And a little bit more progress after getting home from Thanksgiving with family.
For starters, there are no official dimensions/measurements for how high the crew decks and engineering section is supposed to be. So everything I did was a guess. I initially started thinking of making the crew decks about 10 ft high which would be approx. 1/4" inch. But after awhile, that didn't seem right and I figured it would be too thin/small. So I went with 1/2" inch instead. Though the topmost deck is slightly taller at 1/2" plus another 1/8" inch to fit aircraft. Why is this? Well, I figured the topmost deck would be the hangar area for aircraft storage. For a Habakkuk vessel (or any aircraft carrier), you want your aircraft/hangar bay as close to the flight deck as possible. Putting the aircraft and/or hangar bay deeper inside the Habakkuk means the aircraft have to travel slightly further more on the aircraft elevator to either get down below or topside. During general quarters (Battlestations/Red Alert) situations, time is a luxury you don't have when getting your aircraft ready and onto the flight deck, etc.
For the oil fuel tanks at the bottom, I wasn't sure what color to paint those. So I just went with a standard steel color. If it's wrong, it's too late now to change it. 

Looking good 

Back in Post # 8 on Page 1 of this thread, I had shared a response I got from the NRC in Canada regarding if there were any final blueprint designs for the Habakkuk vessel.
Sadly, there weren't.
Everything that was ever "officially" drawn by the Canadian NRC, British military and naval engineers, scientists, and architects was of "proposed" Habakkuk vessel designs.
The word Proposed does not in any way mean a final design. If you need more of a definition of the word, please look it up in the dictionary.
So of all the diagrams and schematics I've posted so far in this thread (and some I haven't yet), what is "official" and what isn't? Here's a bit of a recap.

This schematic below is drawn by the media and based on a press release from 1946. What's wrong about this diagram is that there never were upper and lower port and starboard aircraft hangars. And I'm doubting that there were any vertical access shafts leading to the port and starboard motor nacells. Also, the media forgot to draw a second motor nacelle below the ones that are already in the diagram. As for the fuel storage tanks at the bottom of the vessel, I don't know if this is accurate or not. I'd say only 60% of this diagram is correct.



These next two diagrams below are dated May 21, 1943 and I consider them to be official proposed schematics. What may be hard to see is that motor nacelles were planned to be under the back of the vessel by the keel/rudder area, but these were crossed out. Also, the original planned length of the motor nacelles was to be 55 ft. But this was crossed out and the length was changed to 60 ft long.
The second schematic below is an early proposed scheme showing a cross section cutaway. Some of the main changes here are that the center crew section was originally designed to be 100 ft wide, but this got shortened to only 60 ft wide instead. The "honeycomb construction" spaces on either side of the center crew section originally appeared like a half octagon shape. But this appears to have been canceled in favor of a more square or rectangular shaped area. On the top and bottom right side of the diagram, it says "Longitudinal Timber Baulks". I suspect this was for structural integrity purposes, but this got scratched out in the diagram.





These next two diagrams below are dated July 5, 1943 and I consider them to be proposed official schematics. The first pic shows the "general arrangement" of the Habakkuk vessel. From the side and top views, you can see the Habakkuk hull divided into four sections/compartments, and each compartment is separated from another by a 20 ft thick wall. Also, the very ends (Tips) of the Habakkuk vessel were not made of pykrete, but rather wood construction. At least 110 ft of both ends of the vessel was to be wood construction. I'll explain more about why this was later in this thread as my model project evolves.





These next diagrams below are from a magazine article titled "HABAKKUK" by William J. Wallace, WARSHIP magazine, Vol.5, No.18, 1981, Pages 80-85. The third and fourth pictures are dated May 12, 1943. But whether this date is accurate or not I have not been able to verify. But I do feel these proposed diagrams are somewhat official. One major change is in the third picture that shows the interior of the Habakkuk vessel divided into 10 sections/compartments. The fourth picture below shows an overhead view of one of these sections/compartments. The sixth and final picture below shows a cross section of what the interior of the Habakkuk "houseboat" prototype looked like when it was constructed on Patricia Lake near Jasper, Canada in early 1943.













And lastly, we come to this diagram below from the book "The Canadian Habbakuk Project" by Lorne W. Gold. This is an official proposed Habakkuk schematic. But I haven't been able to pin down the date it was created. From what I've read in the book, I suspect it was early Spring 1943 (April?). If I manage to find more information, I'll let people know.
But anyway, you can see this design differs quite remarkably from all the others. Though there are some similarities too. Though this design mentions a "minimum" of 35 ft of pykrete for the hull instead of the other 40 ft mentioned in other schematics.

