Iowa Class Engine Room #3 Model for BB62 Permanent Display

[Builder2010]

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.

[Builder2010]

The ALCo 251 prime mover detail after cleaning was amazing. I only lost one of those tiny fuel lines 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.

[Builder2010]

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

[Builder2010]

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.

[Builder2010]

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.

[Builder2010]

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.

[loncray]

It’s projects like this that make me happy to be in this hobby even at a far lower level. Seriously, the research and skills here are gob smacking.

[Builder2010]

It’s stuff like this that, hopefully, will drive you to go to higher levels. I was inspired by wonderful modelers throughout my life starting as far back as when I was 13 and visited a neighbor who buildt spectacular RC ships in a day when RC probably used vacuum tubes.

I spent the whole session today preparing paint and masking… A couple of hours of masking. Most of the next painting will be by airbrush. I decanted the remains of the Tamiya Dark into a bottle for later use. Some of the apparatus is sitting on foundations that I sprayed with this before, but there will be a couple of pieces where that hasn’t been done and I need it for touchup work. I chose Mission Models Dark Ghost Gray as the machine color. It needs to be prepared using about 10% of their thinner and about the same amount of some binder such as floor wax with Future. Mission sells the polymer, but it’s a bit pricey. The fellows in my model club said that Future works the same even though Mission specifically says it doesn’t.

Some of the to-be-painted areas will be white, but most will be machine gray. The exception is the inner parts of the turbine housing which will be bare steel on the inside and white on the outside. Some of the elbows on the big water inlet piping is painted blue on the ship and I’m going to do that the same. The masking took so long that painting will have to take place tomorrow.

[Builder2010]

While masking took hours, painting took hardly any time at all. With the air brush it made quick work of laying down the dark ghost grey. It took some time to demask and then I spent time touching up areas that we a bit thin with a brush. There are a lot of parts left that need to be painted white (all the piping) and the swiss cheese bulkheads. Before I can paint, I need to add some more I-beam reinforcement to the area on the inner side of the tall bulkhead part that supporst the bulkhead end of the entry deck since that needs to be glued to nascent styrene and therefore, can’t paint it yet. I love how stuff looks when the tape is pulled off. There was a small area where the Scotch Blue Tape pulled off some of the metallic bronze. I’ll touch that up. Meanwhile, I reprinted the lower Mezz electrical cabinets. I didn’t like how the other ones looked and all those beautiful little knob details were breaking off. The new prints are, so far, parfect.

The valve assembly between the two lube pumps needs to be painted red, the valve wheels yellow, and the box behind them is red with a black and yellow striped upper surface. All of that will be done during the next sessions. All painting will be done next week. The week after we’re taking a Philly trip, but the model won’t be ready for delivery. It will be done by the end of the summer and delivery will be sometime in the Fall.

One area is still not finalized as to how I’m going to build it; the lower-level floor system that’s paved with diamond plate. I printed a bunch of angle-iron frames to support the plates, but installing them individually is a problem waiting to happen. I plan on installing things with epoxy, and epoxying dozens of these frames seems troublesome in working around al the equipment foundations. I woke this morning thinking that I could pre-glue the frames onto thin styrene sheet and get them all ship shape, and THEN install these little sub-assemblies into the ship. I would pre-measure all the styrene sheets fitting them around all the stuff. It could give me more control with these fragile parts. BTW: all of this is painted foundation red.

[Builder2010]

I sincerely hope that the fog of Tamiya Gloss White airbrush overspray is not toxic, because the basement was full of that stuff this afternoon. And I’m also glad that a) I wear “shop clothes”, b) I wear “shop shoes” and c) that it has a bare concrete floor with years of paint, etc. splatters all over it. I say this because, I was about to stir in some thinner in the last bit of gloss white paint I had, lost grip on the glass paint spray bottle and it hit the floor, broke and spilled that precious white paint all over the place. Anywhere and wearing anything else, that would have been a catastrophe. In this case it was just a pain the in the butt and a bit of a mess to clean up.

I finish painted all the bronze main condenser parts. I happy with the results. Part of the assembly can be glued together now, but one end needs to go on when I’m installing it on the base floor so the pipe can position properly.

