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All I did yesterday was spray the flat on the inside of the windows. Most came out good, some not so good. If the coat was too thick it laid down some pretty opaque white patches. No problem. Any sub-par windows will be on the side facing the wall. I just have to keep that in mind as I move forward. When I took this image, the flat coat wasn't completely dry which accounts for the reflections you're seeing on the ones to the right. It was those wet spots that dried funky. The windows will be sufficiently frosty to diffuse the light and obscure the interior.

P&PRR HQ Window Frosting

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  • P&PRR HQ Window Frosting

Started adding mortar to the bricks. The building has a many levels of brick work greatly complicating putting mortar lines in. I first tried some house hold latex wall paint, but the results were terrible. I went back to my Joint Compound method that I've used several times before. I added some Mars Black tube acrylic artist paint to make it more gray and overdid it, so I knocked it back with some white paint of the same type.

This little bit is all the compound I have left. I have to get more at the hardware store.

P&PRR HQ Joint Compound Mortar

I was first slathering it on with a palette knife and then using a single-edged razor to scrape off the excess, but changed by putting a blob of the joint compound at the start of the area getting mortar and using the razor to squeegee the "mortar" down over the area which did the spreading and scraping in one operation. I then used a #11 blade ground to a broad/flat edge to remove excess in the corners of all the various height areas.

P&PRR HQ Mortar Begins

I finished one side in about 2.5 hours. It's a slow, annoying process, but it makes a huge difference in the ultimate appearance of the model. When I do the hardware store, I'm going to paint and mortar the layers before I glue them together making it go much faster. When this part is done, I'll use an alcohol wash to dull it down a lot. There are masonry and top details that will be concrete color. I will mask and paint them when all the mortar work is done. The molded-in door will be painted the UP Armor Yellow window color. If I was going to leave the windows clear I would have to put in floors and a core with elevators and stairwells. The building is so narrow that a core almost wouldn't actually fit.

P&PRR HQ Side 1 mortar

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  • P&PRR HQ Joint Compound Mortar
  • P&PRR HQ Mortar Begins
  • P&PRR HQ Side 1 mortar

Haven't worked on the building due to getting more supplies, errands, picking up family at airport etc. Did get a new Elegoo Mars 3 printer. It's 4X faster, and about 30% greater volume. I'm going to run it along with my original, picking the more complex and larger jobs for the new machine. The new one has a 4K monochromatic LCD instead of the 2k colored screen in the original. This means much higher X-Y resolution, better pixel definition and greater fidelity. This is coupled with a significantly brighter UV LED Light system. Each layer will take between 1.5 and 3.0 seconds versus my old one at 10 seconds. I got it all set up and leveled today. I need to set up a separate profile for this machine, and keep them identified so I don't try and use the wrong one on the wrong machine. The price for this machine was the same as the Mars 1 in 2019.

The design is much more refined than my Mars 1. In three years the technology has really advanced. Everything about it is more elegant and more slickly designed.

66975864967__E494507C-F72F-47FB-84FD-4D6E2B33B6BC.fullsizerenderIMG_1650

This machine couldn't have come at a better time with the massive print job needed to produce the parts for the Missouri Turret. My hobby shop wants me to print more parts for the store.

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  • 66975864967__E494507C-F72F-47FB-84FD-4D6E2B33B6BC.fullsizerender
  • IMG_1650

Finally got all the mortar in place. Developed another new approach on Friday that sped up the process a bit. I'm using the flexible rubber edge of a contour sanding tool. It's rubber and worked as a squeegee to spread the joint compound without damaging the paint below. The razor blade occasionally scraped to deep and removed some brick red paint.

P&PRR HQ Mortar Squeegee

So here's the mortared building, although you can only see two sides. Take my word for it, the other two sides are done also. I will probably seal all this before applying the aging solution.

P&PRR HQ Mortar Applied

Lastly, I am now the owner of another 3D printer; an Elegoo Mars 3. It's got 30% more build volume, 4X faster exposure, and a 4K monochrome LCD with 8 times the X-Y resolution, than my "old" Elegoo Mars 1 (Classic). It's already going to produce great parts for the turret project. For example: I can print the entire officer's compartment floor with the rammer machines attached in one piece. My old machine wouldn't fit it. And it will print this in five hours instead of twenty. I'm keeping the old for non-critical jobs or thin ones that will print quickly.

Screen Shot 2022-03-26 at 11.44.18 AM

The new machine is much more refined than the first generation. Elegoo has come a long way in less than 3 years. They've sold a lot of printers and got a lot of feedback which they incorporated.

66975864967__E494507C-F72F-47FB-84FD-4D6E2B33B6BC.fullsizerender

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Images (4)
  • P&PRR HQ Mortar Squeegee
  • P&PRR HQ Mortar Applied
  • Screen Shot 2022-03-26 at 11.44.18 AM
  • 66975864967__E494507C-F72F-47FB-84FD-4D6E2B33B6BC.fullsizerender

Miles,  after doing a bunch of brick buildings with the lightweight spackling mix, I finally had great success cutting up old credit cards and used them both to apply and remove the excess mortar.   They have about the perfect flexibility, they don't cut and scrape the brick facing, like metal blades and I made up several widths depending on the brick pattern and layout.  I did the Korber Pickle factory as a long flat and with custom cut putty tools I was able to get in to the recess brick areas and use the plastic cards to both apply the mortar and very effectively clean out all the inside corners really well.

Old credit cards is a terrific idea. I'll try that on the Hardware Store when I start doing it. I have to make the reservation at the U of L's Bakery to use their laser cutter.

I spent three days masking the concrete trim work (sandstone?) on the P&PRR HQ. It was finicky working around the various indentations and details. The lower band was simple being straight across, but the upper band was a completely different story.

P&PRR HQ Masking BeginsP&PRR Mask Complete

While it took days to mask, it only took about 10 minutes to airbrush my concrete mix (Tamiya Deck Tan plus a little black).

P&PRR HQ Trim Paint 2

I sprayed the insides of the parapet with the same color. I will then mask it part way up and spray with Tamiya Rubber Black to simulate the tar weather-proofing that will protect the area. The roof itself with be tar and gravel.

P&PRR HQ Trim Paint 1

With the trim done, it was time to mask and paint the front door (on both sides). I got one masked before the workday ended. I will paint this the same Armor Yellow that I used for the windows. And then I'll then mount the signs over the doors.

P&PRR Door Mask Start

While this is going on I was working on the Missouri Turret Project (multi-tasking) with the new printer. The printer is terrific and I lover the 4X speed. The larger capacity is letting me print large pieces in one part including apparatus already attached. This is going to save a lot of fussing during assembly. Here are some examples:

This shows the entire officer's compartment floor with the steps, legs and all three rammers installed. The other object is one half of the complex long-base rangefinder that runs across the entire turret out out the ears protruding from the sides. Note the little seat that broke off when I was removing the supports. This new found ability will mean that I may be able to print the entire electric deck with the myriad of machines on it as a single part. You can't see it in this image, but there's a perfectly formed gear rack inside that curved surface.

ITP RF and Floor Prints

Here's how I'm going to print the massive gun-girder assembly. At first I was going to print it with the manual sighting station equipment attached, but changed the scheme based on some good input. I'm now printing it with the bottom half of the guns lugs in place. I will be able to drop the guns into the lugs and attach the top caps. This part was too tall and wide to print on my Mars Classic. The part of the base extending out of range probably won't matter. If it doesn't print well, I'll split the part into two halves and do it again.

Screen Shot 2022-03-30 at 6.37.46 PM

Like my first printer arriving just in time to make a huge difference in the Engine House project, this one too arrived at the perfect time to make this new and complex project possible.

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Images (7)
  • P&PRR HQ  Masking Begins
  • P&PRR Mask Complete
  • P&PRR HQ Trim Paint 2
  • P&PRR HQ Trim Paint 1
  • P&PRR Door Mask Start
  • ITP RF and Floor Prints
  • Screen Shot 2022-03-30 at 6.37.46 PM

Working  both the turret project and the P&PRR HQ simultaneously. Got good progress on both.

Installed the fancy signs over the doors and made a dent installing ALL those windows. In some cases I had to file the window openings to remove any errant joint compound so they fit without stress. I'm using Gel CA to hold them in. I pre-shoot the opening with accelerator so the gel cures quickly. I hold the windows down to insure they're nice and flat while the CA cures. I still have to create the graphic for the top billboard and design some roof details which I will 3D print. This is the backside of the building and has the windows, that didn't frost so well.

P&PRR HQ Windows WIP

I ran into a turret problem. The long-base rangefinder wouldn't go into the plastic gun house part without cutting the walls below the kit's openings.

ITP RF install Challenge

I was having trouble with the officer's compartment floor print anyway, so I chose to re-design the whole deal into a since printed part. I fixed all the floor problems at the same and create a perfectly aligned construction. I put the two halves of the tube back together and split the tube outside of the support structure. I make the tips with keyed attachments so they would go into properly.

Screen Shot 2022-04-01 at 12.27.37 PM

And here's the result. The hand wheels formed perfectly. I just have to careful removing the few supports around them. I use heavy supports for the whole model and then go back and substitute light supports on any part where removing the heavy support would destroy the detail. If you look closely at the RF base structure you'll see perfectly formed gear teeth in the traversing rack. "If I can think it, I can probably draw it. If I can draw it, I can print it. If I can print it, I can make it." Support removable is the hardest part of the whole operation.

ITP RF-OFC Floor Single

And the tips.

ITP RF Tips

I also solved another problem by printing the entire gun girder assembly with integral gun grunion lugs. I was originally going to fabricate this assembly out of sheet styrene. This was so much more substantial and ELEGANT. This is just about the largest part I can print in my new machine AND it already exceeds the size capacity of my cleaning system. By printing perfectly vertical, I only needed supports in the horizontal print areas.

ITP Gun Girder Print

The trunion bores are perfectly in line. I was originally going to make the guns movable, but realized today that this would only work for the one gun in the firing position. The other two will have the loading cradle/spanning tray protruding into their breaches. If you attempted to elevate the gun, you'd break the cradle assembly (and that would be bad!).

ITP Gun Girder Complete

I've said this before, but it bears repeating. The arrival of my Mars Classic coincided with the creation of the engine house, and the arrival of the Mar 3 makes the turret project possible. Creating the myriad of tiny highly detailed and technically complex parts without 3D printing technology would be beyond my skill set and I wouldn't even consider it.

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Images (7)
  • ITP RF install Challenge
  • Screen Shot 2022-04-01 at 12.27.37 PM
  • ITP RF-OFC Floor Single
  • ITP RF Tips
  • ITP Gun Girder Print
  • ITP Gun Girder Complete
  • P&PRR HQ Windows WIP
Last edited by Trainman2001

Thanks guys. Al, I may be asking you for help and/or advice in the battleship turret project. I need to make six cylindrical (or slightly tapered) drums representing the outer walls of the interior levels and the exterior armored barbette of the turret stack. In SketchUp I'm able to take a shape and unwrap it and flatten it. If makes figuring out what the actual shape of the conical cylinder is without the drudgery of doing an old sheet metal layout project (which I used to know how to do and have long forgotten).

I got all the windows into the P&PRR HQ building, got the ceiling of the first floor installed with its lighting and am about to put in the base plate and roof plate. I've drilled all three pieces of Masonite with a 1/2" drill to accept a piece of ABS tubing of that size to act as a wire chase to bring all the lighting to the "basement". I'm also going to build the bill board and light it.

Here's the upside down view of the building with that ceiling in place.

