5" 38 Mark 28 Twin Gun Secondary Battery from Iowa Class Battleships

[Vic Balshaw]

I love that shot of the New Jersey and all those little people wandering about the bow looking lost. The gun is looking good as well and looking at the seat, problem or not, it puts perspective on the size of the whole build.

 

[Builder 2010]

When you look at those tiny people, you have to realize that those tiny things built that giant ship. It was built in the days before the pre-fab assembly as they do now. It was built plate by plate in the ship yard. And they did it in two years! I never thought I'd have the chance to see any ship like that, especially the beloved Iowas. It was this picture of Dick Landgraff, the superintendent of the Long Beach, CA Naval Ship Yard during the 1980s refit of the class. He knew the ship literally bolt by bolt and was a great source of information during my Missouri build in 2011. Dick passed a few years ago when he was on the Iowa refurbishing committee when it was being made into another museum ship. He sent me this image when I posed the question, "What color are the Iowa class prop shafts?" on the WorldAffairsBoard.com forum. It was the beginning of my journaling all my modeling projects on various forums. They're white, BTW, due to the anti-fouling coating on them.

There's only one 3D print left to do after today's work. All the rest are drawn and in the printer or waiting in the queue. These panels were the last parts of the magazine I needed to design and print. I still have to deign and print something resembling a porthole for the little bit of exterior superstructure that I'm including in the model.

Here are the panels in the lower handling room of the magazine.

Here's the SU drawing:

I simplified the cabling and made the wall mounts more robust for the sake of printing and asssembly.

And here it is in color.

And lastly, here they are on the slicer. I only need one set, but I ALWAYS print more. The printer doesn't care.

Still don't know what I'm going to do about that ceiling. It may mean more printing. The question is how can you view it? Unless you're a little kid looking up or an adult on your knees, it will be very hard to visuallize. Here's another shot of the ceiling showing the cooling coils that are all over the place.

The trouble with designing this aspect (besides final visability) is not knowing what it REALLY looks like. It's the blind men describing an elephant. I can't understand how it all relates to each other. I would love to have a piping diagram. Even though I'm visiting the ship in dry dock in May, folks aren't allowed into the ship due to no saftety systems functioning. So I can't do my own survey. I can't even figure out what's happening with the ship's framing. Your opinions on this aspect would be appreciated.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Magic as always.

 

[Builder 2010]

Sort of a milestone day… I pretty much finished all the gun house interior work. All that's left is to drop the shield over top. That could be a nightmare, but I'm optimistic it will go okay (without breaking off any more foot rungs). There's a lot of images today so bear with me.

First thing I did was change out those 0015" pins holding the trunnion caps with 0.025" pins. I then drilled the holes in the gun receivers to let the aluminum turned trunions set down completely. They were sticking proud of the surface when I attempted assembling it yesterday. I then found that the trunnions needed too much pressure to insert due to cement and paint inside the bearings. I line bored the bearings to match the same openings in the guns and the pins fit perfectly. After assembling I put a little thin CA into the joint to both glue down the caps AND freeze the guns at the level position. They will not be movabable.

I painted the printed 5" powder cartridges and placed some in strategic locations. One is in the right gun's load tray and two are protruding from the powder hoists outlets in the floor pan. I made a bunch more of them and might have them on the deck randomly as they would be in action.

I mounted the fuze setters control unit after inserting the right gun's trunnion pin as I anticipated doing.

I added the oil filters on its support and both of the cartridge chutes that direct the hot, spent cartridges out the back door onto the deck behind the gun house.

I then realized that there was no way at all that I was going to be able to drop the shield over the innerds AND STILL be able to get the ventialtion system installed properly. It wasn't going to happen! I cut the vent unit off of the pipe that went through the ceiling girder and worked with it to install with the rest of the equipment. Even all opened up it wasn't easy fitting it in. Still attached to the sheild assembly it would have been impossible.

I tried fitting the whole deal on the UHR and it will work okay. I'm still thinking about a way to use fasteners to hold the shield to the innerds since it would preclude having to clamp anything.

