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 Post subject: 1/700 Straat Clarence
PostPosted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 5:09 pm 
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After two combination liners it's time to start a project with only 2 boats and 4 gravity davits, m.v. Straat Clarence. She does have 18 3ton winches but that should not be a problem now that both BMK and Battlefleet make excellent winches in 1/700. This is actually my second try for this vessel, I decided to abandon an earlier hull which had started to warp rather badly. This one will be securely attached to a piece of stainless steel.
Straat Clarence was part of a 5 ship class built for a KJCPL (also known as Royal Interocean Lines) service between Japan/China and East Africa in the early 60's. The companies' designs of the period were optimised for seakeeping and hull efficiency at a fixed service speed without much consideration for stowage efficiency. At the time this meant a hollow waterline (almost no equidistant lines, like a clipper) and a good sheer. The opinions of the companies' poor overworked loadmasters were not recorded but the ship definately looked sharp and fast.
For the project I had access to 1/300 deck plans and a side view.
My current method for scratchbuiling hulls is rather different than other small scale methods such as "bread and butter" and Don Mkeands full keel and frame method as illustrated on the Fine Waterline site. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages. I think mine works best when you have a relatively substantial hull but only deck plans and side views to work from. If this build works out I may rework this thread into a short tutorial on scratchbuilding hulls in styrene/balsa.
For starters, the sideviews were reduced to 1/700 on a photo copier. A waterline shape was worked out from the deck and side views using french curves (burmester set) while making sure that the side view was .5mm too low and the waterline was .6mm too narrow. The side view and the waterline were transferred to 1 mm styrene and balsa planks were attached. The sheer was cut from the planks using the keel plate (=side view) as a guide and the decks were added in .5mm styrene. Then I filed and sanded the balsa in shape using the deck plates and some pictures as a guide. This is the result after an evenings' work:
Attachment:
Hull1.JPG
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Hull2.JPG
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Attachment:
Hull3.JPG
Hull3.JPG [ 68.25 KiB | Viewed 5114 times ]

Next time I'll be adding the shelter deck bulwarks and the hull plating.


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 6:10 pm 
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I'll get back to check this one :)
Sure I would cut the plastic trying to fit the balza...
I recently tried to cut directly a hull in soft wood at 1/700, it's more difficult to have sharp edges. Yet after applying liquid cyanoacrylate glue over it and sanding (x2), it didn't look that bad. But you won't have this problem if you plate your hull with plastic sheets...

Maybe you could post a pic of the real ship so we can see what's coming :wave_1:

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 5:55 am 
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I'm making use of the fact that balsa has less resistance to carving and sanding than styrene so I'm able use the styrene as a guide. This is a fairly easy process, the problems lie mostly with getting the sheer line right. And I will plate the hull off course.
I could not find good pictures of Straat Clarence before she was lenghtened in the public domain but this picture of sister Straat Chatham should give you an idea of what I'm working on.
http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/pho ... id=1332403
Or if you don't like following a deep link, this is a sketch I made for the earlier project:
Attachment:
Clarencesketchb.jpg
Clarencesketchb.jpg [ 102.27 KiB | Viewed 5082 times ]

The funnel came out a little higher than planned but otherwise this is how Straat Clarence is supposed to look like when finished. The wave pattern I used is from pictures of these ships doing speed trials so I'm assuming she's doing 16.5 knots.
moomoon wrote:
I'll get back to check this one :)
Sure I would cut the plastic trying to fit the balza...


Maybe you could post a pic of the real ship so we can see what's coming :wave_1:


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 8:02 am 
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Another nice rigging job coming :heh: Love the look of these old merchant ships.

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 9:45 am 
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I am looking forward to watching your progress as well! :thumbs_up_1: I'm always looking for hints and tips for improving my 1/700 scratch building skills.




Bob Pink. :wave_1:


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PostPosted: Wed Nov 07, 2012 5:56 pm 
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Time to work on the bulwarks. As Straat Cumberland is a three island ship I have relatively short main deck bulwarks with limited sheer. Evergreen strip is rather flexible so I decided to represent them by 1 mm strip and use the flexibility of the strips to follow the sheer line. First I glued the strips to the center and foc'sle. After that I carefully build up the plating on both sides in 2 and 3 mm strips while cutting the curvature in the curtain plates and making sure there was some space left at main deck level.
Attachment:
Bulwarks2.JPG
Bulwarks2.JPG [ 122.36 KiB | Viewed 5030 times ]

As this would leave the joint between bulwarks and curtain plates very fragile I added some reinforcements to the inside of the bulwarks.
Attachment:
Bulwarks3.JPG
Bulwarks3.JPG [ 47.07 KiB | Viewed 5030 times ]

And then I simply started adding more and more styrene strips to the hull.
Attachment:
Bulwarks4.JPG
Bulwarks4.JPG [ 137.76 KiB | Viewed 5030 times ]


Last edited by Pieter on Wed Nov 07, 2012 6:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 07, 2012 6:20 pm 
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The poop bulwark refused to cooperate and had to be rebuild a few times.
Attachment:
Outofline.JPG
Outofline.JPG [ 103.09 KiB | Viewed 5028 times ]