P&PRR HQ Ceiling Install

I took a few minutes and drew a commercial HVAC unit and a roof stair exit to add some interest to the roof. With the drawing experience I'm getting with the turret project, this one literally took just a few minutes. I was able to download an installation document for a Daikin unit and use the drawings and dimensions within to draw the HVAC.

P&PRR HQ HVAC DrawingP&PRR HR Roof Stair



Commercial AC 4

Since this building is far in the background, (10 feet away) I didn't go crazy in detailing the AC unit. For example: I didn't attempt to detail the fans.

I printed them yesterday, but didn't get them off the machine yet. The hole in the stair enclosure is a drain hole. I used the "Hollow" feature along with "Drill Holes". On a massive print like this one, you can either open up the bottom and hollow it out that way, or you can have the slicer program actually form a hollow inside. You need to have a way to let out the liquid resin that was not hardened in the print process, thus you need a drain hole at the part's lowest point and an air inlet hole at the upper part. What you see is the drain hole. I don't use this feature very often, but for both of these I used the programmatic method to do it.

P&PRR HQ Roof Parts Print 2

I forgot to add some structural parts under the condensers on this side of the part. I will add them old-school with some styrene angle.

P&PRR HQ Roof Parts Print 1

I'm also going to try and print the entire bill board frame as a single part with the new printer's enlarged capacity. So far… the new machine has been flawless.

Turret update:

My gun spacing is wrong! A fellow forum follower sent me some actual measurements. The real gun center-to-center spacing is 10'-2", mine came out as 9'-5". This error was causing me problems in getting the doors on the back bulkhead to line up properly, and, more importantly, my guns weren't lining up precisely with the kit's plastic gun house part. It took four hours to make the drawing changes, and get them ready for re-print. I wastes some resin, but at least I have the capability to make the fixes myself.

It's a shame because the rangefinder/floor print really came out pretty good. The optical tips on the rangefinder are just placed there. They won't be permanently attached until the gun house is built. The 6.88" (1:1 scale) change affected the main gun girder foundation, the back bulkhead door spacing and the spacing of the rammers on the officer's compartment floor. That meant redesigning the floor itself and fixing some more troubles it had, and I don't think the floor is right yet. There's another access aisle on the right side that I don't know where it goes.

ITP Gun House Stuff

And here's how much debris is created when to extricate the big rangefinder print from the forest of supports. It took almost an hour to cut it away and clean up the print. Even though the machine puts all the details in, you still have to trim it all up without wrecking anything.

ITP Support Mess

Lastly, the metal gun barrels arrived yesterday which was a surprise. I thought it was going to take much longer. I was then able to accurately measure the diameter of the joint end of the barrel and modify the big gun slide assembly to perfectly match it.

ITP Metal Barrels

It's going to be sweet when those guns are built even if I don't have the rest complete yet. I don't know of anyone whose created and accurate 1:72 scale 16" gun in its entirety. Lots of army field pieces, but not of a big naval gun like this.

I was interrupted and the post timed out. Here's all of yesterday's pics, plus some from today.

Commercial AC 4Commercial AC 3Commerical AC 2P&PRR HR Roof StairP&PRR HQ HVAC Drawing

P&PRR HQ Roof Parts Print 2P&PRR HQ Roof Parts Print 1P&PRR HQ Ceiling InstallITP Gun House StuffITP Metal BarrelsITP Support Mess

Today I pulled the roof prints, clipped off all the supports and it's now in the Post-cure chamber. Using the Hollowing feature worked well and reduced some of the resin needed to build a high volume part.

P&PRR HQ Roof Parts Cleaned



I also got the conduit tube finished and have it installed in the building.

P&PRR HQ wire chase access holeP&PRR HQ Wire Chase at Roof

I'm reprinting all of the turret parts that I corrected and some that haven't been printed yet.

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Images (14)
  • Commercial AC 4
  • Commercial AC 3
  • Commerical AC 2
  • P&PRR HR Roof Stair
  • P&PRR HQ  HVAC Drawing
  • P&PRR HQ Roof Parts Print 2
  • P&PRR HQ Roof Parts Print 1
  • P&PRR HQ Ceiling Install
  • ITP Gun House Stuff
  • ITP Metal Barrels
  • ITP Support Mess
  • P&PRR HQ wire chase access hole
  • P&PRR HQ Wire Chase at Roof
  • P&PRR HQ Roof Parts Cleaned

It is my role in life to provide inspiration to others...

There was some warpage in the AC unit, which if I were to make more of them, would fix with more wall thickness (I took a lot of material out of th bottom to save resin) and some inner bracing, but I'm not making more of them. It will work fine viewed from the great distance. Here's the two add-ons being checked for fit on the roof. The roof door looks a little oversized, but not really. I scales to 7 feet tall.

P&PRR HQ Roof Stuff Fitting

I designed the billboard and set it up for 3D printing. My original design of 7" wide was too big for my even-larger printer. I reduced it to 90% and it just fits. I was going to try and print it in one piece, but that didn't fit so I broke it up into subassemblies and will print it next week. I think it's overbuilt, but it's designed to handle Kentucky tornadoes.

P&PRR HQ Billboard

Here's the breakdown for printing. The three angle braces are one print, and the rest is another.

Screen Shot 2022-04-09 at 4.41.45 PM

On the turret front, I successfully (sort-of) printed the entire gun slide assembly. It was successful because the details were superb. Not-so-successful because it warped and the gun, while fitting perfectly, points askew. Even the lifting handles resolved on the counter-recoil cover.

ITP Gun First Print 1

I tried using the "hollow out" feature on the slicer which opens up spaces inside objects to reduce resin use. You must provide opening so any uncured resin can escape. I did all this, but was unhappy with the results and it may have contributed to the warpage. All the stuff around the breach resolved nicely including the coil springs on the breach counterbalance. The breach weighs over 800 pounds and is opened with the help of some air cylinders and springs.

ITP Gun First Print 2

From the side, the gun looks great.

ITP Gun First Print Test side

From the top, not so hot.

ITP Gun First Print Test top

After hours of redesign, I decided to split the slide portion, make the breach yoke a separate part, and provide a means to screw the halves together giving a bit more control than gluing them.

I'm using some massive (in this scale) screws and nuts to assemble it. it's what I had in the shot. So I drew some plugs that will fill the holes after it's assembled. Due to the nature of the turret, you may only see the flanks of the one of the guns on the end depending on where I put the transparent parts. It will take five print runs to make parts for three guns. The first slide set is printing now and will be done at 7:00pm. Another change I made is to re-size the trunion pin so I can use a piece of 1/4 aluminum rod as the pin. Again, the re-draw showed some errors in my original that I'm glad I fixed before going ahead.

ITP Split Gun Plan

I also got a beautiful print of the massive ring gear that is an integral part of the turret. The top surface is the lower race for the roller bearing that support this 2,500 ton beast. The turret weighs as much as a destroyer. The four segments key together since I couldn't get a full ring on the printer. Prototypical I might add since the rear one was built up of segment too. So far the new printer has been flawless. The changes Elegoo has made on the finish on the build plate has produced no separations during printing. And the higher resolution and print speeds are all pluses. So of the details I'm getting on this project wouldn't have been possible on my Elegoo Mars Classic.

ITP Traverse Rack Print

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Images (9)
  • P&PRR HQ Roof Stuff Fitting
  • P&PRR HQ Billboard
  • Screen Shot 2022-04-09 at 4.41.45 PM
  • ITP Gun First Print 1
  • ITP Gun First Print 2
  • ITP Gun First Print Test side
  • ITP Gun First Print Test top
  • ITP Split Gun Plan
  • ITP Traverse Rack Print

It is my role in life to provide inspiration to others...









Yes, I would say that is a true statement! 

I think the HVAC unit and roof door look great!  They will be an enhancement to the building.  I think the 'overbuild' on the roof sign is warranted.  I've seen what tornados can do right here in Butler County.

Those turret ring gear part do look fantastic! 

We're almost getting done here...

I got the lighting and window blocking done. I also printed and built the billboard frame. Regarding 3D printing the billboard frame, it worked… but...

The but is warpage and flexibility. While it's going to work fine, upon close examination it a little rough. These pieces were the largest my new printer is capable of. The pieces were so high that when complete the lower end was still sitting in the resin vat. It's also bigger than my cleaning vats.

P&PRR HQ Big *** Print

The new printer has been flawless. As usual, any mistakes are traced back to my drawings. I've pretty much figured out how to apply the supports so they don't fail. Any parts of the job that have significant mass I use exclusively heavy supports. On small details or areas that are claearly small I use light supports. I rarely use medium.

Here's a front and back view of the structure. Since I took the pictures, I planked the catwalk. It's a little bigger than I originally imagined, but it will be so far away that the size is an advantage. There's not much room left for the stairs and AC. BTW: I painted those yesterday. I made a mistake in NOT bringing the SketchUp drawing down to the shop with me. As a result, I ended up gluing it together improperly. The lower member on the front under the catwalk really belonged upwards to support the back of the angle brackets. I ended up added some stripwood to replace these members.

P&PRR HQ WIP 2P&PRR HQ Billboad Riew View

Here was the building with the lights on and the windows blocked. There was some leakage and when I opened up the roof, one of the panel's sticky stuff had let go and I fixed it with some electrical tape. I like to have some offices dark just to break the monotony.

P&PRR HQ Light test

I printed out the signage today and cut a piece of 040 styrene. After painting the entire frame with the sign backing, I will attached the size with some adhesive transfer tape or the Pressure Sensitive Adhesive. This building will be finished next week. I'll have to do some road and parking lot work on the layout to support it. Plus crawl around underneath to tie the new building into the layout's utility grid.

Everyone have a nice Passover Seder, Happy Easter or Joyous Ramadan whichever is appropriate.

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Images (4)
  • P&PRR HQ Big *** Print
  • P&PRR HQ WIP 2
  • P&PRR HQ Billboad Riew View
  • P&PRR HQ Light test

Glad you all agree. I got the billboard painted. The sign's not adhered yet in the pic. Just there for show. I'm going to have to fab some spot lights for it, because my idea of using the strip lights below the parapet would cast a big shadow upwards due to the catwalk. The width of this building, while very convenient for fitting tight spaces, is ridiculous. The stairwell/elevator shaft would take up most of the width with very little space on each side for aisles and offices.

P&PRR HQ Painted

On the turret front: after four iterations of trying to 3D print the gun body that was a) not warped or b) not perforated in some way, I printed a perfect one today and followed it up with two more. One gun set is left-loaded and the other two are right-loaded based on which side the powder hoist opening is. To adapt the metal guns to the resin slide assembly I turned down the tail to 7/16" so I could had the slide end narrow enough to fit through the turret openings while still having enough meat to support the guns. The only details I lost were the teeny tiny hand grabs on the counter-recoil covers. I will replace them with fine wire. The "bad" on the gun girder print is because there's some new information that required a re-design. I'm printing another in the next couple of days.

ITP Two Guns - 3

I had some trouble with the drawings of the open breach version of the Yoke (the heavy back part that houses the breach. I was also able to successfully use the "hollow' feature of my slicer to open up the interior to reduce resin quantity and help with the warpage. Notice too I am using a 1/4" trunnion shaft instead of printing the trunnion integral with the rest of the model. The length of the nose extension will be adjusted once I have the new gun girder part in hand and have the kit parts to fit it to.

ITP Two Guns - 2

Chucking the tapered barrel into my little lathe required some careful handling. I wrapped the part of the barrel that would be grabbed by the four jaw independent chuck, and then used a steady rest to support the huge overhang. The overhang was the result of having a lathe with a very small through-hole in the spindle. It took 10 minutes to true the one I was doing today, but I got it within a couple of thousandths and was able to accurately turn the new diameter.

