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US G.P. AN-M65A1 box retarder

Notice the small cuts I made in the steel to make the bending easier. They can be easily filled.

The fin weighs 25 pounds. It is 18.5" tall and a diameter of 25".

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Off to the side, here is the pet I use to unload the ordnance and suspend it for painting.

Scratch built; the crane weighs over 1,000 pounds in which the counter weight is a 486 pound I-beam.

The boom is 10' long and telescopes to 20'. I can put 500 pounds 20 feet in the air. I have lifted 1000 pounds without blinking an eye before the addition of the boom and feet triangulation.

I use a 1 ton engine crane in the display vault to lift casings onto their display stands.

I work for a major MRO distributor. Almost everything I utilize to build or restore is free.

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Brian,
The fin assembly really looks really good. And I especially like your hoist. Which came first, the hoist or the 486 lb I beam?
Also, what kind of mask (tape?) did you use for the yellow stripes on the bomb?

Regards,
Jim
 
What came first was a much smaller crane I fabricated specifically for picking up a 1,000 pound milling machine -4 inches into the air, off of a table so I could place a new table under it.

That crane evolved over time and served well. After using it to unload the I-beam from my car, possition the I-beam on the new crane's frame, and then hold up the 200 pound boom; it was scrapped.

As for the masking tape, I used 1/2 masking tape you buy anywhere.

For the smaller stripes found on the nose of the casing, I simply took little pieces of said tape until I had the circles I needed, as it will not bend at such small circles.
 
And for those who are interested, here is the paint found on my AN-M65A1.

On the left is the olive drab.

For my filler lines; in the middle is paint made for painting parking lots lines. It is upside down paint, but with a full can you can use it as you would a standard can. I love this yellow. It is very dual, fairly thick, looks old and comes out of the nozzle like wildfire. It does not take much to do the job; just keep your eyes open and use plenty of cover for over-spray.

In the picture the paint is not dry, with not much thought placed on putting it down. You can see the finished results on the 65A1, and the Mark III on the second page of the thread. It drys with a very slight hint of orange tint -kind of like a school bus, yet not quite as bright and flashy as the standard yellow you'll find at the hardware store.

On the right is ultra-flat black.

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HAZORD said:
The dimples look really good on your first assembly! What type of finish did you get on your sheet of steel, pickled and oiled or something else?
Click to expand...

Call me crazy, but I have no idea what your asking! I backed my car into the biggest building full of steel I have ever seen, and they loaded it into my car with a 200 ton bridge crane. And that was that!
 
When you buy sheet metal, you can get galvanized, or mill finish which has foundry scale on it, or pickled and oiled. Pickled and oiled has been treated with acid to remove the foundry scale, and is oiled so it won't rust. If you are using the steel in dies, the foundry scale eats the hell out of the dies, so most people use pickled and oiled.

The fin looks great. Crane is nice too. I have a homebuilt overhead bridge crane.

Is there a particular reason why you folded the outer edges of the fins and the tabs that weld to the ring in the opposite direction from the way mine are folded?
 
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The steel was pickled and oiled.

The areas in question are bent in the wrong direction because I built the fins by following the drawings you provided.

I wouldn't have noticed. Apparently the 500 pound fins are reversed from the 1000 pounders.

Odd huh. I wonder why?
 
That is really strange. I looked at the photos of my 500 Lb. fin and it is bent just like you bent your 1000 Lb. fin. THe 500 Lb. bomb was the most dropped size that was used by the U.S. during the War. By the way, if you look through some of the books about aircraft flown in Korea and Vietnam, they have some good color photos of the the WWII era bombs on the planes.
 
I have been reading said books for 20 years, with my primary interest centered around the Consolidated B-36 Peacemaker.

With the power of the internet I have accumulated thousands of vintage photos.

My primary source for reference is ORDATA. http://maic.jmu.edu/ordata/search.asp?SearchMode=0

Here are some pictures of same casings in the field. There are a ton more located on the link in the images.

Notice that in every image, the casings have a different shade of green.

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In your travels, have you obtained any color photos showing the Navy paint scheme, with a gray bomb casing and a yellow filled circle/dot between the lifting lugs?

I found this one on the site you mentioned.
 

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Not that I am aware of, as my searching has been based primarily around Army Air Force and Air Force aircraft.

However, just a small search on Google yielded this one.

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What's that in the tail, looks like one of the old "coke bottle" depth charge fuzes - ?
 
It very well could have been a depth charge bomb fuse. They used nose fuzes with separate arming wire from the tail fuze so they could drop them as either contact bombs or depth charges.

Jeff, do you have anything about the Navy paint scheme of gray with a yellow dot between the lugs?
 
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