In July of 2006, I decided, for whatever reason (I think insanity), that I wanted to upgrade the hull of my Nautilus. The original hull casting had quite a bit of detail that did not pull well, and many of the thousands of rivets were plagued with bubbles. After seeing my Total Immersions hull, and falling in love with the look of the overlapping plates, I decided to completely re-skin the model with styrene.

The following page will outline the cosmetic and technical upgrades that I'll be putting into the model over the next while.

July 21st, 2006: I have, at this point, put approximately 4 to 5 hrs into the renovation. I have complete approximately 15% of the reskinning, so to do the rest should put my total labor in at 30 hours total. The rivets are embossed onto styrene sheet, each piece of which is representative of one of the plates of the Nautilus hull. The rivets are created by putting a piece of brass rod in my drill press and then pushing it into the styrene and into a receiving block on the lower side. In this manner, I can create perfectly uniform rivets and also strictly control the spacing and look. Each plate, at this point, takes me approximately 2 to three minutes to measure, cut, emboss and mount.

August 7th , 2006: I have now got about 10 hours into the refit, and its taking longer than I thought. The intricate areas such as the salon window bezels and wheelhouse took much longer than I anticipated, however I have made good progress and am very happy with the look.

As you can see in the sixth photo, I messed up on the symmetry of the alligator eyes when I redid them. I'll have to redo the interior panel to get it back again. That's what you get when you do a four-hour work session with no breaks... Oh well. It will come, in time.

August 14th , 2006: I have just returned from the Pacific NW Regatta. I only completed 50% of the top of the hull, but I ran out of time and just threw some paint on the model for the show. It actually turned out pretty good for a "hack job". Just for yourself and be sure to check out the NW Regatta page for more sub photos:

These three photos are taken to show the interior of the sub without the WTC in place. It shows you the floatation foam along the sides of the hull and the direct drive linkage to the prop:

These photos were taken at the Regatta. The sunlight really does nice things to the rust paint job that I hastily applied (about one hour's worth of effort as time was extremely short):

August 17th , 2006: I have received a few requests for more detailed photos of the plating effect, so I shot these photos last night. Enjoy: