Posted Wed, 08/04/2010 - 17:34 by Brian
This afternoon Kyle and I made some rudders for Nassau. I decided to make nice looking airfoil shaped rudders out of brass. It turned out to be a lot easier than I expected. Its actually a fair bit easier to make the airfoil rudders than soldering up flat brass rudders. Here are the steps we took when making the rudders.
Posted Wed, 08/04/2010 - 16:05 by Brian
Kyle and I have been going gangbusters on Nassau... but we have not been stopping to take pictures and post articles. I thought I would start correcting that a bit today and show some of our progress. The first part of the week we made removable cross braces for the hull - which also act as a cradle for the CO2 bottle. We also roughed out the two piece deck.
Posted Sun, 07/18/2010 - 20:49 by Brian
This is the first ship I have built since Diana gave me the lathe (don't I have a wonderful wife!?). Instead of using small bits of telescoping tubing I decided to make proper bushings for my propeller shaft assemblies. To make things a little more interesting I decided to make them tight enough for an interference fit so I would not need to glue or solder them.
Posted Sun, 07/18/2010 - 20:21 by Brian
This weekend I spent a lot of time determining what motors would fit where in Nassau. If possible I really want to only run the center propeller. The fast gunners have some experience with this hull shape and tell me that will result in the best maneuverability. Unfortunately only a little 280 motor will fit inline behind the aft turrret - and then only if I move the turret 0.5" out of scale. I doubt that the 280 by itself would be powerful enough so I made a motor mount that places the motor above the propeller shaft instead of inline with it.
Posted Sun, 07/11/2010 - 16:42 by Brian
This weekend I took some time and installed Nassau's stuffing tubes and rudder posts. The trick is to get everything installed with everything lined up. This is the second time I have used this technique and it works well. This post gives an overview of the techique I used and shows pictures of my progress.
Posted Sun, 06/20/2010 - 21:02 by Brian
I've not been good about posting when I am working on Nassau... However, I have been hard at work for the last week or so. Here are some pictures of the not-quite-finished frame for her six turrets. I am designing as I go but these pictures should show the general approach.
Updated June 27 with start of forward servo tray.
Posted Tue, 06/08/2010 - 20:36 by Brian
One of my complaints with my previous three warships is that the vinyl CO2 lines seem to have a way of always getting tangled and pinched. I have started making a nice aluminum frame for Nassau's six turrets and I've been thinking about running hard lines in/on/through it to help organize things. The Clippard fittings are all brass so I started wondering what my options were while avoiding galvanic reactions.
Posted Sun, 06/06/2010 - 17:29 by Brian
Between work, the Maker Faire I've had very little free time for the last two months. I finally got some time this weekend to work on Nassau's cannons. When I last tested them they seemed to be firing a little soft. Additionally, I noticed that at high pressures (120 psi) the rubber seals on my Chinese rotation bearings were blowing out.
Posted Mon, 05/24/2010 - 19:58 by Brian
Once I solved the problem of the larger accumulator's failing (see Cursed Accumulators post) I compared how hard the new 1.5" ID accumulatorshit to the smaller 1.25" ID accumulators. There was very little difference (within margin of error of test). This suggested the problem is a glas flow problem somewhere in the ball valve or upper works. The question is where...
Posted Sat, 04/03/2010 - 10:29 by Brian
I spent some time yesterday testing Nassau's larger (1.5" ID) accumulators... consistently with fantastic failures. I know that the problem is the force of the pressure goes up more than intuition suggests... the extra .25 adds one hundred pounds of force... but I really didn't expect things to go from consistent success to consistent failure so quickly. So I am going to increase the cap depth (glue surface) by 50% and hope that is enough. I have enough thick plastic to make a couple of caps; so it looks like I am going to order more plastic from McMaster-Carr on Monday.