70th Explorers Garrison: Forums

update time!

more filling and sanding has been done to the hull. she is looking good so far.





and work has begun on the lower rudder using apoxie sculpt. you were telling the truth chris adams, this stuff is tough!





thats it for now kiddos! updates as i make them!

more updates! i drilled out all the 10,000 free flood holes in the hull. thats not the worst part, all of them need to be square. so i have tons of fileing to do.

free flood holes at amid ships



free flood holes at the stern


free flood holes at the bow


thats just the starboard side, port is the same.

starboard reactor cooling scoop has been sculpted!



updates soon!

well, i sculpted the port side reactor scoop, now i will smooth them out to their final shape.



and i started scribing all the little hatches and access covers on this sub. im currently half way done. it took 2 hours to do what you see in this next photo.

scribing almost done! i have to sculpt a hatch near the stern, and the emergency buoy behind the conning tower. i will begin final shaping on the reactor scoops today, then one coat of primer. i will finish the stern dive planes, and scribe the retracted forward planes and torpeado tube outer doors. im going to build it with rear planes only, and see how it handles. the forward bow planes are soo small at 1/72nd scale that i doubt they will add any directional stability, just create more drag.



and both reactor scoops after they dried.

Looking good, great attention to the smallest detail, I am glad I got an oversized tub so the kids can play sub wars with it............ Just kidding

Are all those details going to hold up if you make molds for it?

thanks andy!

to answer your question curt, they would if i were to make a rubber mold. however, due to some new evidence that has come to light about the soviet alfa class, i will not be molding this one. she will be finished as a one off sub, or a V1. V2 will have the more accurate info incorperated into her, and V2 will be the production hulls that i will sell. so with that info, i give you the current status on V1

she has had both intake scoops sculpted, i primered the hull again, and split her in half today so i can get the foam out, and to install the pressure hull with all the goodies inside to make this bad boy work.



and here it is apart



that took 4 hours of cursing, and prying to get the hull to seperate from the foam plug. whew! im glad its over!

started making the free flood holes square. lesson learned here kids, before i was filing them while the foam plug was still in the hull. that sucked, was very hard to get them square. removed the plug, sooo much easier!

today i started putting the hull back together. or should i say started to figure out how to put the hull together when its in the water. i glued in 4 bulkheads, my logic here is that i will mount alignment pins in 2 of them, and the corresponding bulkheads will have holes the pins will drop into. i will still need a few alignment tabs to keep the hull in alignment, but i think this will help as well. time will tell. any way, tomorrow i will glue in the pins, and drill the holes. enjoy!



forward bulkheads-


rear bulkheads-


also scribed the torpeado tube outer doors!

glued in alignment tabs into the upper hull.

i am happy to report that the WTC (water tight cylinder) has been ordered and will be here soon. this WTC is designed to keep all the electronics dry, and provide room for a ballast tank. all i need is to drop my electric motor, radio receiver and battery in and its ready to run. it has all the solinoids in it that she will need.

Hey what are you doing to Josh in one of those pics?????

It is really looking good can't wait for the test runs.

Kevin at rouge sub works hooked me up with a used unit with new guts. well, the WTC showed up today, and im very pleased. it needs a few little things fixed, but overall im extremely happy with it! it was alot bigger than i thought, but it should fit nicely inside Alfa.



i drilled out some of the free flood holes as well on the belly and under the tower. ill get some pics of those once they are square!

I'm a little jealous. I have a VIIC and a Los Angeles class in my garage waiting for me to have time to put them together.

It looks very very sweet. I look forward to seeing the maiden voyage!