Instead of epoxy I will be using goop to seal them in place from the inside of the hull. In some of the later pictures you will be able to see how the rubber bilge keels hook on the inside of the hull. It is not too clear in the photographs so far, but when I trimmed the rubber threshold it left an 'L' shaped piece that holds the keel in place after it is stuffed into the slots I cut in the hull. The whole thing is shaped kind of like this: L>
Installing the Decks and Casemates, Part I The Nagato has some strange casemates. I don't think any of the prefabbed ones I have seen in the past match them. This is my first warship with casemates, and it has 18 altogether. That is enough to warrant making a mold for them. First I turned a chunk of aluminum on my lathe to the approximate shape of the casemates, added some doors and spotted the location where the barrel would be. None of the different sources I have agree exactly on the shape or size, I wish there was an Anatomy of the Ship for it. Some of the 1/144 plansets are pretty iffy. Something like this doesn't have to have a really good surface finish, the paint and putty applied later will cover small machine marks up. Quickie way of making a mold. The pink gunk is RTV molding silicone. Sticks to nothing once it is cured. No mold release typically necessary. I cut out and fit three of the decks to the hull. Took a lot of filing to get everything to fit really well. The catapult deck is not off center although it appears to be. The way the aircraft crane bulge and boat derrick platform change the shape of the hull makes it look that way. Nothing is going in the bow other than internal armor, so that deck will not be removed often. The deck at the stern will only need to be removed to maintain the gearbox, drive motors, and rudder servo. The two decks that are missing in this photograph will have the turrets and barbettes on them. The long center deck will be removed after every sortie, and provides access to the CO2 bottle, batteries, and pumps. My goal for Nationals is to only remove this one deck at the lake. I decided to disguise the deck lockdown system as casemate guns. I turned down 4 more aluminum casemates, crossdrilled a 1/8 inch hole fot the barrels, and tapped a 4-40 screw hole in the bottom. I originally though about using these 3/8 inch diameter regular bearings. But I changed my mind and went with these 10 x 6 mm flanged bearings instead. Here I am making and installing a press-fit centering bushing for the 4-40 screw. Here is a revised pile of hardware for the deck locks. One of the casemates has been assembled. Later on I changed the bearings to 2 per casemate, back to back. Here is one of the back casemate locks in place. It is fairly easy to turn. I hadn't trimmed the back end of the piano wire yet. That is for later when I am installing the hooks on the bottom of the decks. You can also see the slots where the sides of the aircraft handling platform fit. They are well braced.
Looks like it will work well too, at this point I am still working on adding the barbettes and the rest of the box under the aircraft catapult, so I haven't gone back to put the hooks on the underside of the decks yet.. Will have to see how bad the aluminum gets chewed up in battle. Allies shoot high.
Installing the Decks and Casemates, Part II Front casemate deck lock. . Hole started and filed approximately to shape. Needed some support internally. Three layers of 1/16 inch G10 match the height of two bearings back to back. The rivet holds it firmly in place on one of the cross braces. Test fitting the top bearing. Casemate deck lock in place, in locked position. You can see I will have to grind part of the cross brace rivet heads off when I cut the windows later. Not much will be able to penetrate the window with the barrel in the way. I personally think the whole casemate should be hard up to the end of the front barrel and back to 1/4 inch behind the rearmost forward facing cupola. Its all going to have barrels in front of it anyway. Opened position. If anybody manages to ram the deck lock open they are going to get a nasty gouge. Working on other side. At one edge of the picture is the inclined part of the deck near the step. The other edge is the bulge underneath the aircraft crane. Note the step in the deck over the bulge, it was there on the real ship. Test fitting decks. The resin casemate is epoxy with milled fiberglass fibers added for impact resistance. It needs a little filler putty for the bubbles. The casemate area on the hull ends about an inch too early, I am debating putting the pump outlets in this area. (Gap between the step and the resin casemate.) Base for the aircraft crane built up from several layers of G10. The rivet was a convienient method to permanantly secure the crane base to the subdeck. The edge of the hull has been filed down level with the subdeck. The other side of the crane base has a convienient protrusion that helped positively locate the deck. There is a lightly scribed line on the subdeck that shows where the deck edge ends. I plan to do a double stringer in this section too, there is no way balsa will curve this tightly without some support. Actual deck edge will end up being 3/16 here due to the deck step and the double stringer.
Question: it looks like some of your rivets partially overlap penetrable areas. How will you deal with that?
File the overlapping area off. There should still be enough there to hold just fine. I'm also going to squeeze some epoxy or flexible CA in any gaps I can find between the hull and the part that I riveted to it. The rivets that overlap penetrable area are on the small blocks that locate the subdeck and hold the internal armor, so the blocks are also supported by their glue joint to the subdeck. The main idea behind riveting the subdeck in place is to prevent the subdeck from ever breaking free from the fiberglass hull, which I've seen happen on a whole lot of ships.
