The original CAD designs are by Brent Hartwig who drew these up for us based on the photos of Lake’s Argonaut Jr.
Imagine for a moment what Simon Lake would think if he knew that Brent produced these 3D renderings in the woods of Idaho and sent them to interested people around the world in one evening. No such tools existed for Simon Lake and would not exist until after man walked on the moon.
Few photos exist of Lake’s 1894 submarine, but with what we knew it was capable of and what technology was available at the time, Brent did a great job.
It didn’t take long and here’s what Brent came back with:
With a beam of 54 inches the submerged displacement volume, and thus the total dry boat weight.
Mass = 15980 pounds, which is just over 7 long tons
Volume = 44,2330 cubic inches, 256 cubic feet
Surface area = 62230 sq inches, 432 sq feet.
Center of mass: ( inches )
X = -0.1082
Y = 29.8981
Z = 0.0033
I expect the boat would need to be a bit heavier than this since it needed to be a bit heavy when submerged in order to stick to the bottom crawling along. –Brent
See the Argonaut Jr. in 3D
If you need a program to view CAD drawings, we suggest you download and install Solidworks eDrawings for free. It will allow you to view the drawings by layer, rotate, and even split the drawings open as seen above.
Below are the available files for download. Right Click the file name:
Brent’s CAD work: Argonaut_Jr.3dxml
CAD file with modifications for the 2010 version:
ArgonautJr2010.DWG –AutoCAD Drawing format
ArgonautJr2010.DFX –Generic Drawing File eXchange format
