The Ship Model Forum

This is my first foray into a total subject scratchbuild, i.e. not jut modifying a structure on an existing kit. A number of motivations lie behind this effort, among them interest in WWI, interest in naval warfare and history, the unique subject matter, and kind of an elemental desire to create something from nothing with my hands. Revell’s 1/72 U-boats also stand as a somewhat of an inspiration, I thought it’d be nice to see a WWI counterpart, especially as I very much doubt an injection manufacturer will ever come up with one.

As in WWII, there were several types of u-boats in WWI, and my original plan was to do one of the ocean-going attack boats, indeed I believe the WWII-era Type VII was based on the UB III design of WWI. Alas, finding decent plans is next to impossible, by that I mean I could find plans both online and from retailers that featured quite nice profile and top views, but cross-sections were literally few and far between. That would have left for a lot of guesswork. I thought I could get around this by learning AutoCAD, so I took a night course at the community college, but the course was uneven, and didn’t quite get me to the level of replicating the plans I had, and then manipulating them to fill in the missing sections. I may still return to AutoCAD or a similar package, obviously it’s a terrific tool for the scratchbuilder, but for the moment that route was proving a dead end, and I had the itch to get going. For a while I thought of getting a pad of graph paper, a pair of dividers, a compass, and just come up with something by hand, but that wasn’t all that appealing.

Then in going through my inventory (of course, in the basement) I came across some plans I had acquired so many years ago I couldn’t recall and had just put aside for all that time. I took a look at them, and while they weren’t of the most graceful looking u-boat, they did have one very good advantage, not only decent profile and top views, but a lot of cross-sections as well! Guesswork would be minimized.

The subject is a coastal attack boat of the UB I type. Not the prettiest of designs, but the more I appreciated the relative completeness of the plans, the more attractive it became (on the surface anyway). Its history (served just two days short of a full three years in WWI) can be found here http://uboat.net/wwi/boats/index.html?boat=UB+16 as well as here http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/model ... /SMS_UB_2/, which also provides a description of a build from scratch. Very helpful.

(Sorry for the picture quality, just haven't bothered to invest the time fiddling around with these digital cameras to get the proper settings. Something else on my "to do" list.)







The plans by Wischmeyer, though quite good, are not entirely accurate, the size of the vent holes and the inclusion of deck armament being two errors, this is borne out by reliable pictures found online, so it’s good to have multiple references to catch potential inaccuracies. Originally drawn to 1:32 scale, I had them reduced to 1:72 at the nearby printing shop.

My plan is to use the plank on bulkhead method using the profile of the boat as the central longitudinal spine on which to attach the cross-sections, and then the planks atop that. This to be done in styrene. Fortunately there’s still a decent LHS the next town over, so I got some Evergreen sheets in .010, .020, .030, and .040 sizes, as I wasn’t familiar with working so styrene sheet and the relative flexibility and workability of the different sizes. The fact that I would be working with my hands with various hobby knives and blades also shaped my decision how to approach this. I wanted some degree of rigidity with spine, and figured I could get away with less on the cross-sections, all the while reducing the risk of suffering a deep gash from an errant No. 11 blade skating across a styrene sheet.



The spine is of .030 sheet, which wasn’t all that bad to scribe and cut out given it’s pretty much parallel straight lines. The cross-sections, being circular, I figured might present more a problem scribing and cutting out, so they’re in .020. (Maybe a scroll saw will be a gift to myself for Xmas, to allow for working with thicker sheets, even wood.) Needless to say, there’s still considerable flex in “the skeleton” at this point, but I figure (I’m praying) that the planking will stiffen things up considerably, and I haven’t needed any bandages or sutures (yet).



So that's where things presently stand. Next step is to take care of (what I hope are) minor alignment problems, then commence with the planking using .010 styrene, all the while hoping that this rough-hewn effort will result in something presentable at some future commissioning date.

I've been fiddling with the pictures to see if I can get them to display larger, but can't seem to figure out how to do that without inserting a HUMUNGOUS one and violating the picture size restriction. In any event, should you care to look at them in a little better detail, just clicking them will result in something a bit bigger, but you may have reorient them.

That's a pretty cool project!

For the pictures you might use an external upload service like Photobucket and then link them in here. That's the easiest way to get the pictures in line in decent size in your posts. Although at this moment your pics are properly sized when you enlarge them as well. The rotation thing isn't such a big issue for me (as long as you keep it interesting ).

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The merchant shipyard

Thanks for the tip on how to put the pictures up; in the meantime, glad to see they're acceptable. Endeavoring to keep this project interesting, right now going through the rather tedious process of planking it up.