Takom Iowa Class Mark 7, 16"50Cal Turret with Full Interior Start-to-Finish

[Builder2010]

I do most of my creative thinking upon awakening in the morning and today was no exception. A couple of things got my attention. I had to remove part of the cutaway scrap from the gun house and reattach it since it’s the part that supports the exterior periscope from the kit and my complex interior periscope that I created. Besides cutting it out and preparing it, I had to figure out where it would go. It’s precise location was a bit hard to spacialize due to the missing plastic from the saw kerf. I stiffened the part with some more styrene and, after an initial fitting that was too far forward, I think I’ve got it right. It’s not glued in yet, but it will be before the gun house is installed and painted. I wanted to preserve not only the periscope mounts, but also the little divots between them that denote the location of some hand grabs. The final position is actually rearward from this almost to that line of heavy rivets.

Work then continued on the electric deck. After laying in all the apparatus I realize that I DID have to make a cutaway of the powder trunk that’s facing the viewer. You would completely miss the 300hp pump motor if the trunk was intact. Luckily, I decided to print all the powder trunks hollowed out. So when I cut the piece away using a scroll saw, I didn’t have too much cleanup to do to open up the interior and thin the walls so they were more believable.

Using the same strategy, I realized that you wouldn’t see anything inside the projectile flat cores either with the both the powder trunks AND the central column. I cut the trunk, but not sure what to do about the column. The wiring’s going to run down that, just like the prototype. You can see some of it and it will be illuminated. I had to replace the trunk middle wall due to damage I created when using a carbide router to thin them.

And this is the very restricted view of the interior with the e-deck in place over it. This clearly shows why it needs to be lit. I just ordered more warm-white surface mount LEDs today from SuperBrightLEDs.Com.

[Builder2010]

I started to add the lighting circuit on the underside of the e-deck before I could paint it. I got the foil tape and tinning done, but then couldn’t find my LEDs. I did a pretty extensive search and the only thing that makes sense is I somehow threw them out when doing the cleanup prior to the trip. That’ll teach me not to clean the shop!

I ordered 50 new ones and they’ll be here early next week, and I only had a few of them left from the previous batch, so that’s the silver lining.

Part of the circuit runs over Evergreen styrene. Styrene doesn’t do so well when you’re soldering over it. I tested this when doing the tinning and it was okay. I’ll just have to get on and off with the heat quickly. That’s not a bad thing since the surface mount LEDs are very heat sensitive too. The UV resin has a much higher temp profile and doesn’t really melt. It’s a thermoset not thermoplastic material.

With that work stopped, I got back to the projectile flats. I found that nice new one I printed last month was almost a 1/4" shorter than its mate. I think this error came from taking my height measure from a different reference point on the drawing. The structural steel framing on the two projectile decks is confusing. I decided to reprint this critical part. Here’s the new versus the old one.

The last one was redrawn with 96 sides on the circles, not 48 and this produces a much smoother curve… so smooth that I decided to reprint both projectile flats. I used this as an opportunity to fix some other issues that I had with this part. I also decided to draw the double powder trunk as a cutaway objects with nicely formed walls. Since I’m reprinting stuff, might as well do it all correctly. And on that theme, I’m also reprinting the deck rotation machinery that goes inside this structure. My original had the control link coming off way too low. The control is actually around head height on the outside of the inner shell. I also made it a better part all the way around. I’ll reprint this today and it will all be ready for assembly on Monday. The upper level control needed some serious bracing if it was going to hold together as a little 3D printed part. Here’s the new view showing the revised parts.

I’ll just keep doing stuff over and over until I get it right. The only expense is resin.

[surfsup]

Just simply stunning work. I cannot believe the detail you are adding. My Hat is off to you Sir…Cheers Mark

[Builder2010]

Thanks Mark!

Happy Monday. All my reprinted parts are now done and almost all cleaned up. This week should be an excellent week to do the solvent painting outdoors. October is my favorite month!

The session was foreshortened today. I had an appointment in the a.m. with my urologist to decide to do anything with my PSA numbers that floating around in the 4s. We’re going to take another measure in 3 months. At my age, 77, PSA numbers don’t matter as much as do with the younger guy. And then this afternoon started some physical therapy to help relieve my annoying sciatica. Otherwise, I’m doing just fine.

