A couple days ago I finally got to open my big Seaview. It is a beautiful kit, as everyone who has seen it knows. But like every kit, it is not without its bugs, and since there is a thread of the same name regarding the PL Refit Enterprise, I thought I'd extend the same courtesy to this kit, using my plans for the Seaview, (edit: updated versions including changes made to incorporate data taken from the plans lifted from the 17' when it was in David Merriman's care and which David Merriman says Are accurate) posted here:
http://s1004.photobucket.com/albums/af170/jkirkphotos/Seaview%20Blueprints/
as my reference.

The one thing on the kit that can't be changed is the diameter of the hull, so I used that as my baseline. And with the 2.9" OD hull, the length of the kit scales perfectly with the plans for the length of the 17' miniature. The profile of the nose and the the shape of the front manta fins also match my drawings of the nose of the 17' Seaview almost perfectly.

Note: the nose and manta fins of the 8' miniature are very different from the 17' and do not match the Moebius kit at all. An "accurate" model of the 8' cannot be built w/o extensive surgery.

The sonar domes start in the right place forward but appear to be about 1" too long.

The free flood holes could be opened up.

The sail is correct in height and shape. The sail seems to have moved around from 17' Seaview to 8' Seaview and 4' blueprints. As best as I can tell, the sail location on the Moebius kit is 1.0" too far back. The sail on the model should be moved 1" forward toward the nose.

The missile hatches and the square hinges are too thick and at whole deck piece could be replaced and rebuilt using much thinner styrene for the hatches. The hand holds, fine as they are, are still out of scale and could be replaced with wire, and the missing hand holds could also be added down the center-line of the deck between the missile hatches, and the large berthing hooks for ropes could be added near the sail.

The hatches on the sides of the sail are the wrong size and shape. The angled control panel on the bridge is missing and the well for the radar antenna is the wrong shape for any version. The radar antenna is not thick enough. The running lights appear to be slightly low and too far back on the sail. The front of the base of the sail may be too pointed for the 4 window revision.

The four nose windows are too high up the nose. The bottom of the windows should be just a hair above the bottom of the kit window piece itself. The windows are the right size but possibly the wrong shape. The windows are not flush with the hull and if you weren't concerned about the minor shape problem, you could just glue the clear window pieces into the hull, fill, sand, and cut out proper windows holes and use flat clear for the correct flat windows.

The underside of the nose is not accurate at all. The flying sub hangar had straight sides to allow the doors to operate. To fix this area, the best option is a scratch built FS hangar fitted into the opening on the model, The front and back of the underside reshaped to match the correct curve, and then the bottoms of the manta removed to within about 1" of the edge of the manta and replaced with flat styrene that meets the FS hangar sides squarely, without any curve. This is a tougher fix but actually wasn't that hard. And the Flying Sub can still fit into the bay and the control room can still meet the repositioned windows perfectly. It does all fit as it should!

But the propeller tubes are a disaster. First, they are too large in diameter. On the model, they are approx 1.43 (36.4mm) at their widest. From the blueprints, they should be 1.31 (33.4mm), or .12" 3mm smaller. Second, the sides of the propeller tubes never extend beyond the outside width of the side keels. That is, the outside curve of the propeller tubes extends in a perfectly straight line from the outside of the side keel to almost the end of the tube, when it begins to curve inwards slightly.

This is a huge fix and I'm tackling it by cutting the propeller tubes into approximately 1" lengths and re-gluing with styrene rings to make up for the thickness of the saw cuts with the outside edges making a straight line. Then 4 slices lengthwise without styrene to make up for the saw cuts will bring them to to the right diameter and then a whole lot of putty and sanding.

The horizontal fins on the sides of the tubes have exactly the correct outside profile. But they will have to be removed from the tubes and styrene fins or fillers replace them.

Reshaping the propeller tubes still won't make the back end look right. The taper of the back of the hull is not quite tapered enough. About 1/2 way down the taper, at about 4 1/2" from the back tip of the tail, the model is 2.4" (62.6mm) in diameter. It should be 2.0" (52.6mm). The circumference of the hull at this point is 7.54" and it should be 6.28". That means that in order to get the right shape of the taper at the back of the hull, about 1.25" of circumference should be removed from here. It sounds impossible, but it can relatively easily (especially if you have a dremel tool with a saw blade [use extreme, extreme caution and a full face mask if you do!! - been to the hospital once with that one] or even a full-size jigsaw) be done by making 10 cuts lengthwise along the hull from just before the tip to the tail and forward about 10". The cuts are slightly gore-shaped, like the gores on a world globe, only 1/8" wide at their centers and tapering to just the width of the saw blade at each end. You can use those cheap thin metal expanding hose clamps to draw the remaining hull sections together and use gap filling super CA on the seams, back the seams on the inside with thin styrene, and then more putty. That's where I am now. Not a whole lot of time to work on it, but finishing the reshape the tail is the last thing I have to do.

With the scratch built FS hangar and movie style observation nose (both of which I did before I got the kit, thanks to the kind people of this group who supplied me with dimensions) as well as everything else, I've put about 30 hours into the Seaview so far. I expect about 10 more and then I can start painting. Pictures will follow as soon as I get the roll finished and film developed.

What a great kit! What a great size!!

What is this "film" of which you speak?
;)

[QUOTE=starseeker;2436767]Pictures will follow as soon as I get the roll finished and film developed./QUOTE]

What year is it where you are?

