Beyond The Sprues

Modelling => Completed GBs => Group and Themed Builds => The Floaty GB June 1 - Aug 31 => Topic started by: Cliffy B on February 22, 2013, 10:46:09 AM

Title: Floaty Inspiration
Post by: Cliffy B on February 22, 2013, 10:46:09 AM
Post your inspirational materials here people.

Try Browsing these two forums for ideas.  If you can't think of something after reading through them then well.... ;D

Model Warships - Whiff Section (You'll find a bunch of my old ideas in there  ;) )
http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewforum.php?f=67 (http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewforum.php?f=67)

Secret Projects - Naval Projects
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/board,23.0.html (http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/board,23.0.html)

Go to your local library and look for Norman Friedman's Illustrated Design History series.  Volumes include Aircraft Carriers, Battleships, Cruisers, Destroyers, Submarines (2 volumes), Small Combatants (PT boats and riverine craft), and Amphibious Vessels.  They are all choked full of line drawings, photos, more info then you ever wanted to know and most importantly design sketches/proposals for never built vessels!!!!  They're a treasure trove of ideas and a scratch builder's dream  8)  Feel free to discuss anything you find in them with me.

Photo sources of real ships:
http://www.navsource.org/ (http://www.navsource.org/)

Russian Navsource
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.navsource.narod.ru%2F&act=url (http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.navsource.narod.ru%2F&act=url)

http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org11-2.htm (http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org11-2.htm)
http://www.navyphotos.co.uk/index2.htm (http://www.navyphotos.co.uk/index2.htm)
http://www.defenceimagery.mod.uk/fotoweb/LandingPage.fwx (http://www.defenceimagery.mod.uk/fotoweb/LandingPage.fwx)
http://www.defenseimagery.mil/index.html (http://www.defenseimagery.mil/index.html)
http://collections.naval.aviation.museum/emuwebdoncoms/pages/doncoms/AdvQuery.php (http://collections.naval.aviation.museum/emuwebdoncoms/pages/doncoms/AdvQuery.php)

Official USN Plans in PDF Form.  A scratch builder's DREAM!!!!
http://www.hnsa.org/doc/plans/index.htm (http://www.hnsa.org/doc/plans/index.htm)
http://www.hnsa.org/doc/boatcat/index.htm (http://www.hnsa.org/doc/boatcat/index.htm)
http://www.hnsa.org/doc/index.htm (http://www.hnsa.org/doc/index.htm)

http://www.navweaps.com/ (http://www.navweaps.com/)

Official USN Spring Style Design Books #1 (1919-1925) and #3 (1939-1944).  Ever wonder how ships were designed?  A Whiffer's/scratch builder's paradise!  Did I mention they're all high-res  8)
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/albums/s584.htm (http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/albums/s584.htm)
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/albums/s511.htm (http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/albums/s511.htm)

I'm always available to bounce ideas off of as well.  Ships are my passion and area of interest so fire away!

-Mike
Title: Re: Floaty Inspiration
Post by: raafif on February 24, 2013, 09:38:04 AM
subs ?

(http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s34/hobgrot/Tsub.jpg)
Title: Re: Floaty Inspiration
Post by: father ennis on February 25, 2013, 05:13:49 PM
I'd like to encourage everyone to think outside the box on this one and use some imagination. Personally,I'm going to build something I got the parts for back in the 80's as left overs from a friend's build. I just didn't have a workable way to do what I wanted. Or maybe I couldn't decide just what I wanted. I forget now ...   Anyway, let's see what ideas you guys can come up with. Don't know forsure yet but a prize or something might be in the offering ...   I must admit that I'm a lot better at buying ship models than I am at building and finishing one. But I'm going to give it a try.
Title: Re: Floaty Inspiration
Post by: kitnut617 on March 01, 2013, 10:06:33 PM
How about putting some floats of something big, like this ---
Title: Re: Floaty Inspiration
Post by: Cliffy B on March 02, 2013, 12:02:56 AM
Still love that bird Kit!  Put floats on the Space Shuttle or turn it into a Sea Master/Sea Dart conversion  :o
Title: Re: Floaty Inspiration
Post by: Cliffy B on March 03, 2013, 10:49:58 AM
Frank Tinsley concept for a submarine aircraft carrier  8)
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=2504.0;attach=184698;image (http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=2504.0;attach=184698;image)

Via Secret Projects.
Title: Re: Floaty Inspiration
Post by: jcf on March 06, 2013, 07:13:14 AM
Kipling's 'bat-boats' of the year 2000, appeared in articles and ads from a 'magazine of the future' that accompanied With the Night Mail when it was published in 1905:
(http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff1/ad6.gif)

"Bat-Boat Racing

The scandals of the past few years have at last moved the yachting world to concerted action in regard to 'bat' boat racing.

We have been treated to the spectacle of what are practically keeled racing-planes driven a clear five foot or more above the water, and only eased down to touch their so-called 'native element' as they near the line. Judges and starters have been conveniently blind to this absurdity, but the public demonstration off St Catherine's Light at the Autumn Regattas has borne ample, if tardy, fruit. In future the 'bat' is to be a boat, and the long-unheeded demand of the true sportsman for 'no daylight under mid-keel in smooth water' is in a fair way to be conceded. The new rule severely restricts plane area and lift alike. The gas compartments are permitted both fore and aft, as in the old type, but the water-ballast central tank is rendered obligatory. These things work, if not for perfection, at least for the evolution of a sane and wholesome water-borne cruiser. The type of rudder is unaffected by the new rules, so we may expect to see the Long-Davidson make (the patent on which has just expired) come largely into use hence forward, though the strain on the stern post in turning at speeds over forty miles an hour is admittedly very severe. But bat-boat racing has a great future before it."

The whole story of a world dominated by massive dirigibles and accompanying material here:
http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff1/night.htm (http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff1/night.htm)


Title: Re: Floaty Inspiration
Post by: Dr. YoKai on March 08, 2013, 11:46:19 PM
I'll see your bat boat and raise you "Hovercraft, transport of the Future!

Practical Mechanics cover 1961 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/gems_from_the_collection/423506462/#in/set-72157600000117243)


 This is from a Flickr gallery of Ron Turner, an English cover artist of the 'fifties. Apparently largely forgotten today, I've liked his work ever since I stumbled across it a few years ago.
Title: Re: Floaty Inspiration
Post by: Daryl J. on March 09, 2013, 05:16:42 AM
Deep water marine research vehicle Hippocampus.   
Slow speed, large ventral cargo bay, quiet operation. 

To be built to 1/35 scale

(http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w293/DentistDaryl/IMG_0005.jpg)

Title: Re: Floaty Inspiration
Post by: GTX_Admin on March 09, 2013, 06:19:19 AM
Retro-Stealth?

(http://www.handcraftedmodelships.com/images/uploads/image/css_virginia_underway.jpg)
Title: Re: Floaty Inspiration
Post by: arkon on March 09, 2013, 08:10:04 AM
 ;D ;D
Title: Re: Floaty Inspiration
Post by: AGRA on March 26, 2013, 09:36:06 PM
Aquatic words of inspiration:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-know-why-the-mounted-fish-sings,11223/ (http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-know-why-the-mounted-fish-sings,11223/)

I Know Why The Mounted Fish Sings

Commentary• sports• Opinion• animals• technology• ISSUE 42•18• May 3, 2006

By Manny Angelo

Consider, gentles, the marvel which Fate and father-in-law have seen fit to provide us: wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, a 14-inch bass fish, large of the mouth, fixed and fitted to a rough-hewn board. Yet no fish of mere mortal flesh is this, but a largemouth bass whose heart (larger still!) is cunningly and fearfully in far-away Taiwan of solder and silicon made. A faux-finned freshwater Figaro is he, who though his earthly body remain firmly to its mount affixed, looses such soaring song to prod one's very soul to climb ever upwards. So why, at the merest whim of thee or me, is this die-cast dweller in the murky depths transformed into befinned baritone?

And well may you ask me why, against all sense, a fish imprisoned upon a board may sing. And what's more, no true fish indeed, but a fish of plastic mounted on a board of the same cold synthetic made—how can it then give throat to song? To you incredulous questioners, I say you need but look within the very heart of the fish, and at the battery-operated marvel that is its prerecorded song chip and tiny piezoelectric speaker.

For who's to say that a fish, though mounted, should not sing? Certainly not the oracles and near-divines at Mid-American Novelty, those brave worthies who know no bounds of vision nor of heart, who have such wonders made as Mr. Big-Mouth Bass—not so much a mockery of piscine flash and Pagan revelry as a marriage of the same. And through the judicious, ingenious use of transistor and diode, of mechanical actuator and alkaline battery, have they given their fever-dreams of singing fish a blessed life—a life which, while apart from ours, should in our little lives play its part. And for but a penny less than a score of dollars, who could, by right, say no?

Not I. For even absent a glance into the heart of this noble if simulated scion of wave and water, my own heart leaps up—much as the scaly thing itself feigns to leap from its very board while its electric gills blow to life the Oak Ridge Boys' bumptious ballad "Elvira." For indeed, when this mounted fish sees fit to sing it, my heart is, indeed, afire. Not for the lovely lady in the lyrics, but for the brushless dipole motor which motivates the mounted fish to turn its head and bend its gaze to look right at me.

No—to look right inside me. To look into my soul. And to tell me that, in a world where a fish can sing, there is nothing that I myself could not do, were I only fitted with the proper printed circuit boards, the exact right lengths of pure copper wires, the correct voltage and wattage of battery. The mounted fish stands in joyously less-than-mute testimony that, though there be nothing new under the sun, engineering clever and true may provide us with wondrous novelties.

So ask not for whom the mounted fish sings—it sings for the one who pushes the little red button.