I finished the central column with a coat of gloss white on the upper parts. The paint ran out (read “spilled”) half way through painting the main steam header. I will be buying more paint tomorrow, and may get some time to use it. The entry hatch floor will be expoxied to the cross-supports on the top of this column. I limited the amount of paint on the gluing surfaces.

I got the red base painted on the main gauge panel. The next steps are picking out all the details. Not all of the gauges have the same colored bezels, so I will be using the pictures of the real on to do it as it appears in life.

I am in the process of redesigning the entire 1st level floor system, making all the sub-frames as a single printed part. My original idea of having little 2’ X 4’ self-supporting frames was untenable and would be an installation nightmare. I drew a flat piece on top of the existing frames and intersected the faces to identify where all the apparatus penetrats the floor. I then took that pattern and rebuilt the floor system underneath it. All the myriad of legs are now cross-braced so they’ll be very stable.

Here’s a sample of what I’ve done.

I have three of these systems; two are finished and printed and the 3rd is almost done drawings. The port side frames are split done the middle to facilitate installation. The starboard frames are a single and I will install the evaporator deck through this floor. Here are the first two out of the printer and cleaned, but not removed from the forrest of supports nor post-cured. I made sure that all the joints were in full contact with each other so there shouldn’t be any printer glitches.

I love the the new printer can print objects this large as single printed object. Both of these were printed in one load.

I’ll have some work time tomorrow, but be gone for a little over a week for a trip back East. I probably won’t get to the battelship this trip. I don’t really have anything I need for this project any longer. Of course, I could always visit the ship… it truly enjoy it.

[Builder2010]

I didn’t have much time today after going to the hobby shop to replace the lost white paint, but that didn’t stop me from getting something done. I finished painting the white paint work including the escape trunk, piping around the air ejectors (small and large), and miscellaneous other stuff. Notice that I white painted the numbered studs that are going to go in each identified piece of apparatus in the final display. There are still many loose pipes that need white paint. I will get them later.

I detail painted the lube oil purifier.

The escape trunk and large air ejector white piping.

Notice painting the underside of the entry deck. The lighting circuits are now fully camoflaged. The upper surface will be linoleum brown. There’s gray detail painting on the evaporators needs to be done. I like detail painting. The small air ejectors are sitting there also.

The electrical tape on the main steam pipe that’s wrapped around the middle is almost invisible now that it’s well-coated with Tamiya gloss white (As planned).

Then I did the first coat on the red valve bodies on the lube oil pump manifolds. After finish painting the red, I will paint the top of the box-shaped thing insignia yellow with black warning stripes and the valve handles yellow.

​I painted the new electrical cabinets sky gray. I will pick out details later, hopefully without breaking any of those cute little hand knobs on the bottom.

Before I went upstairs I sprayed the insides of both the low and high pressure turbines Tamiya spray Silver Leaf.

We leave tomorrow for Philly. I won’t be going to the ship this trip. Nothing to learn. But I will be going back in the Fall to deliver the new model.

[Builder2010]

Got back from the trip on Monday, but didn’t get into the shop, per ce, until today. I was doing some design work and had some doctor’s appointments (follow-ups.). During the trip I did some re-thinking about the flooring system. I hadn’t even removed the supports from the last print of the port side flooring, but I wasn’t looking forward to several aspects of them. I didn’t think the angle iron framing was going to work well for gluing to the base. Additionally, I wasn’t looking forward to gluing the individual diamond-plate segments onto this deleicate frame. Lastly, I had way too many supports under it. It would be out of view and just complicated cleaning up the print. The re-design entailed, using H-Beam structures for most of the frame, reducing their number by 2/3 and then installing all the flooring plates and printing it as a single, integrated unit. I didn’t know if it would print well, but as usual the printer came through. Here it is hanging on the printer after finishing tonight. There is a vast amount of supports to remove because I chose to print with the delicate diamond plate pattern. Support debris would destroy thosse details, but required more supports becausse of all the cross-bracing below that was lying horizontally to the build plate. Horizontally aligned surfaces always need lots of support since the resin doesn’t bridge across horizontal surfaces only for short distances.

