Adam Carlson's 1/16th Japanese Type-A r/c Submarine, Part-7

A Report to the Cabal:

Adam Carlson is in the shop for his second one week apprenticeship. Last year he got a lot done on the masters for a 1/16th Japanese Type-A r/c submarine. The first shots I'm presenting here are to get you up to speed on last years work, then I'll show you what we've accomplished in the last two days.

You'll find previous installments at, http://vabiz.com/d&e/articles.html

First twenty-four hours here Adam worked twenty of 'em straight ... the boy is a Machine!

This trip we're working to finish off the hull masters and to get them into final tooling. As it looks now, that effort will take Adam all the way through to his departure, this Friday. That leaves it to me to lay up the hull pieces from GRP and to cast the Resin pieces needed later! I would very much like to have one of these 1/16 scale Type-A's at this years SubRegatta, even if only as a static display piece. I'm sure Adam would like to have one running and at the show too ... hope he can make it to the event. We'll see.

This is where we left off last year: the major portions of the hull master turned, but still in the raw; the masters for the vertical and horizontal stabilizers completed; as were the control surfaces and sail; and a good start on the two propeller masters. Last Monday, as soon as I had Adam here from the airport, we jumped into it again and have gotten things moving along at a good clip.

Adam with the project on the last day before he had to head back to Arizona last year. Man, it was cold, in the high thirties to low forties. This year it's averaging in the mid sixties! Much nicer in the shed this time around. The big wood lathe is in the shed, the rest of the shop work occurs in my converted one-car garage.

This time last year it was thirty-something in the shed when Adam was making wood chips as he uncovered the hull from that ugly block of wood. I think I snapped this picture at two in the morning!

First full work day after his arrival this year I put Adam to work building up the 'eggcrate' structure that will be later used to re-enforce the hard-shell fiberglass mold we'll pull off the big hull master.

We decided that since the upper and lower portions of the Type-A hull are symmetrical, why not just concentrate on finishing one-half of the wooden master, make a tool, and from that produce two identical GRP parts that would assemble into the complete hull (less the bow and stern pieces, which are separate structures)? And that's what we're doing: here I'm laying in some heavy gauge mono-filament fishing line into engraved lines cut into the hull with scribe, knife, and diamond section jeweler's file. The line represents weld beads atop the hull.

Note that the hull master has been mounted in my marking/scribing jig ... a tool that has seen a lot of good service over the years. The jig permits me to lay down both radial and longitudinal lines with scribe or pen.

Just for fun we sat the sail master atop the hull, just to get a feel for how the thing will look. Both Adam and I are jazzed about this project. This has been fun!

Note that at all times I rigidly observe good, sound shop safety standards to prevent loss of eyes or appendages. Safety is job one around here and strictly enforced!

After inlaying the mono-filament line, Adam brushed Nitro-Stan air-dry putty over the work and later sanded the adjacent areas. This built up a radius at the point were the line meets the hull. Tedious work, but that's for the boy to deal with ... not me!

Composing the shot so I get some shadows, showing off the raised 'weld lines' formed from mono-filament fishing line. A bit overstated, Adam later sanded the line down to soften the effect. You can appreciate how useful the marking/scribing jig is here -- used for the initial inlay work, and here as a holding fixture during the putty and sanding work.

We used the vertical and horizontal stabilizer patterns to produce a tool from which these polyurethane castings were pulled. Note that I encapsulated some carbon fiber at the thin sectioned tip projections that serve as supports for the cage like propeller guard. Adam has since cleaned up the stabilizers and mounted them on the tail-cone. Other than an observed interference issue with the forward propeller, things fit nicely. More to follow, sports fans.