The Ship Model Forum

Hi,

I'll contact you by mail since it takes at least 3 posts on this board before your personal message service is activated.

I'm still working on the ship, although at a slower pace now. I've been busy with some stairs and railings on the superstructure in order to be able to place the lifeboats. My goal is to place the lifeboats before any next sailing.

I've been sidetracked by other projects, which are more suitable for summer time. Chaconia, due to the detailing nature, is more of a night and winter project now.

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The merchant shipyard

Just found this thread. Astonishing! Really great work.

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Have fun, Monkey around.™

-Steve L.

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Beautiful work

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Thanks for the compliments. Thought an update was in place, so here it is. It shows most of the work that was done the last couple of months (on this ship at least )

Practically I had to first put the railing and stairs on around the lifeboats before I could install the boats. At first I ordered some Dean's Marine stairs, but they were too wide and the brass was too thick to modify them. So I modified my jig to resemble Capt Haddock's and created the stairs that way. The railings on the stairs are heavily modified Dean's Marine railings and the rest of the railings are Dean's as well. Quite strong brass, easy to install and looks good.

The last couple of weeks I've been testing things for the davits and finally finished the lifeboats (propulsion nozzle and grablines were remaining).

For the grablines I tested a jig to make them in one turn, but actually a method with each bow seperate was working better.
I wound 0.1mm brass wire (from a telephone cable) around a brass tube with a suitable diameter. Then I cut small circles from this "spring". After that I bent one end at a 90° angle to fit inside the hole in the lifeboat. I held the other end with a tweezer and like this I could vary the curve of the bow to all be more or less at same height. Once correct curve was visible, I adjusted the length on the other side to hold it just below the next hole and bent the remaining part of the wire to fit inside the hole. This relatively easy procedure was repeated for each curve. They aren't 100% equal in shape, but in reality they look much worse

Here is the tube with the wire and some pre-cut circles. And a pencil for scale:


And the boat more or less in place. The davit with boat was test-fitted with weights holding the cables on my workbench. Once at correct height, the cables were glued on each wheel to hold it. Once the weights were removed the davits could stand by themselves wiht the boat attached. So in these pictures the whole unit is dry-fitted and will be removed again to finish the final supports, railings and lifeboat winch before final installation.




I guess my next sea trial will be with this 1 boat just to make sure it stays onboard and see if I need any addition reinforcements before starting the next boat installation.

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The merchant shipyard

Finally I got it installed. Had still to put some markings on the fireboxes and eventually also decided to insert some brass pins in the bottom of the davits in order to fix them better. Still looking to improve that forward lashing though. I think I'll have to move it a bit down in order to right. Won't be very easy though.

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The merchant shipyard

Made some more progress.
First a sea trial with the one lifeboat installed to make sure it would hold during sailing before installing the next boat.




And then the second boat was installed. I was continuing with the railing and liferafts when I discovered somebody came to the idea of painting the deck area around the liferafts red, so I did that too. I like some extra colour, although this one in particular does not really improve the aesthetic appearance...




I think I'll get back to the deck area for a while before continuing the railing job on the accomodation.

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The merchant shipyard

Hi Roel this is top notch work , clean and sharp finishing and your Chaconia looks just superb out on the water as well as on the bench . An interesting subject with lots of scope for detail which you have crafted well .
Dave Wooley

i have no words to say.
this model is absolutely fantastic.
good construction and good painting job.
as said Dave: top noch work

Quite a while since the last post. Of course the tug got priority. Not sure if I'm going to continue this build, but at least I took the chance to take the ship out to the water recently. Together with the kid I tested it on a relatively new pond that serves as a fire extinguishing water reserve for an industrial area. Excellent pond for sailing due to its stepped and reinforced sides. Only disadvantage was a lot of floating plants, but it didn't really hamper the sailing.

And full speed trial.




Now she's back on the table. Not sure what I'll do with it. I'm finishing the tug and then I'd quite modelling completely. On the other hand it would be a pitty to leave this one at this stage. She's pretty far advanced, but still requires quite a lot of work as well. We'll see, at least it's fun sailing.

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The merchant shipyard

the model sails very well in the water.
very good Roel

After completing the TI Europe in 1/700, I decided to continue (and finish?!) this build. She's taking up a lot of place and would look nice when finished.

