USS Peter W Ellison

Here is my first attempt at a model warship combat ship a Gearing class Destroyer.

There are two reasons that I wanted to make this class of ship, first well the name, there was a real WWII Destroyer the Harold J Ellison Second it was much less complex that the other ship I'm working on a Scharnhorst Battle Cruiser, also about 1/2 the length and width and about 1/10 the weight.

This is a "story" of my attempts, please remember that I have never done this before. This ship is designed to be as light as possible and with the tools that I have on hand. Since this is a combat ship not a model some short cuts and compromises needed to be made.

1. Plans came 1/144 scale from George (The Plans Master) Goff
2. I wanted a fiberglass hull, so I choose to make a CA Glue fiberglass hull. While testing out the fiber glass process since I had never done that I make up a couple of turrets for the Scharnhorst ( little full size) during that process I stumbled onto the fact that CA glue will not stick to cling wrap. I make a little balsa wood form, then spray glued (3M 77) it, covered with Cling-Wrap(tm) spray glued it again and put on the glass. I tried a bunch of different types of CA glue, couple of brands both thick and thin. I settled on "thin" "odorless" CA glue, this is the type that is foam safe about $22 for 2oz in the hobby store. I used a non-foam safe accelerator, since I did not know that was an odorless one of those. Now having used both types I prefer the non-foam safe, it is smelly but dries much faster.
3. The hull form is a typical rib and plank construction.
   
   1. Instead of making ribs I made a "D" shape with solid centers. Each hull profile slice is a little more that 1/16 of an inch narrower all the way around than the plans call for, so that when the planks are added and the fiberglass is on it will be almost exactly the correct size. Also note that the The flat part (where the deck will go) was extended 1/2 of an inch so that the whole form would the "taller" by 1/2 inch so that I could trim it back once I had placed all the fiberglass on.
   2. I mounted all the ribs on a central board, there are blocks in between each hull profile that help keep it all square and spaced right. The gaps between each rib are the same as the ones on the plans, since the whole hull will be made out of fiberglass the penetrate able windows will be added later.
   3. To smooth out the ribs, take some sandpaper and glue it to a board, spray glue works well, and sand across many ribs at a time, this will make terrible noises, but in the end you will have a smooth hull form to glue on the planks with.
   4. The planks are 1/16 balsa cut into about 1/4 to 1/2 inch wide sections (I took a large sheet and cut the planks somewhat randomly with a knife), then contact cement glued the planks to the ribs. I tried CA glue but it did not set up very well and was really brittle, but the contact cement was perfect, push once and forget.
   5. Then I smoothed the whole hull with sand paper again it is now ready for making the fiber glass hull.
4. With a form and a technique I made the first generation hull. Covered the whole form with the, glue, cling wrap, glue then fiberglass. Added the CA glue. Then pried the hull off the form. This did not go well, the 3M glue sticks pretty good, I broke a couple of planks, but got the hull off. At this point I marked the hull for the water line and the deck edge with a Sharpe marker (more on this later :-). Note the hull is REALLY flimsy at this point, so I put another coat of glass on, got a lot stiffer.
   
   Note: always wear rubber gloves when working with the fiber glass and the CA glue. This will prevent the glue from getting on your skin. Also cut fiberglass is pretty sharp it will help protect your skin somewhat from little cuts and the fibers that stick out. I wore gloves when ever I handled the fiberglass till it was sealed with paint. A large box of non-sterile disposable gloves worked well, when ever I got something on my fingers, I'd pull of the gloves, wash hands and get new ones.
   
