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Everything posted by highlanderburial
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Mast work begins. I think the kit shorted me a dowel but I had extra. The kit gives you a jig to make to hold up the radars and connecting beams. The main part of the "A" frame is some 3/16 plastruct tubing but you have to push through some very malleable aluminum wire. This keeps the plastic from deforming and lets it hold its shape.
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I started working on hatches and scuttles. As a note to all those attempting this build should note that there are 3 different sizes of doors. I spent 40 minutes figuring out which ones were which when I could have simply held them up to the parts sheet. See photo. You will need to use a 3/16 drill bit to cut port holes in the water tight doors. You also need to do this with 2 different doors each with hinges both left and right.
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Today I puttied up some more low spots. The real ship has a bow thruster but the model makes no call out for this. I measured back about 4.25 inches from the hawser hole in deck and drew a circle around the boat to find the placement. I never like cutting a hole in a perfectly good hull. I used a small starter drill bit as a starter. I then moved up to 3/8ths then 5/8ths. The plastruct tube in inserted was larger than that one the outside diameter. MAKE SURE you glue one side prior to cutting the tube flush or it will pop out.
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I used a lot of epoxy putty and sanding to get the tunnels complete. So far I am glad I did it because the stern will look sharp once the anti fouling paint and draft marks are on. I slapped some black paint on the stern to look for high spots when I sand it a final time. A shipmate sent me a photo of the stern of another FRC soon to be launched. This helped me out so I will post it here. I also started building the roof of the 01 deck and installing bulkheads. These are super tricky and the port and starboard structure rails are different sizes. The instructions are a bit ambiguous with the markings but just got slow and make sure you test fit a few if the basswood "C" bulkheads prior to gluing in the rear C9 flat panel guides.
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I finally got the courage to cut out the anchor chain tube in the forecastle. The diagrams on where to put the hole in the deck. Use a small bit first and go slow. Move up to a 1/4 inch bit. Slide the 1/4 inch tune up into the hole and cut flush. The boat door was glued up on the stern. The back deck was also cut to fit as a slide in.
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I created a couple of 3D print files today. The props on the FRC's are four bladed. I have seen various photos of the real ships but several of them seem to look different. I settled on the 4 blade model attached here as an .obj file. This kit comes with NO PROPS so you are welcome! In addition I needed two decently scaled rudders to replace the brass flat plate and copper tube stock that Dumas included. While the rudder I made (on the computer) is still not perfect to my liking I will be playing with it. I started the print about 20 minutes ago for the rudder so I want to see if the file is viable in the real world at this point. In 1/48 the rudder from tip to hull protrusion should be about 19mm high. The fore and aft length should be similar at around 17mm at its widest. propeller.obj Rudder final scale.stl
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I have been laying out the rudders. The kit clearly makes some changes from the original cutter for R/C operation. I looked at the actual line drawings of the cutter and see that the rudders are very far back on the actual ship. I scaled the drawing up from 1:50 to 1:48 which is what the kit scale as. The picture I took was of where the kit says to put the rudders stocks.
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The final bow rail pieces were fitted. There is a jig provided in the kit to true these up relative to the deck. Since both pieces extend beyond the stem I decided to simply bend the plastic back and use it as a clamping point. The worked well. They boat well in the stern went in fairly easy but your need to do a bunch of angle tapering to get it to fit. The plans say to sand the pieces flush with the frames. I highly encourage you to do this prior to glueing them in.
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