Hi Phil have you looked at the drawings in the Anatomy of the type Vll Uboat book ? Regards Phil

well no its in another but i`ve got both cos in the book i have it shows in drawings all configurations of the gun platforms Phil

What a nice gesture Phil. Very much appreciated mate. I might take you up on that sometime. For the moment though I'm going to ponder awhile. I'm not planning to start that part just yet, but when I do i'll let you know.

I downloaded the instructions for the 1/72 U-Boat from Revell today.

The problem is it doesn't show the angles, only side on views. The rear of the conning tower slopes inwards and that is one of the crucial bits of info I require to make sure mine will be in proportion.

In reality I will have to get the model so I can measure it I 3D.

Kind Regards,
Phil.

Evening Everyone,

Another update on my U230 u-boat build.

The next stage will focus on the conning tower. The reason for this was down to the fact that I wanted to mark out the profile of the tower on the mdf top deck so I could plank around this area.

This, however didn't turn out to be a 5 min job.

I realised that to get the correct profile I would have to build the tower as the Type 4 version with the extra platform. I wasn't going to build the complete tower, but just enough for me to get an idea of the bottom profile.

This proved to be tricky as I was relying on only photos of U995 to guide me. I managed to get so far then realised that without dimensions or a similar model to measure I would never produce an accurate version.

Because of this I will resume the conning tower build sometime soon following more research and the possible purchase of a smaller donor model [1/72 scale].

We'll get there in the end, it's just these take time. I have plenty more to do on this model anyway before I return to the conning tower.

Okay, that's the reasoning, now for some build photos to show how far I progressed.

First up, I cleaned the two halves of the supplied conning tower, removing any flash and mould lines and offered them up to each other. Once satisfied, I super-glued the two halves together and filed away any join lines to produce a smooth surface.

From there I tried a test fit of the supplied mdf profile piece that would fit into the bottom of the tower. This profiled piece was slightly too small so I glued a band of 0.5mm thick plastic strip around it's outer edge; it then fitted like a dream, just holding itself in place without gluing. Just the way I like it.

I then removed this piece and drew a centre line down it, marking out then drilling two spaced pilot holes at 0.5mm diameter. The small drill size allows me to get better accuracy rather than drill straight through with a larger drill.

Once happy with the 0.5mm holes, I replaced this profiled piece back into the bottom of the tower and lined the whole assembly up on the top deck. Using the 0.5mm diameter holes I could mark out their position on the top deck. I then removed the conning tower and drilled through the top deck with 0.5mm dill bit in a pin vice followed by a 2.0mm drill. The reason was that I wanted to fit brass dowels to the tower so that I could work on it separately in the future knowing that it would always locate correctly on the top deck when it comes to fixing it.

I also used a small off-cut of laminate flooring as a temporary display stand for the conning tower. The same procedure followed as per the top deck, marking out the pilot holes using the profiled piece in the tower then drilling through with a 2mm drill bit to except 2mm brass rod. The advantage of this is that the tower remains flat even though it has two brass dowels protruding from the bottom.

The attached photo shows the brass rod being worked into the 2mm hole on the top deck, making sure that the fit wasn't too tight.

In this photo you can see the mdf profile piece lying next to the off-cut laminate i'm using as a temporary stand for the conning tower. The two 2mm brass holes have been drilled through on the laminate to except the brass dowels and the mdf profiled piece has the holes ready.

This photo shows the 2mm brass dowels fixed in place on the profiled mdf piece. At this stage the mdf was also glued and fixed into the bottom of the conning tower.

This photo shows the tower in place on the laminate stand, the dowels holding it in the correct position.

This picture shows the conning tower in place on the top deck.

The attached photo shows the start of the marking out on the top deck of the modified conning tower profile. Getting all those compound curves to line up with a nice, smooth flow involved a good old dig around in the food cupboard for jars and glasses.

I think I used a half pint glass and a jar of mint sauce to form the curves.

This photo shows the plastic profile cut out.