FreekS

The hull now has epoxy/glass textile both on the outside and inside. After several rounds of sanding and epoxy putty I now used spray putty on the hull. Four layers so far - looks much better (splits between the hull sections are now invisible) but will be continuing sanding…. the superstructures are too complex for spray putty (too many shadows) - so have been sanding them in preparation for 2 comp epoxy putty applied manually. A 4-blade Raboesch brass prop came in, but the hub needs shortening or the rudder won’t fit. Ideal job for my small lathe, first filed off part of the hub, reformed it on the lathe and carefully filled the emerged hole with soft solder. The prop axle and motor mount are made but not glued in yet. to be able to mount a rudder (and maintain it and the drivetrain, I cut off the “foot” of the rudder from the hull (it must have a name…). I drilled 3.2mm holes in the PLA hull, and using a hot soldering iron pressed two 3,5mm M2 inserts into the bottom of the hull. This fixed the inserts beautifully (I did test this on a spare piece of PLA) and allowed me to screw the rudder “foot” back on with 2 M2 bolts. Seems very stable and firm. next back to sanding…

That’s what I had when I built Corsaro II, which is a stationary model converted to RC. Like many I added a lead bulb under the keel. It’s screwed into some M4 nuts in the keel and can be removed easily when not sailing. Might be an alternate way for Twilight.

That’s brave to test in the sea! The boat looks beautiful but also potentially a bit top heavy and possibly sensitive to wind. Getting as much ballast deep in the boat would be the right strategy!

Lots of parts have been printed. It’s now possible to loosely assemble what the ship(s) will look like. then started to treat the hull with a coat of epoxy; and after a few hours curing (still wet) covered with a layer of 80g/m2 of glastextile, then another coat of epoxy in wet. Result is not very good; the glass textile has some folds and bubbles. But the hull is clearly stiffer and stronger. Next I’ll try to sand the first layer and probably apply another layer of glass textile and epoxy.

Thanks @NavyShooter didn’t I see a 1/144 swordfish of yours on Thingiverse?😀 Here is how the first prints came out, the first during printing - note the horizontal stabilisers lost contact with the support. Then the full plane after removal of the support, and the second version with folded wings (and temp attached prop) after initial sanding.

Those swordfish (nickname “stringbag”) were old and slow planes, but ideal for low speed landings and takeoffs from carriers. They became most famous for disabling the Bismarck with a torpedo hit in the rudder, and even more so for night raid on Taranto by 21 swordfish from the carrier Illustrious resulting in the disabling of three Italian battleships (a nov 1940 attack much studies by the Japanese…). There were 19 grain tankers and oil tankers converted into MAC-ships, each with 3-6 planes (the converted grain tankers had a hangar that the oil tankers lacked). So Macoma with its 3-4 swordfish was tasked to maintain an air patrol around the convoy all-day round and when possible at night. Picture the gruelling operational tempo, the maintenance of wet and salt incrusted planes in the middle of the North Atlantic, right there on deck! On this photo it may have looked like a picknick… Note also how narrow that deck was… Over 4000 swordfish missions were recorded for the 19 ships during convoy duty. The amazing result: although no swordfish actually sank a u-boat while flying off a mac ship, NO convoy with a MAC-ship attached lost a single merchant ship!! The number of swordfish lost I could not find, but surely it was hazardous duty!

This week from my holiday address I could do some sanding and some design of details. Macoma had two to three Fairy Swordfish planes on deck. There was no hangar. Wikipedia has a nice set of side view, top view and front view drawings of the plane, which I used to construct the planes in Fusion. The actual prints will be 7,5cm in length, so I strengthened some elements like the spars between the wings to ensure enough strength. If they print well I can still try to narrow them. I constructed a full plane, then cut off the wings along the hinges, and reattached them in folded position. when viewed on the half-width deck of the carrier it is clear just how difficult it must have been to take off and land on such a narrow deck. Just clearing the island looks hard. Also designed son of the larger details such as lifeboats and the gun aft. printing to resume later this week…

I did start the design a bit earlier than the build log - we are now caught up. Plus, 3D printers are slow but there are many hours in the day (and night). Yet what you see here is only the basic shape of the ship(s), sanding, waterproofing, painting and especially detailing will take a long time! Thanks for following!

The hull has been printed in 5 parts and glued together. I had an entangled filament on one segment. Looks pretty good but will need epoxy coating, ideally with glass mats. First some sanding to be done. also printed the half flightdeck which has been sanded once. I’ve mostly finished the design of the decks, deckhouses, flight deck support and other larger printable parts but these will take a few weeks to complete and print.

After the hull I designed the basic superstructure for both the tanker and the MAC ship. This is relatively straight forward, using basic Fusion functions. Then I split the ships in two halves lengthwise and combined the tanker and carrier into one design. Here is where I think the concept will work for this ship - the half width deck still looks typical for a carrier and the tanker deckhouses are well recognisable. Have to decide how to paint the “cut” surfaces that would not be seen in the individual models and the masts of the tanker will still affect the overall view. also at this stage I cut the three sets of model parts (hull, tanker superstructure carrier superstructure and carrier deck) into 5-6 parts each to fit the side of the printer, making sure there are big enough glue surfaces between them. Several bolt closures are included also. next is printing. At least to see if it all works.

