Surface the Boat!

Matt's AutoCad work continues to rapidly flourish. Below are illustrations of his progress in adding "surface" to the wire frame of the Wahoo. Now completed with this process, he's also begun polishing the hull imagery by smoothing its "skin" (shown in the reddish images) -- all handled through the wonder of that intricate, elaborate professional rendering software he's so obviously mastered. (As we've noted among ourselves, he ought to: he does this for a living!) The whole thing just amazes me, lemme tell ya.

Jeff Porteous

A Salvo of Stern Shots

Matt's been busy. Very busy. Here are pictures of his work completing Wahoo's stern areas in AutoCad. He's been firing them off to us like crazy. . . .


Jeff Porteous

Getting Wired

Matt suggests it's time for an update, and he's quite right. Clearly, this is an opportunity for recent pictures to speak for themselves, and they speak volumes.

See, Matt has been making amazing progress picking up ("lofting") measurements and particulars from the clean, accurate and highly detailed official Navy fleetboat plans he and Jeff LaRue glommed onto recently, and entering them into his Autocad computer-assisted design program. As you can see below (in illustrations provided by Matt last week), these measurements have now evolved into an accurate "wire frame" reproduction of Wahoo's eventual hull -- just as had been done with the stern diving planes shown earlier.

It's all a work still in progress, of course, as quickly evidenced by the two-dimensional sail sitting atop the hull. (Its time will come.) But Matt has now further checked in tonight with multiple images of the process of attaching a "surface" to the hull's wire frame rendering -- also still a work in progress. But isn't it magical how a famous WWII fleet submarine is coming to life before your very eyes? And hyper-accurately? How envious the Gato class boat's original designers would've been of all this technological assistance available to us today....

Yes, now we're all getting wired over this project!



Many thanks, Matt!

Jeff Porteous

Making Plans

Daily e-mails between various team members have flown furiously back and forth as progress continues apace. Most have had to do with the finding, creation, duplication or transmission of plans of various aspects of the Wahoo, be they her overall hull contours, fairwater configurations, deck details or armament specifics. Paul, of course, has been instrumental in researching and presenting the history of Wahoo's parade of varying deck gun types and calibers over her short but illustrious career, answering others' questions and eventually supplying the following basic, easy-to-discern layout of the progression of her armament alterations (and looks of her fairwater too):


Meanwhile, many plans and drawings such as the single example below have also been making the rounds, in this specific instance allowing Tom to take up work on the creation of the deck guns -- currently planned as corrected/super-detailed modifications of existing manufactured gun kits in 1/48 scale. No doubt Tom and/or Paul will eventually check in with detailed descriptions of decisions related to and progress made on the specific guns of Wahoo's various war patrols as their development continues. Note that as I understand it, the following image came from an old SubCommittee Report -- the publication still making its resourceful presence known from the vantage point of years of information-packed back issues readily available to submarine modelers and group projects such as this. I'm betting you have plenty on your shelf. If not, you should! (Plug! Plug!)

Also meanwhile, Matt's been logging plenty more hours at his Autocad wizardry, while Jeff LaRue continues to wrestle with Wahoo's very specific deck details, trying to lock down the associated overwhelming minutiae via help from Paul and Matt, for eventual photoetched reproduction.

Lastly, for now, the announcement of yet another, most crucial Wahoo team member: the West Coast's redoubtable Tom Anderson, master submarine model "master" maker, known throughout the hobby for the extreme quality and accuracy of hulls he's produced for sale by others over the many years he's been involved in the engineering of miniatures. Tom has graciously agreed to help out with the CNC machined production of specific parts rendered by Matt and his Autocad work, guaranteeing the parts eventually comprising this kit will be accurate like no others.

Stay tuned for further developments!

Jeff Porteous