New Zealand Battle Group NZBG

USS Gearing The USS Gearing is being built by Stuart Calvert. The hull was acquired from Dick Hopper in Auckland New Zealand. Dick is a passionate model ship builder with a range of Royal Navy (RN) ships. He is part of a group who have model ships permanently at Model World at Montery Park in Auckland New Zealand. Construction is still in it's early stages. After having learnt a lot building the USS Artemis from scratch this should be a much better finished ship. Most notable is the sheet styrene superstructure. The windows were cut out first. I cut them out the same as the USS Artemis. 2 inches between centres and 1/4" wide. At the moment they will not be backed with timber to save space on the inside for internals. Also, we of the NZBG expect to be operating only DDs for a while that will only fire low momentum bbs. When there are some larger ships on the water that are firing bigger rounds we will look at upgrading the DDs. The prop shafts were installed next using wooden jigs on the inside and outside of the hull. Rudder posts were installed in a similar way with jigs on the inside only. Pictures of these installed parts will follow soon. The cap rail was installed then 1/4" x 1/4" timber braces were added to keep the beam correct. These will probably be removed when the deck is glued in place. The deck was cut to shape from 5 ply 3mm thick aircraft plywood. A hole for the main superstructure was cut in the deck to allow for the superstructure sides to be recessed into it. This was to avoid having to make the contour of the bottom of the Superstructure side match EXACTLY with the contour of the deck. The superstructure decks were drawn in autoCAD then printed out and glued to 1.5mm styrene. The side profiles were taken directly from the plan profile. These side pieces then had a small straight strip of styrene glued along the length to help keep them rigid. The portholes are holes drilled with a 4mm drill on a drill press.
	First deck of the superstructure with the sides. Note the stiffening pieces glued at 90 degrees to the insides. When this was glued together, internal braces were added every 3" or so to stiffen the sides.
	A shot from the stern with the superstructure stacked up to about the correct height.
	I have finished the bottom level (added the front and back) but do not a pictures yet.
	I'll do the gun tub sides next. I'll either use 0.5mm styrene or brass sheet. Styrene will be easier to glue but brass will hold it shape better. A word of caution. DON'T use sheet styrene for bends. It doesn't hold it's shape and I couldn't get it to bend nicely around sharp corners.
	The origainal place of the motor mounts before I got the dumas dog bones. Note: The lugs glued on the side of the deck by the ends of the shafts. These are for the inner deck to sit on.
	I cut about 3" off the ends of the shafts as the dog bones tolerate a little misalignment - this is the great thing about them. I effectively gained about 1 1/2 inches of usable room in the mian part of the ship.
	For the motor mounts I used a couple of pieces of PVC pipe that happened to be slightly smaller than the motors. This was perfect as after cutting about 160 degrees out of them they clamped around the motors thus holding them in place. Before epoxying them onto the hull I glued them together with CA glue and a piece of balsa between them as a spacer just to keep them approximately aligned. When using PVC pipe for this, make sure that the motors are in the pipe as the epoxy is drying otherwise you might break the epoxy and/or pipe if you try and force them in afterwards. Lightly sand the pipe and hull too as this gives better adheasion.
	0.020 thou brass sheet cut for the gun tubs. I used this thickness brass for all the quad 40mm bofor gun tubs. For the rest of the splinter shields etc... I used 0.8mm Aluminium sheet. I found Aluminiun was much easier to work with as you can score it like styrene sheet and then bend it a few times and it will break. Clean the edges with a needle file... Brass is harder to score through (you have to do a lot of cutitng with brass) and it is much heavier.
	After cutting the strip to size (do some maths for the length and approximate the angles with trig etc...) I. a future installment I'll cover the exact way to do this using a 3D CAD package. You'll really like that! Bend the cut brass around anything that's slightly smaller than the diameter of the gun tub (eleastic and then plastic deformation...) Just make sure that the bottom bends around it parallel to the end of the cylinder or it won't sit flat.
	They were then glues in place with CA glue again. I put a large amount on the inside to help withstand the rigors of battle. The foreward 2 tubs are made from 3 seperate pieces.
