1/700 oceangoing tug ITC Suhaili (1976)

[Pieter]

Now that Neptune is doing a russian tug I must confess I have also been working on a tug. It started last november when a bright orange tug with classic lines showed up at Shipdock, a shipyard about 1km south of where I live. After some google-ing and a visit to the Rotterdam Maritime museum library I had a large number of pictures and a good GA drawing from a book on 25 years of ITC (the owners). The company has lesser quality GA drawings (no bridge and mast detail) on their website btw, Http://www.itctowage.com. Suhaili is a fairly powerful , 8440 bhp / 102tons BP long distance tug built in 1976. An interesting aspect of the design is that the tug was built in order to be able to push large barges on the high seas. Originally they had a mast lookout position for this . The push barge scheme had to be abandoned for technical reasons but the lookout positions were there until a few years ago. Anyway, I started to do the hull in balsa and styrene and took some pictures . Then some other kits arrived and the hull started to collect dust. But Neptune has awakened the orange monster from her slumber. Stay tuned.

[Neptune]

Woohoo, I'm very happy to see this!!!
You can't complain, you even had a PLAN!!!

How did you build the hull? Cut several "slices" according to the plan and then put them on top of each other (practically what I did with a self-made plan), or did you use a different method?

Good luck with this build, I will have to stop my build now to wait for yours and pick up the tips and methods! (just kidding, although I will leave in a few days for three months at sea)

[Pieter]

About the hull:
I cut out a ground plate using the plans scaled down to 1/700 and a vertical "keel" in 1mm stryene. I added four pieces of balsa as I had a forecastle break to take into account. These were shaped in order to get the vertical sheer line right. After that I added 0.5 mm styrene for the decks and I put in some bulkheads for the forecastle break. There's a cut out in the forecastle deck in order to be able to put in the towing winch. After the glue dried on that I shaped the rest of the hull. I am currently plating the hull in .3mm styrene.
About the tugs:
I found out recently that our projects are distant cousins. ITC was formed in the early 1970's by a former director, Frits Jonkman, of the dutch towage and salvage company Wijsmuller (now part of Maersk as SvitzerWijsmuller). The S-wind class design corresponds to the 'Ideal high seas tug' thinking within the Wijsmuller organisation of the early 1970's. While Jonkman was setting up ITC Wijsmuller designed and built the very radical, brutish looking anchor handling tugs Typhoon and Tempest. Wijsmuller is also a consultancy and design bureau and it was hired in the early 1980' by the Soviet Union to help design their new generation of high seas tugs. SB-406 looks like a stretched Typhoon/Tempest and represents Wijmuller view of the ideal high seas tug in the early 1980's. Ironically, ITC now owns Typhoon and Tempest and sometimes contracts work out to...SB-406 class tugs. I hope to find pictures of all three designs operating together someday. This also means you can use the ITC drawings of Typhoon/Tempest to get a feel for the arrangements and fittings of SB-406.
Anyway, have fun on the high seas and I'll drink a Westmalle to the projects and to your trip tonight.

[Neptune]

You must be making a mistake there. They look TOTALLY different as well as that the SB-406 is not for rent. SB-408 was the only unit that worked for Tsavliris for a while, in a certain co-operation with the Russian Navy. She was first stationed in Sri Lanka and afterwards in Capetown. The contract ended last year and she was recently heading home, to Vladivostok. The other units, in the Black, Baltic and North Seas fleet are not commercially available and are part of the Russian Navy. Shakhter, the unit in the Black Seas fleet does go out regularily, I'm however not sure for what purpose since I haven't seen her tow anything. She does have a more commercial paint scheme, so possibly she does some commercial diving operations or things alike.

The hull might be more or less similar, although I think your hull is already looking a lot like mine in shape, but the superstructure and equipment are totally different. The Project 712 tugs (of which SB-406 is part) have a heavy and a somewhat lighter crane onboard. Furthermore they carry huge fenders and go alongside other ships for certain work. They also support diving operations. Towing is not really their strength (they only have 60 t Bollard Pull, which is even less than the S-Wind design, yet she is heavier and bigger).

[Pieter]

You're probably right about the 712 class, I was reading some info from Tsavrilis and probably reading too fast. The Wijsmuller connection is very real though, they did much design work for the USSR in the 1980's. This became a minor scandal in the dutch press as a certain towage company from Rotterdam suddenly became patriotic and started talking about cold war 'secrets' being given to the USSR. The partly Wijsmuller designed ships were the SB 131 class, though they did have their influence on the 712. Typhoon looks a bit like a 712 which has run into a wall. In a way the Soviet Union took a retrograde step in building specialised salvage tugs at the time, after 1980 all western tugs except the Smit Singapore were multi-function and could also be used in the oil industry.