All of the insides as well as the exterior shells of the two projectile flats are now renewed and correctly sized. Starting with the cutaway powder trunks. The difference between my feeble attempt to thin the walls of the previous, full-size trunks and my newly drawn and printed (as cutaways) trunks is painfully obvious. I still had sanding to do on the new printed parts.

Here is the reprinted inner ring turning machinery. In this print I set it up with the control rod facing the build plate and the gear head on the hanging end, therefore having no supports on this detailed portion. And it shows. The gear came out beautifully and meshes with the ring gear running around the deck circumference. It’s interesting… even in this close coupled mechanism, the designers chose to have a motor attached to a hydraulic pump, piped to a hydraulic motor driving the gear box. It probably provides good control and protection against overloads.

Here’s a top view of the newly printed projectile flat.

Here’s the full stack showing both projectile flats. Their heights are now identical. Almost had a catastrophe, but it was averted. I thought I had cut through the majority of supports and went to rip the part off the remaining few. I miscounted. There were more supports on the thin circular wall than I realized and it fractured the wall like a spiral leg fracture, from the top edge one third the way around until it stopped at a thickened parts where one of the electrical boxes was attached. Again, with the help of Bondic, I reattached it, sanded off the excess after it cured and alls well again.

The cutaway powder trunk gives ample view into the space. The motor is hidden… I guess I could cutaway part of the central column…

[Builder2010]

Moving along… slowly.

Yesterday I got the lighting completed for the ceilings of Projectile Deck 2 and the Powder flat. For the projectile flats I’m using 3 surface mount LEDs. The ceiling of the first p-flat was under the electric deck. The ceiling of the p-deck 2 is underneath the rotating ring of p-deck one, and the ceiling of the powder flat is the underneath p-deck two’s rotating part.

I found out… and not sure why this happens… is that when you run a parallel circuit out of the CL2N3 LED driver chip, that one leg lights properly and the other burns out the LED. The reason I went to a parallel array because 4 in a series were very dim. I’m using a 12VDC power source and each LED drops 3.2 volts, so four in a series is 12.8 volts and exceeds the line voltage so they don’t light fully. Three in a series works great.

These two parts are the same diamter. The bottom looks smaller since it was further away from the lens. The wiring is captivated on the substrated by Bondic globs. They’re led to the center column down which they will go to the circuit collectors under the base. Each individual circuit will have its own CL2N3 driver chip. On the bottom circuit you can see how I split out the copper foil to separate it from the rest of the series.

I used Molotow liquid mask to block out the LEDs in prep for painting like I did on the electric deck.

To prep the inner drums for painting, I glued some of the details in place that will be easy to paint after the base colors are in, but masked the floor locations for the other pieces so I can air brush the floor the linoleum color. I will also mask where the projectile hoists are going. This serves two purposes. It provides a raw surface for better glue adhesion, and it makes detail painting of the apparatus before assembly much easier.

I put down a patch of Tamiya tape, placed the parts and then traced them. Cut the tape to leave the patch in place.

After I got the two inner parts taped I glued them to their outer rings. As I was writing this, I realized that I really have to get the projectile hoist areas masked too before painting. If I hadn’t stopped working this afternoon at my ascribed time (5:00p.m.) I would have primed that area without masking and that would have been a mistake.

I used urethane adhesive to hold these parts together. It’s gives a little more working time.

Starting to do the same process on the electric deck. I located and glued in the double poweder trunk that passes through this space. I printed out a scaled image of the turret cross-section so I could get an approximate positioning. While they don’t have to be exactly in line, I want them to be as close as I can get them. This chunk also stabilizes that thin printed wall. This serves as the perfect spacer for the separate middle piece since actually touches both walls.