The floor is nice and flat. All the openings are for lube oil purifier, prop bearing pedestal and columns supporting the evaporator foundation.

Here’s the drawing showing the revised under structure. Compare this to the previous design on the port side floors. With this print success I’m going to revise the others to do them the same way. The heavier H-beam legs gives more substantial gluing surface.

Trimming, cleaning and painting will happen over the next few days. Tomorrow is the 4th of July when the USA became a free democracy and I may not be working in the shop. We’re not going anywhere, so who knows…

While the printer started working, I did the first round of painting the little callout sticks that I’m contemplating adorning all the pieces of interest to conform to the printed key. There’s a few spots that need to be touched up. I was more difficult painting the numbers that lay between the sticks.

I’m now looking to expand my shop’s capability. First, I was told that you can use a 5 gallon paint pail filled partially with water as a means to capture and filter out fumes from a small paint booth. My favorite hobby shop owner told me that one of our club members has been using this method for years with good succees. The only reason I didn’t get a booth was the outside venting it would require. This method solves that problem. I viewed a video of how to do it and it’s quite easy and I happen to have some of those paint buckets lying around. I’m going to buy myself a paint booth for my 80th birthday that’s the 30th of this month.

Next, I was also told by one of our club members that you can effectively use a digital vinyl cutter to make painting masks and other items for model building. They’re not just for crafting… I started exploring this and knew that my very talented and techie daughter in law had one. On our trip we stopped at my son’s house in State College PA on our way back from Philly to Louisville. I only wanted to ask her about purchasing advice. Instead, she gave me a spare, brand-new, Sihoulette Cameo 3. Yesterday I bought some materials at Michael’s and am reviewing how these things work. I have some uses for it for the engine room project. I’ll you informed.

[Builder2010]

Worked on the model yesterday and today and am making 2 steps forward and one back. When I tried to assemble the new floor with the lube purifier that must penetrate through it, I couldn’t install it since the valves and plumbing wouldn’t fit through the rectagular opening. I then dropped the unit on the floor breaking it in half at the base junction. Instead of being annoyed, it answered the question of what to do next. Next was re-drawing it as two parts and ending the piping at the floor diamond plate level since you won’t see any of it underneath anyway. So that’s slated for printing tomorrow.

I also found out that the duck under cutout and floor are in the wrong place (about .75" too far aft (19mm). I also forgot to open one relief hole for one of the evaporator deck columns that must pass through. Furthermore; I set the job up in the printer with the front facing edges getting most of the supports. Even after cleaning and sanding it looks a bit ragged. So I’m re-designing and re-printing the part to solve all of these issues.

I thought it would be interesting for my followers to see just how many supports were on this piece of flooring. it took more than a half hour to get rid of them. I sawed off the base which made it a little easier to get into the morass and cut them loose, but here’s what it looked like after the raft was removed. When I reprint, I’m going to adjust the density setting. I don’t think the job required that many.

The bottom of the part after support removal.

And what was in the trash can. Uses a lot of resin. I amd sure there was more resin consumed in the supports than the part itself.

I had to be careful in not using too much brute force. Sometimes the cross-linking from one support to another capture some of the model such as the cross-bracing on the legs. Pulling the supports off without tracing their path can lead to ripping the part itself in the process.

​This shows how much off the duck under is. It also puts one of the support columns into the duck under instead of next to it.

Yesterday I started masking the base for the white paint. I had to stop since I’m going to added some I-beam supports on the bulkhead where the entry hatch and deck are being installed. Wanted to paint the white with the decks in place, but can’t glue them in yet. I’m going to notch the deck to install them over the I-beams.

The diamond plate pattern shows up nicely under magnification. It’s small, but it’s there.

The port side forward floor assembly printed well and I fit the ladders into the duck under to see how they fit. i needed to thin the ladder’s sides to gt the fit right.

Trim painting continued with picking out valve handles, and painting the cutaway areas. To do that red paint I used a Testor’s paint marker. Easier to control than a brush.

And I continued working on the main gauge panel. The bright brass behind the throttle wheels is metal vinyl that I’m going to use for this purpose with the new vinyl cutter. I didn’t use that cutter for this since I don’t know how to work it yet. A lot more work to do on this before it’s done.

