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Deric, I know it must be irresistible when you
get a tank like that for free to want to turn it into a sub, but I’d urge
you to design first and get the steel later, or even better to go from existing
plans. Believe me, although an empty looks like an almost-complete sub, the
cost of the steel is nothing in the big picture of things. Say for instance you
decided one foot less diameter would do, you’d literally save tons of
displacement. The savings in terms of everything else by that change alone
would probably exceed the cost of buying a tank new. And then there’s the
question of whether the tank is of known and appropriate material, appropriate
wall thickness, whether at some time in its life it was overheated, etc. I have
seen this done, since Greg Cottrell’s 3-person sub was made from a WWII
era tank that he got for free. It must be particularly satisfying to literally
turn someone else’s junk into a gleaming new sub. But in retrospect, you’ll
be in the water years earlier and for much less money if you build say a K boat
to plans and order new steel, than if you have to design a whole sub from
scratch just to reuse an existing tank. Just my 2 cents after spending years
figuring out all the stuff related to a custom design. I certainly don’t
mean to put you off building a sub, but if I were to do it again I would
definitely do the first one from someone else’s plans, even though I’m
an engineer by training. Thanks, Alec -----Original Message----- I guess it's my turn , I never thought this day would
come a friend of mine was cutting up some scrap iron from his fab yard and he
was just about ready to lay waste to a beautiful 4' x 12' tank in perfect
condition and of course I asked if I could have it. Well I have the tank now
but I have a problem all of this seemed so easy when it was dream, now that its
all real I am stuck on stupid, So can someone point me in the right direction
until I get over the shock that I have started to build my own sub. from what I
understand you take the dia 4' squared x .7854 x L
L=12' = 150.7968 CF x 62.4 lbs =
9409.72032 llbs of water displacement -- 2.500 lbs this is how much the
tank weigh = 7088lbs and this would be the weight that I would have to meet
in order for the sub to sink ? Do you Yahoo!? |