The Ship Model Forum

Hey group,
as I am staying home for a while and my main project is stalled due to decal issues I have decided to start a new project. Fully scratchbuild this time. After looking through my references my eye fell on a bulk carrier. I had some articles on bulk carriers from the early 60s when even bulk carriers could have a streamlined look.
Irish Cedar was also small enough to be placed in a diorama if necessary. She was build in 1962 at Verolme in Heusden, The Netherlands.
I have some very good general arrangement drawings to work from and shipspotting can help me out if I am missing things. So I started by using the drawings and pictures to work out some basic sections.

And the first plastic has been cut. More tomorrow.

Next step, filling in the sections with balsa wood and adding the decks. As usual I am using .5mm styrene for the steel decks and evergreen 2020 for the planked decks but on this build the main deck is somewhat heavier at 1 mm as I will be working in the round edges of this deck later.



And some cutting, filing and sanding later it looks like this. I try not to use any filler in this phase of the build.

Great to see you start a new one. Did you ever get cracks between the balsa and the styrene due to thermal expansion?

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The merchant shipyard

Thanks Roel. I do not get cracks between balsa and styrene. I do sometimes get warped hulls, probably because balsa is sensitive to changes in humidity. This is one of the reasons why I work in some styrene sections and make sure there is a small space between the styrene sections and the balsa filling so it can expand a little before I plank the hull with styrene strips. Once planked the hull gets screwed down to a building block or its water base.
Anyway, we are not there yet on this build. Irish Cedar had a rounded deck edge similar to your tankers.
I decided to sand this round edge using masking tape as a guide. This is why I used 1mm styrene rather than .5mm styrene for the main deck.

And the result after some filing and sanding. The round down will continue a little in the .3mm styrene plating. I hope it will work out the right way.

This week I have started the hull plating. Most of the hull was done with one 4mm wide styrene strip which was carefully sanded to confirm with the round deck edge. And i managed to damage the first parts of the poop plating almost as soon as I had added the parts. Oh well.


Most of the week was taken up by the stem though. A rolled plate stem is always tricky to get right so I tried something new. I folded the styrene strip diagonally across the stem.

And after that it was filling, sanding and filling again. Will need some more work. I'm getting close to the original shape though.

Very nice work! - I love a good scratchbuild project, especially in 1/700.

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-- Scott

Great job, Pieter! She is coming along nicely!




Bob Pink.

So after april some movement was permitted after all and this build stalled. I cycled this route https://www.r1-radweginfo.de/r1-radweg- ... tfalen.php amongst others and spent an extraordinary amount of time outside.
Now that NL is red zoned again it is time to dust off the bulk carrier and start building again.
Having run out of my old stash of BFM resin bollards I decided to start scratchbuilding all 23 of them.



I used a small jig to drill the holes for some .5mm styrene rod.



And the styrene rods were cut off and sanded true.


Up next were the bulwarks and their supports. All that beautiful 1960s streamline meant no jigs as no bulwark support has the same length or is placed at the same angle. But the result does look nice I think.

Irish Cedar had some rather prominent fairleads on the main deck. After adding these the hull was ready and it is set aside for priming. I did a little parts count for the hull. 178 parts so far.

I have cut my first styrene for the superstructure.


And the other superstructures. Five big McGregor hatches which means five rather complex multi part machines which have to look exactly the same. I have an Amati chopper which I will use a lot this week I think.

Some more work.
The first hatch is almost finished. 50 parts worked in, 10 to go.

And I have been painting the hull. One of my reasons for doing this project is Irish Shippings' attractive color scheme at the time, I think this is good start.

This is where I am now. I hope to finish the hatches this week and to be able to start painting them.

And so, after finishing 5 of these creatures at 56 parts each...


I went to the local hobby shop and discovered that Evergreen makes some really nice metal siding for railroad models that would have saved me more than half the work.

Anyway, the hatches are now ready for a coat of primer and at a parts count of 458 I have started working on the superstructure. Owners'cabin first.