But was plated in after being frowned upon.
Attachment:
Poopplated.JPG
Poopplated.JPG [ 99.67 KiB | Viewed 5028 times ]

When plating I worked from the poop forward, adding styrene strips in about 7cm long strips while following the sheer line. As you can see the pattern is not perfect in the ends but this was also the case in real life. I hope some of the plating pattern will remain visible after a few priming, sanding and priming cycles. When I reached the stem I stopped for now. Straat Cumberland had a rolled plate stem which cannot be plated directly but will be shaped from .3mm styrene sheet.
Attachment:
Foclseplated.JPG
Foclseplated.JPG [ 126.94 KiB | Viewed 5028 times ]


Last edited by Pieter on Thu Nov 08, 2012 6:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Thu Nov 08, 2012 2:52 am 
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Location: Lancashire, England
Looking forward to seeing it progress. Not many modelers build this type of ship any more! Here is STRAAT VAN DIEMEN that I photographed off the Cape of Good Hope about 40 years ago.
Bob


Attachments:
File comment: Straat Van Diemen
Straat Van Diemen off the Cape of Good Hope 7-16-2009_003 (Medium).JPG
Straat Van Diemen off the Cape of Good Hope 7-16-2009_003 (Medium).JPG [ 28.7 KiB | Viewed 5018 times ]
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 08, 2012 6:43 am 
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Thanks Bob,
Straat Clarence was essentially a shorter version of Straat van Diemen. KJCPL and KPM had about 30 vessels in the 5000-10000 grt bracket built in the the 1950's an 60's which looked very similar.
Your projects are always an inspiration for me even though we use different techniques.


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PostPosted: Thu Nov 08, 2012 5:53 pm 
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Yesterday I build added the stem. A rolled plate stem is always a bit difficult to build though this time its relatively easy as I did not have deal with an outward flare above the hull line.
A shape which consists of three half circles was cut out from .3mm styrene sheet.
Attachment:
Rolledplate1.JPG
Rolledplate1.JPG [ 85.8 KiB | Viewed 4975 times ]

This was heated a little and pushed into a conical shape over some pliers I had lying around on the workbench.
Attachment:
Rolledplate2.JPG
Rolledplate2.JPG [ 101.35 KiB | Viewed 4975 times ]

After this the plate was pushed and glued in place on the stem piece of the hull and it was cut down to the right height. This phase is always critical in terms of fit and I used three different plates before I had it right. Styrene is cheap....After that I started to sand the plate so it blended in with the hull and the bulwarks behind it, which are vertical on the Straat ships.
Attachment:
blend3.JPG
blend3.JPG [ 122.76 KiB | Viewed 4975 times ]

As my bulwarks were bit thin and fragile I put a little flagpole platform and the roller fairleads in place behind them as a support.
Attachment:
rollerfairleads1.JPG
rollerfairleads1.JPG [ 64.36 KiB | Viewed 4975 times ]

Next phase: sanding, filling and sanding again....


Last edited by Pieter on Wed Jan 08, 2014 2:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Hatches
PostPosted: Wed Nov 21, 2012 2:07 pm 
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The past week I've mostly been filling, sanding and filling again. Important but visually uninteresting work. Yesterday I started to work on a sub assembly set, the cargo hatches.
Straat Clarence had 5 McGregor hatches. John Bowen gives you good drawings and sizes for these things. After some thought I decided to build them in layers. First I cut out the upper layer in .5 mm styrene plate.
Attachment:
hatch1.JPG
hatch1.JPG [ 125.14 KiB | Viewed 4861 times ]

I glued two strips of 1.09 mm styrene (Evergreen HO strips) to them while leaving about .3mm to the sides. The ends were filled in with .3 mm strips.
Attachment:
hatch3.JPG
hatch3.JPG [ 99.23 KiB | Viewed 4861 times ]

The hatches were turned over and I scribed the pontoon edges.
Attachment:
hatch4.JPG
hatch4.JPG [ 52.8 KiB | Viewed 4861 times ]

Hatch rails were made of .3mm styrene rod and glued to the sides and the hatches were set aside. Hatch 2, 3 and 4 had their rails attached to the winch houses next to them so they will be built next.
Attachment:
hatch5.JPG
hatch5.JPG [ 101.17 KiB | Viewed 4861 times ]


Last edited by Pieter on Mon Apr 21, 2014 5:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 1:19 pm 
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Now that I'm happy with the hull shape and plating I've decided to tackle the next step in hull construction, the bulwark supports. On my previous Straat C project I tried to achieve an in scale appearance by folding cut down PE railings and glueing them to the inside of the bulwarks, adding Krystal Klear to the corners to get the three dimensional shape of the supports. The result looked like this:
Attachment:
mbulwarks1.JPG
mbulwarks1.JPG [ 79.64 KiB | Viewed 4798 times ]