Here's some frontal shots.

While these various parts were drying I was working on cleaning up pile of projectile racks for the magazine. I need 10 of them.

Because of the way I situated them in the printer, the slicer added a ton of tiny supports holding onto the tips of the projectiles which may not have printed well. It was a challenge to clean up and I'm not done yet. Meanwhile, the printer just finished the first batch of three powder container racks that go into the back room. I need five with ammo and four empty that will be in the background so you'll only see their poles sicking up.

This shows all those tiny supports. For those that will be behind others removing them all may not be necessary. I got faster the more I did.

And those left to do.

I found some O'scale figures that I'm trying to populate the model. The scale is right, the garb is not. There are companies that make terrific figurines in this scale. I may get some. I can also kitbash some of these Woodland Scenics figures to make them WW2 US Navy sailors.

That's all the work for this week. Y'all have a nice weekend. It's finally going to stop raining so we're going to get out of the house tomorrow.

 

[Vic Balshaw]

 

[Wurger]

 

[syscom3]

Amazing!

 

[Gnomey]

Great work so far!

 

[Builder 2010]

Many thanks!

Some odds and ends from yesterday's and today's sessions.

Continuing to print, cleanup and paint various components going into the magazine. By tomorrow all the printing for the model will be complete. While doing this, I'm writing the 3D printing book. It's good to write it while I'm immersed in such a project. It's keeping it real.

I've got all the powder cartridge racks printed. The enpty racks will be behind the vision line, but you'll see the channels so viewers can assume there are canisters in them. Did that just to reduce the labor and resin use in making this part.

I painted the projectiles Olive Drab and will do detail painting tomorrow. I printed a plan view of the magazine to make sure I know how all these furnishings get installed.

There are 6 racks with canisters and four empty ones. Here are all six before any painting.

I painted a little detail I missed on the hoists. The upper trunk flange is black.

I also did a light check on the gun house shield. I've been tugging at those leads for a few weeks and wanted to make sure they were still viable. They were and they're nice and bright. The white interior will reflect the light into the shadow regions.

I bumped the captain's manual sight again and broke it again. I tried fixing it… again… but's it's a mess and no longer conforms to the model's quality. I'm printing more of them. I also replaced another 5 broken foot rungs with phos-bronze. Hopefully this is the last of them. I'm getting pretty good at making and installing them, and that's really a good thing. It means I keep breaking stuff. It's like getting to know your body shop guy. It's not somebody you'd like to know that well.

I'm going to remove the old one, but wait until the gun house is installed and safe before re-installing the new one. Again… benefits of designing and printing one's own parts is you can make more when you screw them up.

I messaged with Ryan and we're going to visit the ship on Sunday morning, May 19. We'll be getting into Philly the day before. If we waited any longer the ship might be back in the water.

 

[SaparotRob]

That's just amazing work.

 

[Vic Balshaw]

It all looks so real.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Gnomey]

Looks great so far!

 

[syscom3]

That's just amazing work.

I would say legendary work. This is not regular craftsmanship. This is artisan quality.

 

[Builder 2010]

Thanks guys! It's definitely starting to come together. I'm actually thinking that I could have it done for delivery to the ship on May 19 when we go on the dry dock tour.

For most of my working (and retirement) life, my most creative ideas happen just as I'm waking up in the morning.

For a while I've been trying to come up with a way to fasten the gun house shield to the base WITHOUT adhesive. It was an awkward fit and I really could see how to clamp it without damage. Speaking of damage, broke another 5 foot rungs and fixed them with metal. I was able to screw the 16" turret housing on by expoxying wood blocks in various locations using small brass wood screws. There didn't seem to be any space to do that with this model. There was not vacant floor space!

