…
The photo shows the first line wrapping over the curve of the housing making it very distorted so I couldn’t draw directly over it. I cropped out that part and adjusted its perspective and then drew over that part.
That gray is just an approximation for purposes of this post. When I mix the real gray, I’ll finish up the decals. There’s also another label on the HP and LP turbines.
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Since you have all the cool toys, you could invest in a laser mask cutter, which would make an exact mask and you could directly paint the labels on the shafts.
Your attention to detail is fantastic. Love watching your builds.
Bob
It was suggested to me to get one of those CNC vinyl cutters to make masks and cutting templates. They’re not that expensive. Laser cutters, on the other hand, to do anything more than engraving, are still too expensive for me. I just don’t have any volume to justify these purchases.
After my Cat Scan, I actually got some shop work accomplished. I first intalled one of the perfectly formed entry hatches into a 0.020" piece of styrene that would serve as the entry hall floor, to figure out how to successfully cut the curves. I also needed to figure out just how it was going to install. I also cut away a chunk of I-beam to clear the counterbalance spring. It worked out well, so I traced the piece onto a heavier piece of 0.030". After drilling out the round corners with a drill sharpened with a plastic cutting angle, and getting the hatch to fit nicely, I glued the plastic flooring onto the frame and held it down with some heavy angle blocks till it cured. I then glued in the hatch with the same reinforced medium viscosity CA. The frame will be painted white and the flooring linoleum brown.
There are couple of spots around the perimeter that could use some minor filler.
In this image I’m holding it up where is attaches to the rear bulkhead. The left outer corner is resting on the cross-braces of the large center support column. With all the added stiffness, the flooring will work just fine.
The remaining steam pipes also printed perfectly. One was a replacement for a previous failure, the other was forgotten.
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Before I get started on today’s post, I need help. I’m trying to locate some passable US Navy crew figures in 1:48 that ARE NOT pilots or deck crew for pilots, nor gunners with helmets on them. There was a company marketing a line of naval figures that included many in fatigues for below deck jobs, but I can’t find them. I want to include some crew in the model to show scale.
AFor my US Based readers, Happy Memorial Day.
On this day, I am declaring the drawing phase of the project complete. I added the lube oil settling tank and the bilge receivers at the hold floor’s corners. All that’s left is painting everyting and building the model. Now the fun really begins.
I had an idea that using some of SketchUp’s features to make an animated walk through of the entire entire room. It would take quite a while to produce, but might be worth it for folks who can’t ever visit it in the flesh.
Work on this project got underway in August 2024 and there’s still many months to go until it gets delivered.
Before looking at the overall images, here’s a view of the telephone booth. It’s a semi-soundabsorbing space that permits communication by phone is what-must-be a horrendously noisey environment. This was drawn with the last images Ryan sent to me on Thursday.
I also added the Lube Oil Settling Tank. It doesn’t block views and I adapted a mounting so it will “hang” on the subframe.
The first five images are overall views:
This view shows the port-side wall. It’s the only wall where there’s not much going on and could be backed up to a wall without blocking viewers from seeing the model. The lowest level under the lower mezzanine deck is basically bare in the #3 engine room. This is not the case in rooms #2 & #4. Those rooms contain the degausing magnet generators so other apparatus is in that space. More reason why that wall is okay to butt up against a wall.
This next group are more closeups of areas of interest:
Lastly, here’s a few you see when you’re descending the entry ladder.
Now onto Phase 2… Painting.
I had to do just a couple more punchlist items to complete the printing requirement. I’ve decided to sit the entire model on simulated concrete blocks a la the ship as it appeared in dry dock. To that end, Ryan sent me the actual dry docking plan showing the placement of all 292 blocks. The blocks are basically cubes 4 feet on a side and place on 8 foot centers longitudinally and five rows athwartship.
In the 1:1 ship, the blocks are kind of rough with varying thickness of shim materials on top to addjust for minor variations.
In my 1:48 world, the blocks are going to be all the same. They are NOT the focal point and shouldn’t attract too much attention. I noticed that I put too many lifting holes in my blocks. I haven’t printed them yet and can fix them before do.
The re-designed central column is much more rigid and will serve as a better mounting point for the entry hall floor assembly. I ribbed the lower and upper angle plates and that did the trick. I also tapered the bottom fins that run athwartship so they nestle down onto the floor angle peak.
I added lighting under this piece since the catwalk below will be in some shadow. Because the underframe is bare metal, I could not apply the copper foil directly or it would be an immediate short circuit. Instead, I attached some thin ply to the metal using 3M permanent Transfer Tape and then did the circuit work on that. I provided access to the hollow central column to bring those wires down more elegantly.
