Re: Making viewports (was: Visibility / Safety or Safety / Visibility ?)

["Marsee Skidmore" <heyred@email.msn.com>]

So, how do they make precise hemispherical forms?

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Nuytten <72020.572@compuserve.com>
To: INTERNET:personal_submersibles@psubs.org
<personal_submersibles@psubs.org>
Date: Tuesday, February 23, 1999 9:18 PM
Subject: Making viewports (was: Visibility / Safety or Safety / Visibility
?)


>Hi. Mike!
>        Just for your info . .the hexagonal acrylic segments used to make
>hull spheres were not hexes. .they were pentagons. I have a half dozen
>pieces of the type used for 'NEMO' and the original 'SEALINK' . They are
>cast dished and then sawn to oversize pentagons, then milled to final
>tolerance. Jerry Stachiw once described to me how they were positioned a
>fixed distance apart and then the interstice filled with an acrylic gel and
>allowed to polymerize - unbelievablely elaborate ( in light of today's cast
>hemis') One of the guys who first figured out how to cast monolithic, huge,
>acrylic  sections is an artist/sculptor - George Beasley- he wanted to make
>big transparent sculptures and figured out an ingenious way to do it . .his
>commercial company was Polymer Engineering Inc. - he eventually wound up
>giving his process to Reynolds and Taylor ( SF) I met him because of his
>interest in Northwest Coast Indian art - monumental carvings, etc. and I
>had written a book about it . .imagine my suprise when he said, over
>supper, " I developed the process that R & T used to make the hulls for
>your "DEEPROVER" . .small world!!
>        I saved the large acrylic segments to use as one of the many
>displays in a new museum called th 'Deep Foundation' - it is important to
>show some of the pioneering efforts, I think. They will mount next to a 72"
>OD X 5" thick, highly polished hemi ( one that we used to make the sub
>"Flatbed" in the James Cameron flick "ABYSS") to show the progress in this
>area.
>
>regards
>Phil Nuytten
>