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[ballastanksian]

Your work on the railings is great Geoff. I think they really make the difference espcaially when neatly done. The use of tape for the dodgers initially worried me but then when I thought about it, once the adhesive dries (perishes) it will not be evilly sticky and nasty, so if cafreful, you should be able to re glue them in place and touch up any damage with paint

Your idea of using a cone at the muzzle is also interesting as it should recreate the effect a muzzle break has in dispersing fumes. Perhaps a pepper pot muzzle brake might help diffuse your vapour with a cone added to help manoevre the vapour?





 

[Geoff]

I'm hoping that the paint will also act as a kind of glue and keep all together as its not structual in any way. Nothing further to report at the moment as other stuff intrudes!

I think the next steps will be to start working on the turret turning mechanism whilst I'm sorting out the wood for the deck. I can always build other bits but really want to build in some kind of logical order.

I also have to start on building the gun fire system to validate the whole thing! or not as the case may be!

Cheers

Geoff

[ballastanksian]

How ever you do it, I am sure it will be an interesting journey Geoff.

[ballastanksian]

How are things going Geoff? I hope you have had the opportunity to get back to some model making?

[Geoff]

Not really much progress to report. I'm still waiting on the deck planks so have been working on the gunfire system. As referenenced before essentially a plastic box with a smoke generator in it with a valve to let the air in and a valve to let the smoke out.
 
Its not working too well, I don't seem to have the balance right yet but I still have a way to go because the pressure is so low any tiny leak has a disproprtionate effect.
 
My idea of using a table tennis ball as a valve works quite well but you do need a powerfull PC fan to make it work. The ball just sits inside a B&Q platic pipe joint as that has an inner lip so the ball just rests on it. I have cut half the circuference of the pipe away and the air flows in and as soon as the fan switches off the ball drops and seals the hole quite nicely.
 
I have ordered some 12v solenoids from Amazon and intend to use them to operate anexit valve then we shall see.
 
No more real work on the ship proper as I need to sort out the deck before I can finalise the turret turning mechanism and then the gunfire system.
 
I'm beginning to wonder where all the batteries will go!
 
Cheers
 
Geoff
 
P.S. I'm off to Wicksteed Park show tomorrow with Canopus (now restored to steam power) and Lord Nelson with a working smoke generator.
 
Hope it doesn't rain!
 

[ballastanksian]

I look forward to seeing images of both from the show Geoff. You cannot beat some pre/semi-dreadnought action:O)

Keep at that smoke system, it sounds remarkable.

[Martin (Admin)]

Video? https://youtu.be/IPssjpkj3wM

[ballastanksian]

That is one pretty ship Geoff. The Lord Nelsons did look more business like than their predecessors. Why we went away from secondary armament in turrets is beyond me.

Thanks for that Martin.

[Geoff]

Actually at the ranges Lord Nelson was designed to fight the 9.2" was part of the main armament and the secondary armament of 12 pounders is all on the flying deck and forward and aft superstructures.
 
As ranges increased more 12" guns were required and eventually 4" and 6" introduced in a battery to get a sufficient number as whilst turrets would have been better they would have weighed more so less guns could be carried.
 
At the time of building destroyers were really quite small so a 12pdr could just stop them but as they got bigger it needed a 4" as a minimum and then a 6".
 
In Dreadnoughts the secondary armamant was designed to destroy the unprotected upper works of ships and hopefully take out some of the enemies secondary armamant.
 
To prevent this the secondary armamant gained armour but whilst this could readily protect from a 4" or 6" hit it was just the thickness needed to burst an armour piercing shell which would otherwise pass right through without detonating! Damed if you do and damed if you don't!
 
All battlesghips had strakes of modest armout up to 6" thick to protect agianst the secondary armamanet and to protect against high explosive main armamant shells which could be kept out with relativley thin armour.
 
The US Nevada class introduced the all or nothing armour concept. Thick to protect the vitals and nothing anywhere else but this did make them vulnerable to main armamant high explosive shells - kind of a soft kill!
 
Interestingly in WW2 when most battleships were all or nothing none of them ever got really tested in action so we will never really know how it would have worked!
 
Cheers
 
Geoff

[ballastanksian]

I fully appreciate your point about the weight of turretted secondary armament would have meant fewer guns, but I have read that so often, the casemated guns were ineffective in a rough sea, and suggest that turretted guns, though fewer in number, would have been more effective.

Still, we have what we have.

[Geoff]

Okay, some work on ID. I have been constructing two smoke generators for the funnels using the mini-foggers. One came from Maplins but when I went to get another they had all sold out so got one from Amazon, same cost £20. The Amazon one is a bit bigger so doesn't fit in the box I had built, typical!
 
