Posted Thu, 08/05/2010 - 12:37 by Drew
I have been fiddling with the new Mabuchi motors that I received and so far they look large and promising. At 7.4v they appear to have similar torque to my geared down Maxons but also appear to be even slower and more precise. I am disappointed to see that they only have 2 M3 mounting holes as opposed to what seems to be a standard 4 holes. I am looking forward to making a temporary motor mount and exploring how they perform. Last night I confirmed that everything
Posted Wed, 08/04/2010 - 17:34 by Brian
This afternoon Kyle and I made some rudders for Nassau. I decided to make nice looking airfoil shaped rudders out of brass. It turned out to be a lot easier than I expected. Its actually a fair bit easier to make the airfoil rudders than soldering up flat brass rudders. Here are the steps we took when making the rudders.
Posted Wed, 08/04/2010 - 16:05 by Brian
Kyle and I have been going gangbusters on Nassau... but we have not been stopping to take pictures and post articles. I thought I would start correcting that a bit today and show some of our progress. The first part of the week we made removable cross braces for the hull - which also act as a cradle for the CO2 bottle. We also roughed out the two piece deck.
Posted Mon, 07/19/2010 - 18:56 by Charles
So, with the hull repaired, I am ready to declare Missouri refitted and ready for Sea Trials.
Gunnery trials is another story... when I get the CO2 parts (this weekend maybe?) I should be able to get the guns working quickly (hopefully). Meanwhile, some pictures of the refitted hull.
Posted Sun, 07/18/2010 - 20:49 by Brian
This is the first ship I have built since Diana gave me the lathe (don't I have a wonderful wife!?). Instead of using small bits of telescoping tubing I decided to make proper bushings for my propeller shaft assemblies. To make things a little more interesting I decided to make them tight enough for an interference fit so I would not need to glue or solder them.
Posted Sun, 07/18/2010 - 20:21 by Brian
This weekend I spent a lot of time determining what motors would fit where in Nassau. If possible I really want to only run the center propeller. The fast gunners have some experience with this hull shape and tell me that will result in the best maneuverability. Unfortunately only a little 280 motor will fit inline behind the aft turrret - and then only if I move the turret 0.5" out of scale. I doubt that the 280 by itself would be powerful enough so I made a motor mount that places the motor above the propeller shaft instead of inline with it.
Posted Sun, 07/11/2010 - 19:26 by Charles
I finally was able to get the prop-shafts and new motors working properly, so it was time to move on to the patching of the hull.
I started by replacing a whole window panel which had been swiss-cheesed in the previous season
I then performed several patches according to the directions Brian listed here: http://mabg.org/node/127
Posted Sun, 07/11/2010 - 16:42 by Brian
This weekend I took some time and installed Nassau's stuffing tubes and rudder posts. The trick is to get everything installed with everything lined up. This is the second time I have used this technique and it works well. This post gives an overview of the techique I used and shows pictures of my progress.
Posted Fri, 07/02/2010 - 11:59 by Tom
I just found out about a Polish Battlecruiser.
"The first of three projected battlecruisers for the Polish Navy, Solidarnoç's construction was continually delayed and interrupted by shipyard strikes in Gdansk. Her main armament was to be domestically-made triple 12" guns but the armament industry was so far behind schedule that Poland elected to adapt American 12" guns destined for a cancelled Alaska-class large cruiser. Solidarnoç was completed two months before Germany invaded Poland.
Posted Sun, 06/20/2010 - 21:02 by Brian
I've not been good about posting when I am working on Nassau... However, I have been hard at work for the last week or so. Here are some pictures of the not-quite-finished frame for her six turrets. I am designing as I go but these pictures should show the general approach.
Updated June 27 with start of forward servo tray.