ITP Barrel New Diam

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  • P&PRR HQ Painted
  • ITP Two Guns - 3
  • ITP Two Guns - 2
  • ITP Barrel New Diam

@Trainman2001  Beautiful work -  I have that building for a place on my next layout.  Seems to me many O town/city buildings don't have good proportions relative to the prototype. That one looks pretty narrow front to back. But if it had more depth where would it fit on a normal layout?

Are you making battleship guns? I missed your earlier post so I know the answer, but did you remove some of you images or are the powers concerned someone will print your turret for nefarious purposes.

One of these days I have to learn 3D printing. Started to learn autocad, but never had a consistent use for it so I kept forgetting commands.

I had written a great answer to Scouting Dad's question, and just lost it all because I didn't post it last night. First of all, the Valejo paint required two full days to fully cure. I had mixed it with Model Master Universal Acrylic Thinner and some Liquitex Acrylic Extender. Yesterday after 24 hours it was basically still wet… like get paint on your fingers wet. I got the sign attached to the backing yesterday using the 3M Adhesive Transfer Tape. Today I built a light bar to illuminate it. At first I tried to solder the tiny surface mount LEDs with the magnet wire to build some light fixtures supported by a 1/16" aluminum tube, but couldn't solder the LEDs without overheating and killing them. I did that to three of them. I then went back to my more consistent method which is soldering them to adhesive copper tape like I do for my building interiors. This is a much more predictable method since I don't actually put the soldering iron onto the LED. I hold it next to it and let the molten solder creep up to the LED.

P&PRR HQ Light Bar

I CA'd the bar to the front edge of the catwalk and put some power on it to see if it worked. It does. I will install a CL2N3 driver chip on the + end and will let it drop down the conduit tube so it will be out of sight. The gloss finish shows a hot spot from the lights, but I can't get around that. The bar will be painted with the same red oxide as the rest of the project. I'll be mounting the sign and finishing the roof tomorrow.

P&PRR HQ Sign Lit

Now to Scouting Dad's question. Yes! I'm building a fully detailed USS Iowa Class turret #1 in WW2 configuration with the entire interior down five decks to the magazine level. The bare kit is the Takom Missouri Turret in 1/72 scale, but is just an empty shell of the gun house with plastic guns. The aluminum guns are a Chinese aftermarket product made for the kit, but I had to turn down the back end to better work with the 3D printed gun slide and yoke assembly that I designed and printed. About 70% of the interior will be 3D printing and I'm already into several months of drawing (and re-drawing) components. I've been getting help (as usual) from folks who read my ubiquitous build threads that accompany all my projects on various forums depending on the nature of the project. The kit looks like this.

The reason it's in WW2 configuration is the presence of the long-base rangefinder ears sticking out of the sides. That was removed from the #1 turrets on all the Iowa class ships during the 1980s refit. That rangefinder had a habit of ingesting sea water in heavy seas so it was a problem.

Takom 1-72 Mo Turret

Instead of me going any further with this and hijacking my own thread, perhaps you can follow along in a detailed accounting on another forum found here:

https://forums.kitmaker.net/t/...t-to-finish/16832/44

I've been wanting to do this project for years, but the technology wasn't available nor was the kit that provided the starting point.

Re: 3D Printing: Resin 3D printing is demanding and difficult to just dabble in. If you're just going to print figurines or trinkets, you can get by by downloading existing STL files on the Internet and make stuff. If you, like me, want to create unique parts for models that are not on the market, you must not only master the printer, but you need to master 3D drawing programs as well. I've been a SketchUp user since ver. 1.0 and am very proficient, but there are others. I find that 80% of my printing failures are due to errors in my drawings, not the printer. That said, I remain available for anyone out there who wants to join the lunacy.

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Images (3)
  • P&PRR HQ Light Bar
  • P&PRR HQ Sign Lit
  • Takom 1-72 Mo Turret

My very first model on my birthday in 1954 was the Revell Missouri. It is purported to be the first model Revell made with their own dies. I started building it on the living room floor with Testor's Liquid Cement. It was in a very easily spoilable oval-bottomed bottle that tipped easily. I had the glue sitting in the box top. It spilled, I panicked and moved it to a nice piece of furniture sitting on a lump of Kleenex. It spilled again, this time taking some of the table's finish with it. I ran upstairs and hid, but my dad found me an it wasn't a pleasant experience. You'd think after such trauma, I wouldn't build another kit. Not so. I was hooked and built many, many kits as a kid. I had a brief hiatus after getting my driver's license, guitar and girls in that order, but actually started again in college realizing how much I missed it. My skills continued to evolve and now, heading into my late 70s, are still evolving as I take advantage of new technologies to apply to the craft.

I built the Tamiya Missouri (probably the one you built) in the mid-80s just before all the after-market etched brass was available. Then I built it again in 2011 when my oldest grandson was in Middle School and into model building. This time I pulled out all the stops and added another 1,000 parts to the kit. I was rewarded with an offer to display it in the real Missouri's Captain's Cabin if I could get it safely to Pearl Harbor on my nickel. Three years ago, the ship won Best Ship at our local judged show.

MO at MMCL 1

This turret project will be pinnacle of all my ship modeling. I'm having to re-draw and reprint a lot of parts as I learn more about what I'm doing.

Onto the P&PRR HQ: It's finished and lit and on the layout! Yesterday I got the roof gravel on over a wet coat of artist's acrylic dark, dark gray. I masked the areas that were going to hold the stairs, HVAC, Billboard and plank walkway.

P&PRR HQ Roof Mask

And here it is finished. I didn't put in vent stacks or other details since the roof is not visible from anywhere in the room unless you're 6'-6" or taller. The planks are Northeastern bass wood 2 X 12s tinted with an alcohol wash. I first was gluing the planks with Aleen's, then switched to Pressure Sensitive Adhesive.

P&PRR HQ Roof Detail

I cabled the three LED systems into a single connection. They are in parallel with the LEDs in each system in series. They're connecting to a 12VDC power source. After making the solder joints and shrink tubing them, I added shrink tube loops to tie them all together.

P&PRR HQ CablingP&PRR HQ Cable Cu

Here's the finished product on the layout.

P&PRR HQ Done 3P&PRR HQ Done 2

The site is bare… very bare and needs some stuff.

P&PRR HQ Done 4P&PRR HQ Done 1

The sign lighting works!

P&PRR HQ Done 5

Now it needs the access road. There's a hitch here. A bunch of the work is going to take place behind the petro-chemical plant. It's very, very hard for me to get back there to do any kind of site work. I started out by building up the roadway so it matched the rail head height using many scraps of foam core. In fact, I've used just about all of the foam core and will have to get some more.

The first piece developed the right angle turn to align it with the slanted railroad. That's one of my favorite locos sitting there: a 3rd Rail Pensy J1-a. It was the second engine I purchased in 1996 when I got back into model trains.

P&PRR HQ Road Extension 1

I layered some card stock to further raise the roadway to get the rail head height. This will be slathered in some form of material or another. I've been using pre-mixed tile grout for roads with decent results.

P&PRR HQ Road Extension 2

I cut and fit the other side of the cross-over. It's a ridiculous turn, but were in magic O'gauge land so it's alright.

P&PRR HQ Road Extension 3

I tapered the other end to transition back to the original roadway. I wish I had the foresight to have built the entire road BEFORE putting in the refinery. 20/20 hindsight!!

P&PRR HQ Road Extension 4

And added an extension to the other end. This may work out if I can do all the road finishing off the layout and do a "turn-key" installation. But that may be wishful thinking. Nice view of that cooling tower...

P&PRR HQ Road Extension 5

Y'all are up to date.

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Myles, the lighting for the rooftop sign looks great!  The sign is illumined more evenly than I thought it would with the two LEDs.   As far as the road goes, there is always going to be hindsight.  If you planned every single detail out ahead of time, you would never get to building the layout perhaps.  Besides, there is always going to be reason to change plans as you go.

Last edited by Mark Boyce

Of course you're correct Mark! What i need is one of those Topside Creepers, but should have bought it years ago when I could have gotten more use out of it. What I am going to do is fabricate a custom arm rest that will snuggle into the open spaces in the refinery enabling me to put my weight on the area without damaging anything. That could work and solve the temporary problem. I'll keep you informed.

I measured the refinery and found spots that I could put a support platform without hitting anything. It will look like this. I can make it out of wood I have laying around. I'll put something soft on top to protect my delicate old arms.

Screen Shot 2022-04-28 at 12.59.23 PM

Here's the space. The legs can't be all the same size! I just realized that when I added the little rectangles over this image. So I went back and changed them. The above is the corrected version. I'll make the final spacing decisions in the field.

Here's the overhead view of the spacing. Please forgive the very soiled lab coat. This support should let me lean way over the layout to do the ground cover work without wrecking the refinery in the process. At least that's the plan. It's a "poor man's Topside Creeper".

Refinery Support Plan 1

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Took about an hour to cobble together the arm rest using scrap lumber I've had hanging around. In fact, when we had the new Andersen Windows installed I had to remove valences that the previous owner had installed. It took a while to remove hundreds of staples and padding, but I got a good amount of useful 1X4s.

I held each part on the refinery as I went along to ensure that it would fit without impinging on anything. I use SPAX screws exclusively when building wood stuff for the trains. They are far and away the most sophisticated design that works perfectly. They TORX drive so they don't cam out. They have a fluting on the threads that helps cut the threads into the wood. They had a thinned neck above the threaded section that the lets the upper part of the screw to pull the two pieces together. Not all Home Depots have them. I started using them more than 20 years ago in Germany when I built the first version of the RR. Since then I've found them in the USA and they're now being manufactured here as well.

P&PRR Road Rest WIPP&PRR Road Rest WIP 2

I tested it with the pillow. I can get way over the refinery and will be able to work that difficult space without any interference. I can probably use in other areas as well in the back and over the town. I can disassemble it and change it's shape and size to accommodate other areas of the layout.

P&PRR Road Rest in use

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Just checking in. Haven't done the road work around the refinery yet (basically I'm procrastinating), but have been doing a lot on the turret project. Started to print stuff below the gun house level. The gun house is going to be screwed onto the base instead of gluing so it's removable in case something is amiss. I'm able to print many of the lower level decks and partitions and this will save asembly time, but increase painting challenges.

Meanwhile, on a completely different track (pun intended), I actually used my 3D printing skills to make a home repair. We have Waterpik Hand Shower that clips into a plastic bracket that's screwed through the wall tile. This was installed by the previous owner at least 13 years ago, but probably much longer than that. It fractured across the back shortly after we moved here and I repaired it with a couple of stainless steel threaded rods and nuts to pull the back together and provide integrity. Then one of the wings started fracturing and it wouldn't grip the shower head. I fixed this by drilled vertically through the back into the wings and used steel brads to reinforce it. I did that twice. Finally, as it continued to disintegrate, I resorted to large rubber bands to keep tension on the shower head.

Shower Bracket old

This shows the extent of the damage.

Shower hanger top

I took pictures of it from various views and drew it on SketchUp. There were lots of compound curves so it took two tries to get it right.

Here's the new one doing its job. It could still be better, but I have to buy a new hand piece and I highly doubt that it will have the same handle dimensions as this 15+ year-old one, so I may have to re-draw another for the new one. These kinds of brackets are no longer used with hand showers. What I see now are those that slide up and down a metal pole for various heights. Those poles would require drilling in the tile and would mean we'd have two holes with screw anchors from the original.

The resin one I believe is stronger than the original. I'm using a 85/15% mix of Elegoo ABS-Like resin and Siraya Tenacious. Tenacious is a completely flexible resin and adding to the fairly brittle Elegoo produces a much more impact resistant product. I can drop most prints on the floor and not have them shatter as they did before I found this mix.

