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

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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.

View attachment 774693

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.

View attachment 774694

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.
Yumpin' Yimminy! That is mind blowing work.
 
I'm in the business of blowing minds (without the use of drugs!)

With the 5"38 project showing signs of completion, I'm starting to think about the engine room challenge. To get 33 knots, over 250 feet of the entire center of the Iowas were dedicated to propulsion. Each of the four engine rooms generated 53,000 hp. The engines rooms were over 35' feet long, over 60' wide and 25' high. In 1:48 the model's volume would be 7.8" long, 16.5" wide and 6.5" high. It's not vastly large. I have general understanding of the layout, but that's insufficient. The machinery takes up two platforms vertically, with floor gratings separating the levels. I am not planning on modeling the boilers, but may change my mind.

Here's the four engine rooms withing the envelope of the armored citadel.

ERs Volume.png


I'm aiming at engine room #3 since it was a rectangluar shape with square corners. Rooms #1 & #2 had tapered sides based on the curvature of the hull.

This is the floor plan of #3 from the 1st Platform level. There is the 2nd Platform level where part of this extends downward to. The low pressure turbine is very large and extends downward. The condensors are also very large and are at the lower level.

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Elevation views of two rooms show equipment from different points of view. I was wondering how the 53,000 hp thrust is captured and transmitted into the ship's structure. It's not a simple thing. The prop thrust is captured by the all-important thrust bearing, but where does it go from there. I am assuming that the massive vertical beam that's attached to the ship's structure by massive gusset plates is where the thrust enters into the ship proper and propels it forward.

ER View 2.png

This view gives a good look at the size of the LP turbine.

ER View 1.png


This project won't be started for a long time, and will be on a separate thread if and when I do, but I just wanted to give a teaser of what could come.
 
What scale figures are you looking for? Some wargaming figures might work or more easily adapted for the gun crew. If I can help, happy to do so.

Terry
 
Well then… if you are truly a medical expert… heavy drinking it is. I prefer an older bourbon… let's say 18 year-old.

Yesterday's work and today's are in this post. Bunch of odds and ends. Got all the ammo finish painted and ready to install. Mounted the new captain's platform installed and it works. The gun housing drops right in place. Continue working on the styrene sheet stock cutting the partitions for the magazine. I somehow lost the cut ends of the sighting telescopes which I wanted to glue into the sighting blisters. I took the drawing of same and made a clipped off versions. I'll print them tommorow. Once they're finshed I'll glue them in. Then the housing will be ready to install with the scews.

Speaking of screws; I decided that if it would work to hold the gun house together, why not do the same on the UHR. To that end I added Bondic filler to the bottoms of the four legs of the ring frame. The screws should hold it down nicely, and again, I'll be able to take it apart should the need arise.

I power my LEDs with the CL2N3 LED drivers soldered into a small circuit board. When I was doing this for the 16" project my first attempt had their polarity reversed. I soldered together another one. That "bad" one was sitting on my bench since them. Today I successfuly de-soldered and removed them. They all survived the ordeal when I tested each one. They're not that expensive, but they're not free either. I will use them again.

5IP Mag Ammo Done.jpg


I finished painting the magazine circuit panels.

5IP Mag Circuits.jpg


Here's the new platform glued into the rear of the gun house shield.

5IP New Capt's Platform.jpg


I drew and printed the correctly sized magazine entry doors. On the magazine's outboard side is a narrow passage. On the port side (towards mid-ships) is "Broadway", the 300 foot long wide corridor that goes from turret #2 to #3 and has entry to all the magazines, four boiler and four engine rooms. The view of my model will be from outboard looking in.

I didnt even attempt to 3D print the door dog handles knowing now that most would break off. I did made a tiny hole in the drawing whcih the print did pick up as a guide for the drill. I used phos-bronze wire (0.015") for these handles. I did not put them on the non-viisible side.

5IP Mag Doors.jpg


I've started cutting all the walls beginning with the magazine. I'm using a fairly heavy stock for these walls thinking (probably wrong) that the magazine's walls would be thicker than you're average partitiion. Still don't know about the ceiling detail, but have an idea of how to do the roof girders.

5IP Locating Mag Door.jpg
5IP Mag Wall Parts.jpg


Lastly, I got more serious about how to run the wiring and did those Bondic thickening areas to prepare to accept the screws at the bottoms. The Bondic is transparent and will be very unobtrusive.

5IP Ring Frame Thicken.jpg


I suspect things will be going quickly from now on. Building styrene structures goes pretty quickly, and there's not much more drawing/printing to do except for building the railing and what I do with the ceilings.
 
I'm going to try and make cable railings like the real ship has. In 1:48 scale, theoretically, I should be able to. So I designed and printed the stanchions. I think they'll be strong enough. They should really be brass, but that's whole other deal and I'd probably go with solid rails not wire. I also printed very tiny turnbuckles. They printed perfectly, but do not have the structural integrity to handle even applying the wire to it, as seen here.

5IP Turnbuckle failure.jpg


The eye broke off almost instantly.

I did thread some magnet wire through the eye on the stanchion and it's quite strong.

5IP Rail Stanchion.jpg


I made two that also have angle braces to withstand the tension of the wire. In fact, I made a whole lot of them.

5IP Stanchions Lots.jpg


I also printed the telescpe ends for the sighting scopes and painted them semi-gloss black. I purposely did not paint the lens face. I'm going to apply All Clad silver to it overcoated with transparent green to simulate a coated optical surface. I drilled them so I could hold them with a toothpick during the painting process.

5IP New Tele Ends.jpg


Then I went back to cutting wall pieces. I'm using some 3/32 aircraft ply for the main deck. I'm going to plank it and wood glues to wood better than to styrene. There will be a little lip glue to the front edge so you won't be able to tell it's wood. Started cutting out the openings for the access hatches.


5IP Door Openings.jpg
 

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