Side view is "T" shaped with a plastic tube to contain the fogger with the horizontal being a box to contain the water with a very small PC fan to blow it all out. A cone shaped funnel and tube fit on top to take the smoke up through the funnel.
 
Both work fine and I will try to get some pictures but interestingly the Amazon one produces quite a lot more "smoke" - curious.
 
Current consumption on 24 DC is about 0.5 to 1.0 amp so is very low.
 
Okay so far so good but now the technical question?
 
Where are the real funnel air vents to the boiler rooms? I have found some on the plans each side of the aft funnel but can't find any for the forward funnel - they must exist but I can't see them, any suggestions?
 
Thanks
 
Geoff
 
 

[ballastanksian]

Is it worth selling the maplins one on Ebay and getting another unit from Amazon to match? Either that or keep the former one for another model.

As regards air intakes for the forward boilers, I am afraid I cannot help.

[dreadnought72]

Geoff, here's a late photo of Iron Duke as a gunnery training ship.

That looks like an open vent beside the fore funnel (behind the boats' supports). Are the blocky things between the funnels more vents? Burt's Battleships of World War One gives no clues. But - compared to Dreadnought, which bristles with vents, Iron Duke seems surprisingly lacking.

Andy

[Pondweed]

Okay so far so good but now the technical question?
 
Where are the real funnel air vents to the boiler rooms? I have found some on the plans each side of the aft funnel but can't find any for the forward funnel - they must exist but I can't see them, any suggestions?

They should be around the funnel base. On some ships, the purpose of the lower funnel cap is to keep the weather out of them. On others, there was a plate or cover clipped over them. Roberts drawing in Battlecruisers shows these plates clipped over the vents on Queen Mary in the sketch of the bridge which I believe you have.

The image attached shows Tiger fitting out and shows both the vent openings and the actual cast gratings that went into the square/rectangular openings liad nearby. Instructive image really as you are looking at the air-space that leads down into the boiler rooms in several stages of construction, the gratings are already in the starboard side of the fore funnel.


I have seen hatch openings around the  lower cap on Iron Dukes rear funnel ... can only think the rear funnel had different needs than the fore?

[Pondweed]

Further to the above, the 3 classes of 13.5" battleship [Orions, KGVs & Iron Dukes] all have a pair of these big vents just aft of Q turret. They are above the engineroom so must be vents for that/those compartments.

The 3 boilerrooms for the ID class are under the 2 funnels thus the vents will be above them somewhere on your plan:

[derekwarner]

Guys.....did these Classes of vessels not have pressurised boiler rooms?..........[in inches of water gauge]......Derek

[raflaunches]

Derek


What exactly do you mean?


Do you mean that the actual boiler rooms were pressurised, ie like on modern warships?


or


Do you mean that the boilers were pressurised- because I assume that most steam turbines are pressurised?

[derekwarner]

Nick....certainly the former.........[pressurised atmosphere in older Victorian coal fired ships boiler rooms]....the value was low as it was a water gauge reading...

Can only assume it was to aid combustion.........here is an extract for the US battleship BB35 Texas

"The boiler system was comprised originally of 4 boiler rooms with 14 boilers, of which 8 were superheated.  They were riveted construction and operated at a maximum pressure of 295psi but were tested to 450psi.  Though designed as coal burners, each boiler had 6 oil burners which were used when the ship needed to operate at high speed.  To communicate with other parts of the ship, the four boiler rooms had 13 different voice tubes.  Each boiler room was pressurized by having each boiler matched with a 23,000cfm electric operated blower.  For the crew to enter-exit the room, they had to pass through an air lock. Click on the links in the 1913-1925 section for more details."

....... Derek

[Pondweed]

Guys.....did these Classes of vessels not have pressurised boiler rooms?..........[in inches of water gauge]......Derek

Yes, there was an 'air-lock' on the boileroom which meant it could be pressurised (sealed).

Attached is a section from the 'Anatomy of' book on HMS Dreadnought that describes the subject you raise. I too had always pondered this as any compartment below decks on a warship needs to be seal-able for damage-control purposes... and I was never able to understand how an opening directly under the lower funnel cap could be.

I did go through this with a 'naval author' and I can now see we were talking at cross-purposes and I'd lumped in the airspace, between the hot funnel and the ships structure, in with the BR vents that surrounded it on the ships we discussed. Mea Culpa.

To get back to the original question: I have a plan from a book that shows 3 or 4 raised rectangular boxes between the funnels.

