USS Los Angeles by BrianK - FINISHED - 1/200 - Kartonowy Swiat - CARD

[BrianK]

First build log.

I teach electrical engineering and a colleague who teaches mechanical engineering is a retired sub driver. Captain Paul Dinius skippered the USS Helena, SSN 725, during one of his tours.

I thought I would make him a model of the type of submarine he was on. 

I looked for a reasonable sized card model. This is a model of the USS Los Angeles which was the first of the 688 class. The Helena was a Flight II version and had 12 vertical Tomahawk missile tubes.  I may look at adding details for those if I can figure out an easy change.

 

Here is the front cover with a couple sheets of 1mm thick (40 point) chipboard that will be used for section bulkheads.

 

The text inside is all in Polish.

 

Thank goodness for Google translate: Hover my Android's camera over the Polish instructions and Viola! English translation appear in real-time! I think I can figure out 'rung' should be 'ring'. 😃 

Here we go!

 

 

 

[yvesvidal]

Great find!!! First, it is one of my favorite submarines and it is in the 1/200 scale. I wish plastic manufacturers would embrace this scale for submarines as this scale is becoming prevalent for many ship modellers. It is unfortunate they stopped at 1/150th or jumped to 1/350th.

 

I will be looking at your model with a lot of interest. Thank you for starting this Build Log.

 

Yves

[ccoyle]

Oooh -- chip board. 😬  Have lots of extra blades on hand!

[BrianK]

Thanks Yves and Chris, and everyone else for the early thumbs....

Chris I found right angle heavy duty craft scissors to try out. The bulkheads are not too challenging so I am hoping it will not be to frustrating..... 

 

For the record Chris you are one of the reasons I am enjoying card models so much. Your builds are pretty spectacular.

[BrianK]

For a first step, I cut out the page of bulkheads and divided them into sections. I cut rough-matching pieces of 1mm chipboard using right angle craft scissors. The scissors are big but sharp and accurate. More importantly my hand does not hurt when  cutting the chipboard. 😃

 

In my paint booth I sprayed Elmer's craft adhesive on the chipboard sections and then laid the bulkhead page sections on them. The smell evaporates pretty quick. The adhesive spray reminds me of using hairspray as a scenery adhesive.

 

I punched out the holes in the bulkheads with some leather punches I had.

 

After cutting the bulkheads out I smooth the edge on some 220 grit sandpaper.

 

Hope to finish them up in a day or two.

 

 

[yvesvidal]

I had no idea that building a paper model required such heavy tools... 🙂

 

Yves

[BrianK]

"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum to place it on and I'll move the world."........ or a 1/200 scale paper model 😃

 

Edited January 23, 2024 by BrianK

[BrianK]

Bulkheads are done. The 1mm thick chipboard backing was not too terrible to cut with the angle craft scissors. I used a knife for the little bulkheads. A chisel knife cutting little tangents as I  worked around the curves of the small pieces seemed to produce ok results.

 

I used some 220 grit sand paper and an emery board to smooth the bulkheads. They will not be visible so I only worried about the edges and deburring the flats where two bulkheads will meet.

 

I was originally planning to glue the chipboard sides of the bulkheads to each other when bringing hull sections together. However, the four cardinal registration marks on the card model side might be useful. I am not sure I trust the craft adhesive though. It should be permanent the way I applied it. The card model cut outs seem well attached to the chipboard.

Any thoughts?

 

Edited January 24, 2024 by BrianK

[Richard44]

Why not just mark the edges of the bulkheads where the cardinal marks are? File, pencil, whatever...Then you can have chipboard-to-chipboard and not worry about the craft glue.

 

Cheers (looking forward to your build).

[BrianK]

Great idea Richard. Just transfer the marks. Might as well go all the way onto the chipboard side. I have a little square somewhere.....

 

Brian

[BrianK]

Initial glue ups of the first couple of bulkheads. This step just gets the bulkhead attached to the section hulls at one point. Wrapping is the next step.

 

The small section is the first section aft of the main straight section.

