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

That Gorilla glue is good but I tend to use PVA which in effect is the same stuff but the consistency is more fluid but it has the same curing time and cures clear. The upside is that it's somewhat cheaper.

Simply amazing!

Looks great so far!

Well… thank you!

Assembly work continues. I made the cutaway for the base ring and barbette that should allow viewers to peer inside and see the ring gear and training pinion. I began adding units to the gun house, and got another Splinter module ready to go. The last of the five is currently printing.


The angle block is a gravity clamp needed to cure the Gorilla construction adhesive.





I'm photographing all the finished subassemblies for the AV program like this one.



The Splinter Deck modules continues to grow. One more to go and it will be done tomorrow. The modules aren't yet glued together. It's hard to visualize that this assemblage ran from the rear of turret #2's barbette to the front of turret #3's, about 375 feet (115 meters). Ryan says it's a terrible space to crawl through. I'm just modeling a tiny sliver, but it gives the idea.

I am getting an education on turrets.

Lookin right smart

Mind blowingly impressive.

Thanks all! I too am getting an education on turrets. If we lived in Philly again, I would apply for a job as a docent on the ship.

Work continues…

It was time to connect the ring frame to the gun house base. If I waited any longer, there would be too much very delicate stuff in the way to effectively clamp them together for gluing. I found that the training buffer (the shock absorbing device that stops the gun house from over-rotating into the ship's structure) was forcing the mounting ring on the gun house to not seat into the ring mount. I had to do more surgery on the buffer to make it skinny enough to let the two mate properly. I even had to cut off part of the mounting ring at the rear so it would actually fit. It does now. All of this messing around is not visible.



I assembled the last two Splinter Deck modules and they too will dry overnight and then I'll assemble all five modules into the entire part.


I painted up some projectiles and glued them into their respective places in the gun house hoist and the load tray of the right hand gun.



I had to clip off the projectile's noses so they would fit in these spaces. That's okay because the fuse assemblies are inside the fuse setting sockets in the hoists and aren't visible.



I did a bit more detail painting of more gun house parts in readiness for the clamps to come off tomorrow. I have another dentist appointment tomorrow afternoon. So I may or may not get more work done tomorrow. If not, it will wait until Monday.

I've got a request into Jim Sl he could give me some insight on the ceiling framing for those empty spaces on deck two. While I'm not going to furnish these compartments, I would like the ship's structure more represented. They are holding up many thousands of pounds of gun house and UHR, and the framin below should reflect this. He's been a bit unresponsive so I'm not optimistic that he can help me.

Amazing.

Great work so far!

Besides taking care of some tax things today and watching the eclipse, very short session, but not to worry, did get some things done. The great thing about getting old, being retired and having a great hobby like this one, is that each day you're in the shop, several things happen. Time flies and you're fully engaged. The problem solving keeps the brain working well. And you have something remaining behind that wasn't there before after each session. Compare this to doing crossword puzzles, smartphone games, etc. where nothing really ever changes and when you are ultimately gone from the is earth nothing remains behind to tell people what you did. Don't get me wrong, I play a lot of games on my phone, but it doesn't replace this.

I got the trunks printed successfully. I printed two of each as usual. The picture shows them cleaned and post-cured, but not yet final finished.



I glued up all five Splinter Deck modules. I did it on a smooth surface covered by a piece of polyethylene so it doesn't stick to the table. Put a square on one edge to keep them in line and used every clamp I had that would fit.



Design work on the magazine continues apace. I've simplified it a bit, but there's enough ammo in it to give the correct feel. I've asked Ryan from more information about what's going on at the ceiling. There's a lot of cooling apparatus since this was the only air conditioned space on the ship during WW2, for obvious reasons. There's also a door to the passage that I don't have the correct sizing for. I don't know if he can get into the ship now that it's in dry dock. As it stands now, my wife and I will probably be able to visit the ship in dry dock in May. I'll keep y'all posted on progress.



Lighting will be important to let people see into these spaces.

