Any one brave enough for 1/72 gato interior build?

  Hey Mike K

  Wow! You've invented composite materials for the scale modeler! Thats a really great idea, can't wait to experiment with it.

  I don't care what Rokket says, your not a crazy man. Interior scratchbuilding seperates the average everyday seaman from the IIw.o. youll earn your bunk in officer country!

  As always thanks for all your advice.

Regards, MacLeod

   Aloha rokket

  Hey Rokket. I'm an big admirer of yours and, have been following your 1/72 Type VII build since the begining(awesome)!! I'm also a frequent visitor to your sites gallery, also excellent...

   Like yourself, I like to open up hatches and expose sub-structure as much as possible. I'm building 1/125th Type VII w/ complete scratchbuilt interior as a means of planning my strategy for a 1/72 atlantic boat. I have developed some techniques along the way that may help other like minded builders of sub interiors. I've been using aluminum flashing as pressure hulls, deck plating, bulkheads as well as radio faces etc. Its thickness scales out pretty good, it cuts and drills easily, it can be embossed with a stylus to create rivets and other details and, scribes beautifully. You can coax it easily into curves and, even compound curves. It also responds quite well to super glue. I have also found that the concave bottom of large beer cans makes a pretty nifty convex watertight bulkhead as well as pressure hull fore & aft caps. Plastruct I-beams make great hull-ribs if you heat them up in warm sand (ala-hot plate) and then coax them into the proper radia.

  I'm sure your familiar with Revell's 1/125th Type VII u-boat and, its lack of hull detail. I was able to adapt your oil-canning technique to great effect and, was able to turn very thinly stretched sprue to create believable welds. A retired rapidiograph pen made quite a nice riveting stylus. I back-scraped & drilled to open up all limber holes and. even back-scraped the deck pieces to open up flooding spaces. It looks good but, becomes very fragile and, is very time consuming ( i'de have to think twice about doing that again)! Attaching all the visable bits of ribbing in the free-flooding areas is really fiddley but it is in any scale.

  This little project is in a state of many different sub-assemblies and, I'll have to borrow a friends digital camera if i'm to make any photo posts. ( soon to come)

  I have amassed a trove of type VII schematics and various other reference books and, that is precisely where i have to begin my Gato journey. I have little or nothing on fleet boats and, nothing resembling schematics. Any help in this direction would be greatly appreciated & welcomed. All the techniques i've invented and learned from you guys is gonna make this a killer build! I can't wait.

  P.S. I just finished reading wake of the Wahoo....A must read! Does hanshansa's great u-995 interior photo series still exist somewhere out in cyberspace? If so-do tell!   Regards, MacLeod 

Thanks, Rokket for the link - totally awesome site! Fantastic information!

Cheers, Rick

Hey 96th, Finescale did a feature on a fellow who scratchbuilt a gorgeous interior for the VIIC, and Alistair Wright added a LOT of great scratch detals to the CMK kits:

http://www.rokket.biz/models/modelsweb/rokket/u557/alwright.shtml 

Mike of course has done the same (with those lovely torp rigging chains!):

http://www.rokket.biz/models/modelsweb/rokket/u557/mike.shtml 

Mike, looks liek you're seriously thinking interior... crazy man!

You're more than welcome, but be caeful. You'll need the bulkheads in place, to hold the hull to shape. If you get the liquid plastic on them, they'll become a permanent part of the hull. Same thing if you're using and oversized tube, and using rubber bands to pull it into the bulkneads.

Paint the plastic on as close as reasonably possible to the bulkheads (and rubber bands), let it set, move them and finish painting. Repeat this till it's good and solid.

If you're using a really thin cardboard,it may soak all the way through. That means it'll take fewer coats, but it'll spread, stay farther away from the bulkheads (and rubber bands).

You'll probably start with a 36 inch tube, use the excess to test how much spread and penetration, you're going to get. Draw a pencil line all the way around, and paint up to the line. Then it's easy to measure the spread. Then cut the tube at the line, to check penetration.

You'll need 8 bulkheads. Seven 2 2/3 inches, in diameter, and one 2 1/3 inches(Maneuvering/After torpedo Room bulkhead).

The extra bulkhead is placed 2 2/3 inches forward of the Man/ATR bulkhead to locate the knuckle, where the pressure hull bottom turns upward.

I can send rough sketches and numbers to anyone who e mails me at <<mkeatingss(at)cox.net>>.

Mike K.

mkeatingss wrote:

Now. As to why I like cardboard. It's easy to work and shape. But, after I've got it just the way I want it, I 'plastisize' it. I melt a little sprue in Tenax (or some other plastic soluble glue) And paint a couple of coats, on the tube. Once it's set up, I add more sprue to the glue (thicker mixture) and put on a couple of more coats. It takes some time, but I really like the results. All the advantages of cardboard and plastic. Mike K.

There you go! Bondoman's got the secret, to building an accurate model. Ask a submariner. You don't know one? Don't bet on it. There are a lot of us out here. But there's an even easier way, go to this site:  http://ussvi.org/States.asp . Then click on your state. You'll find a list of USSVI bases in your state. Pick one, close to you, click on it and find out when and where they meet. Then just go to their meeting. Submariners like nothing better, than talking about their boats. You'll find W.W.II vets ("Pigboaters") and Nukes that are still serving.