Installing the Decks and Casemates, Part III Test fit, apply file, repeat forever. Finally got a decent friction fit on the decks. The part underneath the catapult platform that you couldn't see in the previous photograph. I took a detour from the decks and started working on the barbettes. This is a schedule 80 pvc pipe coupling. It was pricy, but it was the only raw material I could find at the hardware store with the correct 2 - 15/16 inch size. Everything else was a little too small. I will explain why the 1/8 inch difference mattered in one of the next posts. Lathes are really handy equipment to have in the shop. I wish mine was a little larger. Finished two of the barbettes, the raw coupling for the other two is sitting on the deck. All the barbettes finished, next I need to mount them to the decks.
Installing the Decks and Casemates, part IV Barbettes and Turrets I found when checking where the barbettes would sit inside the hull that I had already put things in the way. Fortunately they were easy fixes. The sternmost barbette overlapped the gearbox less than 1/8 inch, so I was able to quickly remove the cover plate and put a notch in it. The holes in the cover plate allow access to the motor mounting screws without disassembling the gearbox. I used an adjustable hole cutter to make cutouts for the barbettes. They were a tight fit, which was useful for centering everything. Later I went back with a flap sanding wheel and very slightly opened up these holes to give the barbettes a little clearance. Test fitting barbettes. Figuring out where the turrets will sit. There was quite a bit of overlap on the forward barbette. I had placed the cross brace where the hull changes from having a relatively parallel deck rim to tapering inward, which coincides with the end of the armor belt. Just not thinking far enough ahead. I thought I had a quick workaround for it. I marked the overlaping area Riveted another brace underneath it, then cut out the offending area. I riveted the brace before cutting to make sure nothing moved. OOPS! Try again grasshopper. Workaround for the workaround. Added a second crossbrace and riveted it. Then cut and filed out the rest of the problem area. It was starting to look a little rough but I cleaned it up OK with a file. :ermm: Fits a little better now. First barbette support. The round cutouts are where bearings will go. I could have just screwed them into the deck, but I'm trying to avoid any screws piercing the deck. Detail of the bearing and height adjustment screw. I turned down the end of the screw on my lathe to act as an axle for the bearing to sit on. The bearings can be adjusted in height slightly to make everything turn smoothly, then the screw is locked in place using the nut. The bearing fits into the large groove on the barbette. Here it is assembled. Everything is centered and adjusted so there in no interference. It turns really smooth! So next I duplicated it three more times. Here is everything test fitted together again. 4 smooth rotating barbettes, and a lot of work. At the Brouhaha a lot of the Japanese fleet had the turrets hinged, except they did it from the side of the turret, and the hinge was visible and vulnerable to bbs. I saw a lot of turrets flip open when hit by a bb. I decided to hinge mine at the back. That is why having the correct diameter barbette was important, a slightly smaller barbette would have made it harder to fit the hinge so it would allow the turret to open without the back edge hitting the deck. I still ended up having to modify the hinges to fit. I had to move the holes to one side of the hinge to move the axis the turret opened on a little closer to the back of the turret, to make sure it cleared the deck when fully open. Putting the holes on a diagonal seemed to work best, it helps keep the hinge from moving later. I ended up putting a roll pin in the center of the first hinge to keep it from shifting. This shows how the offset screw holes look. It also shows my left foot.
Geometry class mostly, three points define a plane, the six degrees of freedom and so forth. But your pictures helped a lot, thanks. Your method definately produced better results than my previous attempt at a rotating barbette. If you check the Iboat at nats the screw lockdowns for the barbettes were the axles for three bearings each. I ran out of weight and time to play with on the Iboat and discontinued the experiment, and having the bearings on the inside rotating against the G10 on the outside didn't work perfectly. The G10 was too rough, and the hole in the deck was not a great bearing track since I couldn't do it on the lathe. Also the choice to use a flanged bearing and using the narrow flange to hold the whole thing in place may have not been the best idea as the flange tended to dig into edge of the track a little and cause some extra friction when not adjusted perfectly. Here is a top view of my previous attempt. Sorry I don't have better pictures of it. When is the last time you remember a fast gun ship with the capability of rotating everything Carl? I don't think it has been done on the east coast in the last two decades at least.
My Littorio had the bow mounts rotate together. But the bearings on the barbetts were prone to damage and weren't as good as the three bearing/track system. Really beautiful work Ronny, I have to get to finish mine.
Installing the Decks and Casemates, part V Locking Tabs In this picture you can see the deck is turned upside down to show the locking tabs that hold it firmly in place. One is a triangular plate at the stern that is spaced off the bottom of the deck with a shim that is the same thickness as the deck. The edges of the triangular plate are beveled underneath to make it easy to engage the deck rim. Just flip it over and slide it straight back all the way to the stern. I may add another two smaller plates in the middle of the sides of the deck after I cut out the hull sides, but for now one seems to hold it firmly. At the other end of the deck is a plate that makes a ledge that the next deck overlaps. Same type of construction in the bow. This shows the back edge of the front deck in place, with the two small ledges for holding it underneath the next deck barely visible. The gun deck towards the top of the picture is upside down, showing two 1/8 x 1/4 ss roll pins that engage holes drilled in the cross brace underneath the deck joint. They hold the joint firmly on the cross brace. The same type of interlocking construction was used at the joint between the stern deck and the rear gun deck.
You know, that left foot is going to start demanding royalties for showing up in all of these photos.
Ron, She's Looking Really Great!!! Why is the deck Black, or is it just the way the photos Came out? Nikki
