The Ship Model Forum

Yes you read it correctly, another project. It's been underway quite a while and is by now well advanced.
It's a static 1/100 scratchbuilt model of a harbour tug. Of course it has a name, but I'll keep that to myself to avoid accidental discovery by google search by the one who it's meant for.

The plans were actually pretty easy to get by contacting the company which operates the boat.
The method of construction is a straight forward method in styrene, plank on frame, but the planks are actually rather large surfaces. The bow and stern were then filled and finished with car body filler and milliput in later stages. Detailing is done by using various forms of rods and Evergreen shapes.

The pictures will probably tell the story. I don't have too many pictures of the early stages since I wasn't really planning on putting it online.
This is a rather new method in this scale for me and I'm also testing the use of spray putty for the first time.

So here are the first pictures. Keel is 2mm styrene, frames are 1.5 mm styrene. The frames were later on hollowed out to reduce weight and to be able to use the styrene inside for something else (economy!). All together it's a rather lightweight construction.
Skin and deck are made of 0.5mm styrene, although in the future I'd change that towards 0.75 or even 1mm, the extra thickness allowing for some more sanding in later stages and also it would give a more smoothed out surface. (the current 0.5mm has some oil canning effect).



The first skinning. The keel was a single 2mm piece, however the plans were showing something much thicker. From any pictures of these ships I doubted my measurements of the plans. Later on I discovered that indeed on the forward part it is narrow, but the aft and middle parts were thicker. So I added extra thickness on both sides later on.






Edit: finally found some time to replace the photobucket links with local uploads. Will proceed as time permits.

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The merchant shipyard

Hi Roel great to see another vessel from you.
you are building very fast the hull.
looks good
success

Well as mentioned I've started this quite a while back, I think back in November or December 2014. It is just going slow due to the other projects. I'm pretty sure you can build such a hull in under a month...
As you can see it's a knuckle-frame ship. Meaning it has plenty of flat planes. After framing, I just put a sheet of paper along it, marked all the angles/corners in each frame, and drew out the area I needed, I then transfered it to the 0.5mm styrene sheet. Started at the bottom and then in a sort of lapstrake structure added the other areas and sanded/filed the corners.
For the anchor spaces I needed some sort of structure to start constructing them. I measured them out and then made a box on each side as a starting point. After the filler I could shape the boxes during the sanding process and add the real shape inside the boxes.
Pictures will show that better of course.
Here are the boxes. I covered most of the bow and stern with styrene (2mm thick) in order to reduce the amount of filler needed. I took 2mm since these parts take some force when the filler is applied.
Here is the real thing, you can read its name here, but I guess it won't show up in any search this way

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The merchant shipyard

Unfortunately I did not make too many pictures during the process, but here are a few more. This is after one coat of spray putty and and extra coat of milliput filler. I used milliput since the dents and uneven spots were rather small in size, car body filler often is too clumsy and large in quantity for such small spots.
You can see the oil canning effect on the thin plating due to the spray putty. A few coats of this putty will however solve that oil canning sufficiently. I'm fairly happy with the result of this putty and I think I'll be using it more as a primer on future models.

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The merchant shipyard

So another layer of primer and filling of dents further, the result was satisfying.



Additional filling was done with milliput due to the smaller size of the dents and the longer period you have when working with milliput compared to polyester car body filler. This additional time allows you to better spread the filler and cover more dents in one run.
After that it was time to start the detailing, like most of these tugs, this one has a small metal fender or reinforcement along the highest knuckle. Additionally she has very small bilge keels between the higher and lower knuckle. Those were also inserted. First I tried to use a paper template along the line to get a good bilge keel shape, but eventually I did cut a small gap to fit it and get a more correct and easier way to install them, this model is only static after all.




Next up is the fenders along the deck edge and forward and after that the small gratings for the cooling water inlets on the bottom and sides of the boat. That was something I didn't plan from the beginning. When the skin was already on the hull I did make some cuts to insert "something" later on... So not exactly the best way to do it, but I was in a hurry!

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The merchant shipyard

Very, very nice work on the hull
I did it the same way with my corvette and know how difficult it is, to get a smooth surface when using styrene sheets for planking.
One has to use more frames than in a wooden plank-on-frame hull because the styrene skin is more floppy and additionally the glue tends to distort the surface.

Best regards
Stefan

Thanks Stefan,

And the next steps were the fenders. As any tug, this one is covered with fenders all around. Forward she has seperate blocks and the remaining part are semi-cilindrical.
Since I don't have semi cilindrical styrene rods, I decided to cut some full rods in half. Luckily I succeeded in nicely sawing them so I could use both halves (I wasn't really counting on that).
Then I sort of laminated the bow part with two parts of 0.5mm. After that I sprayed again with spray putty (I didn't place the final forward fenders because I was affraid the spray putty would fill up the pattern of the Evergreen styrene I was planning to use).
After this final putty layer I installed the forward fender. I cut it from one part of Evergreen, however every three cuts in the pattern I made a thicker cut by passing with a cutter blade. This gives a better impression of the real seperate cushion blocks.

Here you see the first part of the fendering, note the Chaconia tanker behind her in the same scale.


And final coat of spray putty:


And the final bow fender in place before the first coat.

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The merchant shipyard

Neptune

An excellent smooth hull.

This is a very interesting and effective build technique. It obviously (from the finished result) lends itself perfectly to modelling modern fabricated/welded steel hulls.
I wonder how it would work reproducing a plated and riveted hull from say 1900? One which has gentle sweeping lines and no hard chine. I am thinking of shifting from wooden plank on frame to styrene construction to create the next plug for a GRP hull. I am confident in using timber but lack the experience with styrene to create a complete hull. Any observations?

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PICKETBOAT

www.chyldshallmodelshipyard.com

Thanks,

Well I'm not sure. I've seen this technique used as a GRP hull plug before, but on a very similar design as this tug.
Gentle bilges etc. would not be a problem, you won't be able to make the whole skin from one sheet of course, but with smaller pieces you can create larger and curved parts without any problem.
The only thing you'll have to take into account is the thickness. As mentioned before, I consider the 0.5mm a bit too thin, however it rapidly loses its flexibility when the thickness is increased. You can make a compound curve of 1mm styrene, but the radii of those curves will be already much larger than what can be achieved with 0.5mm.
Considering you'll have to work on the hull when you use it as a plug, you'll either have to increase the amount of frames, reinforce it from the inside so the styrene sheeting doesn't bend inwards between the frames, or make it out of thicker styrene sheeting and do it in smaller pieces of skin.

The easiest and most reliable way to achieve what you plan would be to make a standard wooden hull and then plate it with 0.5mm styrene. The styrene gives a smooth finish and allows you to detail as much as you want with styrene profiles, while at the same time you do retain the strength from the wooden hull underneath. Combining styrene and wood isn't a good idea, but for your purpose it might work. Once your GRP hull is made, the effect of temperature and humidity on the two different materials doesn't matter anymore for your final product. If you conserve your plug at a relatively steady condition it should also not tear apart or anything.

For a larger hull Stefan's Castle class is also a good reference, I also seem to remember a Bismarck with a styrene sheeted hull which you can have a look at.
Another method for riveted plating would be ARH's method with litho and a punching wheel in order to get the rivet detail on. For large ships however you need a large amount of litho...

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The merchant shipyard

Thanks Neptune

All this info has given me something to think about. I might experiment on a smaller project first, building an all styrene hull and plating it afterwards with self adhesive aluminium tape embossed with "rivets" as I have done on the submarine.

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PICKETBOAT

www.chyldshallmodelshipyard.com

Been out for a while. Could upload pics to photobucket, but somehow my connection didn't allow me to link them here.
Should be resolved now, so here are some more pictures. I'm already further advanced by now.

So here are the bottom gratings placed in the recesses:


First I tried to fill in between with styrene filler. That didn't work out too well, since I couldn't properly scrape out the excess filler without damaging the grating. Afterwards I tried to make a coaming around each one, using 0.4mm thick evergreen strips, they didn't bend very well in such confined space. You can still see that coaming on the forward grating in below picture.
Lastly I taped off each grill separately and just filled in everything around them, carefully removing the tape from each grill afterwards. That worked a lot better.


In next picture the gaps are filled in:


More to come soon.

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The merchant shipyard

Very neat

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PICKETBOAT

www.chyldshallmodelshipyard.com

Thanks,

As promised more up to date pictures. Sort of a fast forward since I seem to have lost some older in-between pictures.
Here she is as she stands today.
The missing steps were first priming of the deck (final colour) and hull (lower hull final colour, top will be black of course).
After that I tried to do a black wash on the sea chests, that failed (I was using acrylic and I don't have a shop close-by). So finally I decided to just use a very fine tipped black marker, which worked wonders and was pretty fast. Result you can see below.

After that I started on the bulwark. First I tried to just drill small locator parts along the length of the deck edge to keep the bulwark in place. It proved to be very difficult to make the bulwark follow the sheer of the hull nicely, even with paper templates. So eventually I ended up drilling/cutting a full gap on the deck edges to fit the bulwark inside. I used a normal grinding wheel for the longer parts and in the corners I used a regular drillbit on the proxxon. This method allows also to better drill the drain holes in the bulwark to make them fit along the deck.
Final part will be filling of the gaps between the bulwark and the deck. The bulwark was placed using some (3 or 4) frames to keep it in the right position, afterwards more frames were added. The frames are also placed inside the deck with a locator piece to make it stronger.

Enough of the explanations, there are the pics






Next up are the placement of some bollards near the bow and the bow fender and frames on the aft curved parts.
Then I guess I'll paint the top hull and bulwark black, carefully masking the main deck and inside bullwark. And after that I'll paint the inside of the bulwarks yellow along with some details on deck. That's just the plan of course...

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The merchant shipyard

Started the bow fender, but I'm not very pleased with it. At first I tried to bend it from 1 piece of 5mm rod, after I decided to cut it to several pieces and put a piece of steel wire through. In reality it's connected with chains on the bow as well.



This method was a little too straight forward. As you can see the plate at the top will be difficult to nicely fit in. A second method, which is probably better, would be to think more "model", less "reality". I should have laminated a few strips of styrene along the bow and then bent a semi-circular piece of rod around that, gluing it with the flat end on the strips. The effect would have been more fitting and much less effort and filler.
Since I was too far along the road and glued it in too many places, I was forced to continue the way I started (believe me, I tried to pry it off, but the risk of making more damage than good was too high). Next time I would use the second method.

Once the top plate was fixed and some filler added to smooth it all out it was time for the painting.

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The merchant shipyard

And the result so far. I've also added the bollards forward and started testing some shades of yellow for the inside of the bulwark.



And next to her the Chaconia in same scale. The flat bow fender was already coated in matt black on top of the spray coat in order to get some shading. The other rubber fenders all around and the round one on the bow will also receive that extra coat to make them stand out a bit more. I was first thinking of adding anthracite, but I suppose that would be unrealistic.

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The merchant shipyard

Had some trouble uploading the last pics and got behind on the actual build due to that.
Finally here we go with the last developments in this build. Things were going relatively smooth, with the lessons from Chaconia applied to create the winch for this tug.
Main problem with winches is the positioning and tensioning of attached wires/chains.




First I put the anchor side of the chain inside the hawsepipe and fixed it with the brass fitting you can see in the above picture. Then I drilled the hole to the chain locker in order to adjust the length of chain. Then it was a game of lining up the winch and the holes.



I also built the aft towing fitting. On the right flat disc there is a small hydraulic crane which will come later.




Currently I'm adjusting the angle of the superstructure (in an advanced stage of construction), together with detailing of the superstructure prior painting. I've also started construction of the azipods.
Hope to update more regularily soon.

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The merchant shipyard

Forgot to mention.
Winch construction is just a collection of punched discs of different thickness. On each side you can see two brakes, powered by hydraulic pistons. The small dots are the bolts with which the brake lining is fixed to the structure. I tried to copy the real bolting pattern for that, thought it was a necessary detail. Basically I punched the small dots with a needle in some litho strips. Then laid the strips over two 2mm thick punched styrene discs. The last detail I added were the pistons.
The warping ends are made in the same way as I did for Chaconia. Practically a piece of styrene tube with on both sides a disc. On one side the disc is drilled open and the details inside were added.

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The merchant shipyard

As promised, more progress on the superstructure:

The superstructure is made of styrene sheets with rounded corners made of cut up round profiles.
The backside.


And placed on the ship:


The central hole you see at the bottom is a tunnel below the superstructure to allow the towing wire from the forward winch to pass aft and tow with the stern rather than the bow. The towing fitting as shown in the above post, will actually hide most of that tunnel.

Due to the constant trim of these ships when they are underway (aft is always deeper than forward), the deck is also tilted, while in that condition, the superstructure is straight up. Therefore I made the superstructure complete and only cut the bottom afterwards to align it with the sheer of the deck.
After the construction I treated it with spray putty to avoid too much unwanted contrast under the final white coat. Afterwards I added the railing and handles to the different ports. They'll be black in the end, so no contrast problems there. Next are the eye brows on the windows and then it's the white coat.

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The merchant shipyard

In the meanwhile I've added all detailing and added the hatches to the main superstructure block and painted it (spray can).
I did encounter 1 problem, didn't take into account that the white can I bought was Alkyd paint and not Acrylic as the others. Apparently you can spray Alkyd over Acrylic, but not Acrylic over Alkyd. I thought perhaps with sanding in between etc. and the Acrylic primer not being strictly called acrylic laquer, perhaps it would work. It didn't.... Paint nearly immediately started crumbling and forming small mountains.
So in the end I sanded everything down to the spray putty layer where I had to apply the red acrylic primer, then applied the primer. It didn't come out perfectly since even the slightest contact between the dried out Alkyd and the acrylic are reacting badly.

I'm now busy with the black parts, mainly the funnels and aft surfaces of the funnels.
At the same time I'm also proceeding with the construction of the most challenging part, the bridge. Pictures will be up soon.

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The merchant shipyard

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