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HMS Empress of India
Well, there is still more to do and the big spring battle at Wade's in New Orleans is approaching fast!
WATER CHANNELING
All ships can benefit from some form of water channeling to direct water back to the bilge pump. I was going to try the new pourable 'self-leveling cement patch' compound like in my son's new Bayern (that construction page will be coming soon), but being a little lighter ship and not wanting to be too low in the water I decided to go back to the old stand-by carved balsa block. I took a piece for each side and carved it to fit the hull contour, leaving a gap in middle to guide water to pump in stern. The channel also serves as a narrow focus so just a little water will raise level quickly and prime the bilge pump.
INTERNAL ARMOR
I then installed the "internal armor" that I made by cutting strips of rubber shower tub liner (avail. from Lowe's or Home Dept) and hanging from the sides of the sub-deck with small brass screws (I love the right-angle attachment of my Dremmel!). [Note: all ships need some form of internal armor to stop the BB's from going through both sides or from damaging internal components. Anything can be used as long as the water from holes made by the BB's can still flow into the rest of the ship - the internal armor may not be used to act as a bulkhead to make the ships unsinkable (would be boring if no one could sink!)]
SHAFT SUPPORT
As you can see from this earlier photo, my installed stuffing tubes containing the drive shafts poke considerably far out from the hull before reaching the props. All of my ships with large props do this (except my small-propped cruiser) and I loose props at battles so often you would think I just toss them in the lake for fun (except my small cruiser which has same props for last 10 years!). Some veteran captains looked at my ships (this club is REAL good about helping each other learn so we all have more fun) informed me that it is probably shaft vibration loosening the props and that I should have been installing stuffing tube support to minimize this.
So in the photo at right you can see that I have bent small brass strip to bend around each of the two driven stuffing tubes and run back flush to the hull, with a small tab bent at each end to support the tub. I carefully drilled the strip and screwed it to the hull (epoxy on screw to seal water-tight) and then used metal epoxy to attach them to the stuffing tube.
RUDDER LINKAGE
On the earlier test runs I discovered that the rudders were not turning over very hard (poor turning), and when they did they had a tendency to continue all the way over and am when the servo tried to straighten them back out. From the advice of another captain who has made one of the sister-ships to this one, I made new rudder-arm linkages from piano wire with the zig-zag bends in them as shown in the photo at left. I can visibly tell that the rudders turn much farther now, and they seem to return to normal now when the servo straightens out, without the 'flipping' and jamming of the rudder that had been occurring. I guess I will find out how these hold up in battle at the Brouhaha on the Bayou this coming weekend.
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