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U-991 1/72 Type VIIc U-Boat - Revell


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EDIT!  Since photobucket made the change, none of these photos will show up.
 
So here's a condensed youtube of them.

 

 

 
 
 
Hello, I have been working on this a while now, and as I get close to finishing it I thought I'd put the build up here, as I have seen many great builds of this kit here.
 
 
The kit and some of the extras.
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A popular thing to do seems to be dremelling out the flood holes and 'Oil canning' the hull. Looks like I'm doing that too.
 
 
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These Cheek pieces look difficult to cut and fit. Probably going to take a while...
 
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.
The dremel work looks a lot like I've attacked it with a dremel, and less like a battereed submarine hull. I will attempt to fix the dremel marks by scraping with a scalpel, then attempt to fix the scalpel scrapes with sandpaper.
 
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More brass work, here with the bow drain holes, the easiest of the three sections.
 
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Edited by TristanR
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Continued,
More fitting of brass and removing material from the backside. I will be sanding ad filling a lot here I think.
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This back one is going to be the hardest to pull off... It's an awkward fit
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Much fitting and sanding later, I am getting closer. There are also corrective templates for some various bow drain holes.

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Yep, I've got to do the other side now. I think it was worth the effort though.
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The other side is proving much more troublesome, the brass has a kind of blister/crease on the bottom edge that I can't eliminate very well. I will pack some CA glue behind it and grind away the bump.
Another complication is that I have to keep checking the torpedo openings are symmetrical. Which is difficult with two 3foot plastic hull pieces to wield.
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Done for now, I might have to revisit some of this but I think it'll have to do.
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Cheers!
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I bought the blue ridge pressure hull for this boat, it's a fine piece of aftermarket goodness for how much of it you can see, but it's not super accurate, and I might enjoy trying to build my own.
I also need a way to hold the torpedo tubes. I have butchered the front of the boat so badly the kit part doesn't fit anymore...
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I also have access to a laser cutter, and if you've ever seen Goldfinger or Logan's Run it can be pretty mesmerizing to watch it go. So I set it to work making me a pressure hull.
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I can already tell it's going to be tricky and almost certainly unnecessary, so I'll see how it goes for a bit.
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Not sure whether to use kit bulkheads or wooden ones I can modify, for instanct the kit bulkheads go right up to suport the deck, wheras I think it should be rounded and leave the area under the deck open.
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next to the kit part my measurement are off a bit, but, the brass cheek replacements have shorter (and more correct) torpedo door openings, so I may need to set my tubes closer to the center then the kit.

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This is the kit's perfectly fine approach to the tubes.
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And here's the mess of CA glue that is preventing the kit piece from fitting,
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Which when it does fit as intended, is to far back due to the shorter doors.the tube muzzle (?) should be right up with the back edge of the doors. You can also see a bit swadge of filler where the brass cheek meets the hull on the right of the image.
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Should be more like this
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Sorry for the image dump! I started a while ago and I thought it better to start the WIP from the beginning rather than where I am in the build currently. I suppose this lot represents 2 months of the work, or there abouts.

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Thank you sirs!
Onward with pressure hull, I am having a problem with fitting this wooden structure. When I put the hull together, somewhere it is squeezing and pushing the front of the tube up a few mm, I can't work out exactly where it's happening though.
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I'm getting through quite a few pieces of basswood, and it's getting more complex. For instance the 2 periscopes are supposed to retract into the hull, so I will see if I can accomodate them.
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Off cuts.
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This piece also needs to hold the torpedo doors. Sorta looks like some kind of klingon weapon.
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Here is the bulkhead piece next to the kit part, you can see where I have removed the wall that goes up to the deck.
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Measurement fail! Rats.

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here is how the bow piece is fitting, there are some horizontal brass plates that go between the top and bottom tubes. This is getting very tricky.
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The rest of the pressure hull is playing nice.
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Things are starting to line up inside,
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Torpedo loading hatch. There is an angled torpedo loading hatch here, I will try and include it.
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There is the galley hatch here, right over where he bulkheads meet.
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Also I found a few helpful images of the intake pipes and the channel between the saddle ballast tanks and the pressure hull in the middle. That's the galley hatch in the middle there.
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Checking the fit of the doors
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This will hold the forward torpedo loading hatch, which is off centre.
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This is what the laser cutting is doing,
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One of the PE sets I have includes some torpedo doors, these will be hidden by the outer doors, but it's a chance to practice soldering, as I attach dome brass tube to them.
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The plastic rod is the drive shaft that would come from the torpedo room and open the doors, you might see something in there if you look.
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Like this.
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So this is the final front end. The tubes themselves are not glued so I have slide the whole thing forward for a hopefully snug fit.
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Cheers!
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I found this cardboard tube which is close enough to the diameter of the pressure hull, and will survive the 10 minutes in the oven that I need to form the styrene sheet.


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Took a few attempts, the key is to let it cool on the cardboard before you remove it. The cardboard cooking smell overides the melting plastic smell in the oven.


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I adapted the laser cut parts (again) to incorporate notches to hold the styrene in place.


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Another test fitting in the hull.


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More oven time and I have the hull mostly skinned. I will do the saddle tanks once it's all together.


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forward torpedo loading hatch.


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Cheers!