The vinyl cutter now has a place on my work bench system.

I had a load of stuff in this spot and nohwere to put it. There was a spot in my storeroom that was occupied by too large boxes of sprues left over from many plastic kits built by me and the grandkids. I don’t know why I saved it, but had used any of it. So it all went to trash and there was space for all the bottles and spools of wire.

I wrote a note to Reskit asking if they had any figures I could use to populate the engine room. They are a really neat Ukranian after-market supplier of highly detailed cast resin (and now 3D printed) detail parts. I used them on my award winning Sikorsky Seahawk. They wrote back today saying they were really happy with my project and will look into this. He asked me to describe the clothing worn in the engine room, and I reached out to Ryan. He sent me three images today showing their garb and I forwarded this to Igor. The fact that Ukranian companies like Reskit and ICM are able to continue working during this miserable war is remarkable. I noticed in this image that that the throttles have nice chrome acorn nuts holding them on. I will add that.

[Builder2010]

Painted pipes today, and continued picking out the small details. Got the third floor system printed and post-cured, and redrew the first one and it’s going to be printed tomorrow.

As I noted on my last post, the supports had some wrap-around which pulled one of the legs and cross-bracing off in the cleaning process. I’ve often said that removing supports is the #1 failure mode of 3D prints, especially when they’re as complex as some of these are. Since I was scraping the first one printed, I was able to scavenge some pieces to graft them to this, otherwise perfect, floor system.

More to come tomorrow. Please ignore the slight size difference of the front portion between the two sides. When installed, it will not be noticeable and I didn’t want to reprint just to fix that.

[Builder2010]

Painting continues and is almost done. If I get a good, long session tomorrow I could get it all done. We had a break in all the thunder storms and I got the base red done on all the decks and deck supports. I have a couple more red parts to paint, but probably won’t have to do it outside. On the right is the newly-printed main floor replacement.

I detail painted the HP throttles. There’s some painting to do on the upper quandrant of the LP turbine, a few tiny details on the turbo-generators and painting the replacement lube purifier. There’s some touch up work on the various air ejectors, but that’s all minor stuff. Once all this is done, the last painting is the white bulkheads. When that is done equipment placement will begin sometimg this week. The throttle springs are molotow chrome base with Tamiya clear blue overcoat.

All the railing I have to solder are 32" high. Instead of soldering a retainer at the bottom to hold the correct depth, I drew and 3D printed a bunch of scale 32" spacers that I will use to set all the railings at the same height during gluing. The little frame next to my power sander is the last catwalk support for the very narrow grated walkway between the HP and LP turbines. I think it’s the last support piece I need to design and print.

[Builder2010]

Detail painting continues…

The turbo-generators are for all intents and purposes are finished painted. There may be a touchup or two I have to do, but they’re done. I had to replace one of those vertical guard poles with wire when one broke off at some point. 600 pound steam lines connect to those two valve bodies. The “copper” color was created by a chrome cylinder base covered with a mix of Tamiya Clear Red and Clear Yellow in an imprecise ratio.

The main and aux air ejectors are also just about finish painted. I hate brush painting white paint!!! Valve handles need painting/replacing where missing.

And, except for some very minor touchup, the main gauge panel is done. Wish I could have done decals for the gauge faces, but inkjet decals just don’t work in this size.

Here’s the composite photo I used to paint it.

[Builder2010]

Today I’m started making some strategic inroads into assembly. Not actual assembly, but more like “assembly prep.” What follows is a bit arcane so please follow closely.

​All that’s left to paint is the fore and aft “swiss cheese” bulkheads. Before painting I had to install the inside support beams that would hold up the aft end of the entry level floor. To measure the placement for these pieces I had to have the entry floor epoxied to the main support column which, in my rendition, is what’s holding up the fore end of the entry floor structure. In the real ship, the entry floor is supported by the entire third deck’s flooring system, which is missing on my model. After epoxying these two sub-assemblies together, I had to place all the necessary equipment on the hold floor so I would get an accurate placement. While doing that I attempted to fit the large crew floor piece that I made yesterday, and found that it interfered with the starboard main reduction gear angle brackets. I made quick work of creating relief cuts so it would snuggle to the correct spot.