I woke up Tuesday morning at around 6:00 and had a disturbing flash thought. The width measurements I gave my very dear and old friend Bryant (the fabulous bass player in my college band and a person I’ve known since 1963…and an amazing woodworker) for the inner width of the showcase was WRONG! He’s crafting the base for me and I’m going to fab the acrylic case top. It was wrong because all my drawings of the turret and the resultant width measurements were WITHOUT the rangefinder ears that are so conspicuous in this piece of armament. I didn’t draw them because this was a kit part that wasn’t being 3D printed. The result, my 8" width measurement was a 1/4" too narrow and that would leave 0 clearance between the model and the case. He’d been routing the ogee edge and I hoped that he wasn’t too far along.

I was lucky. He’s a day before it would have been very difficult and he’s able to add and inch of width to the base which will give me a reasonable fit. Whew! It was weird. I just woke up realizing that something was off and it came to me that I didn’t measure the ears. Subconscious thought it amazing sometimes.

[Builder2010]

Yesterday (Friday) was somewhat frustrating! The weather was good for painting and I really wanted to get everthing I could primed. I had to do some mods first. The projectile hoists didn’t match the wall height of the projectile flat core. I had originally drawn these to match the shorter height, but I changed that last week when I found that the two decks were different heights. So I reprinted both of them to the higher wall height making the projectile hoists now too short.

So I used the surface gauge and laid out a cutting line to make the walls the same as the hoists. All good? Well… maybe not as good as it should be. Here’s the new wall height.

And here’s the stack showing the nice tight fit.

Then I found out why the two walls were different heights in the first place. Due to the large boss hanging down from the electric deck, the upper projectile flat wall height was shorter than the lower projectile’s deck. In other words, I had forgotten that I had alredy accounted for this difference when printing them originally. The two walls were intentionally different. So now the lower deck’s hoists fit perfectly as shown above, but the upper hoists are anout 1/8" too short. I really don’t want to print another deck, nor do I want to mess with the drawing and print another set of three hoists. They were tough enough to get right the first time. I think I’m just going to scratch build some spacers to close the gap.

The next frustration kept occurring as I was adding pieces to the painting board. Some of the components, which I thought were fully done, were “almost fully done” and required some additional cleanup. One of the rear compartment prints had the spanning tray break off…AGAIN! This piece had a very thin weak spot as the tray joins into the cradle at the faux hinge. I’ve had to reinforce them with Bondic. It’s that point that broke. I had to sand off the old Bondic and re-attach the piece. So this all took longer than I wanted. I was short on time. I had a physically therapy appointment at 4:00 to work on my sciatica.

I did finally get all the masking done of the projectile decks including the three spots on each where the hoists will be glued.

With that, all the big parts (except the rear bulkhead and the gun girder) are ready for primer. Masking the electric deck took a bit of time also.

Here are all the rest of the parts ready for paint. I masked the gun recoil slide area which remains as natural metal. I’m using the gun barrels as a convenient handle to paint the slide/yoke assm.

And the rest,

Besides the aforementioned gun slide, rear bulkhead, there are still a ton of even smaller parts that I’m not going to prime. Many will be painted when they’re glued into their final locations.

The last frustration that kept me from painting was finding out that one of my LEDs illuminating the powder flat was sitting where the double powder trunk was going.

This is why!

And here’s the fix. Re-rounting the copper foil tape to the rear. And as I’m looking at this image, I see that the other LED is also where the single trunk’s going, so I have to move that too. Ugh! I don’t know why soldering the LEDs over the styrene patch didn’t clue me into the fact that the powder trunks went there. It just seemed like a good place to put the lights. Ran out of time before installing the LED. When I repair the tape, I no longer rely just on the tape’s adhesive. I add solder to ensure a good electrical connection.

I have to keep reminding myself, “Scratchbuilding is fun! Scratch-building is fun!” Whenever I complain to my wife, she reminds me, “It’s your hobby, no one is telling you to do it!” She is very unsympathetic.

Weather permitting, on Monday I’ll have the LEDs re-routed, the spacers fitted on Projectile Flat #1 and get some primer put on. I’ll also have the gun girder and back bulkhead ready for paint also.

