H.L. Hunley

[Martian]

Now, you may be forgiven for thinking that the Martian has lost the last of whatever he ever had of the plot and come up with a plan so cunning that Baldrick would be jealous of it, but bear with me, there is a kind of method in my madness.

 

Having got my Mercury build ready for paint earlier today, with the Delfin build at a similar stage and the Holland build coming on apace, I was wondering what else I could be doing before I set my room up for a painting session. For those who don't know, my room is only six feet x five feet and it has to be set up for building or set up for painting, not both. I therefore get a batch of models ready for painting to avoid the hassle of having to keep changing the room around all the time.

 

Anyhow, in order to stop the Devil making work for idle tentacles I had a rummage around in my ready use kit stash (Oh yes I have more than one stash.) and came across the Mikro-Mir 1/35 kit of the CSS Hunley submarine.

 

I had been gifted this kit by Mikro-Mir when it first came out and had always intended to try and do something a bit special with it. Pulling the kit out, the thought came into my head , "why not combine building the kit with something else you have always intended to do ?)(If that's not an opening for @CedB then I don't know what is!) I have always wanted to try a cut away build of something and I have quite a lot of information on the Hunley. Her hand cranked propulsion system should prove a good test of Albion Alloys Connecto system of joining tubing together and the nature of their slide fit tubing will be helpful for such things as bushes. I am very aware that I am stepping well outside my comfort zone here and may very well crash and burn but if we can carry it off, we may well end up with quite an attractive model. I use the word "we" here not as in the Martian "we" but as in us as I am a bit nervous about this one and feel I am going to need support to get me through the build. I did an in box review of the kit shortly after I received it and it can be found here:

 

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234971638-mikromir-hunley-in-box-review/

 

 

 

Let's start with the box art. This is a copy of a well known painting and I hope, using some of ICM's 1/35 Confederate figures to display the model in a similar style.

 

 

I began by drilling out all of the port holes in the hull. I did these a tad oversized as I have a cunning plan to add a bit of bling to the finished model which will be either black or a mid to dark grey depending on what source you consult. I shall do some more sleuthing on that one as it was about six years ago that I last researched the vessel and new information is sure to have come to light during her restoration.

 

Next I screwed up all of my courage, took a deep breath and cut three large openings in the hull. There, the die is now cast and there is no going back. Mystic Martian now sees a lot of white styrene marching inexorably in the direction of this build.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Martian the Apprehensive 👽

Edited March 11, 2021 by Martian
Inaccurate title

[longshanks]

II'm quite certain you have the abilities to carry this off in style

 

You may continue to entertain us 🧐

 

Kev

[dnl42]

Ooh! Looking forward to this! 

The propulsion system should be quite fun to build!

[Martian]

9 minutes ago, longshanks said:

II'm quite certain you have the abilities to carry this off in style

 

You may continue to entertain us 🧐

 

Kev

You clearly have more faith in me than I do Kev.

4 minutes ago, dnl42 said:

Ooh! Looking forward to this! 

The propulsion system should be quite fun to build!

I do have a plan in mind for the propulsion system. Time however, will tell whether it is a goer or just a collection of small dangly objects.

 

Martian 👽

[ArnoldAmbrose]

6 hours ago, Martian said:

You clearly have more faith in me than I do

Gidday Martian, I think all who follow your builds have faith in you. I think this will be an interesting project. And when you've done this you can do the same with a modern day hunter-killer or missile boat. It should be an interesting comparison. 😁

Seriously, I like seeing what additions earthlings and martians do to kits with bits of white styrene. Regards, Jeff.

[Orso]

Now I understand why it sunk three times. Big holes in a submarine hull is a bad idea.

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday, yeah, they'd obviously never heard of duct tape. 😁 Regards, Jeff.

[AliGauld]

5 hours ago, Orso said:

Now I understand why it sunk three times. Big holes in a submarine hull is a bad idea.

My Dad always told me that if a rivet popped they would hammer in a balsa plug, I don't think he'd have had any this big.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Brandy]

Your courage is probably the best thing to screw up, compared to the alternatives. 

This sounds very interesting, I'll be following along if I may - throwing in comments that may or may not be productive (or even relevant) as we progress!

 

Ian

[Martian]

Did I say that I could well crash and burn with this build? I did? Well, thatt very nearly happened yesterday. It was just one of those days when nothing would go right. The bulkheads for the fore and aft ballast tanks went in after a bit of a struggle and marking out and drilling the hole to accept the propeller shaft was a real pain. At this point the wise modeller would have accepted that he was just not on form and walked away from the bench. Did Martian follow this very sensible advice? Of course he didn't! he struggled on for a further five hours trying to get the deck right. It is very important to get the deck square and level so that the supports for the crank all line up properly. What you see here is the second deck I made, I couldn't even measure up the first one correctly. I think that the deck sits a little on the high side but I can work round that. I' certainly not starting over again: no way!

