HMAS/m AE2, Scratchbuild

[Bandsaw Steve]

Getting down to brass tacks...

 

One of the reasons I chose to build a submarine was because I thought it would give me a chance to play about with some brass detailing.  Finally I've got to that point.

 

Just about every period photograph of these vessels shows that a cable was carried stretched along the casemate from a point near the anchor-locker to a point abeam the middle of the conning tower.  I've annotated the photograph below with a red dashed line in order to show this cable that I'm talking about.

 

My plan (at this stage)  for modelling this, is to hang a length of lead wire off a series of hooks along the side the casemate. I'm going to make the hooks out of brass, it's a fairly simple job but here's how it goes...

 

Get a sheet of brass of the correct thickness - here about 0.5mm, and trim off about a 7mm or so strip.

 

Cut off as many bits as are needed - in this case 14.  Cut a few spares 'just in case'.

 

As I have use scissors for the cutting each little bit is all sort of curled up and needs flattening.

 

I managed to pick-up a photo-etch folding device at a bargain price the other day.  Here I have used it to flatten the little curly-wurly bits into nice flat plates and am folding each one into a hook shape.

 

See... lots of little hooks with a flat bit for sticking onto the side of the submarine.

 

Here's a photograph of a couple of them stuck on with two-part epoxy araldite. To attach the cable I will apply a dot of araldite to the inside of each hook, rest the cable on top of it and then fold / roll each hook's sticky-outy bit over the top of the cable. That's a fair while into the future though, it will only happen after the hull's painting is complete.

 

The other fiddly bit that I have chosen to use brass to represent is this weird little thing...

I do not know what this little duverlacky is but I rather suspect it's some sort of mass-balance used to stabilise or perhaps trim the forward hydroplanes.  

 

Here's how I made it.  Take a length of fine, brass circular-section tubing and fold it over the back of a razor blade.

 

Cut it to length and stick it on as shown below.

 

Then take a small bit of milli-putt and roll it around between your fingers until it's a small streamlined shape as shown.

 

I did that three times as I will need one on each side and a spare for when things go wrong and left them to dry / cure for 24 hours.

 

I then sanded half of each little blob away - leaving a little streamlined blob of mill-putt...

 

which can be glued into place as shown. I have also sanded as much of the permanent marker off as I could manage, this is to reduce the risk of the ink bleeding-through the final paint job - a risk I was previously unaware of until Hendie pointed it out above.

 

Here is where we are up to now - the hull is very nearly finished and might be seeing some more primer, and then some paint, quite soon. 

 

 

Happy Modelling Everyone and thanks again for following along.

Bandsaw Steve...

 

 

[JohnWS]

5 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

... - the hull is very nearly finished and might be seeing some more primer, and then some paint, quite soon. ...

Steve, your sub is looking awesome!  Nice work on the details. 

 

John

[Courageous]

Stunning work as usual Steve .

[Nigel Heath]

All the added detailed items are really bringing this to life.

[beefy66]

Really looking the part with all the small details getting fitted

 

beefy

[Bandsaw Steve]

Right angles everywhere...

 

One of the things I've never been good at is making anything that involves making a true and accurate right angle or a true and accurate centred upright - especially if it involves drilling a hole. This week I've had to deal with nothing but uprights and right angles. It's been a bit of a pain but I have found one or two solutions, one of which I think may be of great interest to modellers of all abilities. 

 

To start off, here is the my version of the Marconi Radio transmitter aerial, very simply made from a brass tube with a thinner brass rod glued in place with araldite. 

 

In some ways this radio was the most important thing on the boat - this was the high-tech device that transmitted the news to the Allied commanders that AE2 had successfully passed through the Dardanelles.  This news led directly to other allied submarines making the same hazardous passage and was the trigger for a prolonged and very successful allied submarine campaign in the sea of Marmora.  Naturally the aerial sits bolt upright and dead centre on the deck casing.  Naturally the first hole I drilled for it was off to one side.  That was despite using the Dremmel drill press and drilling a guide hole and just everything!

 

But not to worry - here comes the solution. Fill the hole with body putty and stick the aerial back in the hole.

 

Just hold the damned thing where it should go and let the filler set.  As I'm sure you all know, this filler sets like stone, so the aerial is there forever more now.

 

Look! Nice and straight. A dodgy way to get there but I'm happy with this.

