Touching Up

The last week has been pretty productive.  I've spent it finishing off a lot of little things I started but then found something more interesting to do.  The first thing I did was put all the rest of the bolts in the base of the sub and start cleaning the steel around the water inlets / outlets and seal them up with Sikaflex-291 (the marine grade stuff).

The sealing begins.  I mainly wanted the Sikaflex around the welds where the metal joined the hull of the sub because they were big welds that had a little bit of rust around them, which caused small areas to be a little dodgy in their sealing capabilities.  I cleaned it as best I could, but this was one of the things that I had started then left whilst I did other things.  I've since made a rule - if I can't finish it, don't start it.  We'll see how long that last though...

27/01/2015

Here I'm starting to get the rest of the bolts in, these three didn't go in as accurate as I would have liked, but they'll still do their job just fine.  They ever so slightly tilt towards the left of the sub (when it's upright, right now it's tilting away from the camera).

27/01/2015

After about 48 hours the Sikaflex had hardened enough to put some undercoat on it.

28/01/2015

Seeing as the first few bolts weren't lining up the way I liked, I borrowed a piece of 10 mm thick angle bar from Dad to run the length of the sub between the first and last bolts so that everything else would line up perfectly.  There is still a slight tilt to the subs left, but that can't be changed now.

28/01/2015

I moved the angle bar up so I could properly weld around the base of each bolt.

28/01/2015

Here I rolled the sub around with the angle bar still attached (it was hard by the way, with that bar attached the sub was extremely heavy) so that I could weld the heads of the bolts inside with out letting the welds twist the bolts in any way.  The end result was pretty good.

28/01/2015

And here is the base for the ballast release system made from an old blade from a mill.  It's about 16 mm thick and made from high tensile steel.  After drawing the rough outline and drilling a hole in its center, I cut it out with the angle grinder and ground it to a basic circle ready to turn up in the lathe.

28/01/2015

In the lathe and boring the center for the nylon seal.

29/01/2015

The result, though I've still got to drill and tap some holes in it for the aluminium housing to bolt onto.

29/01/2015

The underside that'll be exposed to the water.

29/01/2015

Ballast Release System #1

I've started work on the ballast release mechanism, turning up the bearing housing out of aluminium and the seal made from oil impregnated nylon.
Below is the finished nylon seal.  The center has a tapper over the height of the seal so that shaft doesn't get pulled through the sub.

24/01/2015

The bearing housing along with the roller bearing (bought from china) and the nylon seal.
The aluminium housing needs bolt holes drilled into it yet so that it can bolt to the bottom of the sub.
As the sub goes down the external pressure increases, so with nothing holding the shaft against the nylon seal the pressure may force it up, causing it to leak.  The housing will bolt over the roller bearing and shaft, and as it tightens it'll apply pressure against the nylon seal, stopping it from leaking but still allowing it to turn if needed.

24/01/2015

What it looks like from the top.  The shaft will come through the bearing and a gear will be placed on top.

24/01/2015

A shot from below.  The nylon seal will sit in a hole drilled into the bottom of the sub.

24/01/2015

Basic design (Fig. 9)

Interior Cleanup

Tonight I cleaned up around the forward water connections for the trim tanks, removed all the surface rust with rustbuster and gave it a thick coat of primer.  There's still a few more little things to be welded around the place, namely the brackets for the water pipes, the bolts for the concrete ballast and the tensioning system for the rudder cable.

20/01/2015

20/01/2015

Also I welded in extra support for the rudder pedal bracket and cut out the middle so now the forward pipe sections can be slotted in nicely once the front dome goes on.

Before:

20/01/2015

After:

20/01/2015

Blog Update #1

Check out the updates for the design of the submarine in the link below!

http://thejackalsubmarine.blogspot.com.au/p/gal.html

Work platform upgrade!

Originally the work platform was made out of wood and was sturdy and strong - that is until I decided to put 300 kg of submarine on it; and I was still expecting it to hold up another 600 kg without complaining.  But it was beginning to look a little unhappy so I decided to rebuild the whole thing from scratch, making it from 2 inch square steel.  Also I finally got around to making the whole thing level!  The reason I didn't get around to leveling it off earlier was because the wood structure wasn't rigid enough to be worth it.

Here it is after a the first day.

14/01/2015

Out with the old and in with the new!  The old one had served it's purpose long enough.  I'll begin dismantling it tomorrow and return dads screws...

17/01/2015

Finished and ready for action!  It's a lot easier to work around and is much more stable.  Now it'll take a ton!

17/01/2015

Building : The Work Platform