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THE SAIL
The master of the sail was built from hollowed out ten-pound Modeler's Foam. I get mine from a Pattern Makers supply house
out of Cincinnati, Ohio. The Freeman Company. Look 'em up!
Use Of Model Builder's Foam For The Sail Master
The denser the foam (twenty-pound is heavy and takes surface detail very well)
the tighter its cell structure. Most of the commercially available modeling foams are expanded polyurethane resin, but are of a density (cell size) not familiar to most of us. In comparison, the Styrofoam most of us
have experience with (packaging and insulation, for example) has a very large cell structure. Modeler's foam has a very small, tightly packed cell structure. The tighter the cell structure, the smoother the surfaces
finish achievable. Dense foam is harder to work.
I use ten-pound foam for gross work like the SEAVIEW sail master here. I reserve the denser twenty-pound foam for work whose surface will receive precision
scribing after being worked to shape. These modeling foams are worked with hand and machine tools, just as you would wood and some solid plastics. The prim disadvantage of the ten-pound foam is the need to fill its
rough surface, an operation not required by the denser foams.
A plastic template was lofted off the plan, representing the sail profile. Two metal sheet templates, one for the root of the sail, the other for
the top of the sail, were prepared. A left and right slab of ten-pound foam was cut out on the band saw to the outline of the profile template.
After mixing up some five-minute epoxy and doping it with black
paint the adhesive was then smeared over the face of a blank and the other blank half pressed in place. Making the sail blank this way, with the two pieces forming a black glue line between them, resulted in a blank
with an easily identifiable central plane that could never be obliterated by cutting and sanding. The lines at the blanks leading, trailing, root, and top edges would always reveal themselves as datum lines from
which measurements would be taken.
This black datum line, defining the sail masters longitudinal plane, runs the entire perimeter of the item and assures symmetry as I worked it with saw, knife, file, and
sandpaper.
I glued the upper and lower metal templates to the sail blank. Abrading the master to section (to the edge of the two templates) with files and sandpaper went very quickly. As long as the cutting
did not extend past the edge of the templates I was assured near perfect contouring of the sail master. The only thing to watch as I did this operation was the leading edge of the sail.
Surprisingly, the
leading edge of the sail does not describe a straight line from bridge to deck - it's a slight curve! So, care had to be taken while contouring the front of the sail with the tools to preserve the curve. Other than
that, the forming of the sail went without a hitch.
Of course, the surface of the sail was pitted with all the open cells of the foam, and regardless of sanding would always present a rough surface. So, I
mixed up a substantial amount of Evercoat Spot-Lite filler (available at most automotive refinishing supply houses) and quickly trolled the filler over the surface of the sail master, screeding off the excess with a
putty knife before the filler began to gel and harden. Once hard I carefully sanded the putty to the surface of the master with a sanding block. This effectively filled the previously open cells of the ten-pound
Modeler's foam. The sail master was then receptive to more exacting work.
I proceeded with the other tasks needed to render a well detailed and attractive SEAVIEW sail: Build-up of the sail plane fairings.
Insertion of vacuformed wells atop the sail to represent the radar antenna housing and bridge. Creation and attachment to the sail of four access doors. And scribing of the sails surface to denote deadlights (the
four square shaped windows at the leading edge of the sail) and panel lines.
Sail Plane Fairings
The studio plans were most useful. Back in 1960 the productions Art director had
taken great pains to provide many sectional views on the working drawings of the sail and sail planes. Just to think, he did all that so I would, some forty years later, get the contours just right on my model
SEAVIEW sail master. How thoughtful. (Yet, research reveals that the Art Director's efforts were little appreciated by the Fox miniature builders! ...Who said life is fair?!)
Filling the space between each
sail planes root, each a flat plane, and the curved sides of the sail are projections affixed to the sail called fairings - these interface the lines of the sail to those of the sail plane root and are seen on
'modern' submarines employing sail plane type control surfaces. After making a single sail plane master from twenty-pound foam I drilled a transverse hole in each side of the sail to accept the eighth-inch diameter
sailplane operating shaft. Two plastic sheet sail roots were cut to outline and equipped with a hole to fit the sailplane-operating shaft.