And take a set of Ship's Plans. There's a surprisingly good chance you find some one who served on the boat you want to do. And, if not, you'll probably meet some one, who knows some one who served on her.

Failing that, come here, or Steelnavy, or the Subcommittee. All three sites are home to Submariners. Some diesel (Smoke) boaters, some nukes and some who served on both. There's no shortage of info, if you're willing to dig for it.

Now. As to why I like cardboard. It's easy to work and shape. But, after I've got it just the way I want it, I 'plastisize' it. I melt a little sprue in Tenax (or some other plastic soluble glue) And paint a couple of coats, on the tube. Once it's set up, I add more sprue to the glue (thicker mixture) and put on a couple of more coats. It takes some time, but I really like the results. All the advantages of cardboard and plastic.

Mike K.

A good friend of mine is on the board of the USS Pampanito Foundation. I know she's a Balao, but if it's useful to you guys I can easily walk over there from work and get photos of details etc. you might need. Just let me know.

I would seriously consider using plastic for the pressure hull. You are going to be gluing endless amounts of stuff to it, painting it etc.

Ok, guys, enough talk. Let's plug in a few numbers.

First of all, I'm working from a Tench docking plan (I'm building a Tench class). I can't suggest, strongly enough, that you get the docking plan, for the class boat you're building. Better yet, the plan for that particular boat.

For particular interior details you'll need the ship's plans for the boat.

The pressure hull, not counting the torpedo rooms, is a tube 16' in diameter and 176' long. That's 2 2/3" by 29 1/3", in our size. I plan to use a 2 1/2" cardboard tube and shove 2 2/3" plastic disks (bulkheads) into it, to force it to size. Since were opening one side, anyhow, this should work.

Here's where you hit the first problem. The last 16' (2 2/3"), of the bottom of the pressure hull, tapers up 12 degrees (And, slightly, inward, at the sides). So that the aft end of the maneuvering room is a 14" (2 1/3") circle. The top is parallel, to the rest of the pressure hull.

The conning tower is 8' Dia. tube, with domed ends. It's straight for 13', the ends bulge out about >2'. The main radius of the end caps is (about) 7' with a 1' radius blending it to the main tube.

In the area of the torpedo rooms, the pressure hull is the outer hull. The forward torpedo/forward battery and after torpedo/maneuvering room bulkheads meet the outer hull and so, the outer hull becomes part of the pressure hull. You'll see what I'm talking about, when you look at the plans. Those bulkheads overlap the main pressure hull. The overlap is as little as 3" (at the top of the forward room) as much as 3' 6" (at the bottom of the forward torpedo room)

If you use a tube larger than 2 2/3", cut a slot out of it and pull it into the bulkheads.

Well? What are you sittin' there for? Head for your local hobby/rug/hardware store and start looking. Let me know when you're ready to look at the torpedo rooms.

Mike K.

     Amen Mike,

   I've been scratch building the interior for the infinately retarded 1/125 u-47 cutaway, as exacting as i am able. Sort of as a dry run for the 1/72 atlantic boat though, it's slowly turning into a decent display piece of it's own. I have spent HOURS & HOURS making 1/125 hand wheels etc.( i'll try to post some pics-have to borrow digit. cam.) And i'm here to tell ya i'm all about raiding railroad supplies & and saving the strangest bits and pieces you have ever seen. Casting prototyped pieces out of resin rates way up there also..

   Its always great to hear your feedback Mike!!!!!

      God speed, William

I'm with you, William, I'm beginning to wonder if CMK will ever release those three compartments. I've been waiting a couple of years,now.

 And there are 9 compartments (including the conning tower) on the Gato. At least the Gato compartments have the advantage of being flat. Except for the forward and after ends of the hull, and conning tower (more pronounced, on the conning tower).

One nice thing about doing the interior, is, that errors will be, almost, undetectable. Things were constantly being more around. Even coming out of new construction, no two boats were identical.

And keep your local RR model shop in mind, for detailing parts. The head of an "N" scale bridgeport makes a perfect bow planes rigging & capstan motor, or a bow planes operating hydraulic motor, for a Lionfish. And an the bell end, from an "N" gauge diesel horn, glued to a small block of plastic, makes a perfect klaxon for each compartment. And why build planes control wheel when an "O" or "G" gauge, brake wheel, will do the job?

I'm an industrial grade "Lazy bastard". I never scratch-build anyhing that can be jury riigged from something else.

Mike K.

  Hey Mac

  Thanks for the info, thats really what i been searching around for. As far as CMK stepping up to the plate goes, they still haven't produced officer country, electric motor room, aft torpedo room or, conning tower compartments for the type VII. The war might over before they get around to the gato.

  I'm a great appreciator of peoples scratch building and inventivness! You know who you are.....

   Thanks again Mac.     Regards, William

  Hey Mike

  I've been an admirer of your work for awhile! Most notably your posts on rocketcopy's type VII and, gato site. I hope you post your future works and eagerly await them.

  Keep up the excellent work...............Regards, Bill

You are not alone!

I already turned a Lionfish into a Tench Class, Guppy IIA, with detailed interior. The big Gato is next. It'll be the same boat, different scale. First "as built", then Guppy with interior detail.

Mike K.

I was hoping by now one would be seen around the net. There has to be people out there with that goal.

Make sure you take lots of pictures of the process. Maybe consider submitting it as an article to FSM?