Shower Clamp Installed

I apologize for getting off the train topic, but I've become a 3D printing prophet and like to spread the word of just how amazingly useful this invention can be.

This past Wednesday was the day I was supposed to be visiting the USS New Jersey for my private research tour. That didn't happen. in fact, the entire East Coast trip didn't happen. My daughter and son in law came down with COVID-19 and we had been directly in their company Tuesday weekk ago. They had cold symptoms and thought that's all it was, and my daughter kept testing negative. We all wore masks and my wife and I are double-boosted. The day before we were to leave, our daugther tested positive. Meanwhile our son in law had flown to California to visit his sister. He was with them for about an hour when his brother in law suggested he test, and he was positive too! 48 hours later, his sister and her husband were positive with symptoms. That bug is contagious!!

Meanwhile, my wife and I tested negative, no symptoms and are in good health. If we were going to get it, this would have been the time.

Here's a progress shot of the turret. The top's open now and I did a trial fit of some gun house stuff to see how it work. I've epoxied fitted blocks into the corners to provide some mass to accept small screws. I'm having to decide whether or not to enclose this opening with clear acrylic. Some of my blog fans say leave it open, others say close it. I've asked the curator to tell me how it's going to be displayed on board ship and how much dust protection it will get. I am going to make the partitions in the foreground out of clear acrylic so the side-gun details can be seen.

ITP Roof Opening 1ITP Roof Opening 2

Have a nice Sunday!

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I will be interested to see how durable that bracket turns out to be in practice. I have been working on a project to reproduce Lionel Super-O track ties, and my biggest problem is finding a resin recipe that is adequately flexible and strong. Everything I try (including Tenacious) seems great until suddenly it fractures unexpectedly. It seems to get more brittle over time. Maybe I am getting the exposure wrong. Could you share the settings you are using with that particular mixture on your newer printer?

Of course, your piece is probably much more massive and solid than is possible with the track.

Last edited by Avanti

The bracket is very strong, but no longer needed. We bought a new hand shower that's magnetic and my wife can reach it.

I am still here and still doing things. I just finished a trip back to Philly and toured the museum Battleship New Jersey with a special private tour that answered all my questions. I won't bore you with the details, but the visit was spectacular.

And I also visited the Newtwon Hardware House and took lots of pictures of the interior including some using my new found 3D LIDAR scanner on my iPhone 12 Pro. I captured the entire counter that dates back to 1899. You can also measure directly on the scan with the phone and I now know all the critical dimensions to reproduce this piece. I scanned the long wall shelves and a neat lazy susan cabinet that, which is a reproduction of those that were in the original store. You'll notice that largish safe on the back wall. The legend goes that in 1899 burglars tried to blow that safe with dynamite and instead blew up the entire building, leaving the safe unscathed. That's why the place burned down… or so they say.

As a complete aside, my contractor brother in law told a story about a Trenton mobster who decided to commit suicide by turning on the gas in his apartment and blowing up the building with him in it. He went into the stairwell, lit a cigar and expected to be extinguished. Instead, the upper floor of the building blew up and out, injuring, but not killing him. My brother in law was contracted to remake the building one story shorter. I guess that's the definition of a loser.

In addition to making the scan, you can also export a movie of it. Here's the movies of the counter and the display cabinet. I've already drawn the display cabinet. It's all in one quick movie clip. Ignore all the background noise. I was focusing on the counter and the camera picks up background information too.

You can also export the scan via other 3D formats. I tried first to export as an STL directly into SketchUp.

And this is what you get. It's barely intelligible. This is actually the graphic structure of an STL. It's a forest of triangles. It can't print because the object is entirely open… everywhere, and is clearly not a solid.

I then imported it into Blender using a different format, and got something that looked like an object. I used the .FBX format and got this.

This at least looks like the counter. I then exported this as a STL file to SketchUp and got this. Whie it's still a mass of indistinguishable triangles, you can make out the counter and that's all I want. I know the exact measurements of the triangle since I can measure them on the 3D scan in my phone, so I can draw the correct shapes using all this mess just to establish the correct geometry and proportions.

'

The long leg is 8'8" long and it's 3'3" high. With that I can do the rest. First I will erase all the background and foreground clutter to just expose the counter.

I then had to scale the entire drawing to full 1:1. As it imported, the whole thing is just a 1/16" tall. I don't know why. I opened the group and drew a line parallel to one of the edges. I measured this line with the measurement tool, clicked the mouse and then wrote in the actual height of 3' 3". It asks if you want to scale the whole group and you answer YES. Now the STL is the same size as the final parts. I then drew a rectangle on the horizontal plane that was the correct lenght of 8'8" and a width of this part of 26". I made the drawing a separate group so it could be manipulated and extracted without all the noise. I extruded the rectangle upwards to the 3' 3" height.

On the Scaniverse image I also measured the left hand leg, it's depth (different than the right leg) and pulled this rectangle out to the correct length of around 6'

When I separated the two drawings I got this.

I then started laying in all the drawers, again based on measurements from the 3D scan. That's as far as I've gotten.

So, while you can't have the luxury of simply scanning an object and having it as a printable solid in one easy step, you can work with the scanned image to get a good representation that has the correct proportions. It's no more difficult than using match Photo, but that's limited by having images with good straight lines running to two vanishing points. I believe with the $800 scanners you can make printable scans, but not with the single LIDAR on the phone.

I did the same thing with the lazy susan and here's what that looks like now. Both scans are in the movie.

I found out how the stairwell and the rest of the store interact. I also found out that the openings between the two stores is about 14 feet wide, much wider than what I had drawn.

I took panoramic images of all the aisles, and shelving (which also dates to 1899), and then took exterior pictures of all four store windows. I will see if I can use them. I still have to decide whether or not I'm going to detail the interior with photo images or actual 3D printed parts. Maybe a hybrid...

The back wall: with the famous safe...

The side wall in the original left side hardware store showing that 1899 shelving.

And the large opening between the two stores.

An example of the pano shots: I took one of these standing over each of the total six aisles. Some kind of composite of these might also work.

Armed with all of this information, I should be able to make a reasonable interior. I still have to schedule my appointment at the First Build Makery to laser cut the walls for this interesting building. I already received and paid for all the laser cut windows and acetate from Rail Scale Models. Push comes to shove, I'll pay Stephen Miley to laser cut the walls too. My problem with using him for this project is his limit to 3/16" stock. I want to cut it out of 1/4".

Re: the turret project: I got into all the places I needed to develop a complete understanding to finish the job. I also found a whole lot of things that I did wrong due to lack of information. I have a lot of reprints to do, and some new ones with the last remaining pieces. I was able to meet the curator, Ryan Szimanski and we discussed where the model will be displayed. He wants it on the main deck where ALL visitors can see it, so those with disabilities can get an idea of the turret's complexity without actually going in. My visit was so unique that our tour guide was very happy since I was getting him into spaces where he was not allowed to go.

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Newtown Hardware Interior
Last edited by Trainman2001

Myles, Welcome back! It looks like the trip to the hardware store was very worthwhile.  The first 4 pictures after the video show Image not found.  The rest of the drawings and the interior of the store are visible.  They certainly packed in a lot.  It looks like a great  building  to model.

The turret should be really something when done.

Last edited by Mark Boyce

Just some status. I found out that the laser cutter at the First Build Makery is run on Adobe Illustrator. My drawings are Coreldraw. It takes CorelDraw, but only up to version 5 and I was saving these files in Ver 2017. And to make matters worse, my 2017 CorelDraw stopped booting up in my VM Fusion/Windows 10 emulator on my MacBook Pro. I bit the bullet and purchsed the 2021 CorelDraw Essentials thinking this would give me the capability to save as an AI file. The stripped down CD Essentials is so basic it can't export any other vector file types, only bitmap, i.e., it don't do beans! I ended spending 2.5 hours at the First Build trying to find a translation program on line that could convert CD to AI. I found several, but they only converted the outlines of the building pieces, ignoring all the engraved brickwork lines in the shapes. Without the bricks the job is useless to me. I was working with the Essentials with a 30 refund policy and gave it back and got my $140 bucks back. I was not happy!

I've subsequently sent the files to Stephen Miley at Rail Scale to cut the parts using my original Corel Files. I've since downloaded several free/cheap vector programs that run in Mac, but none export directly into AI either, and they're not as familiar to me as CD which I've been using since Ver 1.0 in 1990s. Corel seems to be the best user oriented vector program out there. Not sure yet what the ultimate solution is. The bricks are laid into the corel outlinse using the "Paste Inside" command. It was something about how they appear digitally to conversion programs that ignored them. Any of you IT gurus out can chime in anytime you want here.

Meanwhile, the hardware store willl be built at higher cost than I wanted.

And, I just got an offer from a fellow in Paris, France who wants to commission me to make another Nighthawks Cafe. Unfortunately, that was a non-laser, non-3D printing project and was almost entirely old school except for the bar stools which were laser cut for me. I would have to do a lot of drawing and again deal with the CD draw/Adobe problem since I wouldn't do it without laser cutting it. I have no idea what to charge the fellow. He said "money was no object", and then there's the shipping to France part. I want to review the time spent making the first one and give him an estimate. It has to be worth my while.

And last weekend I finally joined the multitudes and got COVID. Since I was double-boosted, my case has been ridiculously mild. I had one and half days with a low fever and the usual aches, a slight sore throat and a runny nose. By Wednesday I felt pretty good, got re-tested on Thursday (still positive) and re-tested myself today (still positive), but feel completely normal. I also took an antiviral regimen (Mulnapirivir) so that helped too. Haven't been the shop all week and it bugs me, but I did get to binge watch a lot of my favorite shows.

Later...

On my goodness!  What a rigmarole!!  I'm glad Stephen can cut the parts for you, but it is sad it will cost you!  I agree, you will need to make the second Nighthawks worth your while for sure!!  Make sure you figure in packing it for an overseas trip as well as shipping and a nice profit for you!  There won't be any meeting at Sheetz to drop off that building. 

I'm sorry you contracted COVID, but glad you are on the mend.  Our younger daughter and son-in-law got it back towards the end of last year and said it was like a bad cold for a few days.  Somehow, Kim and I have avoided it.  We have had both booster as well, but know that isn't 100% as you proved.  I hope you don't have any lingering effects and get back in the shop next week!!!

And last weekend I finally joined the multitudes and got COVID. Since I was double-boosted, my case has been ridiculously mild. I had one and half days with a low fever and the usual aches, a slight sore throat and a runny nose. By Wednesday I felt pretty good, got re-tested on Thursday (still positive) and re-tested myself today (still positive), but feel completely normal. I also took an antiviral regimen (Mulnapirivir) so that helped too. Haven't been the shop all week and it bugs me, but I did get to binge watch a lot of my favorite shows.

Later...

So glad that you are better!

Peter

Last edited by Putnam Division

I've passed 12 days of isolation. New rules state that after five days and no or diminishing symptoms you are not really contagious. At 10 days and no symptoms you are much less likely to be contagious. So I'm now in the normal part of the house and am not wearing the mask. We had our first dinner together tonight since last Monday.

I treated myself to go back and read my thread starting from building the mountain, then the refinery and finally Nighthawks. I wanted to recall how much work Nighthawks was and what I would charge for it. So I decided to price it high and see what happens. Meanwhile, my lovely wife doesn't want me to sell it since it was so special to me. I'm asking $2,500 plus packing and shipping to Paris, France. He wrote back and asked me to give him the overall sizes of the building and not a peep about the price. Probably asking too little...

I think I know how to pack it so it will survive. The only problem is the people and stools breaking loose. I think it's possible to get inside to reattach if they do.

It cracks me up to re-read the Saga. When I look at the finished products on the layout, my brain plays tricks on me and pretends that they just appeared there. It's like childbirth (or so I'm told) in that the creation process can be quite painful, but you tend to forget about it and do it again. Each one of the special projects required things that I conjured that I look back on and wonder, "How the heck did I think of that?" And wonder if I were to do it again, would I be that smart?

So the question remains, if I sell Nighthawks will I make another for myself. If I do, it will be an entirely different proccess. I now possess the magic machine to produce the parts much more perfectly than the hand-done pieces I made. When I did Nighthawks I actually mention about the resin machines they had in the engineering department at University of Wisconsin when we took grandson for a tour. At the time I was awestruck since they were $3k apiece. Little did I know that in a little over a year, the price would drop by 10X.

On another front, I explained that one of the things I like to purchase with the NH proceeds would be the full version of CorelDraw 2022. It's over $400. Then my lovely wife said that I should get it regardless of the sale. We spend money on lots of stuff and this is important to what I'm doing. With it I can be back in the business of designing things that I can laser cut myself. Before I can make another Nighthawks I will need the software.

I’m glad you are doing better and your wife stayed well.  I don’t know how we would work out isolating one of us in our house.

Funny, when I read about the fellow in Paris, I was thinking you would be building another for him, not that he would be buying the original.  Now it makes sense he would be buying the original.  He said price was no object; the amount of time that was put into it by a skilled designer and craftsman doesn’t come cheaply.  I think your wife is right, the software is a small price for the joy it will give you.

Me too. I was using version 1.0. In those days the companies with whom I worked covered the cost. It's a different deal when it's me paying. Having now tried seven vector drawing programs I find Coreldraw to be the most comprehensive out of the box of all of them with a reasonable learning curve. Inkscape is free and pretty busy, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to change the ruler origin on the page. I also couldn't intuitively figure how to change the drawing's scale. Furthermore, being Euopean, it keeps defaulting to metric paper sizes and millimeters. Adobe Illustrator is powerful, but it too has limitations that are built into Corel, the most obvious is scaling. If you want to scale a drawing in AI you have to purchase and add-on.

If the deal goes through I will have to make a new Nighthawks, and fairly soon so I don't lose the inertia. As I said, the new and improved version could be nicer and (hopefully) go together easier without all the hassle. I could 3D print the entire turret as I did with the turret on the House by the Railroad. Cornices, corbels, etc. all will be sweeter a la the Hardware House. Nothing can happen until CorelDraw Suite 2022 is loaded on my computer. The reengineering will start in SketchUp as I incoporate all the learnings and fix all the mistakes from the hand-built version.

A few more comments about the Saga...

It's been a full decade since I started writing this. It's beginning to feel like Homer and the Odyssey. Some of you guys have faithfully read every word almost for the entire duration. Amazing! One of the things I often dwelled on was the act of getting old and the potential to run out of time before the project is compelte (whatever that is). Well… I'm happy to report that except for a few minor bumps in the road, I am still pretty much capable of doing all the stuff that has to be done, except not so happy about climbing on the layout. I'm actually surprised that my aging has been gradual with nothing happening that's a show stopper. I'm kind of getting ready for cataract surgery and even for that my son, the eye surgeon, says his mom and I are on the old side of the curve of most of his cataract patients. The bicep tendon rupture as my son in law said, creates no problem for me and it happened six years ago. The AFib causes no problem at all other than taking Eliquis (blood thinner) so I have to be more careful about doing greivous bodily harm in the shop. Some of the developments like migrating from scribing and cutting to laser cutting to 3D printing has been a blast and I'm glad all y'all are enjoying the ride. So I pledge that as long as I'm able and have something interesting to write about, I will keep doing this.

A bad note. Something is leaking again in the kitchen and has dripped water on the layout. It's funny since I was just re-reading the part of the Saga where I replaced all the street paving on bridge street due to the great diswasher rupture of 2018, and I was in the shop today for the first time since COVID, and looked at Bridge Street and saw this. Something has leaked in the same area as the original AND IT HAD DAMAGED MY STREETS!

The leak actually ate through the street and pavement. And of course it's in the middle and the hardest place to reach. I suspect it's the dishwasher again which is directly overhead in the kitchen. The dishwasher is only four + years old. I dread having to repave that road… again! I'm going to have to raise the taxes of all those businesses to pay for this infrastructure work. I may enlist Thatcher Sasse, the son of a friend who's 12, and a wonderfully creative model maker like my grandsons. Who, by the way, are a senior in college and starting freshman respectively. Moving to Louisville when we did when they were 7 and 5 years old was the best decision we ever made. We were there for their entire childhood and they had a great time in my shop.

The Leak of 2022

Have to call a plumber. Ugh!

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Just follow up to the Woodbourne Village's water problem: Our 4-year old GE dishwasher was indeed leaking. What really aggravates me was what was leaking. There were two nylon, hex plastic nuts that secure and seal the entrance and exit of the heating element wiring. The two were at the rear of the bottom pan and not visible looking under the dishwasher. The plumbers had to pull it out. The underneath floor was soaked as was the bottom insulation. The nuts were completely loose! The rest of the mechanism was pristine! We made a emotional, certainly not rational, decision to get a new one. My wife and I were unconvinced that whatever casused the nuts to loosen in the first place, wouldn't happen again. And frankly, the value of what's in the basement under that dishwasher exceeds the value of the diswasher by magnitudes. We ended up buying a new Bosch Level 500 machine.

Meanwhile, the problems didn't quite end there. The shut off valve for the dishwasher feed line under the sink, didn't shut off! It was one of the old-style washered, multi-turn valves. The washers in these things especially in hot water service, and if they're rarely ever used (like this one), harden and become basically useless. I opened that cabinet a couple hours after the plumbers left and it was a flood! Like everyone else, there's a lot of stuff under there and most was wet. The washer was disintegrating and was dripping steadily regardless of how tight the valve was closed. We put a bit Tupperware bowl, but it was filling about 2" an hour. I didn't want to get up at 4 a.m. to empty it, so I turned off the house water during the night.

The new DW was delievered from Lowe's on Sunday. The delivery guy wanted to try the valve and opened and closed it again. This time a piece of the washer was expelled and it was now running, no longer dripping. The DW was going to be installed on Tuesday, I took the new supply hose from the new dishwasher, put on the now-running valve and ran it back up into the sink and duct taped it on the counter so at least we got rid of the bucket problem. Later that day I went and bought two new valves, one compression like the old one and one PEX. I didn't have much room to cut the old compression ring off the pipe stub, so I took a gamble and used the new compression fitting valve on the old fitting. According to the hardware store, there's a 60% chance it won't seal properly. I installed it with some pipe tape and tightened it the best I could and it did not drip, but it was still wet around the threads. The plumbers were able to put a little bit more torque on it and it is now fully in service. It's a quarter-turn ball valve and won't cause a problem going forward.

I hate plumbing.

While still not working on the railroad, I have been very busy on the Missouri Turret. Yesterdat, I finished all 3D printing for this monster project. A picture is worth a thousand words. So feast on this. It took since January to create this. The Turret directory on my laptop has 1,042 files in it. Not included in the above are the sheet stock parts that have yet to be cut. Actual assembly and painting began yesterday afternoon. I want to finish and deliver before winter so the museum will still be open. Otherwise I'll have to hold it until next spring. There are many parts not show that are rejects, duplicates, wrong, etc. that are not show, probably 30% more. If I didn't know how to do 3D before this, I sure know now. I've pretty much tested the limits of the Elegoo Mars 3. The project would have been impossible with my Mars Classic.

ITP ALL the parts

This is the case design. It's all going to be LED lit so I need space under the base for the power supply. My bass playing old friend in Albuquerque is building the base, I'm doing the acrylic. I will also do some graphics with callouts to tell people about what they're seeing.

ITP Case Base Top View

Train work will restart when I'm further down this road.

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Images (2)
  • ITP ALL the parts
  • ITP Case Base Top View

Myles, I hate plumbing too!  I know exactly what you mean about those old shutoff valves.  Ugh!  Yes, buying another dishwasher was probably the way to go, considering you don’t know why those nuts loosened.  I’m certainly sorry you had all this water problems!

The turret project is certainly more involved than I imagined!  It will be a great model when finished.

The turret project is more involved than I envisioned too. What's in my head now is the build sequence. It's not straight forward. I've been building it in my head many times to see just what goes on before what. I'm also working on the painting sequence. While it would be easier to glue the stuff on the bare resin since the CA really has an affinity for the stuff, it would make masking and color demarcation much more difficult. Each deck will have LED ceiling lighting using the same copper foil/surface mount LEDs that I've been perfecting on the latest buildings. They need to go in before painting so they'll be less obvious. They have to be fully painted and assembled before they are slid down the central column that runs from the bottom of the powder flat to the bottom of the electric deck. The central column right now is a piece of 5/8" o.d. copper tubing. I'm thinking of substituting that for some plastic pipe of the same diameter. I'm thinking of making this change because of what is going to have to be done to the copper. I want to attached all the ladder rungs that are welded to this column on the ship. It would much easier to drill the plastic pipe and glue them in than to drill the copper and solder them in. I also have to cut access holes in the pipe to bring down the LED wiring from each deck. Again the plastic wins. I just went back to page 35 when I did the stacks for the distillery boiler house to double check the size of the PVC water pipe I used and it was, indeed, 5/8" so I'm going to buy a chunk and use that instead of the copper. I won't have to change the hole sizes in any of the decks.

The Bosch DW doesn't seem to dry so well. There are other settings that I'm going to try including raising the water temp. If I remember correctly, I used the hotter water setting on the GE to help it dry better. It does seem like very good build quality.

I wish there was a way to index this 102 page missive. I've been doing so backward looks to find certain things and it's very much scavenger hunt to get to where I want to go. Am I missing something? Is there a search function within a given thread?

Myles,

If there is no topic-specific search, I’m also guessing you can’t add reply-specific tags for searching.

But what you could do is add your own “index term” at the bottom of each reply you think you might want to revisit.

The idea would be to make the term unique to you so that the listserver search will find it.  For example, TM01_hopper_lighting or TM01_3Dprinting_turret, where the TM01_ prefix represents one of your custom search terms. You might test one or two terms to see whether you get the indexed topic.

Obviously, if this works, this means you keep track of a list of terms.  But you could create a somewhat sophisticated and/or structured naming convention this way that is easy to follow.  If it works, it should take you to the start of a subtopic.  And, you can add terms retroactively, too.

Hope this thought suggests some ideas.

Tomlinson Run Railroad

Last edited by TomlinsonRunRR

Hey gang! Been a while since I checked in. Sorry, but nothing new on the rails. I've been consumed by working on the turret project. We also had a vacation from retirement spending two weeks in Maui. Not a bad place to forget about politics for a while.

The turret project is in phase 3: painting and assembly. All the parts are printed and reprinted if they needed correcting. I am sure that I printed 100% more stuff than the model needed due to rejects and surplus. Early this week the weather was the perfect-outdoor-painting day…70 degrees and almost no wind. I got all the parts primed excand ready for finishing except for the interior of the gun house shell. I started cutting and assembling the outer shells that will be opened to show the turret interior. These babies kept me up at night trying to tease out the best way to approach them. I had good success this week and have the lowest shell that surrounds the bottom projectile and powder flats. With that success I am now confident that the rest of them will be equally as good and the end is in sight. My trusty old friend Bryant, who lives in Albuquerque, is crafting the wooden base that will support this model. Bryant, besides being one of my oldest friends, and an exceptional woodworker, is also the fabulous bass player of my college band, the Sounds and Sondettes. I will be creating the plexiglass cover.

All the LED lighting is installed using the same techniqye with the coppoer foil I first experimented with in making Nighthawks. Everything I learn doing all this stuff gets transferred to the next project.

ITP Small Parts Primed

That pile of small parts will be painted by airbrush only and doesn't need priming. The relationship between the layers was mind boggling.

ITP Big Parts Primed]

I'm really looking forward to doing the detail painting which will finally resemble traditional model making.

Here's the lower shell with the annual rings that form the non-rotating working area in the lower turret. I had to create a structured sandwich with these rings so it would be stiff enough to overcome the spring in the styrene drum. You're looking down onto the powder flat. There's a lot of stuff that's going in there. Everthing will be illuminated.

ITP Lower Drum with RIng FitupITP Ring 2 Structure

That truncated portion really complicated this part, which was otherwise just a straight-side cylinder. This is turret #1 which is already in the space where the Iowas' hull started tapering towards the sharp bow that typifies this class of ship. The turret barrel had to be chopped off so it would fit between the side armor plates. #2 and 3 turrets do not have this problem. I asked Al Graziano about making these cylinders.

ITP Drum with Truncated Slice Fill Fit

A fellow who I've been sharing information with, Jim Slade, is making a perfect rendition of every plate on the ship, using the original micro-filmed erection drawings from the National Archives. He was instrumental in helping me properly define the pan deck, electric deck and this part of the exterior shell. He's using some pretty high horsepower CAD software to do it. He's not making a model. This is the lower shells, straight and tapered.

Those fingers (which I'm not modeling) are the weld points to tie the structure into the ship's framing. Notice, this structure supports the rotating mass of 2,500 tons that is the moving part of the turret. Notice also the single entry point into the powder flat lowest level. This entry and the one under the outside rear of the gun house are the only two points of entry and egress from this structure. Imagine evacuating 88 men in case of abandoning ship out of those two places. All other travel through the turret is by vertical ladders and little deck hatches. You'll notice in my images above, I was able to print the rollers, track and ring gear as a single split part.

ViewCapture20221013_004238

The LED lighting for the gun house interior is built on a thin ply substrate and then attached to the plastic using the 3M Transfer Adhesive Tape. Once you get the hang of using this stuff, it's amazing how it holds. I didn't want to solder the foil directly on styrene since it melts the styrene and the distortion could have penetrated to the good side. I did the circuit on the ply, then attached to the part.

ITP G House Lighting Install

When this thing is done, I promise I will get back to railroading. I'm procrastinating doing that roadwork at the back of the layout due to the position my body's going to be in doing it. My sciatica really acted up in Maui and I've been back at physical therapy getting myself back in shape. I can say, that from last November I lost 16 pounds went from a 38 to 36" waist for the first time in decades and didn't screw up in Maui and am now the same weight I was when were left. I have a fellow who I've been mentoring for 10 years and he has a wonderful son, who loves modeling and trains. He's 12 and perhaps I can enlist his services in this endeavor. My own grandsons are now both out of the picture. Alex is graduating Illinois Engineering and looks likes he's already landed a good job, and younger brother Jack is in Engineering at Washington Universit of St. Louis. He's took a machine shop elective and loves it. The professor was watching him work and realized he has some experience and he told him where he got it. He's also joined the engineering school race car team. I knew his older brother was into mechanics, but didn't realize that Jack had it too. Makes me proud…really proud.

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Images (7)
  • ITP Small Parts Primed
  • ITP Big Parts Primed
  • ITP Lower Drum with RIng Fitup
  • ITP Ring 2 Structure
  • ITP Drum with Truncated Slice Fill Fit
  • ViewCapture20221013_004238
  • ITP G House Lighting Install

I know it's not trains, but it is modeling...

Time for some more turret updates. I have a definite delivery date, during the week between XMas and New Years. The ship will be open to the public during that time and we're planning on another visit back East. I'm getting the finished base from my dear friend and former bass player from my college band, Bryant Mitchell, who has a terrific home woodworking shop. He retired to Albuquerque to be near grandkids (sound familiar?). I will take the base to the plastics supplier and have it measured for the acrylic enclosure piecces.

Almost all the decks are complete with their machinery. I'm at the punchlist phase. I still have to produce the bulkheads that separate each gun in the gun house.

Yesterday I put together the power feed circuit board and proceeded to solder in 10 CL2N3 LED driver chips backwards! I have more and another blank circuit board and will make another correctly. At the last minute I realized that the cutaway portion I made through the barbette was too low to view the traversing machinery and had to enlarge it after the shells were almost completely done. It was harrowing, but I pulled it off.

Electric Deck with 7 electro-hydraulic pump systems.

ITP e-Deck Complete 1

The complete outer shells with the large travese ring gear and roller bearing that supports the 2,500 ton rotating turret mass.

ITP Bulkheads Complete

The enlarged cutawat opening. I filled the double wall that's now exposed. I used Milliputt to make it look like solid 14" armor plating. Today I will finish sand it and paint the raw edges "Cutaway red".

ITP Enlarged Cutaway

The Powder Flat LED test showing the interior.

ITP Lit Powder Flat

The complete officer's booth with the addition of the auxiliary ballistic computer and the switch panels. The computer is one of five redundant systems in the ship.

ITP Ofc Booth Parts In

These are all the parts I made that remain. There's still a box of plastic kit parts for the gun house exterior. That will be the last thing I need to build.

ITP Parts Remaining

Vertical look at the powder flat showing how I had to cut the tops of the powder trunks so the ceiling height worked.

ITP Powder Flat Done

Projectile Flats 1 and 2 where projectiles are stored and loaded onto the three projectile hoists. They're hydraulically lifted up to the cradles that load the three guns. Powder trunks are shown in cutaway on these decks since their full presence would block seeing anything behind them.

ITP Projectile Flats Done

The three gun rear compartments with the cradle/spanning trays that transport the projectiles into the breaches.

ITP Reprinted R-Compartments Done

The finished base produced by my fried. It is now shipped.

ITP The Base WIP

A stage picture showing how the bottom four decks line up.

ITP Stack Status

The pan deck sits below the gun house providing space for the guns to elevate and recoil. Recoil is four feet! On this deck are the hydaulic motors that elevate the guns with a revolving nut to a 6" lead screw, and the worm gears that drive the traversing pinions. The cracked bulkhead at the front was fixed with some reinforcement. Still to install are the powder trunks that carry the powder cart and the projectile chases. I still have to craft the primerman's platform that sits here. From that platform, the primerman inserts the cartridge into the breach from below. The cartridge is what sets off the 660 pounds of cordite to fire the 2,700 pound armor-piercing projectile.

ITP Pan Deck Almost Complete 2

Okay… you're all up to date. As you can tell, if I deliver this over Christmas, I will be working on the railroad come the new year.

Everyone have a great Thanksgiving.

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Images (12)
  • ITP e-Deck Complete 1
  • ITP Bulkheads Complete
  • ITP Enlarged Cutaway
  • ITP Lit Powder Flat
  • ITP Ofc Booth Parts In
  • ITP Parts Remaining
  • ITP Powder Flat Done
  • ITP Projectile Flats Done
  • ITP Reprinted R-Compartments Done
  • ITP The Base WIP
  • ITP Stack Status
  • ITP Pan Deck Almost Complete 2
Last edited by Trainman2001

Thanks guys.

BTW: I still haven't replaced my CorelDraw, but I'm learning to use Inkscape. If worse comes to worse, I may have to redraw the brickwork in the Hardware Store's walls, then export to Adobe Illustrator and do the laser cutting at the First Build Makery. It's too bad since CorelDraw Suite can convert directly to Illustrator. It's just their stripped-down Essentials that doesn't

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving that celebrates the holiday. We had all our kids and grandkids together and it was great! They're all grown now with the youngest in 9th grade and oldest graduating U of IL and already has a nice job. That's the true and only role parenting (IMHO); To make fully functioning adults that can go out into the world. All the rest of the things we do is just gravy.

My lovely son and daughter in law gave me an early Hanukkah present: the 2021 full CorelDraw Suite for Mac which is the best present ever. I've been trying to use other vector drawing software to replace my non-working CorelDraw17, but to no avail. Nothing works as well. I was immediately able to print out the barbette patterns on US Letter paper in portrait and tile it over three sheets. None of the other packages I was trying could do this. For my model-making requirements, it was an essential feature.

Up to this version Corel was only available for Windows. When I inquired a few years ago, they were adament that there was no intention of porting a native version for Windows. They claimed the volume was too low. This forced me to run VM Fusion (a Windows emulation program) on my Mac which took up 125 GB of hard drive space. The whole deal was sub-optimal, and required constant key stroke changes as I passed from the Mac to the Windows operating systems and back again. Then something changed. It was either a Windows or VM upgrade and suddenly my CorelDraw 17 would no longer boot up. It would start and then abend and stop. Neither company could help me. When Coreldraw finally offered a fully functional product for Mac, I knew what I had to do, but my kids did it for me.

What this means is I can now export the cutting files into the proper version of Adobe Illustrator so the big laser cutters at First Build will be able to make my wall parts for the Newtown Hardware House. Without this, I was going to have to redraw all the brickwork in Inkscape and I wasn't looking forward to it. Inkscape is a clunky program, and Corel is so much better.

I've removed all the other competing programs and with the help of my super-techie daughter in law, removed VM Fusion and all the Windows components which free up gobs of hard drive space. The only other drawing programs I still have to learn are Blender and MeshMixer. Both are 3d programs that work well with organic shapes, which is SketchUp's weakest feature. Both of those programs are bears to learn and I will have to be a little dedicated to pull it off. I would love to be able to digitally sculpt 3D figures. I need 1/72 scale naval figures in indoor garb to populate the turret to help show scale. Nothing is available commercially and if I want them I'm going to have to make them myself. First attempts will be with wire forms and Sculpey.

Another turret progress report. Getting near the end of this all-consuming project. Sent these pictures to the curator and he kiddingly said, "that's a colorized photo from WW2…" Best compliment you can ever get as a miniaturist. I will finish construction of the custom parts by Friday. I picked up the Plexiglass and the plaque and will build the enclosure next week. I still have to assemble the kit parts and, compared to this, should be a cake walk (famous last words…). There are LED lights under the overhangs on the front and rear of the kit turret shell.

There are still some more details to add in here and some mild touchup painting. Everything below the gun house is complete.

ITP Everything but Sighting Stations 2ITP Everything Except Sighting Stations

I had to rebuild the upper barbette shell attachment to the lower cylindrical bulkheads three times before I got it right. The geometry just kept eluding me and drove me mildly crazy. All's well that ends well.

Once this is done I promise that I will get back to the Hardware Store.

I've also thought about instead of making a complete road at the back of the railroad, I'm going to buy a paving machine and a road roller and make the road under construction. Should be fun.

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Images (2)
  • ITP Everything but Sighting Stations 2
  • ITP Everything Except Sighting Stations

Thanks guys! I doubt that I will push the envelope much further than this project did. You know my mantra was "Always pick projects that advance the state-of-the-art, and this one sure did. There's a lot that I would do different/better if I were to re-create it. I don't know if any of the other museum ships would be interested. Problem is they have no money. I'm donating this to the Big J. Just in materials it's almost $500.00.

And today saw the finalization of the gun house interior. It was almost done yesterday. I took a better set of images. The curator was kidding with me and wrote, "That's just a colorized picture from WW2…" You know you're on the right track when people think it's real. Put the iPhone on a tripod and used my Apple watch to "snap the shutter". I gave it a 3 second time delay giving me time to hold up some auxiilary lighting.

ITP Turret Interior Complete 2

Most of what you see here is off-limits for public tours of the museum ships.

ITP Turret Interior Complete 3

Tomorrow I have a few minor things to address on the custom parts and then I'll start on the kit exterior parts of the gun house.

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Images (2)
  • ITP Turret Interior Complete 2
  • ITP Turret Interior Complete 3

I had set an artificial deadline to deliver the turret model to the USS New Jersey Battleship Museum during the upcoming holiday week because we were heading back East anyway and I'm handcarrrying the model to the ship. If I missed this date, it would have to wait probaby until Spring, and once the model is done, I like to get it to the client so nothing else will happen to it. Getting it on the base was a battle royal, but I prevailed. Tomorrow I hook up the leads to dozens of LEDs and finalize the graphics that will accompany the model. My genius #1 grandson suggested adding a QR code linking to one of the forums on which I've journaled the entire build thread for those intrepid visitors who want to learn how it came into existence. It's good suggestion and I'm going to make a tag for this. My new CorelDraw can create QRs… I think.

ITP In Place 1ITP In Place 2In Place 3 In Place 4ITP In Place 5ITP In Place 6

And with the enclosure. I'm actually getting better at making acrylic cases. This one was ALMOST perfect. I got the pieces CNC cut to size by the plastics supplier and it made assembly much, much easier.

ITP In Case 1

I will post again when the lights are on and the graphics are done. We're heading to Philly on Monday.

This was singularly the most challenging model I have ever created. It's still not right. The decks didn't mesh correctly, but it is presentable and 99% of the viewers will think it's just fine. If I make another (another museum ship perhaps) I will have to correct all these inaccuracies and save myself a lot of trouble.

After New Years I'm going to be making a Hardware Store. I haven't forgotten about you guys.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Years and Happy Qwanza.

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Images (7)
  • ITP In Place 1
  • ITP In Place 2
  • In Place 3
  • In Place 4
  • ITP In Place 5
  • ITP In Place 6
  • ITP In Case 1

Thanks Mark! We're hoping that the crumby weather is finished and cleaned up by then. If not, we may bag the trip. We're staying at my sister's in Philly so we don't have any charges to incur. Not worth risking life and limb. We've made this winter trip every year since we moved to L'ville (14 years already!) except for the COVID year, and we only got into a weird snow squall once near Fairmount, WV. I've always felt that sometime our luck would run out.

@Trainman2001  I have been enjoying the story of the build - an epic journey into modeling. Glad the forum has let it be where it is.

Ok - now my engineer's cap came on when I saw the column assembly supporting the guns.  I know those were big heavy shells being spit out of the barrels. How did they adjust for recoil? Stress on the superstructure must have been immense. Then the torque applied to the ship when fired perpendicular - how did it not turtle? 

Thanks guys. No… we're still in the L'ville and leaving for Monday when, hopefully, all the roads will be better.

The recoil from the guns didn't affect the ship at all. The engineering is brilliant. The main recoil absorbing cylinder was basically a large adjusting orifice shock absorber. Inside was a large piston with oil on both sides. There is a hole in the piston with with a tapered pin that runs inside. When recoil starts the pin allows more-or-less freely flowing oil to flow from the high pressure side to the low pressure side. The pin is fastened on the back cylinder head. As the piston travels, the pin gets gradually fatter reducing the orifice size and starting to apply some braking pressure on the moving piston. The taper pin continues to reduce the orifice until it is completely closed at the end of the travel. The decelleration therefore is controlled and gradual. The images you see overhead of the ship firing the guns and it looks llke the ship is moving are just the shock waves of the blast affecting the water beneath the guns.  Two cylinders on the gun top are accumulators that apply a backward force to return the guns to the load position. Recoil is four feet. The pin is not a straight taper, but follows a curve for a mathematically smoother transition.

At 40,000 psi peak pressure in the combustion chamber, the 2,700 pound shell is experiencing 8,000,000 poounds of force telling it to move out of the barrel. The recoil system must manage that force in the equal and opposite direction… thank you Mr. Newton. From what I've read, the recoil system operated pretty well over the life of the ships. There are pressure gauges on the counter-recoil cylinders since they probably are gas filled to apply the spring pressure to push back.

Now for the FINAL, FINAL images with the added and improved graphics. My grandson had a lot to do with the improvements.

ITP Done 1

ITP Done 3ITP Done 4ITP Done 5ITP Fone 6

If you're so inclined to read more, I produced this "After Action Report" on the Good, Bad and Really Ugly:

The Good!

1. Getting it finished where it actually exceeds my expectations. That's really not that hard since I expected nothing in the beginning.
2. Creating a very good rendition of the complicated and elusive Mark 7 16"-50 cal gun including the tiniest details of the massive yoke and breach.
3. Designing and pre-installing all the surface mount LED lighting and the use of the circuit board to contain the nine CL2N3 LED drivers making hookup fast and error free.
4. All the lights working after all the yanking and pulling I did to assemble the beast. The true Hanukkah Miracle of Lights!
5. Machining the back ends of the after-market aluminum gun barrels to 7/16" so I could produce the resin gun slides with sufficient wall thickness with the mating part of the gun slides to support the guns
6. Finally figuring a way to print the entire gun slide assembly in two parts (yoke and slide) fianlly resulting in a warp-free product.
7. SketchUp's ability to produce an accurate flattened-out shape which enabled me to get the circular bulkheads made out of styrene with minimal guessing.
8. My iPhone 12 Pro's LIDAR which enabled me to 3D scan the projectile hoists and lower powder hoist areas answering some major questions
9. My special private tour of the ship where I finally could figure out the nooks and crannies in the gun compartments and surrounding area.
10. Nailing the detail painting.
11. The intricacy and beauty of the long-base range finder and how close it is to the prototype.
12. Producing really small details in 1/72 like the powder scuttles, the inside periscopes, the auxiliary computer and all the pumps and machinery on the e-deck and elsewhere.
13. How well the roller bearing/ring gear came out… finally.
14. The stunning piece of furniture upon which the model sits crafted by one of my oldest friends and bass player from my college R&B band, Bryant Mitchell.
15. Even though it was an awful experience, the way the open bulkheads worked out as a way to display the innards of this complex machine.
16. Mastering the creation of a large Plexiglass enclosure with a minimum of screwups... which is a first for me. Had extra help with all the good advice.
17. How the graphics finally turned out with my grandson's input. The kid's terrific!
18. How the metal guns really highlight the turret.
19. Getting the elevating screws reasonably right... still not perfect.
20. And finally, having the tools, skills, know-how and physical faculties at 77 to pull this off.

The Bad!

1. Having to produce the detail that would be on the back side of the officer's booth bulkhead on a separate piece that is the rear gun compartment. This was necessary as a function of the 3D printing process to avoid supports on details that would have been wrecked by them. It complicated the build.
2. Not drawing the plastic parts in the SketchUp modeling. This came back to bite me right at the end with things like the decking no fitting on the model (among other things)
3. Starting the drawing process with little or no dimensions only having to redraw-reprint more times than I'd like to mention.
4. Attempting to 3D print the thin circular bulkheads on the lower decks. 3D printing doesn't like thin sections.
5. The inaccuracy of tracing part foot prints on non-dimensioned illustrations. Some of my equipment is probably overscale due to how tightly things ended up fitting.
6. Having to make the annular decks into 1/4" thick assesmblies to resist the constant stress of the styrene circular bulkheads trying to straighten themselves out. Besides stressing glue joints that kept popping, the thick decks created assembly challenges at the end.
7. Specing the central column holes too close to the column's diameter. They didn't have to be press fits.
8. Making the cradle assemblies too close to prototype proportions leading to constant breakage and three reprints.
9. Not having a good idea of how some of the parts would assemble in the real world when drawing them, necessitating lots of custom fitting.
10. The constant repainting caused by the late changes.

The Ugly!

1. That collosal error of assembling the armor barbette at the wrong height and having to almost destroy it to fix it.
2. The printing of the ring gear wrongly only to find this out when I was fixing #1.
3. The final misalignment of the projectile flats with their respective annual decks. Maybe people won't mind, but I do. This is due in part to the thick annular rings problem.
4. Getting the spacing wrong between the guns on the gun girder. This caused lots of problems. And that was the 3rd girder I printed.
5. Not having a clue about how long the elevating screws really needed to be and still not happy with the installation.
6. Having to redo the side sighting compartment designs and the telescopes due to not understanding the geometry.
7. Painting the central column only to have it all scrape off as I manhandled it into position and then touch it up two times reaching into the model.
8. Reprinting and breaking the back bulkhead three times.
9. Getting the long-base rangefinder optical ends too short, again becasue I didn't draw the actual plastic parts when doing the design. I took my lengths from line drawings.
10. Dropping important things on the floor and having to repair them too many times.
11. Screw up the projectile hoist fits right to the end.
12. Relying on CA to hold stuff when it's totally unreliable, especially gluing styrene to resin.
13. Having the audacity to think I could create this thing and almost not making it.

Now it's Completely Done… Well… almost. I want to add a QR code tage directing the visitors to one of the build threads so they see how it was really created. Our Internet was out for about 24 hours due to the weather so I didn't make the tag yet. Needed to access Internet to learn how to do it. I'm going to do it now.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah (7th night), Happy Qwanza and Happy and Healthy New Year.

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  • ITP Done 3
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  • ITP Fone 6

And one more thing…

The I was able to drive the model to the Battleship New Jersey Museum and Memorial and deliver it yesterday morning. NOT A SINGLE PART FELL OFF. And that my friends has to classify as another miracle considering that parts were falling off of it all the time during construction… hmmm … or maybe dropping things on the floor contributed to that? Anyway, the model exceeded Ryan Syzmanski's expectations. Later in the day, the model was photographed and catalgued. The USS NJ is property of the State of New Jersey and donating is a formalized process. I will post the final location in the ship when I know it. Right now it looks like it willl go in the ward room. It's a place where folks with disabilities go since it's readily accessible and has a lot of the ship's information and displays.

The handover took place in Ryan's office, one deck below the main deck.

ITP Delivery Ryan and Me 4

It bears repeating: That the model made the trip completely intact is miraculous. I think I'll create a new Jewish holiday….

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  • ITP Delivery Ryan and Me 4

I'm scheduled to start laser cutting the Hardware House next Wednesday at First Build at U of L. I have three hours reserved, but don't have a clue if it's going to be enough since I've never done a job with all the brick engraving.

Meanwhile, I actually had some fun running trains yesterday. I turned them on last week when one of our model club members visited to drop off a job he wanted me to do (custom decal work). Forgot how much fun it is to just let them run around a bit. Nice thing about O'gauge and their weight. They can sit for six months and just get up and go. If it was HO or N, I'd be spending hours just to clean the track.

This is a vid of yesterday's run.

That pedestal with the pillow lurking over the refinery is my custom support that permits me to work on the road behind the refinery without crushing anything. I still have to do that job and I AM PROCRASTINATING. I'm thinking about buying some scale road building equipment and making it under construction.

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January 23 Run - Large 540p

That’s a nice video of the trains running and views of the layout!  You added some nice touches with the graphics citing what each engine is.

Making that road in the back is a nice idea!  It reminded me of when they were building the new road past my grade school in 1962 or ‘63. Our teacher had to close the drapes then open them once in a while for us to watch the men working.

Thanks Al! We do have to figure out how to actually meet one another. Mark Boyce and I met at a service station outside Pittsburgh when I brought him the Idaho Hotel.

The model is on display in the New Jersey, but not in its final position. The ship is closed until March and they were having a board meeting. Ryan put it on temporary display on an end table in the ward room. It's final spot is shown in the images. I was concerned that the end table was not a secure enough place and Ryan already knew that. The board members were impressed and surprised since they did not know I was building it.

