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Hi guys.
Work on the sub progresses. I started yesterday on my drop weight carriage.
I HAD gone off on a tangent a while back and redesigned the legs/drop weight
style but decided to go with my original design. I don't have the ability
to get pictures up just now, but here's a description......
I'm taking the 24 inch round disk that came from cutting the hatch
ring in, and adding four steel caster wheels to it. It has a 1 inch hole in the
center and its curvature matches exactly the bottom of my sub and the two holes
line up perfectly. This is where the "drop pin" assemble will go.
Next, I'll build a wedge shaped shroud that surrounds the caster disk, with
the triangular points carrying the lead weights. The whole assembly with the
disk, wheels, shroud, and lead weights is attached to the sub with the center
pin. I'll have little brackets that attach the shroud to the hull with bolts, (
for transport ) and these bolts will be removed when I launch, with the
brackets holding the disk/shroud assemble in position but loose enough so
it can't jam up. The whole wheel-carriage/drop-weight assembly is shallow (
about 6 inches tall at the bottom ) with pointed ends so it maximizes
hydrodynamics, and the wheels are two 5 inch steel casters, one on each side,
and two 4 inch casters, one at each point front and rear. The larger wheels on
the sides will allow me to balance the sub on them with the front and back
wheels just clearing the ground, making spinning the sub easy. Kind of like how
one of those Home Depot flat carts balances so it can rock forward or back a
little bit and spin when the cart balances on just the middle wheels.
It'll be nice to get the sub off it's wooden cradle, because it's getting
pretty damn heavy to move around.
With the dome shape ( rather than the K boat tube shape ) I am not able to
just roll it up for easy access to the underside for welding/fabrication and
have been jacking it up and down in it's wooden cradle for access to the
lower hull. That's getting pretty old! Anyway, back to work.....See ya,
Frank D.
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