The first picture below shows what I would have to call "the box" that the center crew section (as shown in the third picture below) fits inside.
I started by cutting from styrene sheet what I call the "backwall". This was approximately 10 1/4" inches wide x 6 3/4" inches tall. Now if you're wondering about those angled notches for lack of a better word at the lower left and right corners, those are bevelled edges to reduce the drag under water. Some Habakkuk schematics show this while others do not. I am pretty fairly certain that if a real Habakkuk vessel was built, these bevelled edges would be on the hull of the ship.
Anyway, the first picture shows the box I made for the center crew section to fit in. You might be able to see them, but there's faint pencil lines running along the length and height of the backwall in the center. I had to mark 1 1/4" inches all the way around the circumference inside the box. This will help me to properly position the center crew section inside the box.
That 1 1/4" inches all the way around is for the pykrete hull. Once the pencil lines were added, I then began to add the outer walls of the box made with styrene sheet.
The second picture below is a repeat of what I posted further above. But look at the callout Number 7 where it says Inner Insulation. As I've mentioned previously in this thread in a few posts, the areas to the left and right of the center crew section were to be filled with some sort of composite/resin/honeycomb materials, mostly for buoyancy issues. Supposedly from what I've read in The Canadian Habbakuk Project book by Lorne W. Gold, these two areas were to possibly be filled with regular ice blocks. Not pykrete. The blocks of ice (Size unknown) were to have 60% air bubbles in them or voids. What I mean by "voids" is that the ice blocks were to be similar to hollow bricks. How these were to be manufactured is unknown. Go back to my Post # 122 above and look at the bottom of the very last picture where it explains about the ice blocks. But getting back to that "inner insulation".............both the left and right side areas that had the regular ice in them were also to be insulated all the way around with some type of plywood insulation. How thick is unknown, but I think it may have been at least 12 inches (1 foot). And as far as Number 8 in that picture for the outer pykrete hull where it says Outer Insulation, Yes, a wood insulation (Again, about 12 inches thick I think.) was planned to completely cover the entire outside surface of the pykrete hull all around the ship. How this was to be attached to the pykrete was never fully solved or explained.
The third picture below gives you a bit of an idea how the center section will fit/look inside the larger box structure.
Key to letter callouts:
A = 40 ft pykrete main hull. Will use styrofoam sheet or expanding foam spray to fill in.
B = Box girder painted dark steel color.
C = Four crew, storage, & aircraft hangar levels painted light gray. Looks dark gray due to camera flash.
D = Engineering and refrigeration section
E = Oil fuel tanks for Habakkuk vessel painted a steel color inside.
F = Painted the inner walls a wood color to represent that "inner insulation" that surrounds the regular ice that I mentioned above. 
G = I want to add "ice blocks" in the left and right sides on either side of the center crew section, but I haven't figured out how yet.

In the third picture in the post above with the callout Letter A, I was thinking of possibly using those spray cans of expanding foam to fill in that large cavity all around in order to simulate the pykrete.
I've never worked with expanding foam before from a spray can. So if anybody has any tips and advice, or if you think it would be a really bad idea, then let me know. If the spray foam idea doesn't work for whatever reason, then I'll have to fill that area with pieces of sheet styrofoam.
And for the Letter G areas, I was hoping to fill those areas with "ice blocks", but am not sure how to create that effect. Any tips and suggestions?

Quote from: seadude on November 30, 2023, 11:19:38 AMIn the third picture in the post above with the callout Letter A, I was thinking of possibly using those spray cans of expanding foam to fill in that large cavity all around in order to simulate the pykrete.
I've never worked with expanding foam before from a spray can. So if anybody has any tips and advice, or if you think it would be a really bad idea, then let me know. If the spray foam idea doesn't work for whatever reason, then I'll have to fill that area with pieces of sheet styrofoam.

Test first, to make sure it doesn't eat the plastic.  You'll also need, since it's an expanding foam, less that what you think to fill the void.  That's where testing comes into play as well.

Expanding foam expands with quite a bit of force, so you may end up with your thin walls bulging in the middle.

As an alternative: use styrofoam. Preferably not the coarse-celled stuff that's used for packaging. You can get finer-grained material for modeling.

Quote from: Hobbes on November 30, 2023, 12:05:39 PMExpanding foam expands with quite a bit of force, so you may end up with your thin walls bulging in the middle.