 

Now comes a bit I've been dreading. Unlike more modern submarines, the early E-class boats had a collapsible mast.  When surfaced they could manually raise a rather tall mast on which radio receiving lines were suspended. Prior to diving however the mast had to be dropped to a horizontal position and rested on a gantry just behind the conning tower.  This was necessary as otherwise - when at periscope depth the submarines position would, in effect be marked by a 5m tall telegraph pole!

 

Anyway this time I'm going to be really careful and use a braddle to deeply mark the point of drilling for the attachment points for the gantry. I'm happy to say that this time the holes actually went in really well!  

 

 

And now I had to use my new 'you-beaut' etched metal bending thingamabob to put two right-angles in a single brass rod.

 

And it worked OK...

 

This is what I was aiming for.  The 'mast' is there for demonstration purposes only at this stage - I'll make a proper one later, but at least you can see how the gantry works.  There's more to go on this - some stay wires etc, but nothing too challenging.

 

And now for this... A few weeks ago I actually got off my butt and went down to the maritime museum at Fremantle to have a look at this replica conning tower.  The visit went well and answered a few questions I had about some of the detailed fittings.  What wasn't so great though was that on this replica there is a walk way, at deck level alongside the forward three quarters of the conning tower.  In the photo below it's about half a meter above the stowed cable.  This was not good news as I have never seen this walkway before and have not represented it at all on my model. 

 

On the way home, I dropped into the local hobby shop and spied some of this...  0.5mm thick plastic sheeting - same kind of thing that Evergreen makes, but in this case it's printed with a metric grid of perfect right-angled lines at 1 cm spacing.  The little dots are at 1mm spacing. Oh My God! Whoever invented this is a Super-Genius! I could not wait to get it home and cut some plastic!

 

And here is the stuff in action. If you look closely you can actually make out the walkway on the plans, I just hadn't looked closely enough before. Anyway, all I need to do is cut a perfect rectangle and the job will be done.  this should be dead easy given that the rectangle is already plotted on the job!

 

Voila - one essentially perfect rectangle!  Just what a lazy and largely inept modeller needs!  This stuff is brilliant and it's about the same price as evergreen, maybe a touch more, but definitely worth it!

 

Not a lot to show for this week but at least the uprights are upright and the squares are square - or at least close enough to keep me happy.

 

That's it for another week, am actually making some good progress at the moment so might see if I can do an update this Wednesday.

 

Best Regards from,

The Bandsaw

 

[Kevin Aris]

lovely work, love the detail

 

[hendie]

I'm surprised the young wench down at the whatchamacalliterosium didn't tell you about that one Steve - or have you been avoiding her of late?

 

That is a nice find though - any more information on it?   Like you, I have immense difficulty cutting true 90° edges

 

 

 

[Courageous]

Looks liked you've 'sussed' the right-angle thing.

Great work as usual Steve .

[John_W]

That plastic sheet looks awesome.

(Starts googleing)

[Bandsaw Steve]

The Shape of Water

 

I guess it's fairly poor internet etiquette to rave about a product like I did in my previous post and not provide a link to the supplier or manufacturer.  The 'wave corporation’ of Japan are the people that make this stuff and here is a link to their web-page. http://www.hobby-wave.com. Do be warned - it's very Japanese!

 

Given the content of this particular posting it seems very fitting that I have started by posting a link to the 'Wave Corporation'.

 

I'm getting close to a having a finished hull now and think that it's time to start working on the sea-scape.  I have seen of the work of Chris Flodberg and read an article in the April 2016 edition of Fine Scale Modeller where he outlined his techniques.  Try this link to see some of his stuff.  http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery/users/Chris-Flodberg/user-index.html  Now just because Chris is a world leader in this field and I have never done this before doesn't mean I have to follow his advice! Nahhhh - I'll just press on and see how I go...

 

To get a convincing wake pattern I think it's important to get some sort of idea of what wakes actually look like.  Here's a useful diagram from a text on physics.

 

 

Note the following salient facts:

• There are fundamentally two types of waves - for simplicity's sake let's call them 'Bow Waves' and 'Transverse waves'
• There is not just one bow wave - there are several fanning out behind the boat.
• Each bow wave when viewed from above is concave relative to the boat's line of travel.
• The average angle from the tip of the bow to the point of intersection with the transverse waves is 19.5 degrees.
• The transverse waves are evenly spaced and start at 90 degrees to the line of travel but then curve back gently.
• A 'cusp wave' forms where the bow wave and the transverse waves meet.