I also prepared and started applying the 4mm brass tubes that will substitute for the solid resin ones. This serves two purposes; they are dead straight and not warped like some of the resin columns, and one of them serves as the wiring conduit. The lead wires are captivated by my “Bondic Liquid Cable Clamp” method. For small gauge wirng it works great.
The twin mezzanine decks are a bit more complicated since in addition to getting the overall length correct, I have to determine the inter-deck spacing. I’m holding the tubes in place with reinforced CA. I used my plan to determine the overall length.
But the inter-deck spacing will be set with the electrical cabinets height. The deck height is about a half foot or so above the cabinet height. I will shim the cabinets and use them as the spacer.
Both mezzanine decks are floored with linoleum and in the model with 0.020" sheet styrene held with CA. I glued the columns into the upper mezzanine, but I will wait to do the full assembly until later. The brass columns lack the little angle details I included on the resin prints. If I was more insane than I am, I could have cut some brass pieces and soldered them in place, BUT… they’re underneath and only kids will see them in normal viewing. I have nothing against kids, but it would be a lot of work for very little return.
Lastly, I got good prints of the last parts including the escape trunk, telephone booth and lube oil settling tank. And yes… there is a complete ladder inside the trunk. The printer printed it perfectly with only a few easily removed supports. The trunk DOES make that hitch, but I’m not sure why, but it was clearly noted on the plans. I have to cut out part of the mezzanine decks to accommadate the trunk. It still impresses me that I can draw and print parts with open doors will all the hinge and latch details.
What’s left to print? The keel blocks. On the printer and draining are some last minute additions including bilge receivers, and the support frame for the main air ejector which I forgot to print with the main part.
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My brain would’ve simply stopped working long ago, due to overload. Can’t wait to see this one finish too.
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And what makes you think that my brain hasn’t turned to mush also… I’m juggling a lot of thoughts at the same time in trying to figure out how it’s going to go together. It would be very easy to paint oneself into a proverbial corner.
Here’s the tele booth print. One of the cables broke on the back wall. Fix it? I think not.
And here’s a view of the cleaned up escape trunk. You can see the ladder inside… barely.
And I decided that folks needed to get a better view of the 13 foot bull gear in the main reduction gear, so I marked out and did some surgery. I first hacked into it with a 1/16" carbide routing bit followed up with a small Dremel sanding drum. The end result is what I was looking for and it’s going to be very visible looking from the aft end.
The first batch of hull blocks are done and hanging on the printer in the draining position. When I first drew them on the master drawing, I had them at 8 foot centers in both the X and Y directions. After I checked Ryan’s drawing I realized that only the fore and aft spacing is at that distance. Athrwartships is almost three times as wide. So instead of needing 40 of them, I only need 25. I’m printing them 13 up on the platen so two runs will do the job. You set up a single part on the slicer and then using the COPY function in ChiTuBox
I did an inventory of all the completed parts and found some piping that still needs printing. I’m going to set them so by early next week, no more parts will need to be printed.
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I was working on refining the dimensions of the base and acrylic covers today so my shop time was short. I did accomplish some stuff. First of all, all the printing is done. That said, I may have to print parts that break or more flooring panels. But planned work is finished. In total I consumed about 8kg of resin to print the parts. That’s about $200 worth of just resin. I’m waiting for some more warm days with low wind to do solvent painting outdoors. All of the paint primer is solvent. The color coats are mostly acrylics which I can do in the house.
I decided to print and add the bilge catch basins. There are four of them at the outer corners of the hold floor. When I first cut the floor and glued two of them in with CA, while they were flush with the deck’s edge, they protruded out further down due to the angle of the engine room’s sides. I removed them, cut the slots deeper and re-glued. It works better for me. If I really wanted to do it correctly, I’d redraw the parts with the taper installaed and reprint. It’s not important enough of the detail to do that. Also, there are bilge pumps and piping associated with these, but I have no data on that feature so I’m not inlcuding it.
This was the first attempt:
The new position:
How they look installed.
I printed 25 hull blocks. Shown here is part of the first tranche. I was able to print 13 at a time. The remainder are draining on the printer.
And the model positioned on them for a test fit. Should work as planned.
I gave my friend Bryant Mitchell, the final measurements for the base. He’s gluing it up this weekend. I may mount the model on the base sooner rather than later to give a nice stable building surface.
