Upgrading the 1/100 OTW VANGUARD kit , Part-5

A Report to the Cabal:

This week is a watershed point in the project: completion of all the significant masters needed to improve the VANGUARD SSBN submarine kit. I now stick them in clay and make the rubber tools needed to produce production castings.

The next week will see the rubber tool making, then, just as soon as I can buy some more casting resin, I get the casting done. Then ... finally ... I can start assembling this get, install the WTC and get it into the water. Can't wait to see how well/poorly my pump-jet works to push this big model around the pond.

Built into the trailing edge of the VANGUARD's vertical stabilizers upper, trailing edge is a tube used to fairlead out the long VLF antenna. It's so situated as to pay out the cable well above the pump-jet shroud. Here you see a picture of the VANGUARD shortly before launching and my master sitting atop the print. I simply turned a piece of machine brass on the lath, but out a slot to accommodate it in the training edge of the master, drilled a hole of the same diameter as the rod and inserted it. On the lathe I bored a 1/16" hole to accept a length of brass wire -- supposedly this represents the end of the antenna wire projecting out of the fairlead.

Evercoat Metal Glaze filler was used to plug the big gap between brass rod fairlead and the surface of the vertical stabilizer master. After curing the excess filler was carefully shaved off with a knife, worked with a jewelers file, then sanded with #400. Here it is, ready for a squirt of DuPont, Lucite 131s automotive acrylic lacquer primer.

The dressed out stabilizer VLF antenna fairlead, ready for priming. Not the knife, file, and sandpaper used to knock off the excess filler. Seen to good advantage here is the fillet at the root of this master.

The smaller gauge brass wire projecting out the aft end of the bigger fairing piece fits a hole I bored into the piece while it was on the lathe. The wire will form a channel in the tool in which a like wire will be inserted during resin casting, the end of that wire projecting into the fairing cavity forming a bore that will permit insertion of a short length of wire into the model part, that wire representing the end of the boats VLF antenna, seen in the photo above.

Mounted outboard of the two horizontal stabilizers are two 'bumper plates'. These appear to be bolted to the stabilizers and are there to protect the stern plane outboard bearing. These bumper plates are equipped with two 'rub rails', presumably wood. Not a unique method of protecting the stern of a submarine. For example: some (if not all) Type-21's featured horizontal stabilizer tips fabricated from wood -- the crushable wood preventing (in all but the most aggressive of collisions) structural damage to the horizontal stabilizer when hit by pilings or tugs.

The bumper plate masters was carved from Renshape 40. Atop that piece were glued two lengths of Evergreen polystyrene strip stock used to represent the two rub rails. A piece of masking tape -- its width cut to represent the distance between inner edges of the two rub rails -- assured proper symmetry between them. The two rub rails were adhered in place with thin formula cyanoacrylate adhesive.

The mounted rub rails ready for priming.

Don't panic, that flag, pole, and clamp at the outboard end of the horizontal stabilizer is a temporary fixture, used to remind the tending tugs that will pull the floated VANGUARD clear of the launching way not to get too close and endanger the stern appendages and pump-jet. Once pier-side the clamp secured flags (one on each stabilizer) are removed by the yard Diver's.

Some final work on all the masters was done to prepare them for tool making. Here I'm doing some fine sanding of the rotor master blades with a stiff piece of #600 sandpaper.

What I do is to take a piece of sandpaper, fold it in half (course side out, dummy!) place CA adhesive between the halves, clamp it tight for a minute, and you've created a stiff double-sided piece of sandpaper. The sandpaper is then trimmed to specific widths and shapes to suit specific jobs.

Nearly all the masters I've built in support of the 1/100th scale OTW VANGUARD job. Now the laborious job of mounting all these into clay backings, preparing them for rubber tool making.

The assembled 1/100 VANGUARD pump-jet masters. This British design features a single 'pre-swirl' set of stators, that support the shroud and induce helical swirl to the water flow counter to that that will be imparted to the flow by the rotor. The net torque this propulsor imparts on the submarine is (ideally) zero.

The beauty of this type pump-jet is the accessibility of the rotor -- it can be changed, in water, without too much trouble (unless some former military or yard ships husbandry diver types in-the-know step forward and tell me you can't get a balance bar in there).

The assembled tail-cone, rotor, and dunce-cap on the right. To the left is the pump-jet duct.