I tried to do this again but kept getting 'wobbly' and uneven support stanchions. I tried John Bowen's method of using small paper triangles and got even more wobbly results.
I was not very happy with this so I have decided to use Momoon's method even though this means the stanchion thickness will be slightly over scale.
Using the deck plans as a guide I drew the support positions on the deck with a sharp pencil and glued .3mm square styrene rod to the sides.
Attachment:
supports1.JPG
supports1.JPG [ 82.02 KiB | Viewed 4798 times ]

The tops were cut off flush to the bulwarks using a nail cutter.
Attachment:
supports2.JPG
supports2.JPG [ 134.76 KiB | Viewed 4798 times ]

And the process was repeated on the other side of the deck.
Attachment:
supports3.JPG
supports3.JPG [ 100.62 KiB | Viewed 4798 times ]

I find that this is a surprisingly quick and easy way to get convincing bulwark support stanchions. Thanks Momoon!


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PostPosted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 11:56 am 
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Now that the bulwark supports are in place I'm able to add some other parts. The bollards were painted in the same, dark grey, color as the deck or slightly darker so I can add them before painting and pick them out later. They're BFM resin parts. The same goes for the grid like structures (dutch: "Trossenrooster") on the foc'sle and poop which came from L'Arsenal. The other parts in this picture are not glued down yet.
Attachment:
overviewdec3.JPG
overviewdec3.JPG [ 134.24 KiB | Viewed 4718 times ]

As you can see I've also built the winch houses. They are simple structures built out of styrene rod and plates.
Attachment:
winchhouse2.JPG
winchhouse2.JPG [ 126.99 KiB | Viewed 4718 times ]

Attachment:
winchhouse3.JPG
winchhouse3.JPG [ 138.88 KiB | Viewed 4718 times ]

I've decided to bring things alive a bit by opening the door to the ships' laundry, which could be found in the aftermost winchhouse.
Attachment:
winchhouse1.JPG
winchhouse1.JPG [ 139.01 KiB | Viewed 4718 times ]


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 04, 2012 2:15 pm 
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Taking good shape :thumbs_up_1:
Winch houses look fine and the open door is sure a nice idear I never thought about.

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PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2012 5:39 am 
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Going pretty fast there! Sharp build as well. Your hull looks very nice already. Those frames on the side bulwarks are very diffcult indeed. Perhaps paper or litho would be better to use. There is a certain paper it looks like sigarette paper, but even thinner, which I've seen in use for modelling.

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PostPosted: Sat Nov 09, 2013 5:08 am 
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Neptune wrote:
Going pretty fast there!


You shouldn't have written this Roel...-:)
Anyway, after a small tea break the shipyard is working again. I've built up the first mast in 1mm styrene layers and sanded them down to a conical shape. One down two to go.....
Attachment:
superstructuremast.JPG
superstructuremast.JPG [ 111.27 KiB | Viewed 4187 times ]

I have also started to build up the ships' superstructure. This is a simple three deck structure which was built up in evergreen 2020 and 2.5mm strips filled in with balsa scraps. I couldn't resist opening the smoking room windows.
Attachment:
superstructurewindows.JPG
superstructurewindows.JPG [ 138.63 KiB | Viewed 4187 times ]

Attachment:
superstructurewindows2.JPG
superstructurewindows2.JPG [ 69.44 KiB | Viewed 4187 times ]


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PostPosted: Sat Nov 09, 2013 1:33 pm 
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Looking very good Pieter! :thumbs_up_1: :thumbs_up_1: I like your scratch building techniques! :cool_2:





Bob Pink. :wave_1:


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PostPosted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 4:11 pm 
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First progress pics of 2014.
The superstructure took some time to work out as I wanted to get recessed windows, which will be glazed using Krystal Klear later. After some trial and error I did this:
First I put in a sheet of .3mm stryene and built up the curtain plated over it.
Attachment:
windows1.JPG
windows1.JPG [ 128.51 KiB | Viewed 3883 times ]

Then I build up al the windows in 1 and 2 mm styrene strips:
Attachment:
windows2.JPG
windows2.JPG [ 120.6 KiB | Viewed 3883 times ]

And I drilled out the windows. For the front windows I put in some extra layers as the superstructure has a slight 'streamline' form so the front leans backwards a bit.
Attachment:
windows4.JPG
windows4.JPG [ 132.43 KiB | Viewed 3883 times ]

Next: priming and sanding again...


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 11:01 am 
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After 2 years (aaaarghhh!) I've been bitten by the building bug again having found some nice watercolor paper to work with.
So Straat Clarence has a water base now. I'm also finishing and painting the superstructure now. In the first picture the funnel and aft superstructure haven been placed on the hull and have not been glued down yet.
Attachment:
waterbase1.JPG
waterbase1.JPG [ 95.44 KiB | Viewed 3406 times ]

Attachment:
waterbase2.JPG
waterbase2.JPG [ 59.23 KiB | Viewed 3406 times ]


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 11:43 pm 
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This ship reminds me the mv chrisoula k, the famous wreck in the red Sea.
Very nice job!!


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