Apparently all of this works for any non-hydroplaning vessel travelling over still water.  The reason that the area of disturbance is called the 'Kelvin envelope' is because Lord Kelvin himself worked all this out way back ...whenever!

 

I believe that understanding this pattern is the key to making realistic and convincing wakes. The main complication is how this pattern forms on disturbed, say choppy, or swelling water.  I am working on the assumption that the same wake pattern forms but it is harder to see when it is obscured and dissipated by the  background environment waves.

 

Let's see if I can translate all of this theory into something 'real'. Once again I'm going to write this as if I'm instructing you how to do  it... but that's just because it is easier to write this way than in the first tense. 

 

Firstly - Buy a sheet of everyday polystyrene foam that's the right thickness in this case about 16 mm.  (Note that it seems Chris Flodberg prefers insulation foam - but I couldn't get any that was thin enough).  Here's a rough indication of how the model will 'sit' relative to the water.

 

Mark out and cut out the bit you want to use.

 

Mark out the outline of the boat.  I think it's OK to use permanent marker here because the ink mostly sinks into the polystyrene and by the time I'm finished it will have to diffuse through a huge amount of paint and resin to cause damage to the finish.

 

Here's where the boat will go.

 

Mark out a line running 19.5 degrees from the tip of the bow. OK - I guess 20 degrees will do at a pinch!  

 

Now draw on the relevant waves - taking note of all the scientific hoo-haa above...

 

From above it should look something like the diagram.

 

Now - wait for your wife to go out somewhere and while she's not looking, grab her crème-Brule burner...  Light it up and in short stabbing strokes 'attack' the surface of the polystyrene with the flame.  Each time the burner gets close the polystyrene will crumple and shrink under the heat. 

 

Doing this judiciously will put a series of ripples into the polystyrene surface that I think are a pretty good representation of sea swell. Note how the heat has also markedly reduced the intensity of the permanent marker - so now it's even less likely to bleed through.

 

Now get a sharp blade and cut slots along the lines of each bow or transverse wave of the wake that you wish to model.

 

It's easier to see the effect of all this if I hold the work in the sun like this.

 

And now it's milliput time. I bought a new box of the stuff just for this job.

 

Cut some texture into the 'wake slots' so that the milli-put will have something to grip onto.

 

Using MollytheDog's advice, I cut the milliput 60% by 40% as shown - good advice Molly, it worked beautifully like this.

 

Roll the milli-put up into a uniform coloured sausage.  Make sure that you 'over-mix' it - remember it needs to be homogenous at a molecular level.

 

Then work it into the relevant trenches as shown.  The trenches are only there to give the milliput something to key into.

 

As MollytheDog suggested - milliput like this is really easily worked and smooths out beautifully with a bit of spit on a finger...

 

and is easily worked with a spatula.

 

All of this leads to this... pretty awful looking really! But if you look closely you can see that I have managed to get a nice sharp 'roll over' effect on the leading bow wave. This Milliput stuff is really good!

 

With a boat on it, it looks like this. Hmmmm... No better really....still looks awful.

 

Next time I'm going to stick some colour on this water. It's just too ugly to leave like this for long.

 

See you soon,

Bandsaw Steve.

 

 

 

[hendie]

a novel approach to the water problem.   I'll be interested in seeing how it turns out.

[bar side]

Like the use of polystyrene here Steve.  Just touching the stuff sets my missus’s teeth on edge so I have to take everything out of the boxes if they come with polysytrene packing!  But I still store some away in the garage for modelling purposes

[Bandsaw Steve]

Seachange

 

'Don't wanna live in the city...  My friends tell me I'm changing... The smell of salty air, is what I'm chasing...'  

 

If you have no idea what I'm dribbling on about don't worry - it just means you are not an Australian of sufficient age to remember 1990's television. Anyway - here's how I made a couple of seachanges of my own. From polystyrene, to cold deep ocean, and then to tropical sea.

 

Here's the starting point.  Bare polystyrene foam with some milliput wake embedded into it.

 

First job is to try to smooth out the bubbly polystyrene surface and to merge the milliput with the polystyrene.  I'm going to try this stuff. It's a clear finishing resin in a liquid form normally used for smoothing and sealing the surface of polystyrene RC model aircraft. Unlike many chemicals it is completely compatible with polystyrene and won't damage its surface.

.

 

Pour it on,

 

and brush it all over the entire sea.