I also spent time, but didn’t finish, adding the newly printed piping on the auxiliary air ejectors. It’s a very small pipe system that attaches to BOTH units. This complicates gluing them to the bulkhead to ensure that the piping is nice and straight and isn’t putting stress on the piping. Pictures will come on Monday.
i finalized the graphic for the number key. I’m printing two of them on white glossy photo paper. I’m going to glue them together back-to-back so they can be correctly read from both sides of the model.
See y’all on Monday.
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The weather was perfec today. 80ºF and no wind. I took my compressor outside with the airbrushes and painted the ALLClad Gloss Black Base Coat before painting the bronze metallic top coat on all the seawater handling apparatus. Tomorrow I do the same thing and airbrush the top coat. ALLClad is a hot lacquer paint and I don’t paint that indoors. I’d love to have a spray booth so I don’t have to wait for ideal weather to use solvent-based paints in the shop. I’m finishing up all the things that I can do before painting really gets underway. I have several more metal frame supports to cut and attach before I can paint.
I spent a lot of time hooking up the very tiny piping on the auxiliary air ejectors. These are now finished and ready for paint. Actually, their drums are also bronze colored, but I’ll just spray them without doing the black.
With all the 3D printing done for the engine room, I decided to reprint one of my earliest models: a 1:48 ALCo 251, V16 turbocharged locomotive prime mover. These are also the same engines that are in the emergency generator rooms in the Iowas, and powers the giant crawlers that move rockets at Cape Kennedy Space Port. When I printed it on my original Elegoo Mars Classic, I had to break it into five parts and assemble it after printing. There are tiny details on the model that I drew (fuel lines) that the original prints couldn’t produce with enough integrity to sustain themselves. And the origial ChiTuBox slicer didn’t allow for supports to be connected to other parts of the model, only from the base raft, this meant that to support tiny features that didn’t have support path to the base didn’t get any supports. I could fake it by drawing supports in the design phase.
In this case I tried an experiment in addition to printing the five parts. I set it up to print the entire engine as a single part. At least in the printer the entire engine printed perfectly saving the entire assembly operation. Here’s the whole lot in the draining clamp on the printer.
Here’s a better look at the entire engine.
And if you look closer you can see those tiny fuel lines. They may still not survive the cleaning process, but I’m optimistic. There’s a lot of excess resin all over hiding a lot of the beauty that will be exposed after cleaning.
I’m thinking about opening an Etsy shop sell some of my original designed parts. If I can print the engines in one go it really saves me a lot of time.
Here are two views of the engine that I drew.
After I clean them up tomorrow I’ll share the results. I suspected that this new printing system was so much better than its predecessors that it could do some wonderful work on some of my older designs. This proves it. I have an entire machine shot of tools that I’m going to reprint when I have some spare time and see jhow much better they come out.
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The ALCo’s printer detail after cleaning remained amazing. I only lost one tiny fuel line during support removal.
Yesterday I painted the bronze colored parts. I took the compressor outside again and first sprayed ALCLAD Pale Burnt Metal and then overcoated that with Titanium Gold.
When I brought it inside I displayed it will all the other parts. All that’s missing on the table are the base blocks.
I then went outside again and rattle-can sprayed Rust-oleum “Camouflage Tan” which is an excellent concrete color. You’re only going to be able to see those on the perimeter, but, of course, I painted all of them.
The newly printed corrected mezzanine was now ready to be permanetly fastened to the upper mezzanine. It’s a critical joint that shouldn’t fail so I added some 1/32" pins to reinforce the joint.
With the catwalk in place, I sprayed the underside with Tamiya White Primer since it would hare to reach after the lower mezzanine was installed. I then installed the lower. I used the electrical cabinets with a piece of corrugated cardboard to space the two and then use thin CA in the joints from below to lock the columns in place.
This subassebly is ready for railings install, grating, and the equipment installation. It will be placed on the model as a complete subassebly. I’m doing an exploded drawing of the entire project to determine what can be assembled off the model and what can’t. I spent a few hours today doing final design on the remaining walkways and devising how they’re going to be supported in the model. I know that my method is not prototypical. I believe the angle iron was run more or less off-the-cuff when the ship was built. There aren’t many details about. The drawings I have show some verticals here and there, but mostly concentrate on the platform locations and heights. That sort of how I’m approaching it.
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Do you have a ballpark idea of what you have into this project money wise? Time wise so far? It’s mind blowing that you are able to create all this.
Thank you!