[Builder2010]

Happy Monday. The weather was PERFECT for outdoor painting. I took all the major and medium parts outside and used what was left of a can of Tamiya gray primer for the gun barrels, a full can of Tamiya white primer and then some Rust-oleum flat white for what was left after I ran out of the Tamiya white. I just plop all the parts on the boards to which they were stuck using rolled blue masking tape onto another big piece of cardboard and that onto the top of our two trash totes. There was just a slight breeze and I wore my full 3M chemical vapor mask since there was lots of spray around. I even took off my Apple Watch and put it in my pocket so it didn’t get hit.

The big parts had their bottoms painted too. When the upper paint was dry enough to turn over, I sprayed all their bottoms. The LEDs were masked with the Molotow Liquid Mask.

The Rust-oleum needed 20 minutes to dry to the touch. I used the time to do the lighting scheme for the turret gun house. This time, instead of soldering over styrene, I made a laminate using some 1/64 aircraft ply. The wood will withstand the soldering temp much better than the styrene will. I use Eutectic Solder which has the lowest melting point of tin/lead solders. It has the same freezing and melting point with no transition zone. It is 63% tin and 37% lead and melts at 183°C (361°F). Having instant-solid transition eliminates the opportunity for a “cold” solder joint. Cold joints occur with other solder blends when the joint is moved during the time when it is slushy (neither liquid or solid). The crystaline structure that forms is non-conductive and ruins electrical conductivity. It’s slightly more expensive, but it’s worth it.

Again, I used Bondic to make instant wire clamps. I again used the 3M transfer tape to hold the front and back light assemblies into the plastic shell. This will all be painted white like the other walls.

I’m thinking about scratch-building the last bit of wall detail that goes on the back wall of the gun house. These are basically a bunch of wiring and junction boxes.

So here are all the pieces back in the drying solid before the detail painting begins.

As an aside, the exercise program I’m working on along with the TENS 7000 that I bought from Amazon appears to be working. It’s making the sciatica much better. The TENS unit stands for Trans Epidermal Neural Stimulation and uses high frequency electrical waves to quiet the nerves down that are generating most of the pain signals.

Tomorrow, I will begin some detail painting. I also have to bite the bullet and start working on the final pieces of the puzzle: the outer barbette and outer shells of the lower decks.

[Builder2010]

Very short session today, and I woke up thinking about how to make the outer cylinders and the barbette. I decided to hold off in detail painting until I get further along with these outer barrels. Reason? There are some critical fits to the inner structures and the round outer decking that must bridge the gaps between the inner and our barrels. I don’t want fancy paint and detail parts in the way as I massage all this stuff to fit. And massage i definitely will have to do if past experience is a prolog to future experience.

I already printed out the patterns for these cylindrical shapes. This one is the biggest. It is the outer shell for both the powder flat and the lowest projectile flat. It is also cut on a bias at the bottom where the entire stucture is welded into the ship’s framing. Only on turret #1 is this angle cut made as the ship is already narrowing at this point. There are no powder magazines flanking #1 turret because of this narrowness. The other two turrets have some room between the turret cylinders and the ship’s armor belts.

Here’s Jim Slade’s rendition of this barrel (straight and tapered portions) that he created from the actual ship’s drawings. The fingered extensions at the cut off portion are the weld points to tie the turret into the ship’s structure. Notice that this is where the roller bearing and gear rack gets mounted. I hope to be able to do mine this way also. Ttuhat hatchway is the only opening into the turret other than the entrance under the rear of the gun house.

As before, I stick the pattern onto the 0.040" styrene with the MicroMark Pressure Sensitive Adhesive, just lightly applied to the edges. I then scribe with a #11 blade and then snap it aprart.

Here’s all the parts for this barrel. The circle will serve two functions. It will be the former to mold the sheet into a drum, and it will provide the stock for the annular decking that is around all three lower decks: powder flat and the two projectile flats.

The odd shaped pieces will be the angled flats that get glued in after the cylinder is formed.

My challenge is three fold. I have to get that stiff 0.040" styrene into a cylinder with the ends matched and glued so it won’t pull apart. I aslo have to glue in the annular decks which will reinforce the cylinders, and lastly, I have cut the entire cylinder assemblies in half since I’m planning on doing it as a clamshell.

