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- Barham 2 -

 

HMS Barham 2 – Tyler

5.5 units, 26 seconds, British Dreadnaught battleship

 

The Queen Elizabeth class (Barham, Warspite, Queen Elizabeth, Malaya, Valiant) is the best or second best ship in the hobby.  The only downside is 26 second speed. It otherwise has good beam, weight, size, usable turret locations, dual rudders and 4 shafts, firepower. Ralph Coles built a beautiful fiberglass hull of the slab sided variant of the Valiant. The real life ships had a long life span and were heavily modified throughout their service history. For the purpose of our hobby, the heavily casemated version is the best version and I modified the hull back a generation or two by building the casemates out of wood and cutting out parts of the fiberglass. I had previously built this ship and wanted to build a second for my son. As such, I had the ability to copy what worked and modify what should be improved.

 

 

Since this is a copy of an existing highly function ship, I took direct measurements from the Barham 1, used the same plan set, and directly copied my methods as much as possible.

 

 

 

 

The deck was cut by tracing the paper plan directly on to a piece of wood with the centerline drawn.

 

 

 

 

To keep it as symmetrical as possible I flipped the plans rather than cutting out both sides.

 

 

The deck was penciled in. I got the wise idea to tack glue the subdeck section to the deck and cut them out as one. It worked fairly well.

 

 

 

The two pieces of wood tended to slide a bit, I had to use glue, clamps, and painters tape to keep it steady as I cut.

 

 

 

 

 

The deck and sub deck were separated and the subdeck was marked for cutting out the interior portions.

 

 

 

 

 

It is best to drill holes at the turns to make the scroll saw not over-cut. I usually tape the under side to make ripping of the wood less problematic when cutting across the grain.

 

 

 

 

 

After the sub deck was cut I glued pieces to the bottom side to build the height up above the lower part of the casemates. Since the total deck thickness can only be 1/4 inch in this part of the ship I could have used a 1/8 inch deck and 1/8 inch subdeck, however I used a 1/4 inch subdeck and sanded back to 1/8 inch along the outer edge in order to be legal.

 

 

 

 

 

Wider angle picture showing the pieces being glued into place.

 

 

 

 

 

This picture skips forward several steps. You can see the casemate level deck was glued on to the bottom of the assemply. The stern deck portion was completed in a very similar fashion. The outer edge of the deck/subdeck/casemate deck assembly was sanded to fit within the fiberglass hull at the appropriate width (you need to be sure to measure often as the fiberglass hull can deform/stretch/collapse to some degree making just tracing the hull alone at times an incorrect width, be sure to measure frequently throughout this process. It is also notable that I used pencil to draw on deckplankigns because they look pretty.

 

 

 

 

Here is the assembly wedged into the hull.

 

 

 

 

This is with the decks on and sitting next to her sister.

 

 

 

 

When gluing in the deck/subdeck assembly I like to try to keep things as flush as possible by clamping stright edges on. I used the same method for the bow portion.

 

 

 

 

This picture was taken after the assembly was first tacked in with super glue but then more permanently adhered with West Systems epoxy.

 

 

 

 

I cut the excess side of the hull material back to expose the casemates. I marked the ribs late in this build because I knew where they would go based on the prior version. In general, I would do this step much earlier in most builds. The theory here is to put ribs moreso in the bow for increased protection where the ship sticks ot of the water more. I also lined up ribs with casemates to make the open area in the casemate smaller. A lot of people put denser rib collections in areas they will be shot more, such as next to sidemounts, the bow, and in this ship you could do more ribs in the middle area astern to the casemates as well since this is a relatively exposed area in the QE.  

 

 

 

 

Pre drilling the corners before cutting out is highly advised.

 

 

 

 

It seems to happen frequently with my builds, but once again I got distracted from putting together good in-process picturs so some as completed pictures will have to suffice. The ship battled for the first time memorial weekend 2025, and after a few small tweeks was ready for Nats 2025. These pictures are after her first Nats. Superstructure is sheets of ABS. Turrets are a mold I made, poured with a flexible rubbery urothane. The ship has 2 full unit pumps, 2 stern sidemounts (the superfiring is 75 rounds) and a down angle bow gun (funny gun).