Seriously, thanks very much for the detailed breakdown. I look forward to seeing any images you'd care to post, irrespective of the technology used to acquire them.

Is that you Paul?

The front angle of the sail for the 4 window is 60degrees.The angle of the sail for the 8 window is 55 degrees.alexander

And, if they both knew Kevin Bacon, there would be 6 degrees of separation

oh boy... That's what I call reaching.

The sail is correct in height and shape. The sail seems to have moved around from 17' Seaview to 8' Seaview and 4' blueprints. As best as I can tell, the sail location on the Moebius kit is 1.0" too far back. The sail on the model should be moved 1" forward toward the nose.

Can anyone confirm this? As far as 'fixes' go I don't want to perform any surgery minor or major (although I agree and raised the issue over the sonar domes whilst the kit was still in production, it could have been corrected) but if the sail is 1" out this is an easy 'fix' .

Personally, I think if you don't have actual Blueprints/and or rubbings from the 17'2" Miniature Etc.....I would leave well enough alone.

Just"eyeballing" It is NOT the answer.



Just my Opinion.

BP

"Ahhhh, Camelot!, Camelot!....it's only a Model!"
~Money Python

John P: film is a photosensitive substance discovered around the turn of the previous century, thought to capture the souls of those who were photographed. See Night Gallery, Girl With the Hungry Eyes.

From the looks of my workbench right now, I'd say I'm firmly locked into about 1968.

I got a couple of these antique photo things developed at last. Could have sworn I took more pictures. Next roll I'll get caught up.
Now I know that at least half of the people on these groups don't build models at all, they spend hundreds of hours trying to figure out if the TV Enterprise's bridge was offset of faced forward or trying to determine the height in millimeters of the cardboard cutouts in the Jupiter 2 miniature and I know that the vast majority of people here who do build models build them straight out of the box, pop in some photoetch and a light kit and it's good to go. So I guess I'm doing this in case there are even a couple people out there who are interested in making their Seaview look a little more like the one they saw on TV than the one they get in the box. The Moebius Seaview is a beautiful kit, well-engineered and designed to be as easy to build as possible. But making a kit of that size to contain just a couple parts has its drawbacks, too. Detail is simplified and sometimes out of scale, and the parts breakdown means that corrections require some major surgery.

The first thing I wanted to do was make sure the Seaview was the right shape. I've got another thread somewhere of My Seaview Drawings that I worked collecting the data for for, for many years. According to those drawings, Moebius did a great job of capturing the shape and length and the nose profile and the manta fin shape of the 17 foot miniature. It's an almost perfect match with my drawings. The 8' miniature has a different nose shape, different manta outline, and is slightly shorter overall, so choosing which version to make was a no brainer.

First thing I tackled was the Flying Sub bay. Pictures of the prototype kit showed bay doors that were convex in both width and length, which isn't right. In order for the bay doors to open and close, they were dead straight fore to aft. Got some measurements from nice people here and roughed out a new bay even before I got the model. From there it was just a matter of cutting a hole in the bottom of the model and dropping the new bay into place. Almost. More on that later.

The other obvious correction needed was on the back end. The prop tubes are Way too far apart and give the back of the sub a strange appearance. First thing to do: get rid of the keel, remove the Cadillac fins, and cement the rear cone together. Four an one half inches from the tip of the tail of the hull, the Seaview should be 2.0" in diameter. The model is 2.4". (Attachment s1.) I needed to remove 1.25" in circumference, which I did by cutting 8 eight inch slices along the model, from just in front of the tail tip and lengthwise forward. The width of the saw blade plus just a little filing removed enough material for that 1.25". I used a hose clamp plus a couple pieces of plywood with 2" and 1 1/4" holes to pull the gores together. Some Zap Gap and mostly strips of styrene and Tenax filled any of the leftover gaps. (Attachment s2 and s3)

Before you do anything on this model, wash it thoroughly. The larger pieces in particular have a great mold release that doesn't even allow superglue to adhere very well. If possible, roughly sand joints and areas you want to fill to give the adhesives a bit more tooth.

Because I want to open the limber holes, I needed to remove the molded-on decks. Open, the limber holes will need backing and on the Seaview the backing was the top of the round hull.

Moving to the front, once the rough hangar bay had cured in place, I removed the bottoms of the convex manta to with about 1/2" of the outer edges, backed and filled the open space with .040 sheet styrene. (Attach s4 and s5.) Inside the back of the hangar I added some detail to approximate what is seen in footage of the FS launches.

Attach s6: Two things I wanted to fix on the nose. The nose isn't pointed, the hull is round, the flare makes it seem pointed. I think. 99.9% sure. Anyway, it was only a bit of an inch, so I sliced down the front of the nose and made its profile from the top round. Also the windows are too high, and if you want to make a sub that has crash doors, or the possibilit of crash doors, the windows can't be flush with the hull. The kit windows make great plugs, tho. Glued in place, gaps Zapped, and new openings roughed in.