[derekwarner]

Without getting too far off track, & in the absence of documentation for HM Iron Duke, we could assume close boiler design similarities to the US BB35 Texas as Google confirms

HM Iron Duke = Built 1914, 25K tons, 18 coal fired boilers, 29K shaft HP
US Texas BB35 = Built 1914, 27K tons, 14 coal fired boilers, 28K shaft HP

If we were to accept the ~~23K cubic feet of free air/minute for each boiler on BB35, to understand this volume of free air at atmospheric pressure  ....think of a cube of approx. 30 foot...or say 10 meters approximately

In reality, this is not a big number in volume, the limiting factor was the orifice sizing on the exhaust side of the boiler rooms atmospheric vents...so this may explain the lack of visual images here.....mushroom type vents for the discharge would seem logical

However now we see that Pondweed has some documentation from plans  , would be interesting to see what these look like     ....

Derek

[Geoff]

Thank you all for your thoughts. I already had the solution as it turns out because I bought copies of the forecastle deck from Greenwich Maritime museum. Whilst I have not seen any boiler room vents on any ID plans that I have seen, the original plans clearly show vents either side of the forefunnel so I have gone with those. The above picture of ID shows these quite nicely but why they don't appear on any of the general ID plans remains a mystery.
 
progress on the build:
 
1) I have finally built two smoke generators using 4 "fogger" units (two for each funnel) to run on 24 volts. Despite building various plastic boxes in the end because I used two units for each funnel I used a couple of "washing powder" plastic boxes which were more or less just right and being translucent I can easily check on the water level. The smoke output is quite good but only time on the pond will show if I have enough - you can't get too much smoke from a coal powered ship!
 
2) Started work on the decks and laid the margin planks yesterday both at the deck edge and round the superstructure. Took ages especially the curved bits. I tried steaming the planks (Walpaper steam stripper feeding into a plastic tube with both ends sealed, one lightly so the steam could escape but after 20 mins steaming the spruce planks still would not really bend). Cut them out of a solid sheet in the end which I was a lot quicker anyway.
 
3) Cut 5 circles for the turret bases but 1/8" wider to show the planking at the base of the barbett and after the glue had dried just cut out the inner circle which was easy. Have also laid the center plank and am now pondering the next stage.
 
I'll try to get some pictures up.
 
Cheers
 
Geoff

[ballastanksian]

That sounds like a weekend of hard work well rewarded Geoff. Four generators, crikey, it sounds like the real thing as regards multiples of generators and pumps etc:O)

[Geoff]

As an update I have now planked the deck using spruce 1/8" x 1/16" which was obtained through SHG Marine. Given the size of the order it took a while to collect the planks from the same production run to minimise tollerances. The tollerances on all the wood recieved was really very good and well up to spec.
 
The wood was recieved and work started with the margin planks. I tried to steam the wood for 20 mins plus using a walpaper steamer but with poor results so in the end cut out the "S" shapes from a flat sheet.
 
Before starting the planks were stained with a light oak wood die (Coldron) as I was concerned that I could leave invisible glue fingerprints which would only show up later.
 
In terms of planking I started with the king plank on the center line and planked outwards. After much thought I used black electricians tape for the caulking and a graphite pencil for the ends and margin planks. Planking was done in as long a strip as possible to avoid snaking but even so given the layout of ID there was a degree of "fettling" to get it all to fit as even with accuratley cut planks there is always some margin and a very small error shows up over a width of 90 planks!
 
The whole process was actually quite enjoyable once I got into it if a little tedious at times with the small sections between superstructure and turrets.
 
Once completed I used a "Stanley kinife" blade as a scraper to level the deck and this is working very well indeed. I still have some work to do with this.
 
The question now is do I now mark the individual planks into shorter lengths, say 24 ft scale and how. I'm tempted to just use a small sharp pencil or to make a small cut as in practice its only the lenghts that show on a real ship from any distance.
 
Does anyone have a preference or thoughts to this?
 
To jog or not to jog that is the question - I didn't as candidly at 1/96 scale I could see myself still planking in 20 years time! Curiously there is a new book out on Japanese battleships - photographic collection and there is a very clear picture of a predreadnought which shows no jogging! Interesting.
 
I'll try to get some pictures up shortly.
 
Cheers
 
Geoff
 
 
 

[Geoff]

The book was "Japanese Battleships 1897 - 1945" by RA Burt
 
G

[ballastanksian]

I recognise the author's  name. Good news Geoff, I look forward to some photos when the telemetry gods deem it fit to help you to upload photos.

I am sure the Duke looks lovely in spruce.