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Building the Beast - Part Two

the saga continues

After Thanksgiving dinner, I am back in my little hole in the wall, slaving over the giant U-boat. In the morning I had snuck away to fill gaps, apply some more putty, and further prepare the giant for paint (which can’t happen soon enough!)

11/25/05 finds me awake at 4:30am in hopes of finding a TV for my son for Christmas. I am lucky to have escaped Wal-Mart with my life by 5 am. Never again will I do this. I have to work today, but that is another 4 hours away. There’s plenty of time to get some more building accomplished on the “Uber-sub. “ I cleaned up the putty I applied yesterday with most of the work revolving around the very tail end of the boat where a large resin plug attaches. This plug is part of the attaching point for the rudders and tail planes. Initially it fit like crap, but after several shims, lots of putty, and copious amounts of colorful words, it looks pretty good. I lost a fair amount of rivet detail due to the heavy sanding required to blend everything in. I will replace as much as I can without losing my sanity.

One hour into the clean up, I am done. The hull bottom will need a good washing, but other than that, it is ready for the replacement rivets that are to come. I turn the boat over and begin working on the placement of those wonderful photo-etch pieces to the deck plates. Hatches, anti-skid strips, hinges, lots of hinges, white metal stanchions, additional grab rails on the deck itself and finally, the main rails that run the perimeter of the boat. I begin to notice an increase in the boats weight…go figure.

I decide that the main grab rails will be scratch built as well. They are too fragile in white metal for my ham fisted handling of the boat. As 8:25 am approaches I finish up with the last of the photo-etch pieces. I can almost smell the paint and I smile.

When I arrived home from work I gave the guard rails an additional look. I had re-thought scratch building the railings as my first several attempts didn’t go so well. I cleaned up the white metal pieces and using fair amounts of CA they were attached to the deck plates. They are a lot sturdier than I gave them credit for initially. They also look great at this point. I just need to ensure that I am careful while handling the beast. I carefully flip the boat up-side down and add the remaining pieces; rudders, dive planes, support arms for the screws and finally the bow planes. I had previously cleaned all of these parts up adding brass pins to help with attaching them. There are a few gaps that require some putty, but nothing major. The next few days I don’t get much if any further progress done as the weather has turned nasty. Painting will have to wait. Hopefully it will warm up.