That splitting into clamshells is a huge question mark for me. It has some unique value in showing what’s going on in that annular ring, e.g., the air bottles and the powder scuttles. But it will be very challenging to get the cuts done AND STILL have the halves maintain their cylindrical profile. I’m rethinking this idea and will maybe revert to cutting away some of the cylinders in strategic locations while still preserving their structural integrity.

First things first. I’ve got to form the cylinders and glue them in such a way to keep them together before any cutting.

[Russelle]

@Builder2010

I’ve got to form the cylinders and glue them in such a way to keep them together before any cutting.

Have you considered gently heating the sheet styrene in an oven to above its glass transition temperature (100°C) to allow you to contour it to a former of the correct diameter?

It may take a little experimentation with the oven at slightly higher temperatures to make the sheet truly malleable…

Meanwhile, the pieces are coming together nicely and look awesome!!!

[d6mst0]

Looks like you are getting closer to assembly after all of those hit and misses you experienced printing all of those parts. Looking forward to those pictures and how it’s proceeding. Mark

[Builder2010]

Thanks fellows!

Got some suggestions for making that flat styrene round; using a rolling pin or heating in the oven. I was not going to attempt the oven. I’ve had bad experiences with heating styrene to bend it. It quickly goes from soft to a mess. I did try using a rolling pin over a soft substrate. Did not create any curvature at all. Ended up doing it the hard way.

First I needed to stabilize the various rings so I could get a test fit on the wrapper. I have a pile of 3/8" threaded rod left over from the Sikorsky S-38 restoration. I cut another annular ring and put them together on the threaded rod with some big fender washers. I immediately ran into dificulty with the 0.040" disc thickness. It was flexing all over the place and made wrapping thes sheet very difficult.

Regardless, I was able to test the wrapper fit and it was the right length. I actually figured out the disc diameter by dividing the wrapper length by Pi. That number still works! Using tape and rubber bands I got it to stabilize long enough to take a picture.

I added a splice plate on the squared ends of the wrap and glued it old school… I mean really old school using Testor’s tube cement. I find this standby adhesive works well when you’re gluing large surface areas. Liquid cements seem to evaporate too fast to get a good adhesion. Clamps insured that the joint stayed together during curing.

Because of the thinner sections where the cutouts are, the cylinder wants to turn into an oblate spheroid (football) shape, but the rings will force it to round out eventually.

While this was curing I got to work on the annual discs opening up the inside to create the actual ring shape. To establish the i.d., I first tried to trace the o.d. of the powder flat’s lower edge, but the accuracy of this method was dubious. The ring needs to fit quite tightly.

Next attempt, I used the caliper to measure the diamter, split it in half and used a dividers to scribe an accurate circle. This worked well and after a tiny bit of shaving with a #11 blade, got an almost perfect fit. It was originally too tight and caused the thing ring to fold over.

After taking off the clamps and trying on the drum, I found that the 0.040" styrene ring didn’t have the structural integrity to withstand the drum’s springiness and it was distorting all over the place. Ergo, I can’t use this thin stock for the annular rings. I’m transitioning to 1/8" Masonite which is much, much stiffer. The extra thickness shouldn’t detract from the model. It will also provide enough lateral strength to retain the drum’s shape when (or if) I decide to split the hemispheres for the clamshells.

I was originally going to use this piece of Masonite scrap, but I found some better pieces floating around the shop. The lowest ring has the cutouts and this piece will work for that one. Waste not want not… The only trouble with Masonite is the porosity of the cut edges. I have acrylic sanding sealer that, when applied in several coats, gives the edges a finished look.

Tomorrow’s a physical therapy day again which will cut into work time.

[RDT1953]

Immersion in hot water works well for forming styrene without the risk of melting.

[Dioramartin]

Maybe the Masonite substitute’s the right solution. Just in case though, I had a similar problem once – I pre-curved two long strips of Evergreen strip (square section) and used extra-thin glue with clamps to work around the outside & inside circumeferences, and then some short radial strips connecting inner & outer rims on the underside. That provided reasonable rigidity to the discs, although it may still not be enough for your purposes because yours are much larger than the ones I was doing.

Whatever, this is a fascinating project - one of the all-time great scratch-builds.