[Pieter]

Some progress. The hull has been plated in 0.3 mm styrene. I have decided to built the hull about 2 mm higher out of the water than what would normally be the case as otherwise the hull near the break of the forecastle will become to weak to handle. Towing winch was built up from spare parts, mostly Pit Road 25mm guns and gun bases. After building it was plated over and and towing bollards were built on the rear deck so it's not really visible but at least I know it's there...-:) Small bollards are cut down twin 12.5 mm guns from the same weapons set. They're overscale for their original purpose but this way they can still be useful. As you can see I've alse started working on the superstructure. My superstructure is built up somewhat differently from Neptune as I don't like working in layers of styrene. 1mm is the maximum thickness I can cut easily. The lower level is a combination of 0.3 mm sides dan 0.5mm decks over a balsa core. The balsa core is slighly flexible so I was able to follow the subtle sheer line of the hull. It's still a seperate part, hence its different locations (ahem) in the pictures. And I've just noticed (looking over the pictures) I will have to rebuild part of the forward bulwark as they're not symmetrical.

[Pieter]

More superstructure pictures. Getting the funnels to be straight and symmetrical is a bit of problem as you can see.

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[Pieter]

Found a movie from 1992 of two sisters of Suhaili towing a VLCC through the Bay of Biscay.
http://www.imcbrokers.com/blog/2007/12/ ... ng-a-vlcc/

[Pieter]

Some hull pictures. The bright colors are as bright as the real thing. I did experience a lot of problems with the green, it does not cover very well so far.

[Neptun]

Nice one, I`m in Chile at the moment, with a lot of regrets of not taking my own stuff with me.

Keep it going, Ill soon start my own one too, although my big ships have arrived. Anyhow I want to finish my SB first.

Keep yours going, looks very nice, certainly the bulwark came out nicely!

Regards,
Roel

[Pieter]

Suhaili is still a live project, I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow. Some people seemed to like it at this afternoon's SIG-ships meeting. Hope you're having fun in Chile.

[Pieter]

Some more pictures. The superstructure parts have not been fixed to the hull yet. Had lots of problems with the bridge parts (maybe those open windows were not a good idea after all) but we're getting there.

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[Neptune]

Again in Chile now, next stop Mexico, then home.

Good to see this progress, although posted a while ago. With the funnels and the hull it immediately starts to look much more complete! Hope you�re still continuing! I hope to finish mine soon, if I remember I had nearly finished the lifeboats.

Yours looks much better than mine though, I like those open windows of yours! Next time I�ll have to try that too, because the closed ones are a pain in the ass to paint!

[Pieter]

Open windows are a pain in the ass to keep straight however...I'm very busy this month and there's also a Temeraire which keeps calling me but I'll try and post something over the weekend.

Again in Chile now, next stop Mexico, then home.


Yours looks much better than mine though, I like those open windows of yours! Next time I�ll have to try that too, because the closed ones are a pain in the ass to paint!

[Pieter]

Windows added, finally. And I've build the anchor winch.

[Neptune]

aha, great news.
How do you build your winches? Do you have nice detail pics of your winch?

[Pieter]

If I build a one-off like on Suhaili I use whatever I have lying around and make it a nice one-evening project. Suhaili's anchor winch was made from a badly overscale Trumpeter director tower through which I put a piece of .3 mm brass rod. I attached two brass disks (1/400 S-58 wheels from the IPMS NL Karel Doorman sheet) on both sides and fulled the space between each pair of discs with white glue. The whole setup was painted in Tamiya NATO black and attached to the forecastle.

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[Pieter]

I used another approach when I had to make 14 steam winches on Tjisaroea, one of my stalled projects. I first tried to build one up using PE brass 25 mm triples and fill in the warping drum spaces and steam cylinders using white glue. After three evenings I had one convincing winch and a growing migraine - not to mention the problem that I had to do this thirteen times. I truly admire the Y****o holics on this site who do this up to 40 times! So I had a look at the spares box again. Skywave 20mm guns are quite convincing as a-symmetric steam winches when one cuts off the the barrels and glues them sideways on a square piece of styrene. I added a few handles on each winch and glued a cut down piece of 1/400 railings over some of them which functioned as a safety cage. Safety cages are prominently visible in pictures of JCJL vessels. JCJL carried up to 1000 deck passengers per ship which had to be kept away from the running parts of the winches. The prototype became the special warping winch on the quarter deck.

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[Pieter]

As Tamiya primers seem to have disappeared from the european market the Kungsholm thread will not be active for a while. So its' back to a certain tug. I've started to build the masts, a new winch and the structures on the towing deck. The 'crow's nest' was meant for a scheme in which the Suhaili class was to be used in towing ocean going push barges. Likes most of those schemes it ran into serious technical problems but the structures were kept on board until about 10 years ago.

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[Pieter]

Started working on the shipboard crane and the lookout position. Pictures were taken on my balcony while the sun was going down, which gives a nice look I think.