S6: 1/8" styrene rouns fitted in place to make the hull perfectly round and to support the skin that will fill the opening over the top. Yes, that's a little missile bay back there. Just roughing it up to see if I want to be able to look in thru the minisub bay. Decided I don't wat to. Will cement the working inner minisub bay doors in place.
The sonar domes are 1" too long. Sliced them 1/2" either side of their widest point, cut out the rear portions, backed the opening with styrene, and glued the remainder back into place.
The deck detail is too coarse for my liking. I'm building the model from the largest size references down. So I'm trying to incorporate all the detail on the full size sets first, and ignore what it replaces on the smaller miniatures. The 17' has raised detail down the center of the deck instead of the recessed strips of the full-scale set. Probably a lot easier and cheaper for them to build that way. So I threw away the tops of the decks and scratched the recessed details and set them into place. The deck starts 1/2" too far back from the nose of the sub (and that is Really noticeable!) so I lengthened the deck by 1/2". The handholds are way out of scale and there were also handholds down the centerline of the deck, so I removed them all and will replace with wire.
The observation nose has been placed on top of the FS hangar, which has been cut out of the bottom of the model. Why?...

S8: I wasn't going to do this!!! But finally when it was all getting into the right shape that it looked like the Seaview, I couldn't stand the Bird of Prey manta and just randomly cut it into lengths and reshaped it a bit. As you can tell from these photos, I'm not the neatest of workers. I probably could have calculated the cuts and made them straight and neat but I just cut out the FS bay and started ripping. A few touches of Zap to hold them in the curve I wanted, them more filler. This is the filler I use. It's a 2 part, extremely easy to use, $12 for the can, far cheaper and incomparably better than stuff like Squadron. And depending how much hardener you use, you can be sanding in 20 minutes. Which is great, if you're like me and don't have much time for this stuff.

S9: Okay, I hate the Seaview's control room attached to the observation nose set. It makes no sense and I hate it. My favorite obs nose is from the movie (it was somewhat rebuilt and redressed for Season 1) and that is what I'm making. In Deadly Creature Below, when the cons are looking the the plan of the Seaview, you can see that the girders are supposed to continue up above the windows and toward the top of the nose. Which makes sense. Otherwise you have reinforcement going only half way up the structure.

S10: The Seaview is brilliant. The hangar bay fits perfectly under the control room, exactly supports the floor at exactly the right distance below the windows, the upper level catwalk fits perfectly as a third level, and the dead center of the flying sub hatch fits precisely behind the back wall of the observation nose and beside the obs nose's main floor hatch. And there's exactly enough room beside the side walls of the nose to fit in the sliding doors of the FS hangar. I just made these things according to the drawings and plans I had, fully expecting a lot of rebuilding to make everything work. But the movie obs nose fits, allows the Season 2 hangar doors just enough space to work, and you can build a top hatch into FS hangar and it too will just fit. It's like when they were redesigning the ship between seasons, the model makers tried to remain as true to Seaview as they could.

Next roll of film: I start cleaning up some of this mess, sand, fill, skin the top of the hull, straighten out the prop tubes, and reshape the sail.

About 20 hours into it at this point.

I am very happy with mine, just need to find someone to build it for me, whenever i can afford it.

One other detail that should be changed, the fins on the engine tubes are about one-half the width they should be. They should be about as wide as the diameter of the tube itself and probably thicker too, if one wants to match the studio models.

Refer to the pictures of the stern section, on my web site here:

http://cloudster.com/Sets&Vehicles/Seaview/12FootModel.htm

Phil

Thanks! That's something I hadn't noticed. The very next thing I'm going to do is reattach the keel and those fins so your message couldn't be better timed.

The Universal Law of Modeling (at least as it applies to me): as soon as I've finished all this, David Merriman's friend will finally put all his 17' Seaview orthos online for the world to see and it'll all be completely different from what I've done. But I have to admit, I love it: cutting plastic and grafting, the researching, making all these little tiny bits with my own hands that no one will be able to see with the naked eye. I know everyone has their own definition of modeling fun - this is mine. I really could not care less about the finished model. For me, it's all the getting there. And the Seaview is probably my favorite subject of all time, and the Moebius kit is so big, so beautiful, it's just a joy to cut it into little tiny pieces and put together again.

I agree, it has always been "building" the model that is fun for me, not "owning" it. Once it is done, it becomes just another "dust magnet". I enjoy the research too.

Phil

... using my plans for the Seaview posted on another thread as my reference.

Which plans are these? Would you please add a link to the appropriate thread (searching on "Seaview plan" pulls up a kajillion possibilities)? Thanks!

Try this link Paul it might help you out. :thumbsup:

http://www.nimr.org/techno.html

http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?t=219645

For the fun of it, does anybody know what the Seaview's periscope depth was? On some subs it's as much as 60', but I'm wondering if it was ever mentioned on the show. Not that it would have changed from episode to episode...

I'm pretty sure Chip mentioned to Crane in an early 1st season episode they were at periscope depth, then Crane's next line of dialog to Nelson was they were at 50 feet.

Thanks Alec & Starseeker (1 - x),

Those plans are super - glad you found and shared SS!

I'd gotten sucked into other projects after finishing up the Flying Sub Interior and hadn't been looking at Seaview references for a while ... but as of last week I have been again. I diverted from work that's 95% done for this project and I'll be making an announcement on why by Monday (Tuesday at the latest :D ).

Given that you go by AJ-1701 Alec, I think you might be interested in my mostly complete project - I should have that ready for an announcement by the first week of August. (BTW - I figure the "A" is for "Alec", but what does the "J" stand for?)

Flying sub exterior: http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?t=219877
Chariot: http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?t=181293&highlight=chariot

Thanks. 50' it is.

SS3 - Thanks for posting the FS-1 and Seaview!