On another front… SketchUp 2024 upgrade was issued and all of a sudden almost every problem I was having with version 2023 was gone! Clearly, the problem was not with my MacBook Pro, but was with software that was not working well with the latest Mac OS upgrades. Instead of minutes passing when I was making a simple zoom command, it's now instantaneous. It was re-drawing images as stick figures first before rendering them fully. That's stopped. Booltools 2 was able to do a compllicated trim on the entire stack of projectiles, that caused me a half hour of work before. I couldn't move large assemblies from one drawing to another becasue it sometimes took up to a 1/2 hour for the "beach ball of death" to stop going round and round. It was getting so bad that working on this aspect of the project was frustrating drudgery, not fun and creative. I did have some problems porting over some of the many extensions that I had. Some needed to be deleted and reinstalled with fresh downloads. Others, like VRay, had its own upgrade and needed a fresh download. That took most of yesterday afternoon. All's well that ends well and all is installed and working well.

It all seems to be working out nicely and your right in that it is a good way to spend ones retirement.

Excellent work so far!

What a job you are doing on this.......... Project!!!!

Thnaks guys!

Asssmbly continues…

The glueup of the splinter modules went well. I added some Bondic to the front seams just to present a nice face forward. it's nice and flat and should assemble to the rest of the structure without much trouble.



Getting the upper ammo hoists into the gun house was a different story. I thought I had the routine figured out, but that was not the case. First I had to rip off the officer's platform that I had glued earlier as it prevented the powder hoist from moving far enough aft to let me manipulate the projectile hoist into place. Then there was engagement between the projectile hoist and the Sight Setter's floor and seat assembly. I had to remove stock from the hoist's floor so it would drop behind the front floor, not overlap on top. Then I had to removed more floor from the powder hoist floor so it too would fit flush with the projectile hoist floor. All of this required a number of insets and removals, each of which was poised to wreck these delicate parts. I only had very minor damage and for that I am thankful.

Once again, using the Gorilla Glue earned its keep since it gave me long working time to keep fussing with these parts. CA would have been a disaster. I used the gravity clamp to hold the powder hoist floor down flat. I tried conventional clamps, but they did't ahe the reach I needed.



I also glued in the power systems for training and pointing and the sundry floor pieces they have. I think I'm going to use these images for the AV since you can see the pumps clearly. When more stuff goes on it will be more confusing.



Tomorrow, I'll finish the Gun House installations including the pointer and trainer's seats. The last thing to go in will be the gun slides and the sight checkers sights. The barrels go in AFTER the gun house shield is installed.

I started laying out the floor and wall pieces, even though I still have questions about the ceiling layouts of the spaces. I have to do all the layouts from coordinate measurements. For some reason, Corel Draw is NOT finding my HP printer. Doesn't matter whether I used WiFi or USB line. This is important. Coreldraw lets you print out images larger than you paper size by tiling the images so they can be taped together. I wanted to print them full-size so I could use them as patterns and simply cut through them. Instead, I'm working with traditional layout tools and it's much more tedious and error prone.

Before I delve into today's stuff, take a look at this. It's my favorite battleship in dry dock in Philly. We're planning on seeing it up close and personal in May. At least that's the plan. Gives you some sense of scale to see just how big ships really are and how big really big ships are.



Sometimes the smallest details take the most work and aggravation. The pointer's seat was one of those things. It broke so many times trying to fit it that I replace the support with some phos-bronze wire. I replaced the seat itself twice using spares, but the support gave out at last until I replaced it.



Didn't have as much trouble with the trainer's position. I got its seat in place without damage.



I then installed the right hand gun. The trunnion caps were being very finicky. Should have used a larger gauge wire when I did that part. If they don't hold I'll redo them with the larger size.



So here's all that's left in outfitting the gun house.



I continued cutting some of the floor pieces, but ran into concern that my alignment holes were not correct. I printed the 5" cartridges to further decorate the hoists and gun loading tray.