Well… as for time… Drawing activities began last August, but didn’t kick into high gear until I got John Miano’s drawings in October. So if I was charging by the hour it would be a whole lot of money with hundreds of hours in drawing. As for supplies, I’ve gone through about 8kgs of resin. It’s $17.00/kg for Elegoo ABS-Like resin and $50 for Siraya Tenacious flexible resin, but I use that in a 80/20 ratio so Tenacious lasts much longer. That’s about $250 in resin. My friend Bryant is building the wood base gratis since I’m giving the model to the ship. The acrylic for the outer case will cost about $95 and the plaque another $20. That leaves paint and miscellaneous materials for another $60. So we’re talking somwhere north of $400.00 for materials. And even if I take $4,900 off my taxes, it doesn’t matter because as a retiree, the new standard deduction is more than any itemized items I can include.
I exploded the master drawing into logical sub-assemblies that I believe can be (mostly) built off the model.
Building it as sub-assemblies should streamline the assembly process a bit. Some of the walkways will have to wait until near the end for installation.
What’s on the printer now are some reprints and new support systems for walkways. One is visible wrapping around the LP turbine on the above image. I think I have all the platforms finally designed.
Have a nice weekend
I’m reprinting some of the catwalk supports. They were wrong and too weak. Oh well.
And I attacked the electrical control panel to put in the tiny LED lights. I gave up on fishing the wires through the hole and down into the part. Instead, I just opened up the backs which made the wiring much easier. I found out that I could use a small carbide drill as a router (by accident). I didn’t know how deep the wall was and actually cut through to the other side in two places. I had the option of reprinting or repairing. I chose to repair.
I thought about reattaching the cutout pieces, but it prroved impossibe.
The wires are shown down to the bottom.
I filled the damaged areas with Bondic. Shaping it after application was tricky, but might work okay.
The wires were soldered together when cleaning, so only two leads are connected to the power them. I tested the lights.
I then paved the top and light shields with Bare Metal Gold Foil. It’s a great light block. I tested again.
To close the back holes I used 0.020" sheet styrene held with CA. I filled any seams with Tamiya Filler.
When light testing, you can see light seeping thouugh the styrene, but paint will block this bit.
The last thing I did was spray some Tamiya Dessert Sand.
After detail painting this should look pretty cool!
I also re-drew the fore catwalk frames. Besides being a bit weak, they were also wrong. They’re printing now and will be done in a couple of hours.
This afternoon I’m a guest presenter for a group of Middle and High School kids who are on the autism spectrum. Trimble Corp, the owner of SketchUp, has found that kids on the spectrum learn better visually and like SketchUp. They have a formal reachout program called Project Spectrum, and I am participating in today’s session.
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Apparently, my presentation was a hit with the kids. I set up lighting to give it a more professional look and posed myself in front of the train layout. The kids appreciated that and that I spent the time to put an actual presentation together about the power of SketchUp and what’s possible… at any age. The setup worked so well I might be able to use it do a podcast or two… hmmm.
This was the test image. I have these very bright LED lights with magnetic bases that I attached to the I-beam that’s traverses the room in front of the layout. I didn’t need them at full power.
It was a nice day so I got more outdoor painting done. I rattle-can paint all the below the floor foundations Tamiya Dark Red. It’s also a great water line color for US ships. I painted this group first, and when I got back in the shop realized that I missed a few parts so I went back out and painted some more. I then took the big gray parts and spayed them with Tamiya Regular Gray Primer.
This paint dries very quickly and I was able to place a whole bunch of stuff onto the base
The re-designed front catwalk support is much better. In addition to actually fitting correctly, I thickened all the angle “iron” shapes to they had some strength. I made an error attempting to use near-scale cross-sections. The resin is just not strong enough in small cross-sections. The part is now very stable. With see-through grating it will look fantastic. Those angle braces would not be needed in the real world since the front edge would be welded to the bulkhead. There’s only a hint of bulkhead on the model.
With the prime and foundation painting done, I can now settle down and paint the parts in the shop. My Albuqueque friend has finished gluing the base board together and doing the sanding operaton. He’ll have it done in a week or so. This project is starting to accelerate, and I’m getting excited by it.
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Started doing some fun painting today. I got the electric deck upper painted. I’m reprinting the lower deck’s equipment. I kept dropping the darn thing and have been breaking off all those cute little knobs. I was happy with the painting either. But the electrical console looks decent. The actual panel has black gauge faces with tiny white needles. It wouldn’t show up.
Here they are placed for the pic. They won’t be glued in place until the entire asseembly can be correctly positioned.
Painting will continue tomorrow.
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