 

By contrast, apart from very nearly running out of .40 x .40 'thou plastic strip everything went swimmingly today. I began by cutting away the very top of the bulkhead for the forward ballast tank. For reasons best known to himself Mr Hunley, after whom the vessel was named, thought it was a cunning plan to have the ballast tanks open to the inside of the submarine!

 

Mikro-Mir provide an impression of plating on the inside of the hull, presumably they thought about doing an interior at one time and providing a clear hull half, in the same way they did for their German Delphin kit. The plating was used as a guide to add framing to the port side of the hull and this was where I very nearly came unstuck with the plastic strip running out. Fortunately, a rummage in my scrap plastic draw turned up enough to finish the job and, I think, to do the truncated frames on the starboard side.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Martian 👽

 

 

 

 

 

[dnl42]

Your slogging is paying off! 

[Courageous]

Interesting work there Martian. Are you working from any references to do the interior?

 

Stuart

[Martian]

1 hour ago, dnl42 said:

Your slogging is paying off! 

It felt more like a flogging to be honest!

1 hour ago, Courageous said:

Interesting work there Martian. Are you working from any references to do the interior?

 

Stuart

Thanks Stuart. I have a couple of books on American Civil War submarines and there is a fair bit on the interweb.

 

Martian 👽

[robgizlu]

I'd say that was a very admirable start:  Martian 3 - Micromir 0.

Fascinating contraption

Rob

[Martian]

On 01/03/2021 at 22:39, robgizlu said:

Fascinating contraption

I am given to understand her various crews differed in that opinion. The second time she sank, she was swamped by a passing vessel. A classic case of "Mind your wash" if ever there was one!

 

Martian 👽

[Martian]

Over the last couple of days I have added a sort of shelf that is situated in front of the forward ballast tank. Studying the website of the people restoring the real submarine, it would appear that this contains the rudder controls:

 

 

The control linkage to the rudder is going to fun as even Hunley's restorers are unsure about it as most of the mechanism had completely corroded away. They know it was controlled by a tiller situated at the front of the vessel and they know where the control arm exited the hull and how it operated the rudder. What is unknown is what happened in between or even where the mechanism was situated. Avoiding the heads of the crew and the crank mechanism and avoiding fouling the two conning tower hatches, the control runs had to either run underneath the crew's bench or along the starboard upper quadrant of the hull. You pays your money an takes your choice. As things stand at the moment ,I am erring on the side of under the bench, purely on the grounds that I have worked out how it might have worked in that position. This could all change if further information comes to light during my researches.

 

Turning to less complicated matters, I have built up the brackets that hold up the bench for the crew. These were constructed from .10 x .80 'thou plastic strip and are now being left for 24 hours to dry thoroughly before they are trimmed and cleaned up. I thought about doing a paint effect for the actual bench  but then remembered that I have some wood veneers. So why not replicate wood with, err. wood? Should be a goer in this scale. Accordingly, I cut the shape required for the bench from .20 'thou plastic card, chose the type of wood I wanted and laminated it to the plastic core. I will give it a coat of gloss varnish before ir is finally glued in place.

 

 

 

 

I am beginning to realise that this is likely to a long build as it is going to be, model a bit, go away and have a long hard think/research the next problem, do a bit more until another hurdle is reached, think/research again etc. Still I thrive on this sort of challenge and we will see how far I get.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Martian 👽

 

 

[beefy66]

Slow but steady progress and very interesting.  

 

Stay Safe

beefy

[Martian]

10 minutes ago, beefy66 said:

Slow but steady progress and very interesting.  

 

Thanks Beefy, it is a very compelling subject but it is going to be really tough to carry it off. I really don't feel my usual confidence with a build with this one but I was gifted the kit, its box was just getting more and more tatty so what's to lose?

 

Martian von Several Light Years Out of his Comfort Zone 👽

[Courageous]

11 hours ago, Martian said:

I really don't feel my usual confidence

Most of us have seen your past work, it may take a while but you'll get there in the end.

 

Stuart

[ArnoldAmbrose]

16 hours ago, Martian said:

So why not replicate wood with, err. wood?