If you don't mind, I'll try to stitch them together and repost so they'll be available as complete sheets. Might not be able to do it for several days, but I think they'd come in handy for a lot of people.

That would be great! - I've always hated that they're in pieces like that. If I ever get a rainy day and some time, next I'm going to post the Fox 1/24 miniature Spindrift blueprints. It's a huge sheet so I think I'd need to do it in something like 18 - 24 sections. If anyone wants to reassemble these, post them on their own sites, etc, feel free!

That would be great! - I've always hated that they're in pieces like that. If I ever get a rainy day and some time, next I'm going to post the Fox 1/24 miniature Spindrift blueprints. It's a huge sheet so I think I'd need to do it in something like 18 - 24 sections. If anyone wants to reassemble these, post them on their own sites, etc, feel free!


Hey Brother, I would be VERY interested in these.

Are they THE REAL BLUEPRINTS FROM Fox???

BP

I don't know how exactly you'd define that. They are blue, they are printed, I got them in the mail from Fox in 1968. The top 1/3 is scanned and over on SF modeling
http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?t=225365
as I don't know if it's Moebius specific.

While I'm scanning, regarding the Seaview's tail cone shape and the shape of the prop enclosure, from the Fox plan of the 4', which is what I'm using as reference for this area.

Given that you go by AJ-1701 Alec, I think you might be interested in my mostly complete project - I should have that ready for an announcement by the first week of August. (BTW - I figure the "A" is for "Alec", but what does the "J" stand for?)

It's something very creative and secretive... :devil:

Nah it's not really.... :)

its the initial for my middle name... "John" All the males on my mothers side in the last few generations has it some where in thier name. Including my son :p

Back on topic now.

Kudos to you starseeker3 for what your doing. I knew from lots of www research and my own set of blue prints that the kit wasn't 100% accurate but I still love it and applaude those doing such an undertaking. Look forward to more updates :thumbsup:

On the blueprint for the 4', I just noticed that it actually shows periscopes and radar extended. I'm not sure if this is meant to represent maximum extension, but this does look very much in line with photos of other subs that I've been looking at. Maybe I'll max them out here. Totally stuck on how to extend the various bits once they're retracted. Best idea I've come up with so far is some kind of cam attached to the diving planes that actuates a lever, just far enough to push them out of their wells so I can get my fingers on them. Spent more time on the sail so far than any other part of the model. Sigh.

Howdy,
just want to make one comment here if you don't mind..It's great that you possess all these blueprints...I do as well..But, I've learned over all my many years of professional modelmaking that blueprints contain alot of errors in dimensions and details. So for me and my fellow modeling freinds at least, these technical drawings are only a guide, never intended to make the final product... and never reworking a model. This is just my opinion of course..I found this out many years ago with the Nautilus...plans for that Icon aren't even close to being accurate in any way shape or form to the final miniatures used. (just an example, mind you). Please don't be offended by my opinion,but in the interest in doing your Moebius model justice, just FYI to be thought about.
Sincerely,
Will

Very true. Details change from one scale to another, and how the model makers finally end up making the models is something else entirely. The full size sail plan differs from the 4' sail plan, the location of the sail varies in relation to the missile locations on the full size set and to the location on the 17' to the location on the 8' to the location on the 4'. The nose and manta are different shapes between the 8' and the 17'. So many differences all over the place.

But there is some kind of order here. Moebius has captured the 17' perfectly from top, side and cross. On the 17', the Fox model makers didn't try to capture any fine detail, just sturdy representations that would stand up to filming and transport and storage. Thus the 3 raised bumps along the deck between the hatches, where on the full size set those were actually recessed grooves between the hatches. What anyone wants to go with is certainly a matter of individual choice. I'm cherry-picking details from the largest versions and working my way down, trying to stay generally true to the 17". Just nice to know what the designers were thinking when they first came up with their ideas, rather than just adding or leaving bits at random. Which in the FS and minisub bays I've done liberally, too - gone random.

Don't know the Icons Nautilus plans. Copies of Harper Geoff's (sp??) have appeared in numerous magazines, tho, and are widely available. Again, don't know how they match the finished miniature. But as far as plans go, I figure any kind that you can get are perfectly wonderful and the more the better, but just like autographs, never, ever spend money for them unless they can be absolutely authenticated. In the case of autographs, that means seeing the person actually sign their name. In the case of blueprints, I guess that would mean holding them up to the finished product and measuring??

Howdy,
just want to make one comment here if you don't mind..It's great that you possess all these blueprints...I do as well..

PS: If they're sf related and you haven't already, please post them. Whatever subject they are, there are sure to be scores to hundreds of people here who'd love to see them!

point of concern here, you mentioned Icons Nautilus...I meant the Cinematic Icon, the Nautilus, the submarine everyone loves, not the Icons replica :)

my thought on the seaview is that the plans and dims from those that restored the hero sub, were incorporated in the Moebius Seaview model for the final result, "the best" of the 17 footer and the 8 ftr so to speak.....This would make sense since both were used...perhaps....Dave Meriman would know..my knowledge is more on the FS1 :)
Will

I haven't wanted to chime in much yet as I've been involved in my own research project on this subject and didn't want to tip my hat too soon. I have to agree with Will that the plans are only a starting point - it's the actual models that have the details we're truly interested in.

