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ť Forum Category: PT Boats of WWII
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ť Forum Name: PT Boats - General
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ť Topic: PT-20 drawings?
http://www.ptboatforum.com/cgi-bin/MB2/netboardr.cgi?cid=101&fid=102&tid=3449

Well, I may be building another 77 footer model, a follow on to the PT-41 I started a decade ago or so:
[url]http://matthewsmodelmarine.wordpress.com/writings/pt-41-building-one-of-the-expendables/[/url]
And I want to do better this time!

That one was built with drawings printed from NARA microfilm- really awful stuff, most are illegible at best. I know that the films at HQ are much better, but I haven't paid attention for a long time- has anyone made all these Elco PT-20 series detail drawings available, in any format? I'd really like to get better views of these construction drawings!

Also, I downloaded a ZIP file someone posted, for the Mk 18 tubes- great stuff! But, I neglected to write down the poster's name- whom do I have to thank for that?
But wait there's more- In going through those Mk 18 drawings, I see a couple details missing from the set:
- Forward tube mount structure
- Any sort of detail on the bracing rods and their attachment

Any chance either are available anywhere?

Thanks,
Pat M

Posted By: Pat Matthews | Posted on: Dec 16, 2013 - 5:08pm
Total Posts: 89 | Joined: Jan 7, 2012 - 5:41pm

The torpedo tube drawings are from the collection of Al Ross Pat. He generously copied them and mailed them to me. I spent a week scanning and stitching them. I'm glad you're going to make good use of them! As for the missing ones, as far as I know they are not available, at least not yet. Here's a list of the drawings missing from the set:

318390 - Training Gear Arrangement And Details
328260 - Welded Turntable
328262 - For'd Support & Details
328261 - Aft Support

Pity about the microfilm... I may be wrong but I think I remember hearing that the HQ film is the same as the roll Dick had scanned.

Posted By: Jeff D | Posted on: Dec 17, 2013 - 2:51am
Total Posts: 2200 | Joined: Dec 21, 2006 - 1:30am

Thanks for that, Jeff!

Where are these scans by Dick?

A few years ago, I examined the films at HQ- they were in perfect shape, nice clear originals. Wish I had a portable scanner with me then. The NARA films I received look to be bad copies of copies.

I once received a snippet of that forward support from Al via fax... I'll go hit him up again!

Posted By: Pat Matthews | Posted on: Dec 17, 2013 - 4:49am
Total Posts: 89 | Joined: Jan 7, 2012 - 5:41pm

Ah, I see Dick's dvds at HQ... order incoming!

Posted By: Pat Matthews | Posted on: Dec 17, 2013 - 5:56am
Total Posts: 89 | Joined: Jan 7, 2012 - 5:41pm

I wouldn't call the 77' drawings "crystal clear", if anything they are a bit lower quality than the 80' ones. Although the offsets drawing is mostly a blur, the lines drawing is pretty clear. Got to get the hull right eh? Check this thread for further info: [url]http://www.ptboatforum.com/cgi-bin/MB2/netboardr.cgi?fid=102&cid=101&tid=1538&sc=20&pg=1&x=0[/url]

It would be interesting to see what HQ has in the way of microfilm.

Posted By: Jeff D | Posted on: Dec 17, 2013 - 7:26am
Total Posts: 2200 | Joined: Dec 21, 2006 - 1:30am

The HQ films are an original back-up set of films from the factory, saved only because an engineer (I forget the name...) kept the set at his house. They are PERFECT. They're in strips of 4 negatives, I think in paper sleeves iirc.

Back in the day (and through the 80's for sure), it was common to distribute sets of engineering drawings on 35mm films to disparate locations, so that paper didn't have to be sent everywhere. Each site would have a viewer, and for some extra $$, the viewer would include a printer using the OCE process... the print came out somewhat wet and smelling of chemicals...

Pat

Posted By: Pat Matthews | Posted on: Dec 17, 2013 - 7:40am
Total Posts: 89 | Joined: Jan 7, 2012 - 5:41pm

Pat
I'm sure you're referring to the set of Elco film strips that I donated about 10 years ago after cleaning out my father's attic. I'm glad that someone has taken the time to review and appreciate them, and perhaps found them useful. But I'm quite certain the as found collection did not include an index of drawings. Do you know if anyone has since made such an index?

Posted By: Ed B | Posted on: Dec 17, 2013 - 11:02am
Total Posts: 91 | Joined: Oct 26, 2006 - 5:31am

Well I'll be! Thanks for that Ed... and I hope I have the story at least half right?