I started designing the hull. First, I imported three images I found; a side view sketch of the tanker, a top view of the deckhouse arrangement and a rib-plan (from a US tanker). These can be scaled to 1:144 and placed on the three perpendicular planes as “canvases”. This allows me in Fusion360 to trace the main lines in the three dimensions. the ribs were traced and placed in their location along the keel, the deck was made including the front to back and starboard to port curves using a “sweep” command. The hull itself is made by “lofting” from the keel surface to the deck along the ribs and the bow and stern lines.For that to work it is required that the ribs, bow and stern lines exactly touch the keel and deck edges. That is achieved by intersecting the rib plans on these two surfaces. All this took me days to find out - and I tended to forget exactly how I did it minutes after it worked. Luckily you can look back in the history of your project…. As the first level of the deckhouses in the bow, stern and midships follow the hull shape, I used for a deck the top of this level. Then I constructed the actual deck level and used that plane to cut out the hull including the first level of all three deckhouses. Above a side view at this stage, superimposed on the scaled side view of the tanker. As the rib plans were traced from a poorish image, at this stage I spent some time changing the rib drawings until the hull appeared best. This is very powerful as you see the hull shape change instantly. Without actual Macoma plans this was the best I could do. And here is the same hull body superimposed on the carrier side view. It fits both quite well. The hull was now a solid body, and Fusion has a function to hollow it out from the top deck surface. This worked but made the program very slow for subsequent operations and its finicky and dependent on the hull shape and desired wall thickness. Much easier proved to delete the top deck from the solid body, converting it to a keel surface and two side surfaces. These can easily be “thickened” and joint again with much better results. Another few days of internet searches and discovery (and frustration) spent…. There are lots of helpful videos and forum posts on the topic of designing a hull including CAD. It’s quite time consuming and frustrating to a beginner, until one realises a non-engineer can now do in a few days what dozens of droughts-men used to do (better of course). It gave me the feeling that this kind of 3D design fits in our hobby - it’s detailed, fun, full of problem solving - and as you will see later does not reduce the amount of sanding and detail modelling needed for a nice result!

Andy, that’s sort of my plan too; one hull with all electrics. I can make several “decks”; tanker, carrier and half/half. given the size of the build and the size of my printer the hull and the decks will each be made from 5-6 parts. So I’ll need glue surfaces between them as well as some grams to maintain the hulls rigidity. For the moment I’m planning to screw the hull and decks together, your solution could also work but with a 1 meter deck sliding over a 1 meter hull looks daunting. I’m going to aim for the half half carrier tanker as that allows me to have the tanker hull have both peacetime colours as well as war time grey. Unfortunately these ships appear not to have had dazzle camouflage patterns!

Yes John, those masts worry me too - they will obstruct the view of the half flight deck. Also as they are on the centreline I’d have to halve the masts - tricky. Not solved that one yet! Ive reviewed a bunch of Fusion 360 tutorials and build logs on making a hull - and it’s clearly very tricky. I’ll report on my efforts here but it won’t be an expert view!

Inspired by the beautiful liner/troopship made by @shipmodel I am embarking on a similar project. pre-Ww2 Royal Dutch Shell had built a series of oil tankers colloquially known as “Triple twelve” - they could carry 12000 tons of crude, cruise at 12 knots and use 12 tons of fuel a day. Some of these were operated by a subsidiary of Shell Netherlands, and some by a subsidiary of shell UK (shell was Dutch/English at the time). These tankers transported oil to Uk during the war, and to provide air cover to convoys some of them were converted to MAC ships - aircraft carriers carrying three/four Swordfish biplanes on their deck. They seem not to have sunk any U-boats, but no convoy with a MAC ship attached appears to have lost any merchant ships either. MV Macoma was built in 1935 (in a now long defunct shipyard in Amsterdam) and converted to MAC ships in 1944 in UK. Basically the deckhouses were cut off and a flight deck installed. The ships thus had no aircraft lifts or hangars, but retained their role as oil tankers while functioning as carrier. Macoma also retained her Dutch civilian crew and the air complement was made up by Dutch pilots from the Dutch Fleet Air Arm. Although the two Dutch converted ships (to my knowledge) were never referred to by “Hr. Ms.” (Her Majesties), they were in effect the first Dutch aircraft carriers. After the war they were converted back to tankers (to make it easy for modellers not exactly to the same configuration) and went back into Shell service. Aim is to build Macoma at 1:144 scale (making her 1 meter long) and making her radio controlled. Initially my plan was to build one hull with two decks, one for the tanker and one for the MAC-ship, but then the hull colour would not fit with both periods. So now I’m leaning towards having the port side MAC ship and the starboard side tanker (interesting stability issues foreseen). The ship will be designed in Fusion360 and printed with PLA, which will need epoxy waterproofing. I’m not an expert in Fusion (of 3D printing) so it will be a nice learning. I have collected photos from the internet but have no plan of the ship. I’m thus going to have to construct the ship from photos, and some silhouettes. I have some plans from American “t2-tankers” from the same period which I’ll use for the hull lines. Also still a shortage of detail photos.

Wow, that ladder would be a nightmare to solder for me - and the precision!! Were all rungs soldered at the same time?