The Ship Model Forum

The largest ship I've ever sailed, this ship forms part of a 4-ship class that were the largest double hull tankers ever built. With a capactiy of 3.2million barrels of crude oil, these ships are even larger than the regular VLCC.

I've made an attempt over 10 years ago, after sailing on this vessel, to make a waterline model of her in paper. It was waterlined and never really got anywhere near finished (didn't have a clue about scratch building or where to obtain better materials for it at that time).
Now, after obtaining the necessary skills by building gas carrier models, I'm in for another, much better effort.

Due to her bulk being underwater, I decided to try to make a full hull model of this ship in order to fully grasp the size of these vessels.
It's also part of my effort to keep prototyping, never fully building a model the same way as the one before her. This is the first time I'll attempt a full hull scratchbuild in 1/700. I'm still somewhat undecided as to which method and order to hull construction I will apply. So for now everything is mostly dry fitted in order to allow adjustments once I decide what to do.

I've made a rather odd start due to lack of styrene in appropriate sizes and thickness. That has been solved now, so I hope to make some serious progress soon.

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Yard conversion to merchant shipbuilding

I always like your small scale builds of huge modern ships!¬
they are not beautiful (?!!) -- but nevertheless--very interesting!!



JIM B

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....I buy them at three times the speed I build 'em.... will I live long enough to empty my stash...?
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IPMS UK SIG (special interest group) www.finewaterline.com

Thanks Jim,

she definately isn't the cutest ship around, but she does fit in my colourful collection

Here's some progress. Inserted styrene cylinders (sanded to around 75% of the circumference) in the sides of the main deck. This is feature quite common on tankers as it divides the stress of the hull evenly and avoids concentrating the forces on the corner joint of the deck and the side of the hull.

You can also see the rather large camber of the hull. This is present on most merchant ships to make sure the water drains. On previous models I have not paid too much attention to this, but on this vessel the camber is quite obvious. The weight of water remaining on deck after a wave washing over, would be quite considerable, so it needs to be drained as soon as possible. Only the centre 14m are actually level, outwards of that on both sides the decks goes down. I pre-cut the camber, then bent the deck to represent this and to fit on the top of the frames. I will likely fill the small cuts and sand them smooth later on.

After inserting it, I filed it down to get a more even contact surface using a scrap piece of styrene and a flat file.
I did determin the construction method now and I'm collecting all info about hull shape from the plans in order to get the shape as accurate as possible. In waterline this would be a relatively easy build, but full hull has its complications.

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Yard conversion to merchant shipbuilding

And another update. Slowly she's starting to get some shape.

For this one I'll keep the deck off until the milliput on the rest of the body is dried and sanded to shape. Experience from previous models with this method, showed me that from time to time the supporting plates to which I attach the milliput afterwards, give way when I push the milliput too hard. In order to prevent this with large size pieces on this model, I will leave off the deck, so I an support the supporting plates from the inside.

Parallel body outline has been attached too now. Will soon add the supporting plates, tangent planes, to support the milliput, my most dreaded job on such a model.

As for thickness, due to the size of this model I've opted to build most pieces of 1.5mm styrene, while the longtudinal is made of 2mm styrene. On smaller size models I only make the frames and longitudinals of 1.5mm while the rest (parallel body plates, deck) is mostly made of 0.75 or 1mm.
In this case I opted for thicker pieces due to the large size and long lengths encountered. Don't want the parallel body plates to be bent.

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Yard conversion to merchant shipbuilding