Case in point - the limber holes. They do not match up at all between the two main miniatures or the plans that've been posted. Further, the plans do not show them on raised panels which are plainly there on both the large boats (though, of course, with significant differences between the two).

The Moebius kit is definitely based on the 17' boat.

And now for that research project I mentioned: a large photo-etched enhancement set for the Seaview. I've just finished up design today and should have kits in my hand in about 3 weeks. For the set I've corrected some of the major errors (the above mentioned limber holes) and included new details that can really enhance a build (full-sized set version sail doors, interior seating, etc.)

You can see more at http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?p=2467016#post2467016 or for full details, check out http://www.modeling.paragrafix.com/Pages/Seaview/PhotoEtch.asp

Aaarugh! - nice work! That set is going to make life so much easier. Not for me on this Seaview, but definitely the next one. I've just finished scratch building correct sail hatches. The sail has taken me more time that all of the rest of the Seaview put together but it has also become the focal point of the whole model.

Yes, there are many differences between plans and miniatures and miniatures and miniatures. The limber holes actually slant both directions or can be vertical depending on the miniature and season and the 17' 20 missile version doesn't have the rear ones at all. The 17' has three holes on the floor of the bridge and no bridge compass. The full size bridge set seems to have two periscopes almost side by side, rather than the in-line layout on the plans and the miniatures. On and on.

But your etch set is great to see! Nice work! I'll be following that thread closely. Obviously, we should not be in a hurry to finish our Chariots when they first arrive?

(Edit) Hey, now that I think of it, so I've done my own hatches: the parts for the limber holes will still make opening them up a whole lot easier and give the openings a nice scale thickness, and the handholds will save me ages of bending wire, and etched brass is a lot stronger and will take handling a lot better than wire would. What else have you got on there??? I love the handhold drill guide. That is genius! Your set looks like an absolute essential!

Actually, in defense of using studio drawings, since David Merriman was mentioned, if you go to the excellent Cultman article by Mr. Merriman where he describes building his DeBoer 57", go to part 2 and you'll see that he uses the exact same studio diagram of the sail that I'm using (and have posted bits of) to make a new sail for his model. And tho he had the actual 17' in his possession for more than five years, he chose to use the same "primary document" to fabricate masters for the sail access doors and other details instead of replicating the less detailed ones from the 17'. Really, nothing's "right". It's all a matter of personal preference, and of what's more fun for you to do.

Actually I'm glad you posted that last blueprint of the seaview, so I can add the antennas...

Even David Merriman can make a mistake once in a while. In his Cultman article somewhere he says that he's surprised that none of the masts on the Seaview are streamlined. He shows this same blueprint in his article but he doesn't show the top view. Perhaps he doesn't have the whole sheet? In the top view, you can see that the forward periscope mast is streamlined and the loop antenna mast is teardrop shaped. For both I used 1/16" Evergreen rod as the cores. For the loop I used the smallest and 2nd smallest Evergreen half rounds as the trailing edge and for the periscope I used the 2nd smallest Evergreen half round on both sides, sanding to shape. They all slide into Evergreen tubes (1/4" od) in the sail. In front of the radar mast, the lowest of the 4 details in the diamond shape that is shown to be just a recessed ring, on the full sized set there is actually a mast standing up out of that position. I have no idea what that's about.

Much as I like Merriman's Cultman article, it totally drives me crazy when people talk about going to the "primary references" that they have in their possession but then never show you the references, or do it in a picture so small that no useful details could ever be made out. It's like they're saying "Look at what I have and you don't, ha ha ha." Sigh.

Also drives me crazy when people post attachments upside down. Let me try that again.

It's been a while but I got a few more pictures developed, showing my "progress" through most of August. Most of my time was spent on the sail, as this (and the deck) will be the focal point of the model. The attached show the sail under construction. The diving planes were cut off, their rounded tips pointed up, and they're attached to the sail with a brass rodThe inaccurate hatches were replaced. Opening hatches were made for the bridge and the deck hatch behind the sail. The lower sail hatch was bosed in and the little black bits of plumbing were added to the wall facing the hatch. The various masts were shaped and I used pieces of styrene between Evergreen tube to make sure they stayed square and parallel. A radar dish was made to the proper thickness.
Once the masts are all lowered it would be impossible to pull them out of their wells without damaging them, so behind the wall facing the opening sail hatch is the other opposite opening sail hatch, which opens onto a lever that pulls up and raises the masts enough to get a grip on.
Note: the front diagonal edge of the sail is not a straight line. It's very slightly convex. The front of the sail is too pointed so it was removed, reshaped, and reattached. The back edge of the sail is too rounded, so it was sanded flat and replaced with a strip of styrene that was sanded to a sharp edge.
I inscribed the panel lines on the sail but they're overkill. I like it better without, so they're filled and sanded.
Behind the sail, the opening hatch opens onto the little room shown in the Sky is Falling, an under deck space between the watertight deck hatch and the inner pressure hatch. That's a 3mm LED, so you can see this is pretty much full size. The sail is almost solid with LEDs, wires, levers, floors, ladders, walls, etc.
Each light or pair of lights sometimes runs to a separate 5 or 10K ohm variable resistor. They're hot glued to the bulkheads that the the rest of the round hull will be glued to. With the limber holes along the sides of the deck opened up, you should be able to see the round hull inside.