 

I cheated in this case and used an old hair dryer to help it along.

I did this three times to get a nice thick shiny protective layer. This product worked beautifully.

 

Meanwhile,  I had been mixing up some acrylic paint to match the colour of the ocean in a reference photo that I found on the web.

 

Once the resin was properly dry I slapped this colour all over the entire base. I did it twice actually as I figure that the more layers of resin and paint between the polystyrene and the final surface - the better.  At this stage I was very happy with the result.

 

Here's what it looked like when I got it inside...

 

The colour looks different under this light... It's OK but it looks very like a cold deep ocean and looks quite grey and will perhaps look a bit too subdued especially when the submarine is in it's final weathered, darker grey finish.

 

I left it for 24 hours and thought about it.  I came to the conclusion that this colour would be good for the Mid-Atlantic or the North Sea, but AE2 (and AE1 as well) spent most of their time in shallower, warmer waters - either on the East coast of Australia, in the tropics or in the Mediterranean.  I also felt that I had not fully dealt with the knobbly polystyrene bubble texture that was still a bit too visible for my liking.

 

So it was time for another seachange.   

 

I started by sanding back the entire surface in an effort to further smooth out the bubbly texture. This is where the resin was great because it made the surface strong enough to withstand some fairly coarse sanding treatment.

 

Here's the result; many of the polystyrene bubbles knocked a bit flatter and the whole surface ready for some more paint.

 

I mixed up some sea blue using the three colours below.

 

You might be wondering why orange is there. The reason is that the blue is far too 'BLUE'. I do a bit of landscape painting and have learned that if you are dealing with an oversaturated colour the best way to lower it's intensity is to add small incremental amounts of the complimentary colour (in this case orange). Some people say 'add grey' but that tends to make the colours dull - in this case I'm adding a very bright orange so the resulting mix is still bright - it's just a bit less blue.  Throw in some green too - almost all oceans have a greenish tinge even if it's not immediately obvious.

 

The initial mix was still a bit too 'BLUE' so I deadened it down a bit with some more green and a few small dashes of orange as well. 

 

Ahhhh!  That looks about right. This is more like what I had in mind!

 

There's more work to go on this but I think it's back on track.

 

Thanks for looking in folks and BTW if you haven't seen Seachange - do yourself (and the missus) a favour. Twenty years on and it's still a winner! 

Steve

 

[hendie]

wow again.   I liked the North Sea look but the tropical version looks pretty darn fine too.   I would never in a gazillion years thought of using  expanded PS for making a seascape but judging by how this is going - it's prefect for the job.  The polystyrene beads really add a touch of realism and break up the uniformity of the surface

[Nigel Heath]

Nice work on the base, it already looks very effective.

[Bandsaw Steve]

Churn and Foam

 

As far as I can tell the visible wake of a ship consists of four basic components:

• The shape of the waves (already discussed above)
• The subsurface churn - the zillions of microbubbles that form under the surface where the vessel's hull and propellers disturb the water
• The foam - the aerated frothy water that forms on the surface both right next to the vessel and for a small distance away - especially on the top of the wake and waves
• The web - the stringy, sketchy, blobby, persistent, remnants of the churn and foam that is left behind long after most of the aeration of the water has dissipated

This post will deal with representing the churn and the foam.

 

Unusually for me, this will involve an airbrush - I haven't used one in ages...

 

Given the tropical seascape that I'm trying to represent, I'm going to make the deep churn from this light shade of blue.  According to Chris Flodberg a very light peppermint green is better for temperate and cold water.

 

Spray it on in an appropriate pattern that makes sense relative to the modelled wake.

 

The main thing is to make sure that the churn is not homogenous, you don't want it to look manufactured, but it should be roughly symmetrical about the hull and should broadly honour the established shape of the wake.  AE2 was a twin propeller boat so there are two distinct churn tracks after the boat's stern.

 

The near surface churn is better represented by airbrushing  pure white. Be a bit sparing in the application of this or it will obliterate the deeper blueish churn.

 

Once the white is on you should have something like this. The sub-surface disturbance is done - churn complete!

 

Here's the same stage viewed from behind. As Hendie says, I think that the remnant bubble texture from the polystyrene is helping.

 

Now I have to model the foam - the foam is opaque and is a bit less extensive than the churn.  I have chosen to represent it with Titanium white oil paints. As I have mentioned above I do a bit of amateur painting and oils are my preferred paint. They blend beautifully and stay workable for long periods of time. I find I can get much better control with oils than acrylics.