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Thankyou mr leghorn sir!
Next to do is the tops of the saddle tanks that require skinning. Using the oven and a smaller cardboard tube I made some strips to run the length of the saddle tanks.
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I'm shimming them in places. I would like to say my wooden structure was a perfect fit, but it's not at all. I'm having to sand and trim all over to get a good fit.
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Going back to this helpful shot and others I can't be arsed to put up, you can clearly see the angled sidewalls that run the inside edge of the saddle tanks. I don't theink tha angled walls run the whole length, I think there is a spot around the tower where they blend into the pressure hull more.
Also it looks like that chap at the bottom of the image (peter weller?) has noticed us this time.
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So I trimmed the frame to incorporate these sidewalls. There is also some bulging going on between bulkheads that I need to decide if I care about.
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Lots of trimming later I think I have something fairly accurate. The inner conning is represented by these wooden ovals. There is a bunch of plumbing that floods the saddlle tanks around area.
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So I can finally stick the hull together.
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It sort of works, not as snug a fit as I hoped but it's good to get it together.
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Here you can see that I opted to cut the sides off the top of the hull so I could get a nice finish on the top of the saddle tanks. I hope I don't regret this.

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Big gap here.
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But Ok further forward where it matters.
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pretty good at the back although my brass work is looking a bit mangled.
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Cheers!
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Very interesting build, only one comment which you may have already taken care of is that i dont see any wells for the two periscopes, as in the revell kit these protrude from under the conning tower and sit quite deeply inside the hull.

See page 12 of the instructions.

All the best Chris

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Mr Sovereign, the laser cutter is at work, Sorry but I've been pushing my luck a bit with how much I use it lately, and trust me, this structure is not a good fit for all the trouble it is.

Hey Chris! these two holes here are the wells for the periscopes, I did miss them at first though!

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you can see the attack periscope well here, the nav periscope is to the right of this but doesnt go at deep.

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More laser.
Decided I'd have a crack at a wooden deck. These laser cutters have 2 mode, vector cut, which is what you'd imagine a laser cutter would do, and raster engraving which is a different process that doesn't burn all the way through.
Here the red stuff is vector cutting, and the blue is engraving. You engrave it first and then cut it out second.
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This be the laser cutter, it's a beast.
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I'm cutting 24 x 4 basswood at 1/16 thickness.
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Action shot, this is the engraving process.
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And this is the vector cutting.
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It took a few tries, below is a successful cut on the top and an earlier attempt that was a bit high on the lasers.
You have three settings,
Speed - too fast and the belt drives can't keep up with smooth curves, too slow and the laser has more time to scorch the wood.
Power - once you get a good speed, set the power so it just cuts through.
Frequency - how fast the laser pulses, to fast and it gets scorched, not fst enough and you get rough edges.

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I did by Nautilus's Laser cut deck, which is excellent, but I felt the planked deck was a little out of scale when looking at reference.
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fits pretty well, but I may need to adjust my file for a few areas like this.

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Since the boards are only 24" long I had to split it, so I picked a spot under the conning tower.
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I cut another piece that fit in the bottom of the conning tower that with hold the two halves of the deck together with magnets probably. Lasers and magnets. What a time to be alive.
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Rats, my torpedo loading hatch doesn't line up. I will have to fix that (or not show it)
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Cheers!
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Thanks for the comments folks, another update...

So there are these flood holes here that are fairly prominent and I have a PE replacement for them. I am pretty concerned that I will lose the shape of this strip, especially as I removed it from the hull.

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Carefully cutting out these holes, and shaving the plastic down so I can slip this PE in.
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Some CA glue...
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hopefully there is enough backing to keep the shape together.
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There are several inspection hatches along the top of the saddle tanks, I have PE pieces for them, but I think I am going to scribe them instead.

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Another thing to do before the side walls go back on is to make sure the tops of the saddle tanks are nice and smooth, I will also add the elds back in with some styrene rod.
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A bit prominent but I will sand them down.
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Sticking the side walls on was straighforward, I was careful to use the deck and a guide to make sure it all fits snugly to the deck. I am going to use styrene strip to make the uprights the run along this channel. I'm glueing the sidewalls on so the styrene strip is an exact fit. Here is number 1 of 90. Oh yeah, when doing the PE hoels on this middle section, I forgot to take into account that the rivet spacing. The holes are between the rivets every 7mm or so, except that kit's rivets are now of by 3.5mm, so I will have to sand off those rivets (and probably put Archer ones on)
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Ok that's four... Time for a break.
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I can't put this off any longer. I'm going to try and solder up the 30mm.


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First the hinges for the gun shield, I don't imagine I will get these to work as hinges.

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I decided to display the shield in the stowed poition, so I need to solder the hinges at 45 degrees. I'm using these offcuts to hold the stuff.


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Starting to put the thing together, Having to get creative in how I hold all this.

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I learnt to solder by watching Paul Budzik's videos on the youtubes.

I'm applying flux with a syringe to the area I want the solder.

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Then I am shaving off a sliver of solder, and stick it into the blob of flux.

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Apply heat and bingo!

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Holding the barrel straight was tricky

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I think I mounted the seats too low.

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The upper two guns required use of kit parts so I just superglued them together.



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Cheers!



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