Full hulls without too many tears

barry

Active Member
After the fiasco building the underwater section of Spruance and not being Polish or called Christoph I wanted to try and get a reasonable hull for lesser mortals like me. I have cheated a bit this one does not have a sonar bulge.

It done the usual Metasequoia Pepkura way so I will not bore you with that.

I used a Pritt Stick to laminate the card onto the backing sheets no fuss no mess. Stuck the waterline plate to the building board with Selotape checked everything was going to fit and having finally found a bottle of controlable super glue (Loctite Gel Control) used that to glue it together fit of formers is deliberately a bit slack, no stress.

At this point having tried to put the deck camber into the model I braved my wifes ire and pinched her two handled wooden rolling pin laid the deck on the carpet and rolled the camber into it. Worked a treat having carefully washed said rolling pin stuck it down with superglue. With a curved deck it's no good just piling books on it you have to weight the edges.

OK this is nothing new so far.
 

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barry

Active Member
Keel plates

I find trying to line all the edges together seamlessly always defeats me so I designed the hull with a maximum of a 6 cm space between formers and spent some time finding the longest keel plate lengths I could get without any darts in. This way half the formers just hold the shape with no glue.

I used 80 gsm (20 lb Us...copy paper) for the plates it is just too thin really one plate had to 160 gsm (just enough to feel like thin card but floppy) it's very similar to a Polish plate anyway.

The joint showing on an overlap is more than acceptable for me anyway and if one uses 160gsm and sands the leading edge of the plate it will hardly show with a bit of edge colouring.

The plate "design" looks sloppy as hell because it's just a very generous square with a centrepop and the leading and trailing edges mapped in. It is now a case of line up the centres and the leading edge, trim to get a really good overlap of the water line plate carefully do the bow first (guess who did not sand enough off the bow spine). A big overlap is used at the trailing edge of the plate and the next plate is glued over the first (lap joint), making sure to get the glue right to the edges at the leading edge. Only apply glue to the trailing former edges and dab a spot on the spine the waterline plate to hold the centreline in place now apply a gentle pull down to the plate edges.

Hardly shows the joint and it's a lot easier.

If you are building from a copy it should not be too hard to use this method.

There are the pics see what you think looks aright mess but who will see it.
 

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jasco

Member
Hardly looks " aright mess". I looks great to me. I don't understand some of your idioms, though. They say that the US and the UK are two countries separated by a common language!:) Are you telling us that you did not glue the hull plates to every bulkhead? Do you think that is how Cristoph gets those fabulous joints?? I can see that if the plates are not glued down everywhere they can't transfer mistakes from the bulkheads to the outside of the ship. Hmmmmm:?
 

barry

Active Member
I only glued the bulkheads at the ends of the plates and also not on the spine. If there is no glue there it can't pull the keel out of shape and if you sand the underside of the plate edges there should be no gaps to fill on the outside. So if you want to paint it over it should give a pretty smooth surface.

No Christoph cuts everthing so exactly there are no gaps if the design leaves a gap he fills it with liquid metal, but he is 3 leagues above me I'm just cheating to catch up a bit.

At least now I know how to design the keel for Tarawa which was the object of this one should work even if it will be 3 times broader. To me bulkheads are for holding the shape of the card with as little contact as possible.
 

barry

Active Member
I should not answer when I'm sleepy there is NO glue on the bulkheads or the spine only on the plates except for the bow. Sorry about that
 

barry

Active Member
Hull sides

Add joining strips to the underside of the deck leave a space so the joining strips on the sides don't make a bulge.

Join the bow and midsections with a joining strip.

Roll the flare into the bow section I use a big old wooden knitting needle make sure it fit as precisely as possible to the curves.

Glue is only used on the top and bottom of the hull sides, don't glue the last 3cm.

Carefully fix the bow to overlap the stem (which has been sanded to a sharp edge) by about 1.5 mm. Work your way along the length of the hull. Repeat for the other hullside making sure the bow join is as good as possible best glue about 3 cm at the bow to start with, again do not glue right to the end of the plate.

Roll the stern piece again as precisely as possible tack glue to the centre line of the stern. Wrap the plate round and slip it under the unglued portion of the mid section plate. Then carefully scribe a line with either a sharp pencil or scalpel blade. Trim off the excess, then glue top and bottom of the aft plate and carefully fit it.

That's your hull done looks reasonable I think.

The rather poor picture of the bow does show how much the seams on the keel plates show.
 

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barry

Active Member
Might as well finish it

Spruance is now at the slow stage so I might as well finish it at least it's some card to play with. I have more trouble with long deckhouses than soft Mick this one ended up with 6 doubled up parts as it does not unfold very easily in pepakura, well not the way I designed it.
 

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barry

Active Member
Bridge

This ship has a very awkwardly shaped conning tower and guess who flipped the upper deck and did not notice.
 

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Bowdenja

Active Member
Barry the hull looks fantastic........... well fed with no ribs showing like all those skinny models:grin:

I have a question............. not being a ship guy........... why did you hide the ship's number in the pics? Supersition?

john
 

barry

Active Member
Gun turrets

Well one anyway looks overlarge for the ship really but it is in scale and in reality just a fairly thin steel box structure. I hacked off the back end of the upper deck and got the AA tubs in the right position. I used 160 gsm paper a bit thinner than my usual 200 gsm and cornflake packet backing on the turret worked quite well. Reglued the bridge dodgers in daylight but still have not made provision for the riding lights.

Quite pleased with this one so far.
 

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Jim Krauzlis

Active Member
barry said:
Quite pleased with this one so far.

As well you should be, bazzer!

I'm glad I finally found this thread...just couldn't find it early on.

I'd say this is probably one of the best hulls I've seen, even with the potentially complex shape of the underwater parts that seem to always warp along the glued joints at the formers. I think the idea of not gluing the hull plates between the ends eliminates any of the glue warpage that normally seems to creep into the build. Not sure this is possible with all hulls, but this one came out superb!

Pretty beautiful ship, whatever it is.:grin:

I'm very much looking forward to seeing this one again as you progress further in the build.

Cheers!
Jim
 

barry

Active Member
funnels

Not a lot today been messing about with all sorts of bits. Set off with idea of puting cylinder caps in side the funnels they got in the way so I threw them away and butt jointed the tops. Worked out well except I forgot to paint the insides before putting the glue on.
 

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