Kind of forgot why I stopped this build, so I guess the interruption was long enough
During the Europe build I added a couple of parts on deck, but due to some construction work in the workshop I can't work on the hull right now.

So decided to tackle and finish the accomodation block first. I started the railing a couple of years back on places where it was required, so now I continued with the railing and finally tackled some parts that I wasn't too keen on before: The magnetic compass and gyro compass repeaters on the bridge wings.
The magnetic compass is just a rough shape as she'll be covered in canvas later on (I think I'll use alu foil for that).
The gyro repeaters need some small detailing, but look ok for now, turned them on the lathe.

I'll try to update the older pics from the photobucket account as well in the near future.

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The merchant shipyard

Lovely build. And HUGE!

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Have fun, Monkey around.™

-Steve L.

Complete catalog: - https://www.model-monkey.com/
Follow Model Monkey® on Facebook: - https://www.facebook.com/modelmonkeybookandhobby

I have now finally restarted this build in earnest.
Main issue has been two-fold: I needed to do more research for certain areas. Each time I figured out how to build it, my time ran out...
Secondly, the cargo heater area was a serious road block. It didn't leave much open ends, where I could adjust lengths for the piping. I was affraid to tackle that, but it needed to be done before I could advance with the rest of the cargo system.

I finally found a way to do the research and make plans of it. Then I decided to tackle the road block head-on.
Due to the impossible-to-oversee amount of work, I'm forcing myself to build at least 2 parts each day (time permitting). It looks like a task without end, but it guarantees progress, which is better than nothing.

I'm having issues uploading images to the forum, as soon as I sort those out, I'll be back with new pictures.

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The merchant shipyard

So, here we go.

First started the warm-up by adding some valve actuators on tank 3. I finished those on Tank 1, so I had a good example of what I needed to do.


And then on to the real work, the cargo booster pumps and heater.





And in the meanwhile I continued on the main hose handling crane, midships. I had already done some work on the aft crane somewhere last year, but that one still is not painted.
The main crane is now in primer (used to be white primer, but somehow turned brown inside the can...) In any case, good enough to get rid of any contrasts, since those are difficult to get rid of underneath a white coat.

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The merchant shipyard

Figure this is a way around my picture uploading issues.

After getting "stuck" on the manifold area, I decided to carry on with the piping of cargo tank 2. Stuck isn't the real thing, I just needed to do more research, make detailed plans of that area before I tackle it.
I've also made some progress on the main cargo hose handling crane.
And since I had a short period left I also started with my long dreaded forward ventilation. No idea why I left that off for so long.
That's it for now. Busy with those plans of the manifold area at the moment, so I'm almost ready for some real progress.

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The merchant shipyard

And more progress made. Plugging away at the cargo piping. Added a few more lines. Then it was time to add the bunker manifolds, working my way up, layer after layer of piping from the deck level to the top.

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The merchant shipyard

I've continued.
Slowly getting there. Currently making roller and closed fairleads. A little more piping to do before I really get to the catwalk and final detailing stage.

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The merchant shipyard

super detailed model, a marvel

Thanks Norberto,

still making progress.

Mooring fittings were made using several jigs for both length and spacing of all rollers on the roller fairleads.


And an overview with the mooring fittings installed.



I also made the fixed gangways for both sides. I will only install those at the end of construction, when I'm doing the ship's side railing.



And after the last layer of piping, I could finally start on the catwalk over all the piping. These will be the last big pieces to go on. While working on that aft piece of catwalk I also decided to go for the final run of detailing in the areas where I'm installing the catwalk. So I'll be going aft to forward and add all details, which will not be obviously in my way for any further work. Last thing will then be the ship's side railings. Still a long way to go, but at least it looks like I'm getting somewhere and much faster than I ever expected when I suspended work on this model that many years ago.

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The merchant shipyard

Due to some access issues with thr board I haven't updated much. I did (and still am) continue construction on Chaconia.

I basically had to paint and place the aft catwalk, up to the edge of the "hatch" underneath the manifold.

This also meant the aft part was more or less finished to its "upper level", so I didn't need space to put my hands afterwards. I therefore decided to go a bit further and add more details in the aft section. That part is nearly complete apart from the stairs, outer railing and mooring fairleads.

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The merchant shipyard