Gidday, what a novel yet brilliant idea! (Wood grows on what are known as trees on this planet. 😁)

 

13 hours ago, Martian said:

Martian von Several Light Years Out of his Comfort Zone

Go to warp speed and you'll be back in no time at all.     Seriously, we do have faith in you being able to carry this off. What you've done already looks good. Regards, Jeff.

[Martian]

7 hours ago, Courageous said:

Most of us have seen your past work, it may take a while but you'll get there in the end.

 

Stuart

 

5 hours ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday, what a novel yet brilliant idea! (Wood grows on what are known as trees on this planet. 😁)

 

Go to warp speed and you'll be back in no time at all.     Seriously, we do have faith in you being able to carry this off. What you've done already looks good. Regards, Jeff.

Thanks Guys, you couldn't bottle some of that faith and send it post haste to Martian Towers please?

 

I have some HGW rivet decals that I bought on the back of @Ex-FAAWAFU's Sea King thread without any clear idea of what or when I was going to use them for. I think that day has now arrived and I plan to use them to add the rivets needed for the plates on the deck. Work on the deadlights continues apace and I will get some pictures up as soon as I have finished them.

 

Martian 👽

 

 

[Martian]

As promised, tonight we have the pictures of the deadlights on the Hunley. I really must stop trying to call them portholes. The Hunley had enough ways to sink without adding to them and portholes on a submarine are about as useful as a submarine on Mars. As well as doing this model as a cut away, I am hoping to present it in the style of the ship builders models that I wonder at every time I visit the Science Museum and the plan is to paint the model and then gently sand the rims of the portholes until the brass reappears.

 

I have assembled the propeller which consists of a plastic hub and three etch brass blades. My initial reaction was "yuk, they look too two dimensional. Go scratch build another set of blades Martian." Then the thought struck me, which made me stay my tentacles; "Supposing that they were really like that?". The problem is that the only pictures I can find are of the broken prop of the Hunley, covered in concretion. What to do?  The other conundrum I currently face is how to make the prop guard. Mikro-Mir just give two flat sheets of brass and leave the modeller to get on with the job. I could try annealing them and the soldering them together but I can feel it in my water that as soon as I try and clean up the butt joints, they will fall apart again. Suggestions anyone?

 

I think deck of the sub will be getting Crispinated tomorrow, at least that should not be too difficult. (Famous last words!"

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Martian 👽

 

 

 

 

 

[Pappy]

Jolly good work

 

G'day Martian,

 

I have this kit and will follow along with interest as I am keen to see your solutions to some of the kit deficiencies. Mine will be a  far less ambitious build and the interior will remain a mystery. 

 

I e-mailed the restoration people directly reference interior and exterior colours. One of the boffins replied that the interior was likely white due to the traces of lead oxide and white paint found during the restoration.  As for the exterior, I suggested black but the reply was that it was likely a medium grey based upon the contemporary painting of the Hunley (which forms the basis of the boxtop art)  which depicts the exterior colour as grey, so that is what I will be using. 

 

I am especially interested in seeing what you do with the spar torpedo and its associated control rigging as that is where I am stuck presently

 

cheers,

 

Pappy

 

Edited March 6, 2021 by Pappy

[Martian]

1 hour ago, Pappy said:

Jolly good work

 

G'day Martian,

 

I have this kit and will follow along with interest as I am keen to see your solutions to some of the kit deficiencies. Mine will be a  far less ambitious build and the interior will remain a mystery. 

 

I e-mailed the restoration people directly reference interior and exterior colours. One of the boffins replied that the interior was likely white due to the traces of lead oxide and white paint found during the restoration.  As for the exterior, I suggested black but the reply was that it was likely a medium grey based upon the contemporary painting of the Hunley (which forms the basis of the boxtop art)  which depicts the exterior colour as grey, so that is what I will be using. 

 

I am especially interested in seeing what you do with the spar torpedo and its associated control rigging as that is where I am stuck presently

 

cheers,

 

Pappy

 

Thanks Pappy, if the museum think it was grey, then grey it will be. It was the painting that set me wondering whether Mikro-Mir's instruction to paint it black was correct. At least that's one of the problems I face ticked off the list. Apart from some possible crispination, today's work on this build will be plotting where the supports for the crank go and working out how to fashion a jig for the same. I may have to simplify the actual crank by restricting it to right angles, depends on what I can do with the Connecto stuff.

 

Martian 👽

 

 

[Norman]

Looks good Martian !!

 

Im guessing its because you are of a many a tentacled body that you are to build multiple projects at the same time ?

 

Or is it an Occam's razor scenario ? your just bloody good ?

 

I prefer the second

 

Cheers !