 

I will raise the tapered end of the small sections a few millimeters (1/2 the difference in bulkhead diameters for the section) before trying to wrap and glue the hull all the way around. That should keep the bulk heads perpendicular to the axis of the boat during wrapping. I will try to show that in the next set of photos.

 

 

 

 

 

[BrianK]

BTW Richard, after all my hand-ringing about the bulkhead marks, I cut out a few hull sections and test fit them only to then realize the hull deck and side paint lines are going to make excellent registration marks for bringing the sections together.....

 

Brian

[ccoyle]

I hope this step goes well -- rolling a neat tube of that length has got to be a challenge.

[BrianK]

Thanks Chris.

I am nervous about it.

Trying to take baby steps and keep the bulkheads square. I think patience may be the most needed skill. 😃 

Here is one more baby step. I glue up about a 30 degree arc of the tube and walk away for an hour...... 

 

Temporary jigs definitely help. I am using some scale weights and steel bench blocks as anchors to tape the section too.

 

Gluing on the inside of the seam and relying on capillary action to seal the joint. Not sure that is the best way but it seems to hold.

Using Lineco neutral pH  PVA glue.

 

 

 

 

[BrianK]

The bulkheads are glued on one side of the hull of the main section. After the other side, there are 7 more sections. The good news is the other sections are all much shorter......

 

[BrianK]

After I started to wrap the other side of the hull on the long main section I became concerned about the fragility of the foot long tube being supported by only end bulkheads. So I used some chipboard to make extra bulkheads. I had a matching bulkhead available to use as a template from one of the other sections. 

Then I started closing up the hull, continuing to slowly glue in small arcs and reassess.

Then finally I was able to close up the hull. It took a couple rounds of glue application to get the seam edge to adhere. I used a weighted cutting matt to get even pressure on the side opposite the seam and that finally did the trick without crushing the hull.

There are a few dimples and creases but it came out ok. I can see every blemish. 😃 The added bulkheads really did help.

I know what the bulkhead holes are for now. Your pinkie fits in just fine to push out little dimples in the hull. 😃 

Aft end.

Moving on to the smaller (hopefully easier) hull sections.....

I have a busy week ahead at work. In the evenings we are interviewing candidates to fill an open engineering faculty position so it may be slow going with updates for a bit.

 

[rshoker]

Fabulous so far. I built a scratch model of a 688 in the 1980,s using the floating dry docks plan in 1/96th scale. They told me at the time the nose shape was a guess as the boats were still hush hush when the plans were drawn. Sadly in hindsight the bow was not nearly sharp enough. I am half tempted to turn a new nose for her, but frankly then I would want to redo the whole thing. Too many other projects on the shelf. Loved how you have documented your project so far. Good luck on the conversion, seems like a job for adobe illustrator and a good color printer! Looking forward to the rest of your build!

[BrianK]

Rshoker,

I like your conversion idea. I have a color laser printer. I can scan the bow section and import it into CorelDRAW where I can try to add the 12 Tomahawk hatch panel lines. I think it will be tricky since I suspect the hatch lines will be curved on a 2D layout of the hull section. CorelDraw has some Illustrator-style distortion tools that may save me. I can also practice print and shape a few until it looks right then put the 110 pound paper in the laser printer to print the cardstock version......

[BrianK]

Working on the aft hull sections. Tried two techniques but in the end the one that seems to work, at least for me, is to get the bulkheads glued to the hull at one point. Next let them dry so they are firmly attached.  Then apply glue on small arcs of the hull wrapper, starting near the attached bulkhead, and align the bulkhead with the wrapper by hand. Let that dry for 10 minutes and, working gently, do another small arc. To help seal up the seam I use bench weights to apply pressure, after sticking my pinkie in the  bulkhead holes to apply some back pressure to the seam. so it is flat and straight.

 

[ccoyle]

Hey, Brian! How are you coming along with this project?

[BrianK]

Life sidetracked me. I had to go overseas for a few months. I hope to restart this project later this fall......

Sorry for the terribly delayed response Chris.