That looks really very good!

excellent persistence with the hatches

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...?
http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... index.html

IPMS UK SIG (special interest group) www.finewaterline.com

Thanks Jim.

Very sharp work so far. If I do see something as repetitive as those hatches coming, I do search for an "out of the box" solution to avoid testing my patience

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The merchant shipyard

Missed this scratchbuilding project so far, unfortunately.

It occurred to me, that instead of using Balsa wood for fillers, using a hard foam, such as Rohacell (this is foamy Plexiglas, you can find it in some architectural modelling supply stores) or the styrene stuff used in building or MDF might prevent the thermal expansion/warping problem. The plastics have similar thermal expansion coefficients and do not react to changing humidity.

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Eberhard

Former chairman Arbeitskreis historischer Schiffbau e.V. (German Association for Shipbuilding History)

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Wow, I wouldn't have enough patience for all the work put into this ship. Like some else mentioned its nice to see scratch built ships especially in 1/700 scale looking forward to the progress of your ship.

Thanks everyone for the comments.
Mr Falck, I think I have warping under control nowadays by having some styrene sections on this hull and not pushing balsa into place. Note that this hull went through spring, a fairly hot summer and fall without warping. If I do get problems she will be screwed to her base. I have tried hard foam and mdf in the past but I find them difficult to cut and sand and they have no clear grain to work with. Balsa is wood and I have 30 ish years of experience in working it with basic tools on wood. It works for me. For smaller projects I have tried laminated styrene only which can also work well but not on this size.

I did. I just looked in the wrong direction. Stumbled on it when I was looking for solutions for something else. I want to do an SD 14 or B 26 in the faraway future and they have this typical currogated superstructure which may be based on Evergreen profiles.

Pieter,

I doubt your 1:700 model would have problems due to different coefficients of thermal expansion for the materials (plastic and wood). While there will be small differences with normal temperature changes the glues and fasteners should control it.

Most (all?) plastics have large coefficients of thermal expansion, much higher than metals or wood. Thermal expansion of different materials becomes important with larger scale models up to several meters in length. In this case a temperature change of 20 degrees Celsius can result in a difference in change of length between wood and plastic of up to 5 mm (1/4 inch)!

There is an example on the Forum of a 1:72 scale R/C aircraft carrier over two meters long that was built in a cold workshop in winter and then buckled severely when put on the water in the hot summer sun. The plastic flight deck was fastened securely to the wooden frame at both ends and buckled upwards in the heat. Likewise, long plastic sides to the hanger deck buckled in the heat.

I had a similar problem with a 76 inch long (1.93 meter) 1:96 Cleveland class cruiser fiberglass hull that had Plexiglas frames and longitudinals epoxied into the hull to hold the flimsy fiberglass sides in the proper shape. I was working on it in the summer sun to get filler to harden quickly, and the Plexiglas expanded faster than the fiberglass. Some of the longitudinals actually broke the epoxy and popped out of the hull! Lesson learned!

Phil

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A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

In 1:700, the relative strength of materials and adhesives is pretty good. My 1:200 Missouri is now almost 60 years old since I originally constructed the hull. The overall ship has been significantly reworked, but being all wood in effect, no issues. A model, just as old, bit more crude, of an ARL with a hull of wood and aluminum has survived perfectly. My Alaska is all styrene in the hull, some plexiglas used in the superstructure, was begun 30 years ago, no issues. The APA 1:120 and about 4' long does have a plexiglass O1 level which spans about 55% of the length of the ship. It's been on there a couple of years with no issues so far. It's an "inside cat" as I suppose your waterline model will be. Living in the sub arctic, it's not likely to get baked as if one lived in Phoenix. For various reasons, that long plexiglas deck is in two pieces with what really amounts to an expansion joint, just like the one found on Missouri's superstructure midships.

I have a model of Whitehurst (DE) in about 1:550 which I made when i was flying out of Phoenix 30+ years ago using nothing but an exacto knife and a paintbrush. The lifelines are from a girlfriends hair. No issues, but that one's all styrene sheet.

Your wonderful project should last a long time if stored or shown in a good environment!