He's also going to get pics with better image quality for me.

ITP On Display in Big J 1ITP on Display on Big J 2

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  • ITP on Display on Big J 2

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… Seems like I read that somewhere.

I finally got to First Build last night to start laser cutting the parts for the hardware store project. So that's good.

The CorelDraw file coversions to Adobe Illustrator worked well. So that's also good.

When I got there, all the stock that I was planning on using was no longer available AND they really don't expect to get any more. That's bad.

So I chose to cut the walls out of 1/8" white Plexiglass, this required spending time on my laptop changing some dimensions to accomodate the reduction from 1/4" to 1/8" stock. That could be okay

Then I started running the machine on the piece of 1/16" ply for some of the thinner parts. After over an hour of screwing around, it ended up cutting the bricks and engraving the outer cut lines. And it was horrifically slow. That was really bad!

So after spending three solid hours there, I got one totally useless part cut out of the dozens needed. That's also really bad.

So where am I?

First Build has two industrial-sized 2' X 4' laser cutters: #1 and #2. I was working on machine #1. The fellow assisting me, Jack from GE (they own First Build), said one of the machines wasn't working so well, but he wasn't sure which one. Maybe my troubles were because it was this machine that wasn't working so well.

First Build has been focusing more and more on making prototypes for GE Appliances (HQ'd here in Louisvile) and, while the Makery is still open to the public from 5 to 8 on weekdays, they are paying less attention to it than before.

I have these options open to me going forward on this project.

1. Continue to go back to First Build and keep experimenting to get the settings right and cut the parts out of Plexiglass including brick engraving.

2. Cut only the outlines out of Plexiglass and use Plastruct Brick Sheet (like I did in Nighthawks) and eliminate engraving all those bricks.

3. Go old school and cut the walls out of styrene sheet and build the structure with Plastruct brick sheet. This works, but not as cool as laser cutting.

4. Find another outisde vendor to laser cut the walls. Stepehn Miley at Rail Scale, doesn't seem so interested any longer to do custom jobs.

I have another reserved appointment on Monday night. I'll give it one more shot at First Build and then decide which option to take.

As usual, I will keep you all posted.

Some progress to report! Allen Goethe of Twin Whistle is finishing up laser cutiing all the flat parts out of acrylic and and styrene including engraving all the bricks. Meanwhile, i didn't sit idle. I reviewed the architectural parts that I had previously printed with my old Elegoo Mars. I found that some could benefit from reprinting.

On the long roof cornice, my old printer required the length to be divided into thirds, making for more warping and joints. The new printer could do it in two parts. I redrew the parts and reprinted. i also redesigned the junction key making it tapered so it would engage with the female opening better. I reprinted the end details on this assembly also. In all of the cases I was able to position them on the machine to minimize any supports in the detailed areas.

I also joined the previously printed large lower cornice and corbel details. I thought about redrawing this to make it in two parts also, but it would have been more complicated to do so and I decided to use the previously printed parts. The slight warpage will be corrected when they're attached to the building and my resin mix does have some flexibility.

NHH Long Trim Assembled

I then redrew and reprinted the window sill parts. The two store fronts have slightly different widths due to the intrusion of the door to the apartments upstairs. The original parts had supports in bad places and did not meaure up. I keep learning about printing and just the time that elapsed from the first printing and now taught me more techniques and enabled me to not have any supports in detail areas. So here are all the printed parts waiting for the building pieces. I expect that to be sometime in the next week.

NHH Printed Parts 2

I'm going to try a new way to do mortar lines. There's a water-based clay product that can be used as a panel line accept or weathering solution by Flory Model Co. UK. You brush or spray it on and remove the excess with a wet paper towel. You need to apply over a gloss finish and seal it with flat finish. I think it will be more forgiving and less labor intensive than using joint compound. We'll see. Right now, it's not carried by my local hobby shop, but they're checking to see if they can order it. Otherwise, I'll have to get it via Internet. They have more colors than this.

Screenshot 2023-02-03 at 11.28.24 AM

And I cleaned the shop! And boy, did it need it. I even took the shop vac to the work surfaces.

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  • NHH  Long Trim Assembled
  • NHH Printed Parts 2
  • Screenshot 2023-02-03 at 11.28.24 AM

Just paid for the laser cutting, so it should arrive sometime next week and then the fun begins.

The  big problem with the joint compound is its abrasiveness. When you scrub off the excess, it tends to remove some of the base color as well, even though I'm using solvent-based base colors that should not dissolve in the water-based joint compound. I'm expecting that the clay product, especially after using a solvent-based gloss coat, should not remove any base. It seems much milder in its composition. We'll see...

Meanwhile, I have to buy a new inkjet printer to make decals for this project. Our only four-year-old HP printer simply stopped printing cyan. One page was full color and next all pink and yellow. I did all the tricks to reset it, including changing out the nearly new cartridge, and the problem persisted. I then tried one more time the next day. It printed one image with blue, the next image with the blue in stripes and the last image in pink and yellow again. It's not the cartridge… it's in the logic.

Anyone have any thoughts about this?



Anyone have any thoughts about this?

Yes:

Your cyan print head is clogged. Happened recently in our Epson printer. Google "Print Head Cleaning Kits" and you will drink from a fire hose. The basic idea is to use a syringe to force watered-down Windex through the heads until they clear.  I used an old medical syringe I had around. Made the printer like new.

This can be something of a project, depending on your printer. Very likely, there are You-tube videos on how to do it for your particular printer.

P.S. -- This generally happens when you don't use your printer enough.  I used to try to minimize my printing. Now I do the opposite. Paper and ink are less environmentally harmful than new printers.

P.P.S. -- If you do end up getting a new printer, the Epson ones with the huge ink tanks are da bomb.

Last edited by Avanti

HP's cartridges are sealed and have all the print jets and circuitry built in to each new cartridge. The first cartridge was just a couple of weeks old when it started and the second was brand new also. They were both HP factory OEM products. It seems weird that both would have failed Cyan jets. I hate coicidences. (that comes from watching hundreds of hours of great cop dramas).

I like the thought of Epson's tank system, but the base price of the printer is significantly higher than the base level HPs. I guess you pays me now or pays me later aphorism comes into play here. We print so little that the Epson tanks would last for a long time.

Mark:

We must have bought the same printer but with different results. I have had horrible luck with both Epson and HP.  I think that they were designed to be used much more than I use them.

Miles: Try cleaning the print heads as someone above mentioned.  I am currently trying to revive another printer and I think cleaning the print heads is the answer.

I really following your builds.

HP's cartridges are sealed and have all the print jets and circuitry built in to each new cartridge. The first cartridge was just a couple of weeks old when it started and the second was brand new also. They were both HP factory OEM products. It seems weird that both would have failed Cyan jets. I hate coicidences. (that comes from watching hundreds of hours of great cop dramas).

I like the thought of Epson's tank system, but the base price of the printer is significantly higher than the base level HPs. I guess you pays me now or pays me later aphorism comes into play here. We print so little that the Epson tanks would last for a long time.

As I understand it, only HP printers that have a single "tri-color" cartridge have the print head built into the cartridge. If that is what you have, I have no idea what is going on.  If your printer has separate cartridges for each color, then there is a separate print head that can be cleaned.  See this:

https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/...w-to-clean-printhead



As for Epson: I have no idea whether these machines save money net. I love them because they are SO much less hassle to own and operate. Recommended.

Last edited by Avanti

The Hardware Store parts are in shipment, and I actually got down and dirty and worked on that back road. There is a big gap between the foam core/illustration board road surface and the underlying layout. I decided to simply mix up some plaster of paris and soak some paper towels in it. It didn't have to be neat, and believe me, it ain't. It just has to raise up the road surface to be level with the rail head and provide some surface for the structural adhesive to hold.

I used my custom-made body support to reach over the delicate refinery and work behind it.

Back Road Body Support

It worked pretty well… not perfectly well. Getting off the ladder I bumped into on of the pipe rack supports and did some damage.

Back Road Wrecking the Refinery

After I finished with the plastering and mess, I went back and epoxied everything back in place. It's pretty solid now although it needs some paint to hide the shiny mess.

Back Road Refinery Fixed

After putting down some plaster-soaked towels I put some weights on it so it would have at least some flat spots for the futhre adhesive.

Back Road preparing the base

After lifting the road surfaces I had some base for the adhesive. It's just holding a paper road so it doesn' have to be very solid or strong.

Back Road Plaster Filler

While this was curing I coated the road surface with some clear urethane to seal it from the water-based paint that I'm going to use for the coloring. I didn't do this with the city streets and should have. The water-based paint causes the surfaces to curl a bit. Tomorrow I will glue down the road and then use Sculptamold to taper the grade portions into the flat portions. I've used grouting tinted black before for roads and may do that again, or I might mix up some gypsolite and plaster it that way. It has some nice texture to it. By the time the road is done, the Hardware House parts should arrive. I will use spackling compound to transition the layered cardboard grade areas.

Back Road Surface Sealing

Later...

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  • Back Road Body Support
  • Back Road Wrecking the Refinery
  • Back Road Refinery Fixed
  • Back Road preparing the base
  • Back Road Plaster Filler
  • Back Road Surface Sealing

First layer of plaster is on the road. I mixed some Woodland Scenics blank tint into some acrylic based grout. It was an awful operation! First the position of laying across my body support was not confortable and my back didn't like it. Then there was the slop. I persisted.

I used Loctite structural adhesive to glue the road pieces down to the layout. I put some weight on it till it set up. I then used the grout as a coating to blend the road parts into the layout. I made some filler strips for the crossing out of some left over MDF strips from the Engine House job. I used a narrow and wide putty knives to slather the goop onto the road. This was why I sealed the road surface so the water-based top coats didn't destroy it.

I broke a couple more refinery pieces, but they were minor and considering how I was going about this job, it was a miracle that I didn't wreck any more.

I used a freight car to double check the flange ways. They were clear.

Back Road Plaster 1Back Road Plaster 2Back Road Plaster 3

I'm going to refine the surface a bit more with some tinted spackle, then paint with a darker gray to blend it into the existing road. I also delineated the parking lot at the headquarters building. There too I will be using some spackle to lay down a more road-like surface than the OSB layout sub-base. This road will have a dotted-white dividing line and have LED lampposts lighting the way.

Back Road Plaster 4

I definitely know why I procrastinated on this job. It was distinctly not fun. Plastering is my least favorite model railroading task. Years ago, my now-grown grandsons would have tackled this job.

While I was doing all this, I was printing some more parts to the Hardware House. The extant structure has some very cute octagonal drawer units will all kinds of screws in them. I scanned these with my 3D scanning software in my iPhone 12 Pro and used the scan to draw a reasonably accurate rendition of them. They are mirror twins. I also drew and am printing (as I write all this) the L-shaped checkout counter that also has a zillion drawers in it. Both of these furnishing date back to the 1899 rebuild after the fire.

Here's the scan.

NHH Hardware Kiosks

And here are the pair plus the missing attic vent that I needed to print. Painting those tiny brass knobs will be fun. I really don't know how much of the interior is practical. I have still images of a lot of the walls and some pano shots that could be put in to simulate an interior. If I do that, I'm not sure where the actual 3D parts are going to go. Meanwhile, I have options. If I really wanted to be anal, I could use the variegated coloration of the drawers and really match the real thing.

NHH Kiosks and Vent

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  • Back Road Plaster 1
  • Back Road Plaster 2
  • Back Road Plaster 3
  • Back Road Plaster 4
  • NHH Hardware Kiosks
  • NHH Kiosks and Vent
Last edited by Trainman2001

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