   I learned a couple of things at this step.
   1. Next time I'll only put glass where the solid parts of the hull will go not all over the whole hull. This will save on glass and time. Also it will make it easier to extract off of the form (less surface area), I'll update this document when I have tried this and see if it helped. In additional I'll cut out the windows to correct size, one layer of glued glass can be cut with a knife or scissors, two its really hard to control where the cut goes. With each additional layer of glass just keep trimming back.
   2. Also, sand between coats of glass. At the seams between the glass there are bumps, also there will be drips of CA glue, they all need to be sanded.
   3. Third CA glue spreads out sharpie marker in to large streaking blobs, so the water line and deck that I very carefully transcribed on was useless.
5. After getting the two layers on I float tested it in the bathtub, it worked, note it will seep water though the glass till it is painted.
6. Next I cut out the windows with a dremil "rotozip", very messy, do outside and with a mask, gloves and old clothing because the little fibers from the fiberglass don't come out in the wash well.
7. After I cut out the windows the "ribs" seemed really flimsy, so I added one layer of glass inside and one more outside the hull. Giving a final thickness on the ribs of 4 layers of 7oz glass.
8. Then I used spray "sand-able primer" on the hull in an attempt to get it smoother and seal the hull. First NEVER do this in the house it smells REALLY bad. Next time I'm not going to bother, all it did was add weight and it would have take a lot of work to get it really smooth, I would just paint it with latex or enamel paint, I prefer latex because it does not smell bad.
   
9. Attaching the rudders, I choose to use a geared drive on the rudders, big gear in the middle little ones on the top of the rudder arms. This worked pretty well, I get more than full travel REALLY fast. In the future I think that I'd switch to using a more traditional method of arms and control rods. I used a low profile "water proof" servo from Hitec. Not the lightest, but it was the lowest without going to a sub micro servo. Also it is a full power servo, I'd switch to a normal "micro servo" instead because the added power is not really needed.
10. Next comes the super structure, well since the fiberglass on the hull went so well, I did the super structure with the same technique. Only two layers of fiberglass, then sanded the tops and bottoms flat. All the horizontal surfaces where one layer, cut to shape, then another layer cut to shape and sanded. By now I'm getting a lot better at working with the glass. Also I have switched from putting glue on the cling wrap covered form to putting the glue on the glass and sticking it to the form. It is easier to control and edges stick down better. I made the turrets with the same technique, but there I had a hard time getting them off the forms, so I would cut up the back to remove the first layer, then glue the seam back together and put the second layer of fiberglass on top. Note, at first the super structure will seem really flimsy, as soon as you mount it all down to the deck and the top of the shapes it will stiffen up.
    
11. To attach the layers and pieces together I used "thick" CA glue and accelerator. That makes for a water tight seal, although it does cause a little rounded edge at the seam, if nice crisp corners are important to you then glue from the inside. Here I made one mistake, looking at the plans I realized there should have been a tall railing on the second to the top layer, I tried to glue thin balsa and cover it with fiberglass, not very successful, I'll not do that next time.
12. While working on the super structure I put together the motor mount. I have not tested this outside of the bath tub so I don't know if it is too fast or slow. Seems to work pretty well. I made my own props also that was not too difficult some day I'll document that process. The only thing I'm not happy about is the motor is too high, next version I'll try and get the motor down closer to the bottom. The little metal gear box came from the local hobby store, next time I might make my own, since there is a wonderful store in town called Ax-Man that sells cheap plastic gears for hobby use.
    
13. Here are a couple more with the additional superstructure bits, and the removable second stack. That is where the top of the magazine goes in. The gun is mounted in the superstructure and the deck, the hull has the motor and the rest of the electronics. Starting to look more like a ship now.
    
14. Superstructure is complete, fake gun barrels are mounted. The mast is where my radio antenna goes. No paint yet, but getting close. Next tub trials happened here, second trial was a disaster, I found a 1/8 inch gap in the balsa at the back and needed to re-skin the back. Also the fiberglass was cut there at about level with the bottom of the bilge, so I added a little back to get to 45 degrees. Cut off the balsa and glued on a new piece. Third trial was better still a small leak, but paint should fix that.
15. Just before painting.
    
