DMK Ellison

Here is another attempt at a model warship combat ship a Scharnhorst class Battle Cruiser. For more information on the real ones a good web site:
http://www.scharnhorst-class.dk/

This is a "story" of my attempts, this ship is much more complex that the Gearing USSEllison unlike that ship is is a wooden hull ship.

Building steps

  1. Plans and templates came 1/144 scale from BDE R/C COMBAT SUPPLIES INC
  2. I wanted to build a wooden ship, and was not too sure if I could draft the templates from plans myself. So I ordered the plans from BDE. Unknown to me at the time the owner was a Big Gun Nationals and it would take a little while for my plans and templates to arrive. In the meantime I got started on a Liberty Ship. When the templates and plans arrived I started in on it, the templates are clear and would have been easy to follow had I not wanted to make some tweaks :-) There where a couple of changes from the templates: None of these changes where all that hard to make so off to the scroll saw for me.
  3. Here is the hull in the beginning stages (center ribs mounted to the hull base plate)
  4. I learned a very useful technique from a gentleman building a Hindenburg combat ship, that was to build a jig to hold the ribs while the glue setup. His suggestion was to put a rail with the top edge at the water line and wide enough for the ship to fit between. To build mine I got a "Stair" board (bunch of pine boards glue edge to edge) and added the rail on bolts (three per side) so that I could adjust the height of the rail. With the jig I used the Aluminium L channel as a cross member to brace the ribs while the glue set. I used Gorilla glue, very strong, forgiving, and is gap filling. The gap filling can be annoying, but most of the time I like it. One thing I learned is that Gorilla glue will not stick to ClingWrap, so put that down below the ship and wrap your clamps in it to prevent them from getting glued to the ship.
  5. A view of the stern dry fitted together, this is before I added the 1" of solid material at the stern.

  6. View of the Bow, still needs a little more shapeing.
  7. How the bow is constructed. I like this method much better than the way I designed for the Liberty Ship. The connection is very strong and weasy to line up.
  8. The water channel, this is from a suggestion from Steve R. and his great website:
    http://www.geocities.com/wtpat2/newgneisenau.html
    The suggestion was that scratch built ships the water channel should be designed in from the beginning. So that is what I did. I made the base board out of 1/2" thick poplar and cut the channel down the center. I need to widen a place for the pump but I'm not sure where the pump will sit till I get the battery and more internals placed, somewhere in the middle. The next step is from the inside of the ship slope the base board down to the water channel to force the water where I want it. The final step will be to put a thin layer of plywood on the bottom to seal up the hole.
  9. There is still lots of work left, things like the deck, superstructure, guns, radio box, rudder box, pump, battery so I'll be working on this a lot. The goal is to have a maiden voyage at the Fray. This ship is somewhat advancing at the same rate as the Liberty Ship. I try out something on the Liberty Ship then once I'm comfortable with it apply it to the Sharnhorst.
  10. Time to fiberglass the parts of the ship that can be solid. Since I like the CA fiberglass and I can work outside (so vapors are not as much of an issue) I layed really thin plywood (1/32") in strips. As long as the gaps are small enough the fiberglass will not sag.

  11. I forgot to take some pictures right after I glassed the stern, so these are a little later in the process you will see a deck rail, rudder bits and a prop.

  12. Time to add the deckrail and form the subdeck that will act as the water seal. The real ship had lots of reports of water on the deck during operations at sea along with the fact that non-scale waves seem to hit the scale ship pretty hard :-). The sub-deck is a 1/4" thick poplar about 1" into the hull. The deck 1/8" plywood will be over the top, giving a total of 3/8" (in the end slightly less because of sanding, but pretty close). To make the water seal I cut the deck shape, then 1/2" in from the edge of the deck I cut out the deck pieces. That gives roughly a 1/2" of overlap of deck on sub-deck to keep out water. I cut one continious cut with the scroll saw around the cut out, giving a 1/16" (blade width) gap. Over all that work pretty well 4 out of 5 pannels worked ok only one broke. In the end the one that broke was ok becuase I mis-calculated the deck pannels so I needed to shorten one pannel. During glueing of the sub-deck I broke it in one place where it was a little too thin, the Sharnhorst has a very fine stern (translation, skinny) leaving not much room for the rudder. A little extra sanding with the belt sander and that problem was no more.

  13. DISASTER !!! Before installing the deck I was measuring where to make the cross members so that they would not end up in the middle of a turret. I discovered that I was and inch and a 1/2 TOO LONG ! No clue how that happened, while that is technically just legal (+/- 2%) I wanted to it be as close as possible so I sawed off the front and a little off of the back. Measure early and often ... After that scare I'm back on track.
  14. Really starting to look like a boat now. Some various technical bits: General comments: I have a "watts up" meter on it's way from Battery Space so that I can montior the drain on the battery. In theory I should have 4 hours of run time, minus a little from the reciever, servos, team delta boards, and solinoids. I got the meter beacause I'm curious, and because I'd like to not use the 10A unfused current monitor on my meter :-) to watch the drain.
    I decided on 12V sort of at random, yes I know that most people use 6V, 12V seems more more logical to me to run a higher voltage and lower amperage. Also in the long term I'd like to build a rotate cannon and having a higher voltage makes it easier to build a motor controller.
    I used a dog bone between the motor and the main shaft so that I did not need to line up perfectly everything.
  15. Most current view, the side showing the armor belt and the top showing where the turrets will be. Saturday weather willing I'll have it on the pond for the first time.