Due to price increases, the pt-boat Shapeways shop disappearing, import tariff's in the UK and imposed tariff's in the United States, climate conciousness and also I guess due to my advancing age, I am radically changing the way I deliver products and services to you - I have created many hundreds of designs over the past thirty years and I want them to remain available to you for many years to come!
My latest orders from Shapeways/Manuevo showed enormous cost increases and they have told me that they will not be bringing back the "shop" model as the digital storage costs was one of the factors for their demise. There are many 3D printing companies and laser cutting companies world wide and also many people have their own machines.
I also regularly buy Scandinavian Birch Plywood that has been shipped half way around the globe to Australia for me to laser cut and then mostly ship it back to Europe or to the USA which doesn't help either the cost or the order delivery time.
I am in the process of adding around 10 new pricelists containing the ability to instantly download both all of my laser cutting and 3D printing files, for a small fee, so that you will be able to cut / 3D print your own boats, parts and accessories and also improve on my designs, if you so choose, by offering all of the files under a Creative Commons licence.
Many of the simpler items will be free, so potentially you can get started on your model dream very economically! I am loosely basing the file prices on the file size, as it is a reasonable indication of the effort that went into it's design.
This approach should result in lower overall costs for you by eliminating delivery costs and/or tariff costs that are being imposed globally for delivery of physical goods, a good example is a recent customer in the UK who had to go many miles and pay 55 pounds (around USD $68) to pick up his boat kit - that will kill the experience for many people!
Hopefully I can generate enough income from this approach to fully pay for at least the hosting costs for the website, that I have heavily subsidised for 30 years.
Interesting fact www.pt-boat.com has been continuously around for longer than google, it used to rank very highly in google until they changed their ranking model to one of greed, based on how much you pay them, I don't pay them, so I have personally changed my search engine to yandex.com!
The Fully 3D Elco 77' boat - See the Elco 77' page
https://www.shapeways.com/shops/pt-boat
I have added a new gmail email address, please send me an email to test it and let me know the progress of your project and that you're still alive!
Schnellboot latest detail - see latest news page
The Original PT-Boat(s)
Redrawn Original Hull Construction Plans
The original Helm and controls
The Elco PT593 Model
General model Photo's "Boatographs" Hull Construction Photo's Drive Train Photo's Electric's Photo's
Cabin Construction Photo's Dinghy Construction Photo's Raft Construction Photo's Mast Construction Photo's
Mast Support Construction Ammo box Construction American Flag 1939-1945 Rudder Brushless Motors
Mufflers and Manifold Numbers Crew Roll Off Rack VeeDrive Gearbox Propeller Propshaft Packard Engine
Lasercut Deck Other Builders Boatographs Servo's and how they work
Hull-2 Kits
Hull-2 1/20th scale Skeleton Kit
Hull-2 1/35th scale Skeleton Kit
Weaponry (The good stuff !)
Torpedo Construction Photo's
40mm Bofors Canon
Rocket Launcher
37mm Canon
20mm Canon
50Cal BMG
The S-Boot Model
Hull-1 Rib Plans
I have put the existing boat hull (Hull 1) Rib Plans on the web site as large .gif files.
My thanks to many people for their input and especially Beaty Lay and Roy Copeland for their input on torpedo's and to all the crews and people involved in all other PT-Boat websites, books, and the dedicated ex-crewmembers for having such a rich selection of photo's and memorabilia.
Any info, comments, criticisms, donations, drawings or photo's gratefully received (please don't send originals)
What an awesome craft for 60 years ago, or more!
In my many years of research I sometimes stumble across people who have old photo's or drawings or other memorabilia stashed away somewhere, and in all seriousness, if you have anything pertaining to PT Boats, it needs to be preserved! There is very little left of an awesome chapter in history!
I know many have an opinion about the sale of memorabilia and historical photo's on the likes of Ebay but from my perspective, it is a great source of information, and certainly gets stuff out of the attic which would otherwise probably end up at the rubbish tip! When I started this project 20 odd years ago it was very difficult to find information, now there is lot's around!
In my humble opinion US PT-Boats and crews operating before and during WWII around Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and many other Pacific island groups, did more damage to the Japanese military supply chain than anything else to save Australia from probable invasion and there is almost zero history of those events recorded in Australia. There were apparently PT Boat bases in Cairns and Darwin but I am unable to find any definitive details of these. I did recently find reference to a quantity of 11 British style Fairmile-B boats having been built at Lars Halvorsen's boat works in Ryde in N.S.W. in 1942 but I would be interested in any further information, where did they serve? What weapons did they have? - I have had a couple of responses to these questions and now found a couple of books. - Update 2019 there is now considerable information on line, one example www.navy.gov.au/ml-814.
Please do not harvest details from this website, I am not interested in any of your junk email.
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