I have installed the rudder. I was going to cast one, but decided upon a different approach. I am using the Renshape master which I have impregnated with West epoxy. Hopefully this will work. I used a previously successful approach for installing the rudder shaft. This entails cross drilling the shaft thru the rudder and installing machine screws to hold the shaft in the rudder body. USN ships used the double hung rudder method. This requires pulling the rudder shaft up and out vertically in order to remove the rudder. Troublesome, yes, but the rudder support is much stronger. Bismark might have gotten away if she had be built that way.
The rudder post goes up thru the keel and thru 1 1/2"s of maple block, all bedded with thickened epoxy. I still need to coat the outside of the blocks.
Atlantas had prop shafts that were just shy of two feet in diameter. That would be about 1/2", mine are .275", so I added metric tubing to make the shaft diameter more realistic appearing. It free floats on the shafts. I added Oilite thrust washers to each end of the shafts as well. My shafts are too short, so I bought new lenghts and they are being threaded for the props, which have been cross drilled and tapped. Stainless set screws complete them.
The deck beams that the hull was built with do not conform with the hull. I had laser cut beams made with the proper camber. After trimming the existing beams, they are sandwiched between two new beams and all will be epoxied together. The strips running the center line of the deck help me to align the camber center line and are temporary. When all are fitted and aligned the glue mixing begins.
That's all for now.

I am in wait mode. Waiting for more laser cut deck beams, waiting for new prop shafts to be threaded, and motor mounts to be made, together with U-joints to arrive...
Meanwhile I have worked on installing my anchor winch. It has to be accessible, and removable. I decided that the forward most section of main deck should be separate from the rtest of the main deck. That way I could build a system that would not require the entire deck to be removed and re-installed as I worked out the kinks. I am using 1/16th" fiberglass sheet for the main deck. I cut my forward section and spaced a hatch into it. My hold downs consist of epoxy captured nuts place in small sections of F/G sheet, epoxied to the underside of the deck. I cut a hatch and fitted my wildcat in the appropriate location while also mounting chain pipes and creating anchor bolsters from Renshape covered with epoxy. Did I say how much I dislike having to wait 12 hours for the epoxy to dry?
When all the pieces were placed, it was a matter of fine tuning the mechanism. I am sticking with one working anchor and one static one. The working one has 720 scale feet( 120 scale fathoms) of stud link chain. The video shows the results.

I am driving the winch's gear head motor thru an ESC. Using a FrSky radio, running OpenTx, I am able to set the speed of the gear motor running in each direction. The ESC is then controlled by a three way, center off switch on the transmitter, giving me Down, Off, Up control.

I am using a FrSky X9E radio running Open TX to control Juneau. The winch motor is speed regulated thru an ESC. The radio allows me to select the speed of the motor, separately in each direction, and to adjust it to whatever speed I choose, ie, fast down and slow up. On top of this, the transmitter allows me to link the ESC to a switched, in this case a 3 way, channel so that there is no hunting for the speed. The only draw back is that there is no "live" speed adjustment, but I can live with that.

No new pictures today.
I have completed her anchor winch installation and the access hatch above it. I adjusted the wildcat a bit and the chain seems to run a bit smoother.
My prop shafts came back having been threaded. I had to trim some thread, add flats to the threaded portion of the shafts for the prop's set screws to grab and flats just inboard of the stuffing boxes. Again for set collars to grab. I am using oilite bronze thrust washers on both the A brackets, between the brackets and the props, and between the set collars and the stuffing boxes.
I made a tray for the rudder servo and added the rudder hardware. Temporarily installed all and test it out. I set my rudder angles to about 32 degrees maximum, and times to about 2 seconds swing from extreme to extreme.
Continued painting epoxy where need inside the hull and await a few more deck beams.
That is it for now. Pictures next post.

Well it has been about 5 months and this is where she lays. I managed three coats of high build primary(wow! Expensive stuff...$34/ spray can, witha discount) after way too many hours of filler and spot putty and sanding.
Sanded all over and filled pin holes while re-edging the deck. Next up is cutting out mounting and soldering braces to the fairwater which is .025" brass. Fair the gaps where it meets the hull and three more coats of primary over the bare spots and the red stuff. Sand again and then add some color to the hull.
Almost time to start cutting out the deck access holes....

So much for best laid plans. I was all ready to cut out my fairwater, but no scroll saw blades. Do you think that I could find any locally? Of course not. Back to the internet...
So... I decided to start building my superstructure kit, which was especially made for me by a gent in North Carolina. It is CAD routed out of about .080 Sintra like material. Of course I could not help myself to see what it would look like, instead of a bare hull, so...

I managed to create the fairwater out of .025 brass sheet. I silver soldered some pegs to it and have epoxied it into place. Some West system epoxy fairing, first round, and some sanding to come.
I could not resist setting up the superstructure, which is more or less assembled, but not yet in it's final form. I added seven of the gun turrets for effect. She will be imposing.
I hope to finish primer the hull this week and maybe throw some finish paint on her. I'll see how that goes...

It is hard to believe that I have not posted for two months...
I've spent a lot of time waiting for items to arrive and in the end made up my own supplies instead. I have manage to paint the hull. All of the drive gear is installed and the rudder servo as well. Brackets are in place for the main batteries and I can install ESC's at my leisure. Next up will be to add a flange around each of the major hull openings. I am going to use G-10 Garolite , 1/16 " angle.
The camouflage pattern as presented is documented by B/W photographs. The colors are somewhat speculative, however she had immediately previously worm MS 12 MOD, so her hull colors would have been Ocean Gray 5-O, and Sea Blue 5-S. Based upon that and the information and the photos, I have used Light Gray 5_-L, Sea Blue 5-S, Ocean Gray 5-O, Haze Gray 5-H and Navy Blue 5-N for the narrow band at the bow. The latter is ENTIRELY speculative, because it could as easily have been Black.
Sadly, there is NO documentation, at NARA, or any where else, that has been uncovered that addresses this issue. It gets worse. There is some indication that Juneau was wearing a version of Mountbatten Pink, USN version being A LOT lighter, at the time of her loss. Stay tuned.

I see that I had not posted some earlier photos, so...
I made the armour belt,3.5" thick, from 1/16" Lexan and epoxied it to the hull. I had some wire loom supports laser cut locally and installed them on either side of the hull internally. The port side will support servo wires exclusively, while the starboard side will support power wires exclusively. Many of the servo runs are quite long, 3-4 feet in length so I made up custom servo leads. Each lead is color coded on either end and they have been run in the looms. Additionally, I made support trays for the five ESC's, but they are not yet installed. As I previous mentioned I installed battery trays/supports on the lower platforms, which were themselves installed after being epoxied on both sides.

Posts seem few and far between, but I have not been slacking. All of the basic radio wiring is done, as well as the house wiring. Motors and rudder are functional as are the smoke generators, and the anchor winch, as per pictures.
Next up is the superstructure which is 3D printed. Once it arrives, I can do weight tests and possibly get a test float in before the water hardens up.