New project - USS Nautilus

A glance into the living resin & glass fiber hell.......

More concept work.....this time the anchor:

Original:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2549/3953530408_1ebf3b2d4f_z.jpg

CAD:

And on the boat.....

Dr.Schmidt wrote:A glance into the living resin & glass fiber hell.......

I have not worked with fiberglass, is that sand being used? Can you tell me what is happening in this photo?
Thank you!

The procedure to make my moulds is as follows:

You put your pre-form into the sepeartion plane ( if necessary) and then you build these wooden boxes around the pre form. In my case I used plastic coated chipboard for the boxes. Everything is then covered sereveral times with a mould release wax. Then I apply the top coat, wich is a metal filled mould gelcoat (everything blue in the picture a remanents of the gelcoat). Then you let the mould gelcoat set. Next, one laminates about 3 mm of glassfiber into the mould box and fills it with what you called sand (which is pretty close). The sand actually is made of about 2 mm large glass spheres. It's a cheap product called Proaver http://www.poraver.com/en/. It easily mixes with resin, does not need to much of it and then solidifies to a block that can easily be sanded but can take the perssure of screw clamps. Finally you sand the proaver to a flat plane and seal the mould again with about 3 mm of glass fiber. This way you get a closed box wich is very stiff, easy to clean and will stay straight, evene when clamped together.

First tool done....upper half of the bow:

More mould making mayhem

bow - lower half:


bow complete:


deck - main mould:

The last milled pre-forms. The conning tower....



And the rudders:

That's the current status of the design....

Right in time for Christmas I got a big package full of 3D-printed parts:

Propellers - turned out really good, even the profiles. Excellent for only 28 mm diameter.




Stern bulkhead - notice the 7° kink for the tilted prop axis:



deck hatches:


Sail cover, bridge, mast housing and small parts like periscopes:








That's going to be plenty of work to make moulds for all these parts.....

The first mould for the stern section:





Actually it's two moulds, as there will be a service hatch here:





Now I have to take an involuntary break.....I ran out of glass fiber

O.K., the upper half of the stern mould is done as well:

One can already guess from the pictures above....it's going to be tight in the stern section:

Really not much space in the stern section, but just enough to get conventional hook ups in there:

The bow planes are not quite trivial, too. Right now I plan to keep them fixed. The whole alignment will be done with a single bulkhead:

The decks and a few smaller parts are going to be photo etched. Hell of a work to draw all that.....

Small update. The moulds for the hull are done and only minor adjustments have to be added. The moulds for the sail will be ready by end of the week...hopefully. And to avoid boredom, I've started to fabricate the silicone moulds for the smaller pieces. All cast in PU resin:


top of the sail, mast support, bridge, sonar dome, hatches etc.



Hatches:


And again the lid of the sail:

Well, the moulds for the sail....done.

O.K., getting the first parts out of the new moulds. The sail is laminated and in its vaccum sack.

The design is getting close to finalization as well.....

The first sail is out of the mould. Not that bad and the resin-cast cover fits quite perfectly:





The moulds for the aft control planes are ready as well:

The bow:

Got the stern section out of the mould....

Design is finished. With a bit of luck I'll have some photos of the real mdel (raw assembly) by Saturday.