	A view from the top. Those Gearing and Sumner buffs out there will notice that I stuffed up the starboard tub a little. I bent the forward and aft sides the wrong way and didn't notice until after I had glued them on. CHECK THEN GLUE!!!
	The almost finished result. The fititngs are from HR (More about them later). The splinter shields for the twin 20mm guns are 0.8mm aluminium as are the director stands. These were just a strip of aluminium sheet (of the correct length) bent around a tube until the ends touched and it looked right. Length of a circle (circumference) = 2 x radius x pi = diameter x pi (pi = 3.14)
	A birds eye view of the same as above. The 20mm platform by the aft stack was lovely to make. Maybe it was the practice doing the rest of the splinter shields but it only about 30 minutes to make. Not counting the time the glue took to dry ;-)
	Detail of the bridge. I used quite thick Sheet styrene for the sides so it would stand up to bb fire. If I were building a detailed scale model then I would have used my favourite aluminium sheet. I still need to make the director for the top
	You can also see here that there is a faint line about 15mm from the outside of the hull. I glued the deck onto the cap rail and hull, making sue not to glue the deck to the beam supports. When the glue was dry I scribed a line 15mm in from the deck edge, then carefully scored along the line with my sharpest blade. After 3 or 4 runs with the blade I could put quite a bit of pressure on it without (much) fear of running out of the scored groove. After about 15 passes with the knife I cut through the deck and then did the other side. I then bevelled the underneath of the removable deck so it would fit nicely. I cut some small lugs from some scrap 3mm plywood and glued them to the underside of the deck edge for the inner deck to sit on. I will then fasten the deck to these with small countersuck stainless steel screws and paint the heads grey.
	Prop shaft braces. Just about to spray the antifouling.The tape over the ends of the shafts is to prevent paint going up the shafts and coating the bearings.
	Off the port bow.
	The setup down aft. The batteries are NI-MH (Nickel Metal Hydride). They are going way down aft as she was down in the bow a little during trials the previous week.
	The 1.5mm styrene sides of the SS have not stood up to the constant handling and battling. The biggest problem was the bottom of the pieces not sticking to the deck with CA glue. These are being replaced with 3mm plywood. The old sides were removed and used as a template for new ones. A couple of light passes along the edge with a craft knife on the plywood and it's easy to score the line deeper and eventually through the ply. These were glued squarely together with lengths of 1/4" x 1/4" timber.
	They were then glued into the deck cut out. The image shows the forward end of the SS. The front facing piece was glued in first (not square to the deck, but horizontally by eye) and left to dry. The 2 angled pieces were cut after measuring the gap. The edges were mitred as well.
	View from the top. The deck of the SS will ber modified so that it can be screwed on to tabs on the uprights to allow easier access to the internals with the deck screwed on. This would allow easy placement of the small, lightweight radio gear above deck level. The other advantage of this is that it stays out of the water for longer in the unlikely event of sinking.
	Stern gun setup. 1/8" hose feeding the guns (with custom made 2 port manifold) from an MJV-2 with approx 1.5 cubic inch accumulator being actuated by an MPA-7. This gives a lot of air flow and the guns fire very hard. The firing mechanism has been built off-centre as the rudder servo and motors are in the middle of the stern. The Receiver battery will be placed on the other side to even the weight distribution.
	A similar system has been made for the forward most turret but with the firing components in the centre of the ship. The SS has also been sealed with resin inside and out. Fully loaded, she now floats on waterline.
	Added some internal bracing to the top of the SS sides as well as the end bracing. The entire wooden part of the SS was coated in West System resin for waterproofing. The external faces of this were sanded and other detail added. The Water Tight Doors (WTDs) were simply made from 0.5mm styrene and the other larger parts from scrap 3mm styrene.
	The top deck of the SS is removable to allow easy access for final placing of the radio gear etc as well as refilling the guns. You can also clearly see that the stern section is removable (see 3 photos up) as well as the small section for the forward turret. This means that the gun will remain fixed (with all plumbing) and the main part of the SS can be removed for maintenance and quick fixes.

Final construction pictures coming soon.

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