[Builder2010]

Martin, that’s a great thought. I’m pretty good at scratch-building structures out of Evergreen structural components. It would be easier (for me) to add I-beams and other shapes to the annular rings and making them much stiffer. After all, the real ships decks are thin plate supported by structural steel. I’m going to try this before fussing with the thick Masonite.

I’m also going to give hot water the opportunity to soften the drum so it would apply less spring back force.

There are support beams that I already 3D printed. I was planning on installing them AFTER gluing up the entire drum. Perhaps, they should be glued in now along with some lateral tie-in beams. That could make the rings stiffer while still using shapes that were found on the real turret.

[Builder2010]

PLAN A: 0.040" thick annular ring. Failed due to too much flexibility

PLAN B: Cut annular rings out of 1/8" Masonite… nice and stiff, but a pain to cut and finish

PLAN C: Idea given by Dioramartin on Kit Forums to make the thin rings strong by using Evergreen structural shapes. Three times a charm. I have made many scratch-built items using Evergreen structural shapes and I should have thought of it. But… who cares. You take good ideas from where they come.

Using 1/4" Evergreen I-beam stock I cut a series of peices to stiffen the annular ring and then glued another ring on top of this making a completely stiff assembly.

I used a piece I was going to scrap for the bottom web leaving the perfectly fitting one as the top visible ring.

This was pretty cool since the 1/4" thickness put the ring’s top level almost in perfect line with the floor level of the powder flat interior. Happy coincidence.

But there’s a wrinkle! Two parts of the this ring have to be chopped off due to the truncated aspect of the #1 turret’s lower end. This cut removes a significant part of the ring’s inner structure and destroys some of its structural integrity.

To resolve this dilemma I added some more interal structure. This helped a bit.

After making the cut, you can see there’s not much left of the old lateral I-beam.

An added web of 0.040" styrene restored some of the strength. I still had shape the web a bit to get it conform to the rings circumference.

The true test of all this work was putting the skin on it and seeing if it held shape. It did what it’s supposed to do. When the other rings are in place the oblate shape will round out nicely.

Here’s a side view of this assembly.

And here was a test with the truncated wall. Clearly, it will take a bit of finessing these flat walls to get them tight, but I have no doubt that it will look okay.

Getting this drum formed and solving the annular ring problem was huge for me. I really was concerned about this aspect of the build. I have to make two more ring sets for each projectile flat, but having a viable method takes all the angst away. I’ve left the settings on my two Starrett machinists dividers from the final ring i.d and o.d sizing so I’m certain that the additional rings will be exactly the same size, therefore guaranteeing that the drum will be perfectly cylindrical from top to bottom.

I also realized today that I did NOT make templates for the barbette portion of the outer drums. That and the extra material being consumed in making the additional annular rings created a stock shortage. I put an order for two more 12" X 24" sheets of 0.040" Evergreen Styrene. I ordered it from my wonderful local hobby shop, Scale Reproductions, Inc., even though he doesn’t stock these larger sheets. I have a goal in flife to keep them in business. The model building community in Louisville, KY is alive and well.

Due to the strength and stability of the constructed rings, I feel more confident that I could go with the clamshell scheme.

[Dioramartin]

Wow! Glad & somewhat surprised I could help a little, but you’ve taken it several levels (pun intended) way beyond what I could imagine – bravo sir, fantastic! (PS Tim is my first name)

[Builder2010]

Tim, credit is due! While I executed the idea well, there would be no idea with the spark you provided. That kind of kickstart has happened many times in my career. Here’s a good example. In the early 90s, Engelhard, where I worked had been trying to shrink itself to success (spoiler alert: it didn’t work). As the head of training, with nothing but layoffs for three years, we had a heck of a time to generate full classes and weren’t doing any training at all. The fellow who ran HR IT, made a casual remark at a staff meeting, “There are lots of other comnpies around here, perhaps you could pool your resources?” That was it… one line. I said it was a brilliant idea. It took nine months to create the Metro Park Consortium, where 6 corporations joined forces to provide for general management education. Turning an idea into an innovation involves a lot of perspiration. I was the CEO of this effort and it worked great. We only needed one or two of our people needing the training and they could get it at the same price as it would cost us internally. Unfortunately, I too was laid off that September in 1995, but the company asked if I would stay to run the consortium. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for me, I was already hired at Henkel with a better job and a company that’s still paying my retirement 20 years after I left them.