Forming each sail plane/sail fairing went like this: one of the sail
plane root pieces was slid onto the sail masters shaft, the sail inserted into one side of the sail and pushed home until the sheet root piece made contact with the sails surface. The root piece was then glued to
the sail. Plastic gussets were glued between the root piece, fore and aft, and the sailplane removed. I then filled the open voids between root piece and sail with Euro-Soft filler (selected for its long cure time -
needed as this operation had to be done with care. Spot-Lite cures much too quickly for this type work), waited for it to harden, reinstall the sailplane master, and then carefully cut and filed the filler to
continue the lines of the sail plane. Simple!
Damn... I'm good!
Sail Vacuformed Bridge and Antenna Wells
It would have been all but impossible to build into the top of the
SEAVIEW sail master the two deep depressions (I prefer to call them 'wells') that represented the radar antenna cavity and the bridge.
I elected to fabricate these two wells from vacuformed plastic sheet,
and to integrate them with the sail master after almost all structural work on the sail had been accomplished.
A shape (more correctly called a 'plug' when used in this manner) was cut from a suitable
material - wood in this case. The two plugs represented, in negative, the shape of each well. One for the bridge, one for the radar antenna housing.
Vacuforming one-sixteenth-inch thick styrene plastic sheet
over these plugs produced the severely concave wells required. Each well insert piece was trimmed away from its surrounding plastic sheet and inserted into a cutout at the top of the sail master. The seams between
wells and sail top were filled with Spot-Lite and filed smooth.
Sail Access Doors
Set into the sides of the SEAVIEW's sail are four big access doors, all of identical form. To keep
things simple I made one master of the door, made a quick and dirty rubber tool off it, and then cast four resin copies of the door. Each cast resin door was positioned against the side of the sail, a small drop of
thin formula CA adhesive applied to an edge and allowed to run under the door piece to stick it permanently to the sail.
There was no excuse for not getting the exact shape of the door master down right -
the studio drawings were very specific and a check of the video of the movie confirmed the shape. (Obviously, whoever prepared the studio drawing so many years ago adapted a pre-existing watertight door, either an
item in storage somewhere on the Fox lot or found by the Properties people somewhere in town).
Sail Panel Scribing
From my copy of the studio plans I lofted the sail panel lines onto the
surface of my little sail master. I scribed the horizontal lines onto its surface with the aid of a machinist's surface gauge. A hand held scribing tool, guided by a straightedge, was used to cut in the vertical
panel lines.
In the course of cutting in the panel lines I made some bad moves that had to be filled. These corrective chores accomplished by first applying filler to the problem areas and then quickly
re-scribing by hand to clear out filler within engraved lines I wished to maintain. Of course, because of the fillers quick cure rate, I had to work small sections at a time. But the work went quickly - all scribing
and repairs accomplished in one afternoon's work.
A thin sheet of aluminum was cut out to become a deadlight scribing stencil. (A 'deadlight', in navy parlance, is a transparency intended to see out of a
structure or to let light in). There are four deadlights set into the movie version SEAVIEW sail's leading edge, just above the sail planes. Each deadlight was represented by a scribed outline on the sail master. As
I was building the sail to represent the one seen in the 'movie' version of the SEAVIEW, which had deadlights, it would be my job to later obliterate those engraved lines as I modified the sail to reflect that seen
on the FS-1 version - something I forgot to do on this project!
Nuts!... sometimes even I drop the ball.
The gross panel line work out of the way, all panel and deadlight engraved lines were filled
with air-dry touch-up putty and the excess chased out with the hand-held scribing tool or the narrow blade of an old dull razor saw, done with a light touch; just enough to dig the putty out of the engraved lines,
but not to cut any further into the soft ten-pound foam. After the putty dried, the entire surface of the sail master was wet sanded with #400 sandpaper and then primed. Done!
I then built a
mother-mold/glove-mold tool over the sail master and from that produced hollow polyurethane resin pieces.
part 2 continues
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