¹⁄35

Building the Beast!

Now that the conning tower was 98% complete I decided to focus on the main hull. I once again mounted the beast into the jaws of my Workmate. I laid the deck plates on top and noticed that the hull was slightly narrower than the plates. I would need to cut spreaders to establish the correct width. Using some thick balsa wood strips, I cut and “epoxyed” them into place. The hull was now the correct width to receive the deck plates when the time came.

From the beginning I decided to add a fake pressure hull to this beast. If built per the kit instructions, you can look all the way to the bottom of the hull thru the deck plates! For the money, totally unacceptable! The question was how to do it? I got a few suggestions from the gang on Armorama, (Thanks Skipper) but decided the best and easiest way was to simply super-glue sheet styrene to one side of the hull. Once dry, push the other side into place, thereby creating a curve on the top, and then super glue the other side in place. I initially tried this with some longer pieces of sheet styrene and it was hard to maintain the curve in one spot, while moving to glue another one. I then figured that if I cut the pieces into smaller, more manageable pieces it would work. And work it did. I had a few hang ups here and there, but over all it went pretty smooth. I rummaged thru my bits and pieces box for tubing of various sizes and lengths. I pretty much cleaned it out and I was still short!

After a short trip to the closet Hobby Town I was armed with more tubing. I laid them in place along the length and cut others to place across the hull. There were a few gaps between some of the sheets, and tubing here and there. I filled these with Aves Apoxy and all was good. A good 2 hours after I started, the pressure hull, although fake, was complete. I decided it was time for a beer while everything was drying.

Returning to the hull I found that things had dried enough for some paint. Grabbing a can of Krylon Flat Black I went to work painting. I got a good even coat wherever I saw white staring back at me, and even in a couple of areas I didn’t. While the paint was drying, I went to work on the deck plates. Using some course sanding sticks I removed the brass “nubs” that were left from removing them from the frets. The deck plates were supposed to be soldered together, but I decided not to. I began at the bow and worked my way back. The plates didn’t want to cooperate in some areas so I convinced them to and continued. By the time I reached the stern I was faced with another problem. For some reason the plates at the stern didn’t fit the width of the hull anymore. They were too wide. Again, what to do?

End of Part One