Well I havent posted much in a while, but we've still been semi-active down in SoCal with SCRAP. Over the last year or so I've mostly been battling and maintaing the Bayern, I-boat and even the FS Volta has gotten a few sorites in. When Strike put on their final sale I figured I pick something up even if I wasn't going to build it right away. I grabbed a Moltke with a deck and plans. I've finally got the itch to start building and I've blown the dust off of her. Thanks to those who put superstructure files in the resources section, the first thing I did was print some SS. Lately I've been using tough PLA which has been easy to use and fairly resilient. With help from some friends I also got my piecemeal workshop transformed into a real workspace with plenty of working area: Started getting the deck/subdeck cleaned up and sanded as well as test fit. I plan on modelling the midship casemates even though it will be more work I think the ship will look nicer overall and add that extra hard area. Spent probably way too much time modelling the turrets, but the plans I have (Goff) are very inconsistent and don't even quite look like the real ones based on the googling I did. In the end I think they came out pretty good: That's it for now. I'll have some more progress to post in a couple of days. Oh, I also put in an order with Battler's for guns, regulator and a bottle. Everything said it was in stock but we'll see how long it takes them to fulfill the order.
Nice workshop! Nice superstructure too. Looks like someone must have uploaded a nicer one than the one I tossed together a while back.
Some more updates. First time having an in-line rudder ship but it looks like the mechanism is simple enough: Final product after a few modifications: I plan on modelling the midship casemate guns and have some questions regarding the 1/8" casemate deck location. With the 3/8" hard area weather deck and the 1/8" casemate deck placed directly under the cupoals, the penetrable area between the casemate deck and the weather deck is less than the diameter of a BB, essentially making it impenetrable. Is this how other builders have built this deck or have they extended or "pushed" the cupolas downward so that the casemate deck aligns with the aft weather deck? Here's a screnn capture from one of the other threads that looks like the casemate deck was just placed lower and aligned with the aft weather deck. This would make things easier and allow a bb to pass between the casemate deck and the 3/8" weather deck.
There's no rule saying a bb must pass. If that's where the stringer lies then enjoy the extra impenetrable! EDIT: Also, there's no rule saying the second inline rudders has to function. Get rid of that and add all the extra area to the main rudder.
A note on the inline rudder. It is a 4 prop ship like the Derf. That front rudder with have maybe 30° total arc. Having the same gear ratio front and aft will cause it to jam. My Derf has a 45 tooth on the rear, 60 tooth on the driven center, and the arc of a 92 tooth for the front. This gives me 85° of swing on the rear and 28° swing on the front. The front just barely clears the prop tubes. Also, for combat, pin it in place.
Hmm, I do see now that it doesn’t have to function, but it indeed has to be present. Wouldn’t that mean that whatever small surface area it has would still have to be subtracted from the main rudder? My plan was to make it “itty-bitty” and have a length that would not even come close to touching a shaft on either side at full deflection.
I think I found the answer to my own question. The allowable rudder area table is preceeded by the statement: "The maximum total moveable rudder area..." so a non-moving front rudder would meet the requirements of having the scale number of rudders but not detract from the rear rudder area. I'll take this into account when I get around to designing the aft rudder.
Small update: The BC order I made has shipped. So from ordered to shipped was just a little over two weeks. I had made sure everything I ordered was listed in stock but overall a large improvement in turnaround time.
Waterline marking done at about 19lbs which sat well in the water. Got the top of the fiberglass hull filed to be even and cut off the extra fiberglass that extended too far past the deck step. I found somewhere in the forums here that the mold was incorrect as to where the deck step was and that coincided with the deck kit and plans. Made the cutout for the forward casemate guns: Also got my ribs laid out. 15% minus bow and stern came to 18 total with one at 3/8". Still going back and forth on the casemate positioning but I'm leaning toward having the casemate deck in line with the aft weather deck and going from there. Feedback on rib positioning welcome. Preliminary gun placement is to have one wing as a stern gun and two aft sidemounts. No bow gun. I debated having more ribs in the stern as that's where I plan to engage the enemy more often but we have several extremely proficient allied cruisers in our group that are good at getting their dual sterns on my bow.
Feedback on rib positioning - the ones amidship are too far apart. Much more than 3" separation, and things get really wobbly. 1/32 balsa isn't the strongest stuff in the world. Separate your bow ribs a bit more (1-2 less, probably just 1) and put that in the middle area. It sure looks like you have a lot of penetrable area, but you weighed it at 19 lbs, which seems reasonable. Your rudder gadget is really very nice looking. I think I might have to steal that sometime. (Or maybe I have already, but you don't know that) Your planned gun config sounds fine, it's been done before, quite successfully. Given you have 3d printing fu, I'd like to suggest that you 3d print the casemates, especially if you can print them in TPU. Although, I suppose ABS or PETG would probably be fine. But yeah, looking good!
I agree with Chris. Take 2-3 ribs out of the front for mid ships. I had a Moltke and run with the gun set up you are thinking of. I was never happy with the wing stern gun. I tried a few different aim points. Always hard to get in target. If I still had it I’d go with a bow gun. Not sure if I’d do A turret or the wing.
Thanks for the feedback guys! I'll play around with moving one or more ribs to the midships area from the bow. May re-consider the bow gun, my I-boats wing stern is also lack luster.
Time for some thread resurrection, but at least it's mine to resurrect. I find I get build motivation whenever I order some boat parts. When I saw that SJS had some shiny motor mount plates for the old Traxxas gear boxes I ordered some to go on the ABS printed gear box(courtesy of our resources section). So I finally got the drive shafts epoxied along with the dummy shafts. Most of the water channeling is done as well. Now I've already tried to figure out my midships casement guns but I don't think I ever really came up with a solid strategy to tackle them. At this point I'm trying to figure out what to do about the area found directly below the cupolas. The way I cut the casement stringer aligns with the aft weather deck, but the cupolas seem to sit about another 1/8" above that. The following image has my casement stringer in red, and the areas in question in green. Here is an exemplary casemate image outlined in green: Could I shift the midships casement stringer up another 1/8 so it sits directly below the cupola? I haven't cut that fiberglass as of yet. Any other thoughts? I haven't resigned myself to not modelling the casemates yet. I'm in no rush and really would like to have them.
Ahh yes, that annoying feature that some German casemates have, a platform underneath the cupola. The Deutschland class PDNs have them, as does the VDT, and a number of others. Most of the combat models I've seen (including mine) simplify the casemates. I originally tried the correct scale shape, but had tremendous difficulty. It was very hard to sheet, and basically impossible to seal. And patching was a nightmare. Given how often I have to resheet my predreads, I very quickly decided to simplify to a basic circular cupola.
Since you only get 1/8 for the stringer I would extend the cupola down to the existing stringer you cut. Are you planning to mold in the casements? I’ve done it on a few hulls, now a days you can just print the negative and fiberglass from the inside