Worked on the second set of annular rings today, with a break to go to the hobby shop to pick up more 0.040" large sheet styrene. When he special ordered the large sheets for me months ago, he ordered more than I needed. He still had it and I bought more.

I measured the rings for the projectile flat, cut it all out and found that my i.d. was about 1/32" too big and wouldn’t work. That’s part of the reason why I was running out of my original stock. I remeasured and re-scribed. For the first of the two rings, I scribed the circumferences and then made radial scribes to faciliate snapping off the scrap.

While this works okay, it’s a bit tedious and also leaves some inconsistencies that need to be sanded out. On the second ring, I realized that if I scribed the circles just a bit deeper, I coud snap the scrap out directly, leaving a much smoother and rounder edge. It also took 1/3 the time.

I also was being really anal and actually laid out the 1/6 spacing for the internal bracing. An absolutely meaningless exercise that will never, ever be seen by anyone. But it was fun.

To glue on the top piece I used some angle blocks to hold the edge in line. Liquid cement all the way.

I test fit the stack to see how it all aligned.

And then I fit the upper and lower annular rings into the drum and was rewarded with a nice rounded drum. I was almost tempted to glue it at this point, but it was very near quitting time and I didn’t want to do anything rash. I’ve said it before, “I am not patient! I am persistent!” It’s that persistence that has me doing stuff two or three times until I perfect the method, but I will screw up when I don’t allow time for glue or paint to dry.

I’ve created the development drawings of the barbette pieces. I don’t have a working CorelDraw any longer, and am not in a position at the moment to buy a piece of $400 software. I have Inkscape and MyDraw. Both are decent, but neither works for me to make full size templates on US Standard Letter Pages.

Coreldraw is simply the best vector drawing program I’ve tried. It does several things that really help. First, it enables you to move the ruler origin anywhere on the drawing page. It makes it so much easier to establish accurate guidelines when you can set zero at the edge of the object. It also enables you to tile prints that exceed the size of your printer’s page. I can’t figure how to do this in MyDraw at all, and in Inkscape you have to export pieces of the drawing as separate PDF files, which is a total pain in the butt!

I ended up printing a page scale image of the three templates with their 1:1 dimensions. Two of them are fully rectangular and will be easy to layout on the styrene. The other has a simple curve on top and bottom edges and I will work that out somehow. Corel also enables scaling very easily. I also have skill with Adobe Illustrator and found it too to be clunky and difficult to use.

[Dioramartin]

Well thanks but truly the credit’s all yours, excellent results…and yes we’ve all doubtless learned Modelling 101 the hard way: If it doesn’t need to be glued (yet), don’t.

And that’s a very interesting story originating from a chance remark, someone should write a book about such examples. I was also previously interested in your experience with the overnight sub-conscious – they don’t say “sleep on it” for nothing. So much so, it positively saved my life on one occasion over 30 years ago – won’t bore you with the story, but from that day on I was a true believer & it’s never let me down, I trust my sub-conscious far more than my conscious.

[Russelle]

Can’t see the pics from your latest post?

[Builder2010]

Funny you should mention “book”. I’ve written one entitled, “Turning on the Lights”. I haven’t tried to get it published yet, although I’ve had a few folks read it. It’s sort of a memoir/anthology of what I’ve learned and observed in working with thousands of people spread over dozens of organziations. It is both chronological and thematic. My sister edited it and said, “it should be required reading for anyone who wants to go into management.” If you’re so incliined I can send you the PDF off line.

My starting premise was all I have to do was turn on people’s lights and the rest they would take care of themselves. I found that creativity was effectively quashed by education systems where you had to be “right” when you raised you hand in class. By 5th grade, most kids were conforming, no longer creating. But I also found that you could re-ignite that sense of wonder.

Don’t know why you can’t see the pics.

Here they are again.
!

Hope they display now.