 

And here goes the first rather rough application - this got smoothed out and more carefully blended into the background soon after, but I think you can get the idea.

 

Here's the foam after the stern being roughly slapped on.

 

And here's the result to date... I'm happy with this outcome, although this particular shot in this light makes the sea blue look a bit more purplish than in 'real life'...

 

Here's the view from behind.  Somehow the colours look more true to life in this photo.

Next up I'll have a go at modelling the web.

 

Best Regards,

Bandsaw Steve

[seadog]

Thats looking good!

 

[hendie]

ooohh very nice work sir.  I am suitably impressed with that finish and like the fact that you appear to have used a Scottish oil paint that helpfully informs you that it's no too thick. 

The addition of the oggin is definitely bringing another dimension to the work

[Bandsaw Steve]

I had never before noticed that this paint was ‘No too thick’ but I see it now - thanks for pointing that out. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 You must be reading this with more attention to detail than is used when it’s written. 🤔

 

What is ‘Oggin?’ 🤫

[hendie]

2 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

What is ‘Oggin?’ 🤫

 

Well, since you were using all this technical jargon like waves, churn and foam and stuff, I thought I'd continue with the tech speak.....  definition of oggin

[Bandsaw Steve]

Thanks for that. This thread gets ever more educational. From casemates to Kelvin Envelopes to Royal Navy slang. There just So much to learn here! 👨🏻‍🎓

[Bandsaw Steve]

Modelling the web - on the web...

 

As per my interpretation of Mr Flodberg's work, the last piece of the wake to be modelled is the web of stringy foam left behind after the froth and churn has dissipated.

 

He recommends using medical-grade rayon, but I don't have any of that to hand. So a cuddly toy from the local Salvation Army shop became the donor.  I won't show pictures or tell the story because going into a shop to buy a child's toy specifically for the purposes of disembowelling it (the toy not  the child) is a strangely disturbing experience and not one I wish to immortalise on the web.

 

Anyhow after the organ donor (or should that be the 'oggin' donor, Hendie?) had donated, here's the raw material.

 

 

Strip small bits out of the greater blob of Rayon.

 

Brush some more of that clear resin onto the work in all of the relevant spots.

 

Then stick the rayon into the resin and work it about and stretch it out with your finger or tweezers until it looks about right.

 

I reckon something like this looks OK.

 

Like I say - tweezers are good and after a while I managed to get the shape teezed out correctly even before I stuck it onto the work.

 

Once all the webbing is in position cover the entire work with another layer of clear high-gloss resin.

 

Leaving this.  I hope you don't mind me saying that I'm very happy with this. Pleasantly surprised in fact!

 

Since I'm sitting here now - I might as well press on and show you the next bit I've done...

Knock out a bit of 3mm MDF that's the same size as the modelled base.

 

Cut out the bit where the submarine's hull is going to sit.

 

Make sure that you have a vacuum cleaner on hand when you do this because this is a seriously messy job.

 

Once that was cut out, I got some of this 'E6000' glue - that's apparently great on polystyrene, I cut some scoring into the MDF base and stuck the polystyrene onto the base board. it's a good idea to stick some weights on the thing and let it sit overnight.

 

Which yielded this...

 

And now the submarine sits right in the 'oggin' rather than just balancing precariously on it.  This is why I could get away with not modelling the hydroplanes - the plan was always to have them hidden under the water.

 

Don't worry about the little gap between the hull and the ocean.  I will fix that later on.

 

And now, since I'm feeling well pleased with this, here is yet another view of AE2 churning heroically across the Mediterranean en-route to history...

 

Right. I've done all I can with the base now, so it's been sent off to the picture framers, meanwhile I will carry on with the submarine. I need to do a lot more work on the conning tower and then...Painting the model itself...

 

As always thanks for any and all signs of interest, it helps to keep me focused and 'moving forward' as they say. 

 

Bandsaw Steve

 

[Courageous]

Jolly good show on the seascape . 

 

Stuart

[hendie]

4 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

or should that be the 'oggin' donor, Hendie?)

 

 

 

4 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

I got some of this 'E6000' glue - that's apparently great on polystyrene,

 

One of my favorite glues - there's times when no other glue will do

 

 

That oggin is looking very realistic.  Is this your first attempt at such a beast ?   I'd be terrified having to recreate something like that - you are a braver man than I sir