16. Insides:
    
17. After painting and adding the torpedo tubes:
    
18. Next will be pictures after its shake down voyage and first battle.
19. After several shake down trips here is what I have learned:
    • The ship is very tippy. Need to lower my center of gravity and move the gun from the right side of the superstructure to the center. This is a ship that you really need to design around all the major bits. Those being: drive motors, battery (largest ballast weight), CO2 (lighter but still pretty heavy, long), the gun (needs space), radio gear (mine is in a box to protect it).
    • The ship is still a little slow, so I'm going to try a direct drive. While the little gear box is really cool I'm going to switch to using dual motors. I'd like to come back to the gear box approach because long term I think that is a better approach than direct drive.
    • Have had a number of mechanical issues with the drive system, need a simpler system, second reason to switch to the direct drive.
    • The deck seal needs to be much better, I used duct tape, it works but is a little hard on the paint job and the eyes. I'm going to switch over to a L shape, laying the deck on the short part of the L with the long part of the L against the hull. This should allow me to get a better seal and not use tape.
    • The Palmer "Rock the boat" regulator works well (thanks Bob for tweaking the guns for me), use a pressure guage to set it to 150 it comes set for the low end of the pressure range.
    • I need a better pump, I was attempting to use a pump from a windshield washer (from a local junk supply place), while it works ok on the bench I had trouble mounting it and it vapor locks pretty easy. I'm going to make on that is much smaller, that can reliably prime on tiny amounts of water.
    • Going to make the hull deeper, with the added weight of all the stuff in the ship it runs too low in the water. This causes two major problems, first it does not look right, second very small amounts of additional water in the hull cause it to sink. Since I have the form that is at least 3/4" taller than the hull shape I can just make another hull and not cut off the top. I'll post on the results of that once I get it complete.
    • I have had a lot of problems with sand-able primer on the inside of the hull or any place that you need to glue things onto. At least with the brand that I have nothing sticks to the hull very well. 10 ton epoxy just pops off, this does very bad things. I used this to seal the hull outside and inside so it would be a little nicer to work with, next time I will not be doing that.
    • My rudders swing to far to the right and left, I think that I'll switch to rudder arms away from the gears so that a full swing of the radio lever maxes out the rudder. The gear method worked it is just that I would have to put a limit pin in to prevent the rudder from going too far and I'd rather no do that.
    • Electronic speed controller (ESC), I originally was planning on using the two micro switch method, but it would not physically fit into where the radio box needed to go. So I grabbed a car ESC that I had sitting around, bad idea. The "brake" on a car would help slow down the car, but on a boat means that there is a half second delay between forwards and reverse, very bad. If you use an ESC get a water proof boat on that allows for instant reverse. Also a battery elimination circuit (BEC) is a good thing. Unfortunately mine showed up the morning before the first battle so I decided that I'd rather not use it just go with what I had.
20. Overall I'm really pleased, now that I have a pond that I can test on (all winter here that is not an option as 8" of ice are not conducive to test runs) I think progress will go much faster. After using the wonderful Minneapolis at our first local battle I'm hooked, looking forward to having my own ship ready soon.
21. Been a while, a couple of local pond battles and Ice Breaker and it is time for another update. A bunch of changes have taken place:
    • A new pump, the automobile windshield washer pump seemed to vapor lock a lot, so several pumps later I settled on a 6 blade brass impeller, soldered onto the motor (nothing to come loose) and with a "vent" hole opposite to the outflow, about 1/16" in diameter. This keeps the pump from vapor locking, while you lose a little pressure you trade that off for no vapor locks, good trade in my book.
    • Dual/single direct drive props. Got rid of the cool brass gears, they might work for something else but where not strong enough for combat use and it required length that I did not have.
    • Lots of different motors, finally settling on a single 280 sized motor. This needs to change, I can only run a single motor or there is too much speed. Over winter I'd like to work on that, new props.
22. So here are the pictures from the latest inside shots:
    
    
23. Some photos of the pump:
    
    
24. The gun used:
    
    
25. This ship is on hold till I can get the Sharnhorst class battle cruiser finished:
    DMK Ellison.