I suspected I would find other interference areas and didn’t have to wait long. When I put the central column into place next to the MRG’s frame, the column’s aft triangular bottom brace brace crashed into the electric lube oil pumps foundation. In this case, it was easier to hack away at the column base than to surgically alter the pump since it was part of a larger structure and would have been more troublesome to modify.

Before epoxying the column to the entry floor system I had to be darn sure that I was putting it in the correct location. This took some trial and error get the positioning right. I’m using 5 minute epoxy and glad I did. I had to hand-hold the two parts in alignment until it set up enough to sefl-support when placed on the table top to finish cure. The relief cut is pretty obvious.

After I was able to locate and mark the height and lateral location of the support frames, I cut them from some scrap Plastruct I-beam I had left over from a previous project from years ago. I cut some cross pieces that needed to be notched so they nested into the verticals. I glued them together with solvent cement. Plastruct parts are ABS plastic. I then positioned the frame onto the bulkhead to recheck its positioning.

The trial fit has the floor at the very top of the bulkhead wall, which is actually correct.

I got worried that it may impinge with the aft MRG frame and did a quick check and found that there did clear, albeit closely. When the gear box is place there still may be some interference, but I make it work.

In this case I used rubber-infused CA to glue the frame to the styrene wall. Again I needed to make sure that the hold floor would be able to slip underneath the supports before gluing. I was able to slipit underneath. With that last check, I was able to glue it in place and clamp until cured. This newer CA product needs 15 seconds to cure so I was able to adjust plumb.

​To do the bulkhead painting I needed to mask all the oxide red parts including the hold floors. This morning I awoke realizing that with the floors not being glued in yet, I could easily substitute carboard for the real floors, and do the painting without worrying about them. I still have to mask the exterior areas, which I had already started. tomorrow, I should finish masking, paint the bulkheads and we’ll be ready to start fastening things to the real floors.

I was doing finish painting on the low pressure turbine, and knew all along that there was something funny about the fit, but left it go until later. Today was that “later” time, and I needed to do some router surgery. Don’t know why the rotor fit into the lower half, but the upper quadrant wouldn’t get close to fitting. I had to remove a lot of stock from the bearing portion that separates the low pressure and astern turbine wheels. Once I did the surgery, the parts fit and can be permanently assembled.

​Onwards and upwards!

[Builder2010]

Finished masking the base, took it outside and sprayed it with Tamiya White Primer. When it was dry (it drys fast) I brougt it inside and sprayed a second coat of Tamiya Gloss White. After pulling the tape I found some erros and areas where overspray got behind the mask and touched up with Oxide Red and the white where necessary.

I then noted the locations of all the inner structure on the card stock that I used to mask the inside and made a grid that I could use to locate all the penetrations for the LED wiring that needed to pass through the ship’s base and through the wood base.

I placed the critical pieces on the card stock and noted where the holes should go so they would clear any of the internal structure. I found, to my annoyance, that I still missed the correct openings on the integrated floor prints. I’m not going to reprint. I will repair them so they’ll work. I still have to pay attention where the base “concrete” blocks will go. I can drill though them if they’re in the way, but would choose not to. I have to remove a square notch in the aft, starboard side of the electrical mezannine frames to accept the escape trunk. I already made accommodations for the trunk on the stepped-down walkway frame.

The image shows one location: the leads coming from the evaporator frame. It was gratifying that the main steam pipe wrapped around the central column as I designed and the entry floor was still able to align well with the wall.

Happy Friday. Work resumes on Monday.

[Dioramartin]

Myles all I can say is (a) that turbine’s a work of Art on its own – if you scaled that up to something around 12” across I’d seriously consider buying it (b) have you ever considered a fresh career sorting out SpaceX’s problems?

[Builder2010]

Thanks Tim!
I could probably double the size and still produce it on my printer. Bigger than that would require re-engineering the construction so it would multple parts (more than the three there’s now). At larger scales, all the turbine blades could be resolved adding to further design changes. So… I probably won’t do it.