Aquanefiness: Very 'Scratch' Subs!

The recent buzz surrounding the public debut at Salute 2010 of Steve Blease's Aquanef has had me playing around with ideas as to how to very cheaply and easily come up with some suitable submarine vehicles until the real thing can be cast and released.

As I mentioned in my last post, I had thought of combining the recently purchased 1/2400th Ironclads with some submarine vessels, in order to re-create a sort of late nineteenth century Nemo and his underwater friends (Meglomaniacs) versus the Ironclad navies of the World Powers (Militarists). Thinking of the "It must be a Monster of the Deep" confusion evinced by the latter when dealing with the incredible technology built by the former, I thought that some anthropomorphic shapes for the submarine vessels might be the way to go, and I lit upon the plastic monstrosities you see in the photo above as likely contenders.

The gastronomes amongst you might recognise them as the plastic soy sauce/shoyu bottles you often get in sets of take-away Sushi. These I had originally snaffled with a view to turning them into Dirigibles for Aeronef, but thought that they could do just as well as underwater craft. I know that the vessels on display at Salute were full models, but rather in the vein of my previously built Ottoman sub, I felt that as most early submarines operated offensively pretty much at the surface or at most 'awash', then a waterline type model wouldn't be too amiss.

Some hacking with a craft knife, along with a quick scruffle in the bits box brought me to the following:

An electrical connector, and some bits from the ever-reliable eye drop pipettes went in to form a more machine-like shape, although some creative painting could render it as perhaps a sort of steam-powered cuttlefish.

The larger of the Soy Sauce bottles has a plain surface apart from eyes and a raised brand or trade mark, which of course could easily be painted up as some form of mechanical device - from the fin on the top surface I cut out a couple of slots which could be entry hatches or mounting points for steam funnels and/ or masts and periscopes:

Similar treatment was meted out on the smaller bottle, which has some rather nice inscribed scale markings, to give the following:

A closer view of the 'cuttlefish':

Size comparison on the two soy sauce powered craft:

Now the smaller of the two up against the Peruvian Ironclad the Independencia:

A touch on the large size, perhaps, but then these are supposed to be monsters of the deep!

More to come on this I fear.... :-)