The Ship Model Forum

Hi there!

My name is Tommy, I live in Sweden and I'm new to this forum. I'd like to share some photos of my on-going project. A project that actually started 20 years ago.
Why so long you ask? Well there's a long list of excuses (isn't it always); career, wife, kids, other side projects etc. etc. But now I've decided to finally try to finish her (before the next project).

For starters here's a picture of the real thing:


This is one of twelve Swedish Navy 23 meter patrol boats of the Tapper class, the HMS Dristig.

My build, as most others, started with construction of the keel and frames:



To be continued....

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Welcome to the board!


Great little project you have going. Indeed scratchbuild projects always seem to take a lot of time!
Love those Swedish camo schemes. Hope to see some progress soon and hopefully it won't take another 20 years to finish it

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Yard conversion to merchant shipbuilding

Planking of the hull is made by strips of abachi wood:

Top view showing the installation of prop shafts and bow thruster:


Port quarter view:


Starboard bow view:

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That sounds familiar - I also have a project continuing over 10 years and not finished plus a couple of side projects

Love big RC torpedo boats and your work is great looking and accurate Will be glad to follow your thread

Happy modeling,

Yevgeniy

Neptune and Yevgeniy,

These are old photos from the build that illustrates the (lack of?) progress. I've only divided them in to parts, or tidbits if you like, so not to choke the board .

After the hull had been planked (and painted) I couldn't resist a trial run in the local pond:

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Half the deck had already been covered at the trial run, so naturally the rest would follow.

Aft view:


Forward view (with what will become the ship's boat):

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Next up was the construction of the superstructure:

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Nice to have new pics each day

So, this is basically where I am today:





This is where the detailing begins and where I think I got stuck last time.

Lets face it, at 1/100 scale, or even at 1/50 scale, you can get away with a lot regarding dodgy info on details. At 1/20 scale though the details are more, how should I put it.... massive or pronounced.

More on this later....

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One of the first details I looked at was the two life raft canisters, positioned windward about amidships.



At 1/20 scale these are about 65 mm in length, hard to come by as a ready made fitting. I've therefore tried to build them from scratch.

First the basic form was turned in wood and two of the sides filed flush (barely visible in the picture below).



A rim was constructed out of styrene strip to finally mimic the original. The canister in the picture has layer of primer only.



Still to be constructed are the cradles to mount the canisters to the deck......

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When I started this topic I said that nothing had happened with my build for 20 years. Now, this isn't entirely true.

A lot of time have been spent on research, planning of details etc. One such thing being markings (pennant numbers, name boards), for which artwork was compiled:



Out of this came a waterslide decal set:


(Artwork)


(Photo of the decal)

When I applied the name part to a 23 x 9 mm piece of teak, representing the name board, it turned out like this:

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Hello,

I love the name boards. Thanks for that. I now know what I am going to do for mine.

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James W.

Dry docked:
1/72 HMCS Assiniboine DDE 234-1960
1/72 HMCS Ottawa DDE 229-1960
1/72 HMCS St. Catharines-River Class Frigate-1944
On the slipway:
1/72 HMCS Camrose-Flower Class Corvette-1943
1/72 HMCS Trillium-Flower Class Corvette-1942

You must really love this boat to continue thinking of making a model of it for over 10 years with such attention to details

Nice subject and great work .Looking forward for more .I don't think I will be around for another twenty on this planet so please keep working .

My absolute love are the Norrköping class of torpedo/missile boats:


(Real thing)


(My model - 1/50 scale)

Regarding the Tapper class it's more of a task that I've taken on and I'm gonna see it through, over time a love/hate relationship has evolved. She's like soooo butt-ugly, that she's beautiful.
I had a chance to visit the yard where she is built, as they were building her. That's why I choose the Dristig.

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Here's a compilation of all (but one) of the doors and hatches on the boat.



The doors and the circular hatches still lacks their handles at this stage. The circular one in the middle sits, more or less, flush to the deck while the two in the upper right corner sits on a 19 mm frame.

In the top left corner there's two hatches in two variants each (closed or open). I had first made them closed, like all the rest. But after studying photos of operational boats I concluded that these two are,
for the most part, left open (part of the ventilation). Hence the second option and the one I'll likely go with.

Materials used are styrene and butylene plastic (sheets, tubes and strips). Handles will be of brass rod.

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A small update on how work is progressing:


Overall picture


Close-up picture

• The hatches for the (ELMA ASW grenade launcher) ready-use lockers are in place.
  
• The first (of many) swan neck ventilator is in place.
  
• The "fence", between the two lockers, that forms a basket for storing ropes and mooring lines is in place.

Materials used are styrene and butylene plastic (sheets, tubes and strips).

(I welcome comments or questions, should there be any )

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What is butylene plastic? Does it have any specific characteristic that you prefer? Or is it just easily available or cheap? I use mainly polystyrol because it's cheap, but it has a disadvantage of being rather hard and therefore difficult to cut. Polystyrene is softer and easier to cut, but more expensive. Does the butylene plastic stick with any regular plastics glue?

Love the Norkoping as well, do you have more pictures of that model as well?

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Yard conversion to merchant shipbuilding

Of course there is something called butylene plastic, but what I meant to write was BUTYRATE plastic.

One supplier of this is Plastruct (the link will give you the properties). Some of the tubing that I use (particularly in the larger sizes) comes from them. I find the plastic a bit harder and "sharper" than styrene and I use the same liquid solvent cement as for styrene.

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On each side of the superstructure there are two T-shaped life raft racks:




I've fashioned them out of brass strips:


Front view


Back view

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