As an alternative: use styrofoam. Preferably not the coarse-celled stuff that's used for packaging. You can get finer-grained material for modeling.

If I were to use expanding foam in that cavity, I would tend to think the foam would expand upward (Not sideways) since there's nothing that will cover the opening/cavity.
If I have to use styrofoam sheets, I was thinking about the sheets used for model railroad scenery. I think Woodland Scenics makes them? Would that work?

It expands in ALL directions, and doesn't care what gets in the way.

Don't ask me how I know this.........................

Work on the Habakkuk cross section has temporarily stalled a bit.  
I asked a friend if he had some spare pieces of styrofoam I could use for simulating the pykrete hull. He gave me the wrong type of styrofoam sheet that breaks apart really easily and leaves tiny pieces all over the place and on myself due to static electricity. THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANTED TO USE. 
So I have to wait a week and a half till I get paid to buy the correct type of styrofoam to use.
And I still haven't figured out how I'm going to create the mini ice blocks to fill the areas marked Letter G in my picture further above.
So the most I can hope to do now is look through my spare parts bin and see what I can use to try and detail the center crew and engineering decks marked Letters C and D in my picture further above.

Quote from: seadude on December 01, 2023, 06:02:57 PMI asked a friend if he had some spare pieces of styrofoam I could use for simulating the pykrete hull. He gave me the wrong type of styrofoam sheet that breaks apart really easily and leaves tiny pieces all over the place and on myself due to static electricity. THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANTED TO USE. 

That stuff drives me mad    You don't see it quite as much here in the UK as you used to. Manufacturers have moved on to something a little more "solid" for packing.

Expanding foam is a really bad idea.  I think you'd just end up with a mess and a wrecked model.
It never ever stops expanding at the point you want it to and continues to increase in volume at an exponential rate until it threatens to take over the world.

I may have exaggerated sightly there, but I do think it is a bad idea.  Even if you managed to get the amount correct so it exactly filled the required compartment it would not have a smooth flat surface.  If you managed to get it to rise slightly above the edge and then cut it back to create a flat surface it would not look good as it would be pocked with a multitude of various sized bubbles.  It won't look like pykrete.  You could I suppose fill all the bubble holes with filler and sand it back and then paint it but it seems like a lot of work.
Based on my experience with using expanding foam (sealing up bulldozers so they could wade through sewage sludge) I don't think it will damage plastic.

As you are simulating pykrete have you thought of combining a clear resin such as might be used to simulate water,  and wood dust such as might be produced by a power sander?

QuoteIt never ever stops expanding at the point you want it to and continues to increase in volume at an exponential rate until it threatens to take over the world.

Sounds like what happens in episode 6 of the Invasion: Earth series. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion:_Earth_(TV_series)

QuoteAs you are simulating pykrete have you thought of combining a clear resin such as might be used to simulate water,  and wood dust such as might be produced by a power sander?

Never gave it any thought. But then, I've never really been good at working with resin. Just can't seem to get the two parts mixed right. 

I swear I will never use styrofoam ever again for model building purposes.   
Even the sheet of styrofoam I used which is stiffer and used for model railroad terrain building purposes still leaves tiny pieces stuck to myself after cutting/breaking it apart.
But thankfully, using it to simulate pykrete in my cross section is all done and I think it worked out well.
The first pic below shows that I used pieces of 1/2" inch thick styrofoam sheet to fill the cavity all around the center section. I made sure to use regular white glue (Elmer's Glue) to glue all the styrofoam pieces in place. Any gaps between the edges of the styrofoam and the styrene white sheet pieces were filled with Perfect Plastic Putty.
The second picture below shows styrofoam pieces painted to look like pykrete. I used TAMIYA XF-78 Wooden Deck Tan. Actually, there is no "true" color to pykrete because the color of pykrete depends on the type of wood pulp used to make it. For example, if a person were to use shredded newspaper pulp, the pykrete might be a light/medium gray color instead of the traditional regular wood color which is more common when making pykrete.
The third pic below shows a better view of how "rough/grainy" the surface of the pykrete would be. This is the effect I wanted when using the styrofoam sheet. Pykrete blocks would most likely not be smooth sided at all when building a real hull for a Habakkuk vessel. Depending on how the pykrete blocks were formed and cut, the surface would most likely be a rough texture.

Yeah, that stuff's HELL to work with!   

When I was building my American N Gauge layout in the late 80s we used that foam for the terrain foundations and by the end of the evening we looked like snowmen! And it 'statics' onto you as well, so the only way to get it off is with a POWERFUL Hoover!