I’ve learned something over the past several days: whatever skill at soldering I once had — gleaned through lessons from my father and repair schools whilst in the Navy — has all been lost. While soldering these simple connections for this model I cursed a lot, burned even more, and even completely cooked an LED from the inside out. I finally got the wiring and lights hooked up and into the model, but it wasn’t a fun process. I either need to practice this skill, or I need to start buying pre-wired lighting kits.

The setup is simple, though, and that probably saved my sanity Continue reading →

Ten days in Costa Rica and the coldest winter in memory in the north east have slowed my building.  Since I still can’t airbrush a lot (opening the window is NOT an option), I’m still plugging away at other items. I’ve added brass rods through the lower hull that will serve two purposes: to mount the sub to its base, and to provide power into the hull for the lighting.

I also installed the bridge assembly, Continue reading →

Slow progress as of late. Honestly it’s just been too damn cold to do any building, so I’ve been focusing more on writing. I’ve forced myself to eek out a little progress on Nautilus ever few days, though, and since most of it has been in the hack/cut/destroy department, I’ve made a little headway.

I’m definitely lighting the model. I picked up some LED tape, which is exactly what it sounds like: adhesive backed tape with an LED approximately every three-eights of an Continue reading →

Being a swanky science-fiction-enabled underwater craft, the Nautilus has a Victorian lounge with large bay windows. The scale of the sub is in question, as I stated before, and the lounge area really brings this to light: the desk along the wall has sets of books that are quite large compared to the built-in book case contents. I’m telling myself the ones on the desk are log books, and thus larger, and the ones on the wall are paperbacks for casual reading. That doesn’t explain why a writing desk dwarfs a pipe organ, though. In retrospect, I should’ve scratch built a smaller replacement writing desk. Oh well, next build.

In the previous post I showed the brass ceiling beams that went in looking all Continue reading →

The Nautilus from Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” is one of those iconic ships of fiction, up there with the star ship Enterprise and the Millenium Falcon. The Nautilus has been rendered many ways, the most recognizable the Disney version from their movie. This is a new interpretation from artist Greg deSantis, which to me is more in line with the vision in the original novel, and the mid-19th century experimental submarines — especially those of the American Civil War — that Verne would have seen, both in person and depicted in the French press.

The plan with this kit is for a quick build. But, isn’t that always the way at the outset? Several of us in the New Jersey Continue reading →