And no, I don't recall seeing any index. It's the sort of thing I'd love to do (scan and index them, and maybe cross-ref them to Dick's work)... but they're in Memphis, and I'm not!

Pat M

Posted By: Pat Matthews | Posted on: Dec 17, 2013 - 2:18pm
Total Posts: 89 | Joined: Jan 7, 2012 - 5:41pm

You pretty much got the story right. One reason the film strips are so clear (other than the fact that they are indeed factory strips and not copies of copies) is that they never saw the light of day (literally) for 50 years. One thing that always concerned me though was how complete/incomplete that collection was. I can't readily find my record of how many strips there were, but I seem to recall it was around 120 (or 220?). At 4-5 images per strip, that's only about 500 or 1,000 max drawings all together, which seems quite low since there were 70' and 77' drawings included as well as the 80'. I am ignorant, however, concerning just how many drawings would have been produced for any given class of PTs.

As far as the difficulty of your scanning/indexing them since they are at HQ in TN, I do recall Alyce once asking me if I knew anything about you, because you had approached her about borrowing them for your research. Well, 10 years or so I didn't know anything of you and thus couldn't vouch for you, so I guess she was understandably reluctant to loan them out. Maybe now that we all know a lot more about you, perhaps HQ might reconsider. Worth a shot anyway. I would think the value of having an index could be incredibly helpful to the community.

Posted By: Ed B | Posted on: Dec 18, 2013 - 9:52am
Total Posts: 91 | Joined: Oct 26, 2006 - 5:31am

Hi Ed . . .

Glade to hear from you.

I've tried repeatedly for more than seven years to borrow them as well as all the other microfilm at HQ., to no avail. They just will not release them or loan them out of the HQ archives. It's for the fear of losing them or damage that might occur in transit or at someone else's hands. I've even mentioned that you had asked me to barrow your donated microfilm, and again no luck.

I offered to have them scanned by my profession microfilm house at my cost, then I would create exclusive DVD's for HQ to sell, as a fund raising tool, just like my DVD sets I furnish to them free to sell at what ever price they wish. This was also offered for many items, including other microfilm on file, digital conversion of all the film footage, and many of the specialty books and manuals at HQ. Specially the four-volume set of Assembly Instructions for Elco 80 kit boats sent to the west cost. I offered to produce all at my cost with the caveat that I would keep one copy for my private use, and produce data and video DVD's for HQ to sell to all interested.

Microfilm scanning - I've tried to scan my purchased microfilm on my flatbed scanner with film inserts and to other slide scanners devices, all with less than desirable results. First the microfilm frame size, although 35mm film, is larger than a photo slide resulting in image cut-off. It wasn't until later that I sent them out to a company that knew what they were doing on specialized microfilm scanners. Scans were Bi-Tonal TIFF files (42" x 20" finished size approx.) at 300 DPI, resulting in a very large 8 - 9 mb file each at 12,000 x 6,000 pixels.

Pat:

The scans on the DVD sold by HQ, were scanned from reels of microfilm purchased from the NARA and film reels graciously loaned to me by Al Ross.

Posted By: Dick | Posted on: Dec 18, 2013 - 5:15pm
Total Posts: 1417 | Joined: Aug 27, 2006 - 6:36pm

Dick

I guess if you couldn't get it done, no one can. Too bad.

Posted By: Ed B | Posted on: Dec 18, 2013 - 6:21pm
Total Posts: 91 | Joined: Oct 26, 2006 - 5:31am

Dick;
I can understand HQ's reluctance, as this sort of thing has happened before, for instance, the copies that me and Wayne have of Ken Prescotts original Kodachrome color slides of PT 61 at Searlesville May 1943, are the only ones. Ken loaned them to another "person", after I returned them to him(insured, tracking number sign upon receiving,the whole nine yards) and they were never returned. But with your close relationship with HQ and Ed being the one who donated them, that seems very odd.
I recall the original idea for HQ was to copy/convert everything(photos, documents, film, etc.) to DVD disk, was that plan given the deep six?
Take care,
TED

Posted By: TED WALTHER | Posted on: Dec 19, 2013 - 5:05am
Total Posts: 3059 | Joined: Oct 16, 2006 - 7:42am

Dick-
You've put in enormous work on this- thanks! But it sounds like we just need to move a pro scanner into the museum for a while. Some time ago, I half-jokingly tried to cajole Google to "Scan Our Drawings!", just as they did with books... they actually show up at libraries with their book scanning gear. No response of course...

