U-Don's U-Boot typ VII C

[zathros]

Add what you want, but I go for realism, and in this case, strip paper will deter from a superb model. Mixed Media is what the best models are made of. Paper Purists, well, how pure can they be, they use glue. The purity is the miniaturization of a massive sub into something you can hold, but still looks like a massive sub. IMHO. By the way, I used to make the collapsible deck rails for real nuclear submarines back in the early 1980's. They are composite in construction.

 

[Dagger]

A great job, it looks great. In my humble opinion, I think that very elaborate models almost always carry something that is not paper, and that does not stop being a paper model. A wooden ship carries metal, threads, plastic , etc, and it does not stop being of madera.El plastimodelismo is similar. For a model to be 100% pure, be it of the material that is, we would have to deprive ourselves of many details. So I see it myself. Magnificent work takes in this model. Greetings.

 

[Papa Mashy]

Thanks for the thoughts. I would have to use cotton later for the aerials and control cables anyway or leave them off which would be rubbish.
Just another of my random musings.
Thanks for indulging me.

 

[Papa Mashy]

I was concerned that I had used too thicker card for the deck plate and the top half of the conning tower was not going to seat properly due to the position of the navigation light inserts....

I got away with it. Just about. It was very tight!


With that potential problem out of the way, I moved on to further assembly of the conning tower.

Along comes another tricky bit...
The footplate that sits inside the conning tower, needs to sit atop the nav light inserts, and accommodate the cylindrical recess at the front of the tower.
This took some considerable effort to fettle into place.

Along comes the next challenge.
The outside fairing gave me some grief. It comprises of a strip of paper that needs to be curved to fit the shape of the tower, but also curved in the opposite plane to flair out. There are a series of triangles and small rectangle strips to support the fairing but the instructions here were not overly clear.
So, I thought I'd be clever and fit the rectangles (this provide the gap between the tower skin and the fairing) & triangle supports first...

DON'T DO THIS!!
Because the fairing strip is curved in two planes, it doesn't want to conform to the shape dictated by triangle supports. All that happened was the fairing strip lost it's shape and the pressure used to try and get to conform caused it to start to show the underlying supports through to the outside surface.

Cursing, I ripped off the fairing strip and cut the triangle supports off. Grrrr...

Attempt 2.
This time I formed the fairing strip and glued the top edge to the rectangle strips attached to the conning tower. This then allowed the fairing strip to take the shape naturally and the support triangles could by slid underneath and adjusted as necessary to support without distorting.


Fairing out of the way. I moved on to the box for the RF aerial

Now on to fitting handrails and other external parts before paint...

 

[zathros]

Biger than life pictures, and still looks fantastic!!

 

[Gandolf50]

Thanks for the thoughts. I would have to use cotton later for the aerials and control cables anyway or leave them off which would be rubbish.
Just another of my random musings.
Thanks for indulging me.

I would use thin wire instead. If you use the two plier method and pull both ends of even light copper wire, with a slight twisting motion, even to the point of snapping the copper wire at one end, it will be far stronger and straight. Most of the wire I salvage from worn out electronics. If you need to use cotton thread... run it over a wax candle to get rid of the fuzz, or a thinned glue on a paper towel and pull the thread through it.

 

[Papa Mashy]

I would use thin wire instead. If you use the two plier method and pull both ends of even light copper wire, with a slight twisting motion, even to the point of snapping the copper wire at one end, it will be far stronger and straight. Most of the wire I salvage from worn out electronics. If you need to use cotton thread... run it over a wax candle to get rid of the fuzz, or a thinned glue on a paper towel and pull the thread through it.

That's a great tip. Thanks Gandolf.

 

[zathros]

If you use steel wire, you anchor one end onto something hard, and pull a long section till it stretches, you will feel it "let go", this hardens the piece. It was how we made the stems for the little flags on aircraft instruments when they went bad and dropped down to warn you. This really makes the wire stiff. Copper works, but is a bit too soft for that. Tig welding wire works the way it is, and comes in all sizes. I couldn't find one YouTube video that showed the method we used. The method I use leaves the wire perfectly straight.

 

[Gandolf50]

Here is the basic principle, that is used to straighten lead came using a lead vise. For our purposes stretch shorter lengths of wire (short enough that you can pull it by hand, say about 2 feet of wire) and replace the lead vise with another set of pliers.

 

[zathros]

We used to stretch 30' sections of wire, much easier, the longer the piece.

 

[Gandolf50]

We used to stretch 30' sections of wire, much easier, the longer the piece.

Not TWO handed you didn't

 

[zathros]

Actually, with one end bolted to a concrete wall, and two people at the other end, with the wire wrapped around a 2" dowel, yes, we did, constant pressure, and it stretches around a foot per 10 feet with the .060" wire we were pulling, a constant increasing pulls too it stretches, and you can tell when it reaches it's end. A 5" inch section of that wire would go straight through your hand, that's how hard it was. You couldn't bent it more than one time, or it would crack, then fail. These were made for military aircraft, never knew which ones.

 

[bigpetr]

Great tips guys, thank you for your wisdom

 

[Papa Mashy]

Wire, wire everywhere...
The two plier technique for straightening wire is a great tip and without it, I'd have been struggling even more. Thanks again!

So, with that, I've added the various rails, steps and the 'basket' around where the AA gun is situated.

I'll not lie. I found creating the 'basket' very challenging!
I tried working from the paper piece, but that didn't work as there are a lot of bends and curves that the wire just wouldn't quite take on in a uniform way without introducing various twists and irregularities.
After several fruitless attempts, I finally just cut the uprights to the desired length, made an approximate hoop for the top rail and worked my way around by eye. (after marking the positions on the conning deck from the paper version.
There is some clean up/repair work to do before paint, which will hopefully pull it all together.

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

That looks really good! I really like all of the detail that you are adding to this project!

 

[Dagger]

A magnificent job! The wire is not easy to handle, you have achieved it superbly.Question: what material is the wire and what glue did you use? In my case, test an infinity of glue, none works correctly, at the slightest movement they break off. of copper and welding achieve very good result. With glue always fail.

 

[Papa Mashy]

I used some old fuse wire I had knocking around. (30 amp)
The glue used was CA. I this case Gorilla gel super glue brand.
I did think about soldering, but the difficulty in holding the pieces in place put me off.
There are some more deck rails to do, so I'll experiment soldering on those as they are flat and should be easier!

 

[Gandolf50]

Looks Great!

Yeah, the soldering method works better, but like you said, holding the wire is a problem ( hint: try alligator clips ). After soldering you can sand down with a needle file or emory board ( you can do the same with CA glue as long as it is a STRONG BOND)

I refer back to me trying to solder a turnbuckle with some salvaged wire, that I didn't know came out of an old motor! Really hard to solder when it's magnetized!!

 

[Dagger]

Everything is a matter of ingenuity and practice. Holding the wire is the key, then welding is simple. What I do is on a board position the wires and fasten them with small strips of painter's tape, so they do not move, then we solder without problems. If we exceed the tin there are several solutions, heat and remove the excess, filing, cutting, etc. Another disadvantage is nearby welds, sometimes the heat transmitted by the wire causes the previous welding to detach. In these cases a dissipator between solders resolves the problem, a simple aluminum bar supported on the wire to be welded helps a lot.

 

[zathros]

I have found that UV Activated Glue works perfect for this kind of object. You can then sand the UV parts to whatever shape you want. It turns into hard plastic, and takes color very nicely.

This particular brand is available at Home Depot. i have used various brands, all seem the same, some are more Gel like. They all included a UV Light on the other end of the tube.