 

 

 

 

This pictures is too funny not to include. This was float testing inside of a Jean Bart hull before Nats 2025. I did have to take the drag disks off but otherwise she fits.

 

 

 

 

Ship weight is 27.8 pounds.

 

 

 

 

15 degree off angle depressed bow gun can shoot below the water line.

 

 

 

 

This is the business end. The underrated benefit of using 2 pumps and not using twin stern guns is that it frees up real estate for another stern sidemount. This ship has a stern deck that sits low to the water, and is quite manuverable making for a very dangerous stern gun setup.

 

 

 

 

Props are between 5.5-6 inches from the stern, with rudder post at about 4.75 inches. The ship has 4 drive shafts, two inner powered and the two outer with drag disks. The twin side by side rudder shape is slightly different than the Barham 1 but the ships turn very similarly and I’m not convinced either is supperior. This is a good look at how little of the hull you have to expose to fire the stern most sidemount.

 

 

 

 

The middle section is removed for routine battle access, ideally the bow and stern deck sections can stay on unless heavier maintannce is required. The section has slides and locks which when pushed forward keeps the section locked in place. Since there is overlap with the bow and stern sections of deck as well, once this middle section is on, none of the deck sections can be easily removed. I put magnets on the stern deck and the back of the mid portion deck to help keep that section in place, there seems to be enough friction and this is probably not necessary.

 

 

 

 

The front deck section also has slides and locks, this is not going anywhere when the middle section is on since there is super structer overlap and the deck itself abuts the middle deck section. The back section also is held down when the mid section is on and can’t come off. The back section however just has 1 latch in the stern most part and magnets for the rest, a 1/16 thick magnet imbeded in the deck and a 1/4 inch thick magnet in the subdeck. I applied white silocone as well since this ship will ride fairly wet on the back deck when fighting hard, this seems to be very effective at keeping extra water out.

 

 

 

 

Under the bow deck sits the radio box (which is admittedly old fashioned at this point), bow gun solenoid, back end of the CO2 bottle, and a reciever battery. The radio components from this ship were taken directly from the VU. Again, admittedly old fashioned but still effective, this ship has a servo switching drive as well as the pump, it does have solid state electronic firing boards for the guns. The VU origionally ran 20 amp hours main power alone and occasionally with hard battle would drop voltage and go out of control. As such I opted to wire in direct reciever battery power. Since the Barham runs 40 amp hours it is not necessary in this ship to do this but has not been switched back over. Since it works fine I may just leave it.

 

 

 

 

The middle portion of the hull houses the four 10 amp hour 6 volt NiMH packs in trays along the outsides of the ship. There is bulge water channeling, so these actually about 1 inch from the outer portion of the hull. The two pumps are midline and sit in front of the motors. You can see where the hose exits the hull. The CO2 bottle is a 5 oz, I actually have a 3.5 oz bottle in this picture because the bigger bottle was misplaced and I still wanted to take the picture. The Barham 1 has mostly run on a 3.5 oz bottle but frequently runs out of gas, making the 5 oz bottle a better choice. There is a red piece of plastic which holds the bottle in place.

 

 

 

 

The motor mounts are printed ABS knock offs of the old Traxxas Villain gear boxes which I so loved but are no longer avaliable. Under the plastic boxy gray covers are the motor with a pinion gear and drive shaft gear. The two stern solenoids are noted next to a piece of lead used for ballast. The two rudders are driven with a water proof servo with a gear mounted direclty on top.

 

 

 

 

All of the guns on this ship have 1/8 ID gas in to the bottom with two 1/16 hose going to the back of the magazine and back of the elbow. I have ben using epoxy to attach a small magent to the T so misfires become less likely. The gun holders are a red plastic that is easy to drill but quite strong. The magazines for every gun in this ship feeds back to load in the same turret, you have to be a little careful with bend angles but usually this works well.

 

 

 

 

Here is the ship at Nats 2025.

 

 

 

 

Father and son.

 

 

 

 

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