And I do apologize for the picture quality. It's terrible. And remember, you're looking at work in progress photos. Nothing is sanded, nothing is neat, the model is still in a shocking wreck of a state.
You can barely make out the fake missile tubes attached to the aft hull top. There is one "practical" missile tibe with an opening hatch and a missile modeled after the movie version. On the underside of the deck you can see the under deck supports modeled after the kind they have on Trident subs. The missile tubes and under deck supports and fake aft escape tube are all visible through the open limber holes and make it all look wonderfully complex.
The first light test photos are hugely overexposed. By having all the lights on separate pots, I can control their brightness. The lights are all very, very dim, except for the bottom spots. The same principle that applies to scale color also applied to scale lighting. So many models are so brightly lit that if they were full size they'd be visible from space. The front spot is dimmer than the bottom so that anyone who looks into the obs nose isn't blinded. Yes, lots of light leaks. Nothing's sealed yet. Both the front and back of the FS hangar are backlit by deep red LEDs. The front and back walls of the hangar are .010 styrene, so the light shines through nicely, very close to how it appears on screen, not nearly as overexposed as this.
From the top, you can see the front of the pressure hull hasn't been covered over yet. Red and green LEDs on the sides of the sail, and the 4 lists inside the bridge are fibre optic.
The on off switch for the whole thing is a push button inside the propulsion tubethat will be operated by pushing on the port rudder.
Spent about 20 hours on the FS interior. These pictures are of a dry fitting. Nothing's been sanded or cemented yet. The control panels are screen grabs from Silent Saboteur that I photo-shopped together and shrank and printed. The problem with the FS interior is that the set was about 3 feet deeper (in height) than could fit into the FS. I wanted it to be as deep as possible, which entailed a lot of grinding of the inside surfaces of the FS hull. But a reasonable simulacrum can be made to fit. The floor is black styrene for light blocking and .010 clear styrene over top of that. Since these photos, I've got strips attached to the edges of the girders so that they're T shaped, have put together the ceiling girders, and have boxed in the windows. Lunar Moels FS interior is beautiful, but I think they have the walls framing the windows wrong. I makes more sense, and keeps everything square (the FS walls all angle inward toward the ceiling - nothing's straight or 90 degrees) if the interface is of two different parts, each angled differently. They also have the window side control panels angles 90 degrees off where they should be.
Anyway, it sure looks different than when I opened the box 8 weeks ago. It's gone from a science fiction-ey kind of sleek pretty shape and become what looks more like a really ugly piece of plumbing, which is I guess what a real submarine really is. It's the most modeling fun I've had in years, if not decades.
So that is almost all the crude stuff pretty much taken care of. Now it's time to start in on the fine detailing and get this baby put together.

Holy Cow! That all looks super. I'm especially impressed by the FS interior!

I've replaced a couple of the photos with higher res b&w so that a little more of the detail stands out. The periscopes don't have their clear tops on yet in the photos. You can see the mess I've made of the sail top grinding out it's inside enough to give me room to feed fibre optics to the bridge lights. The bridge and radar wells are scratched. There is a LED under the bridge that lights up the little room (well, all you can really see is the ladder) under the bridge.
The little blue and tan squares in the photo of the hull without its top skin on yet are the pots hot glued to the bulkheads. I'm leaving two sections of the hull open on top, one to access the pots and the battery pack, the one in front of that because I have a nagging suspicion that I'm going to try to put a movie control room in there someday.
On the tail is an open square in the top of the hull so I could access the switch I didn't know I was going to wire in to the propulsion tube. Through it you can see three of the five oval holes on each side of the keel in the bottom of the hull on one of the 8 foots. It was a neat detail I wanted to add. Still have to box them in on the inside before I close up that hole.
It is amazing how a model this size just soaks up the detail. I really don't think one could add too much. Well, the panel lines on the sail... That was too much.
Even more amazing is how much detail the tiny FS can soak up inside. I've added the little shelves inside the diving suit/air tank compartment. Now I'm going to have to add little strips of color to represent diving suits and make little air tanks when I finally start detailing.

Thanks! Some of the detail in the FS interior is a little over thick but its as fine as I could get the plastic and still have something to hold on to. I wanted to make everything on this model myself, no photoetch or resin, just to show that it could be done. The only special tools I used were a pin vise and micro bits, a dremel, and a soldering iron, all of which any modeler should have.
The Chariot, on the other hand... I can see no way around etch and resin for that puppy. I make my own etch using the Pulsar system and it works pretty good, about a 50% success rate, so if you make two frets of each, and have lots of duplicates on each fret, you almost always get what you need. And there is no way I can make all those wheels and tread cleats individually (2 Chariots), so I'm going to cast the parts, I think.

The first is a scan of the top of my FS interior, looking down. It is still just dry fitted and held together with tape. You can see what I meant when I said Lunar may have gotten the interface between the walls and the windows wrong. If you add a small triangular fillet to the wall, you can make bring the end of that piece to vertical, and then the piece running to the window can be vertical and square with the window frame as it probably should be.
The second is a scan of the FS walls. Because everything is three dimensional, there will be some distortion in the scan. But you can see how everything is put together.
Even though the interior isn't tall enough to be scale, with just a little tiny cheat on the ladder, the ladder actually does hook onto the wall beam in its latched and stored position. That was unexpected - occasionally thing do work the way you'd like.
Now I think it's finally time for some sanding and painting.

Holy crap! Wish I could even see things that tiny! LOL!

I wonder if there's any way of re-naming this thread to something like "Still Yet Another 'My Seaview' Build", as that seems to be what it's turned into. I had hopes that it would turn into something like the PL Refit thread of the same name where anyone out there with info on the Seaview miniatures, if they spotted anything that would be of interest to crazy insane detail freaks, would post, but I guess that info just isn't out there. ???

So on with my Still Yet Another Seaview Build:

I realized that, when I was a kid, every Saturday night I'd be in front of the TV watching Voyage and, now, most Saturday nights I manage to get in an hour or two on the Seaview itself. Yes, not a lot getting done very quickly. I see green leaves in the bg of one of these photos, so that means these date from August to early September. Heading off to look for a digital camera today.

The first two photos show the Observation Nose being dry fitted together, so that explains the gaps. In the first attach, tho it's very hard to see, on the far end of the conference table, there IS an ashtray. The figures are altered figures from an ancient Revell Jupiter C kit, I think. They have great detail and all I had to do was make them a little bit smaller to match the size of the Moebius figure standing on the right on the catwalk.

One thing that really slowed me up was a bit of insanity that I couldn't shake for the longest time. Looking through the open hatches on the upper and mid decks of the ON you could see way way down into the inside of the Seaview. At first I had blocked off behind the hatches the way they did in the movie, but I knew I had to build hallways that led back into the ship. It came upon me that if I built hallways, why not build at least the upper deck throughout the ship. The missile room was already roughed in. So I roughed in the decks and stared at it for weeks in horror and finally decided that if this model was ever going to be finished, I had to draw the line somewhere. Now what I'm thinking about is someday building an exploded model of the Seaview's three decks. I hope someone talks some sense into me before I actually start.
So I pulled out the floors and just ran corridors back from the hatches.

Attachment 3 is a photo of the front of the ON with the FS bay attached. You can just barely see the FS in the bay. It attaches by two tiny magnets to a metal ring on the ceiling of the bay. On the right hand side of the photo you can see a wall that matches the contour of the inside of the Moebius hull, with some slight thinning of the hull in the top back corner. That's the curve that the sliding hangar doors follow. I love this angle because it shows how three decks really do fit into the Seaview and don't interfere with each other. Also the back wall of the ON ends just before the center of the FS bay, and the FS top hatch (the white blob in photo 4 that I REALLY have to remember to blacken to block light bleed) so there is room for a mid-deck Flying Sub access room/airlock.

And attachment 4 shows the dry fitting of the hallways. The mid deck hallway follows the angled path shown the 3 deck floor plan from a screen grab from a 3d season ?? episode posted on another thread. The upper deck hall goes straight back from the water tight hatch to an arbitrary bulkhead I put in the model to keep the hull round. I made sure to include the big airvents, as it seems to me that most of the 3d and 4th seasons were set in the air ducts.

The ridged panel sticking up the near side of the nose is the top of the port FS hangar door. It's just a roll top desk roll top in miniature. I went to a fabric store and found a package of two small pieces of finely woven patch material. I cut it 1/2" narrower than the hangar bay doors and superglued .100 Evergreen half round strips to one side. Because I don't know how long the superglue will adhere to either material I Tenaxed a 1/4" .010 strip along the outside edges and sanded it slightly to match the thickness of the fabric. Then I superglued .030 x .040 Evergreen strip on the opposite side of the fabric, each piece centered on the half round opposite. Throughout, to keep everything as perfectly square as I could manage, I used a small machinist's square to align each piece. I made sure to keep the superglue off the 1/4" styrene edge pieces as I didn't want it to interfere with the Tenax weld when I ran the liquid glue along the 1/4" edges. By welding the 1/4" edges into solid plastic sandwiches, they will trap the rest of the door solidly even if the plastic/fabric superglue adhesion starts to fail.

The ,030 x .040 pieces were longer than the door is wide. They were very carefully trimmed to fit snugly into slots on the inside of the hangar bay. Much to my astonishment, the doors work great. From the outside they look like the solid panels of half rounds seen on the miniature. Open, on the inside of the bay the .030 x .040 give the side walls a heavily ridged look that just adds another level of detail to the bay.

Getting the bay to fit inside the model, and the ON to fit inside the rolling doors, and keeping everything square, was very painstaking. There is not a millimeter of space to spare anywhere. But it all fits! The doors work!

Since the photos were taken, the halls were finished and installed, lights for the halls were wired. I replaced the front walls (with the fire extinguishers) in the ON and added the small details (handles on the cupboards, knobs on the TV, etc, but no tea service [have to draw a line somewhere]) and finished the ON.

I pretty much finished the bottom of the sub (added a new more accurate stern keel primarily) and am just about to seal up the top. Despite the horrible look of the filler globbed on the model, it sands really easily and very finely.

So very slow progress but it is progress. I hope. I have to be able to take better pictures of this. The first time I assembled it and turned it on and looked in the windows and peered past the figure on the catwalk down the just barely visible hallway (the ON is very dimly lit and the hallways are regular scale room brightness behind - the contrast in lighting levels works really nicely) the first words I could manage were (Mr. Big's favorite word on Sex and the City): "Abso...lutely Fantastic!" First time I've ever said that. So it MUST be progress.

