Huckins 78' 20th scale hull

Having completed the Vosper Hull I have decided to do a 20th scale Huckins Hull.

 I find the Huckins to be the ugly duckling of the three US PT's, very utilitarian in design, not nearly as elegant as the Elco but it was the best riding boat and should have become more popular, I guess we'll never know why things turned out the way they did for Huckins but seems when you mix military and money some strange things happen!

In the 20th scale Hull I am allowing for three electric motors of up to 35mm motors the same size as used in the Elco 20th scale.

The images below are from my 3D model, produced in Autodesk Fusion (formerly Fusion 360) essentially completed (never say never) in September 2024. I have posed many of these images, as best I can, to mirror the various available historical photo's, not that there are a lot available!

There are essentially no historical drawings available for this boat, or the other 17 Huckins PT's  (some say they were deliberately destroyed) so I am reliant on the one drawing of the experimental 82' boat (available from Huckins) and the few available on-line photo's and a few expert opinions such as Andy Small and Frank Andruss.

I will continue working on this boat as I want to produce a set of plans for it, from what we do know and I will produce a slightly different version with the later open bridge setup, roll off racks, radar etc. but first I will produce a laser cutting template set for a hull kit and a deck and superstructure kit.

With the Vosper model, I exported the ribs back out of the 3D model into Autocad and then produced the laser cutting outlines, which worked out perfectly smooth and accurate, so I will do the same with this model.

This is my version of the Huckins Hull "lines" which are sections through the (model) Hull at 1' sections both horizontally and vertically.

These lines are for the Rib profiles excluding the thickness of the hull skin, which in this case is 1.6mm or two layers of 0.8mm.

(c) copyright 2024 John Drain