 

Brian

[BrianK]

Ok its been a year but I got back to work on this build. My humble apologies for the delay. Over the next two years I will be retiring to Thailand (my wife's homeland) and will have additional interruptions into modeling in general as we move our lives and hobbies to the other side of the world, but hopefully the future delays will not be so extreme....

 

Truth be told and spoiler alert, I fished the build of the USS Los Angeles (as the USS Helena) and the posts below are the documentation of the process. Skip to the end if you want to see how it turned out. 😃

[BrianK]

I stored the parts of the submarine in a plastic box and started by refamiliarizing myself with the project and where I left off.

 

[BrianK]

The first thing I picked to tackle with the project restart was the propeller hub. It was the last thing I built last year in the winter of 2024 and I was not happy with it. The hub of the propeller was a small paper cone. There were 7 marks on the cone where the 7 fluke of the propeller go. But if you do not roll the cone of the hub perfectly and glue the edges exactly then there will be a gap in the arrangement of the flukes. I had not done a good enough job and so I was unhappy with my hub. You can see it in the first photo. I decided to betray the card modeler's creed (give me card or give me death....or something like that) and use wood to make a replacement hub.

 

A bamboo skewer glued into a 1/4" diameter piece of dowel created the blank. My Sherline mill and some Godhand spin blade chisels mounted in a pin vise did the work. The tool rest is an Allen hex key secured in the mill vise. I worked slowly and compared the wood version with the paper version to get the size right. 

 

[BrianK]

Next up was the propeller flukes. I used the paper ones from the kit. Figuring out where they go was the fun part. I reasoned that the 7 flukes are equidistant apart at both ends of their mount points so I drew a circle down low on the hub to represent where the fluke mounts start. I measured the circumference of the circle, and divided by 7. That gave me the fluke spacing for the lower mount point. I ticked off the 7 marks on the circle with a pencil. You can see the circle in the first picture. I estimated the pitch of the flukes and figured out where to draw a second circle around the hub for the upper mount point of each fluke. Again dividing by 7 flukes gave me the spacing for THAT circle. All that was left was to use the pitch to put the first tick mark on the upper circle. The 6 other tick marks followed.

I glued the flukes with white glue. A helping hand alligator clip acted as a support while each fluke dried. I then air brushed the finished propeller with gold paint (that looks brass-like). After the propeller was done, I cut off the bamboo skewer with a Zona razor saw.

 

 

Edited yesterday at 04:38 PM by BrianK
additional info added

[BrianK]

I decided to work on the stern since I had completed the 4 stern tube sections the year before. So I made the stern vertical and horizontal planes. I used some scrap 1mm cardstock to create the curve of the surface of the planes. It was easier than relying on the included bulkhead piece. Steel bunch blocks held the thin edges together while drying. There are 4 stern planes but the horizontal planes have vertical rudders at the end too.

As it turned out, I did not mount the planes until much later, after the entire hull was built. The planes are delicate and I knew I would damage them if I installed them too early.

[BrianK]

I integrated the stern tube sections next. This task was very humbling and made me realize I have a long way to go to become a great card modeler. As I glued the sections together the imperfections at the joints started to show. I would need to find a solution.....

[BrianK]

But before I worked on solving the problem with the stern tube assembly, I decided to build the bow tube sections. I had cut out the bulkheads last year so this effort involved cutting out the casing pieces and gluing up the tube sections.

[BrianK]

To fix the seams in the stern and bow sections that were driving me crazy I decided on a radical solution. I would putty and paint both the bow and stern sections. Having worked briefly around subs at Newport in 1994-1995, I knew that the hull paint job on a working sub showed a patchwork of new and old paint in different spots and I decided to exploit that. I would get the paint job close to the main hull, without repainting the main hull, which was in good shape since it was one piece.

 

I used Vallejo plastic putty, which is an acrylic resin and cleans up with water. 

 

The paints were brushed on Vallejo followed by a rattle can flat overspray.

[ccoyle]

Butt joins, eh? Those are a real booger -- I dislike them almost as much as petal structures. 😒