I was having one my normal, nutty dreams about making something or another that made no logical sensse, but as I woke I realized that I could fasten the housing to the frame beams just like the prototype. All I had to do was make them a little beefier to hold a screw. Then I brainstormed how to do that. I thought of wood, then J-B Weld, then epoxy putty like Milliputt, and finally Bondic. You can fill big spaces with Bondic. You just have to do it in multiple applications so you can effectively cure each layer with the UV light. All this noodling happened before I actually opened my eyes.

I also decided to try a test piece to see how well it would hold screws. I have some nice small ones that I wanted to use. I used a scrap base ring where I filled one of the bays between the ribs. The drill was a #58. The screw had a #55 diameter. I figured it would cut its own thread.

The Frame beams have those large lightening holes. I blocked them off with a small piece of thin styrene and then filled each side with Bondic until it was a solid. Since it's exactly the same material as the beam, the drill should not wander.

This shows the blocking piece.

And with the Bondic filling.

I airbrushed the first coats on all the powder racks for the Magazine: gloss white on the empty racks and haze gray on the full racks. Next session I will detail paint the full racks.

I got successful prints on the replacement captain's sights, the magazine circuit panels and the portholes.

The portholes show the limit of just about what you can do with 3D Printing. Notice that some of the locking handwheels are already gone. There's just not enough strength to hold up. The porthole fits into a 11/32" hole which will be drilled into the styrene bulkheads. The details inside face and that will be facing away from the viewer.

With the decision made on how to fasten the housing to the base, I now had to actually see how it fit. First of all, all the angles and ledges that I had either printed in or glued on were not working. They were hanging up on all the equipment, and they weren't needed any longer. I cut/ground them off.

I got the front and sides to fit, but the rear was hanging up. Upon inspection I found that the captain's platform was too wide and was not letting the housing drop down pass the voice tube and a control switch on the communications installation. If you look closely at this picture you can see it hanging up on them.

The correct fix was to redraw/reprint this part with a different width. I close the lazy approach (which turned out not to be at all), and found another spare and attempted to cut it down and remake the locking arms. Almost got it. The first arm construction went well, but the second one didn't. It almost fit and in attempting to do a minor adjustment broke the part, reguled it and broke it again. It was scrap. I just redrew a revision and will print it tomorrow. My mistake was the platform fit when it was in its final position, but I didn't account that it had to slide down through the obstructions to get it there.

With my resistance soldering unit I could actually solder the wire while it was in the resin part without damaging it.

 

[N4521U]

Good Golly!

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Golly gosh!

 

[Wurger]

 

[Builder 2010]

Good golly indeed! If wasn't actually the person building this thing, I wouldn't know how it was done.

The reprinted parts including the platform are done and painted. I cleaned up the gun house shield back wall and airbrushed fresh white on it so it's ready for the newly resized part. Painted the white rail portions of the ammo racks waiting for the final touch up, and continued cutting out the styrene wall panels for the cabin work. So in summary, work proceed apace.

Making a new manual sight was the correct thing to do and takes advantage of having the 3D printing capacity right in the shop. The old one was just a mess and didn't belong on the model.

I tested the new platform and it slips between the comm poles without interference so the gun house can be joined to the inerds whenever I want to do it.

All the white paint is on the ammo racks. I have to do some detail and touchup on these and they're ready to go.

Woke up thinking about lighting scheme for the magazine and how to best run all the wiring to the electrical compartment under the wood base. There is a railing on the deck in front of the gun and I may add that along with the planked wood decking. I need more information about exactly how those rails were constructed. I will just need a little bit of it, so I could make the stanchions out of brass… much stronger than 3D printed resin.

All depends on how much time I have. I want to deliver the model when we do our visit on May 19. That sets a hard date. It's not easy for us to make the trip back East, so if I don't deliver it then it will have to wait until 3 months or more later. I don't like keeping finished commission models around. Once they're done, I want them out of my hands. I don't want anything to happen to them.

I have to get the final case dimensions and order the plexiglass and the name plate. I also have to create the AV program. I'm collecting images as I go along for it so the work will be in organization and adding all the text items. Shouldn't take too long, but it's another task that's needs to be completed.