TIFFs: Should be able to do better on file size. When I was running the print department at work, I installed a large format scanner to capture our old engineering drawings. Also saved as bi-tonal (B&W, or "1 bit" per pixel, as compared to 24-bit full color scans). With TIFF compression, file sizes were in the 300 kB range for large format drawings for 200dpi scans... 300dpi would be 2.25x as big.

The larger file sizes sound like uncompressed BMP (bit map) images. But another factor might be "noise", all the hash on the image... if this can't be edited out, the file will get larger. I was working with fairly clean prints...

Pat M

Posted By: Pat Matthews | Posted on: Dec 19, 2013 - 5:40am
Total Posts: 89 | Joined: Jan 7, 2012 - 5:41pm

Ed:

Gave it the old college try!

I believe the difference between the sharp, clear quality of your donated microfilm could be accounted for simply by the difference between the the Navy Dept. filming (NARA copy) and the more conscientious Elco filming of their own material. The old adage "Its good enough for government work" holds very true, even to day.

Pat:

Ten to twelve years ago I spent months approaching many companies, including Kodak, Agfa, Ilford, Imation, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Bill Gates Foundation, the Getty Museum and many other high-end scanner companies like Linotype, Hell, and so on. Depending on the company type I would ask for help or inquired about loaning equipment new and/or used. Each contact including many presidents and CEO's failed to raise any interest or desire in helping physically, financially or equipment loan, it was very a defeating experience, having so many doors slammed in your face . . . so I completely understand not hearing back from Google.

I've been doing this type of work for 46 years. For most of the 70's I managed a large Technical Art Department (150-plus illustrators), a Camera Department and a Microfilm Department, microfilming over 10,000 pages a month. In the 80's, I co-owned a printing company with four large Heidelberg Speed Master 6-color printing presses, a large pre-press department and a complete bindery department (50-plus employees total). For the last 35 years I've been running my own design/graphics business.

[b]During scanning I wasn't concerned with file size, only quality.[/b] A file size for an image using a black & White monochrome bit is simple math:
1 byte of file data = 8 monochrome bits (8 pixels).
An Elco engineering drawing 42" x 20" at 300 DPI = an image of 75,600,000 square pixels or bits. Divide this by 8 bits (1-byte) and you get 9,450,000 bytes or a [b]9.45MB[/b] image. The file can be LZW compressed down to 2.2MB, not 500KB. The physical drawing size would have to be reduced in resolution or from 42" x 20" original size drawing to a small 20" x 9" image to expect a 500KB file.

Most all of my files have been LZW compressed TIFF's at or about 2.2MB each for storage, but when a compressed file is opened up they revert back to the uncompressed size of 9MB each.

With my NARA microfilm order, I had refused it twice due to quality issue. Not from the originals they were duping, but the quality of their duplication work. The first set received the film was very, very reddish brown, not the expected dense black. It was clearly a chemical issue, with the chemistry in their film developer nearly spent. The developer bath was clearly over used and it was impossible to get a good development. The second set, was suffering from improper fixing of the developer. Strangely, they replaced the developer with a clean charge but forgot to replace the fixing solution which stops the development. The third set came out well, with a very dark dense black image, but unfortunately the originals they were using were in less good condition - in other words bad microfilming to start with.

Posted By: Dick | Posted on: Dec 19, 2013 - 4:33pm
Total Posts: 1417 | Joined: Aug 27, 2006 - 6:36pm

So, here's what I'm building now in CAD, just wishing I could read more detail from my nasty NARA prints. These are simply the main outer surfaces (or the inside surface of the paint!). From here, I design the structure for whatever type of model construction I'll use, and add the details (like ornaments on a tree). This much has been a couple-three day's solid work.

The model build should keep me busy though for a few months...

[image]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7460/11459427476_ddcbee02fb_b.jpg[/image]

Posted By: Pat Matthews | Posted on: Dec 19, 2013 - 7:56pm
Total Posts: 89 | Joined: Jan 7, 2012 - 5:41pm

Dick- I just received the two drawing CDs from HQ-- thanks again for all the work you've put into these!

I'm scanning through the 77 footer material now... some is better than my old prints for sure... other prints just make me want to cry! So much info just lost...

Net, I'm ahead here though- thanks!

Pat M

Posted By: Pat Matthews | Posted on: Dec 20, 2013 - 1:11pm
Total Posts: 89 | Joined: Jan 7, 2012 - 5:41pm