The Moebius propeller cones are one of the two or three inaccuracies that most effect the look of the model. Out of box they are spaced way too widely apart, giving the back end of the model kind of the look of the back end of an unfixed cat. The attachment below shows the tail view of the oob Moebius kit superimposed on the tail view of Dave Merriman's refurbishment. Admittedly, the angle is a little different, so there will be some distortion. But nothing near to account for the differences. The Merriman is of course, the one with the close, smaller tailcones.

Also attached are two sections of the 4' blueprint, scaled to the Moebius.

The tail cones also flare outboard too far. According to the blueprints of the 4', the outside edge of the prop cones continues in a straight line back from the outside edge of the side/bilge keel.

Even if you don't care to narrow the taper of the Seaview's main hull (see a post way back above), you can still make the back end look a whole lot more like the Seaview by modifying the prop cones. This summer I removed the keel fins and cut each prop cone crosswise into 6 segments. I joined the segments back together again but staggered them as much as I could to try to line the outside edge into a staight a curve as possible while leaving enough plastic on either side of the join for sanding later. As always I use Tenax for a strong join, fill large gaps with strips of styrene and and then CA to fill small gaps.

While that helped to fix the outline problem, the prop tubes are still too large in diameter. Finally, this weekend I made 4 slices in each tube, 1/8" wide at the back and tapering them to just the width of the saw blade near the front. That left me with tubes that looked like one end of a stiff banana peel. I squeezed the pieces together, clamped gently with small hose clamps, glued and filled as above and with some serious sanding (using a drafting circle gauge to keep everything round all along) have straighter edged and proper diameter prop tubes that are spaced properly from from the center line. When I say "proper", I refer to what the blueprints show. Far more importantly, they now look very close to photos of the Seaview miniature. Far, far more importantly, they now look right to the eye. More photos will follow, soon I hope. With luck, they will be of construction finally completed!

Edit: One reason that I trust the 4' blueprints is that almost everything on them that can be measured with a straightedge or calipers is a virtually match for the Moebius kit, with was supposed to be based on measurements of the 17'. Where the Moebius kit doesn't match the blueprints is where contours are involved. Some, like the profile of the nose above the manta fin, are spot on to the shape of the 17'. Others, like the tail cone of the hull, are a little off. Since I had to remove all the tail fins to reshape the tail cone and the prop cones, I went back to the blueprints for the dimensions of the fins. Someone on a previous thread somewhere said he didn't think the tail fins looked quite right. He was right. The tail cone on the kit is a little fat. But if you take the dimensions of the caddy fins from the blueprints below, say at 372' or 384' and the width (from inside edge at the hull to outer edge) of the fin at the same station, you get precisely the width of the fin at that station on the Moebius kit. So the 17' tail fins match these blueprint dimensions perfectly. What is different and effects the shape of the fin is that while the tail cone is the same diameter at the front of the fin and at the back of the fin, the cone from the prints is a little shallower, so that the fins at their middle should be a little close to the center axis of the model, which would make the fins slightly more concave from the side than they are. If you ignore the offset, the kit's measurable dimensions match exactly what they should be from these blueprints. Time and time again the kit's dimensions match exactly these prints, and the prints can also correct errors. Not all the time. There were too many subtle variations between miniatures. But for general use, matches observed phenom and can be used to make predictions.

I should finish off this thread, I suppose, so maybe just a couple more posts. It's been 6 months and a day since I started on this kit. I wanted it to be finished yesterday but...

This is the horrible, horrible, horrible little diving bell that I've been working on for the last three weeks instead.

Everything was going fine. I sanded off the kit hand holds and replaced them with new ones made of .008 guitar string. My smallest drill bit, a #80, is about twice the diameter, so that's why the hand holds have little rounds of filler where they connect.

I used Grandt Line nut/bolt/washers for around the main hatch and their rivets for around the ports. The ring around the top and the hook at the top (way over scale, I know, but as small as practical [for me]) are the leads to a led.

I drilled out the large and small windows and filled them with clear rod. I drilled out the 2 (only 2, not 3) spotlights and ran fibre optic through them. I connected two pieces of fibre optic at angles and they shoot enough light around the bend to make the spots glow.

And I replaced the base of the bell. The legs are supposed to be offset from the front, 45 degrees from where the kit piece keys. Strangely the Moebius prototype got this right.

And added other small detail from wire and stryene.

And I was so happy with this little jewel. It was so cool!

And then I set a Moebius figure next to it.

See, 6 months ago I measured the kit diving bell and noted that it was way too small. And six months later, I'd forgotten that.

According to the blueprints of the diving bell in Colliver's book and various other writings about the bell, all agree it was 8' in diameter. Thats .75" in 1/128 scale. The kit bell is about .55".

I found a close enough for me .71" sphere in one of my 1/24 Gemini kits, cut the windows and hatch from the newly completed and detailed kit bell and shaped and sanded and drilled and re-installed them on the Gemini tank. Made another new and larger base.

Eventually got the whole thing finished. Again. Man, now this really looked great. Cut new fibre optic bases for the spots, installed one, put the other one together, reached for the super glue to put a little tiny dot of thick glue on the end of the second spotlight (the very last thing to add to the bell), picked up the wrong bottle by mistake, and sprayed thin super glue all over the 99.99% complete bell.

Okay, three weeks later and third try looks pretty good. Some of the pieces not quite as crisp as they were first time around, but good enough. Besides, that fine at that scale, I'm worried that paint, especially if I have to do more than one or two coats of yellow, may soften it up anyway.

I only hope re-sizing and detailing the minisub goes a bit smoother.