The Ship Model Forum

The second boat is finished, I redesigned it at 50% adding the clins this time. I modified the first front pair which seems to be badly drawn on the original plan.

I've been focusing on the final paint details and small repairs the last few days.

The support pillars of the ship have been printed, a 4 mm nut embedded in the support allows a good fixation to the support. A piano wire reinforces the whole in the upper part.

I still have to mount the navigation lights on the front mast and the one on the back mast, and the brass name plate to engrave.

An advantage of a civilian model is the variety of colors which add interest! As to figures I have been looking for suitable USN figures. I did find out a PT Boat crew in a very large scale and somewhat expensive from a printable file. As a STL file I suppose they could be reduced to 1:120, they have helmets and life jackets so could man various position, though a little warlike for a repair ship. I remember you had various "swabbies" for your 1:200 tanker?

Hydrograaf is quite a stunning small model!

Cheers: Tom

Pascal,

A wonderful and detailed little ship model - well done!!!!

Hank

Thanks to you!

The Hydrograaf had a big brother, a little longer by 5 meters, but less lucky, the M/S Eilerts de Haan.

M/S Ellerts de Haan was a hydrographic ship of the Dutch Navy, built by the Rotterdam Fijenoord shipyard. (1921)

During the German attack on the Netherlands in 1940, the ship was in the port of Den Helder for conservation purposes, which meant that it fell into German hands.

The German armed forces converted the Ellerts de Haan into a school ship and renamed it Randzel. The ship was lost in service while being used by the Germans in the Baltic Sea in the spring of 1945, when it ran aground south of the German island of Fehmarn. �

The ship was named after Johan Eilerts de Haan, a Dutch naval officer and explorer who died in 1910 during a voyage to Suriname.

Johannes Gijsbert Willem Jacobus (Johan) Eilerts de Haan (born in Noordwolde, October 3, 1865 - died in the interior of Suriname, August 29, 1910) was a Dutch explorer and soldier. The Eilerts de Haan Nature Park in Suriname is named after him.

These brackets/shelves are interchangeable by removing two screws, so I can change models from time to time. Very practical.

Making the display case, thanks to Bruno ( Bgire) for his tutorial.

https://www-laroyale--modelisme-net.tra ... x_tr_hl=fr

I still have the brass rods to cut and glue. I used Sader epoxy crystal, it works very well.

I also used Wolfcraft ES22 brackets that I modified by gluing balsa shims to make them accept 2mm. thick glass.

Some progress on the display case.

I cut and glued the 8mm brass angles, from the excellent Tartaix company, it is sold by weight.

Reference: L2CLE1/8

https://www.tartaix.com


I've already spent at least 3.50m of my 4m in stock, I should have enough to finish before Christmas as they are on holiday after that. It's glued with the same glue. If it goes over, a razor blade is enough to remove any excess glue.

I use the same technique for building my cases since the late 1980s - inspired by the description in McCaffery's book.

I have been buying metals from Tartaix here in Paris in their shop in the Marais area. However, they don't seem to go down to very small sizes, such as 4 mm x 4 mm.

Recently I built a couple of cases using Plexiglas instead of mineral glass. It has the advantage of being lighter and I had from another project lots of leftovers, but the disadvantage is that you can't scrape off so easily excess glue and it attracts more dust.

Seen on World Of Warships (well known online game) last Christmas by a friend, thanks to him for the screenshots.

Surprising, isn't it? From there to think that they were inspired...

Hi Pascal,

For some reason I missed the final stages of your build, the end result is beautiful! My full congratulations.

Maarten

Maarten Sch�nfeld wrote:Hi Pascal,

For some reason I missed the final stages of your build, the end result is beautiful! My full congratulations.

Maarten

Glad to read you.

Thank you Maarten for your documentary help, wise advice and encouragement throughout this project.

Oh wow!

This built made me join this forum. I stumbled upon it today when looking for example deck layouts of tram steamers as I'm trying to get into model making and I'm currently working on trying to 3d model my own tramp steamer based on some simplified model I found, so I can 3d print it later.

Needless to say your build puts my efforts to shame It is truly amazing!

I want to ask so many questions, but don't think it would be suitable to ask on the forum, and it doesn't seem like I can send private messages on here. So I will limit myself to only two:
1. Are your models available anywhere so others could print them themselves?
2. Could I contact you over email (or you can send a private message on here if you can) to be able to ask more questions?

--
Fred.

Thank you very much, Fred.

1 - No, I never sell my print files, sorry.

2 - You can ask your questions here, no worries.

If I remember correctly, you should be able to send personal messages after making 3 or 5 posts on the forum itself.

@Pascal:

While it saddens me that I won't be able to put together your models, I completely understand your choice not to share them.

As for questions, I think I will start at the beginning: where would I begin to look for good ship blueprints/plans?
So far I only found one website hosting a few, but from reading through your topics it seems you are able to find really detailed plans. I feel if I were to model myself a ship from scratch (currently using a pre-made hull) I would really need those.

Secondly, I was wondering if you could point me to some resources about modelling hulls. I only have hobby experience with Rhino3D and Fusion360, and while I'm capable of modelling things for 3d print, I feel like there's another lever of knowledge when it comes to modeling complex curvilinear shapes like hulls.

@Neptune
Thank you for letting me know. For time being I will lurk around and read the forums and ask questions in open topics when applicable. Definitely don't want to be 'that guy' who goes around and sends unsolicited private messages to people

von_bednar wrote: As for questions, I think I will start at the beginning: where would I begin to look for good ship blueprints/plans?
So far I only found one website hosting a few, but from reading through your topics it seems you are able to find really detailed plans. I feel if I were to model myself a ship from scratch (currently using a pre-made hull) I would really need those.

May I take this one up? For the 'Hydrograaf' the plans can be found in the Dutch National Archives in The Hague, these are all online available for free, here's the link: https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzo ... ~4324-4340
For the ship's boat's, these can also be found here but these were generic for the Dutch navy and can be found in the small vessel's section.

But for other ships: it really depends on the ship in case where you have to look, there are no sites having all ships of the world. But for starters, US Naval ships of the past may be found in the HSNA site, and commercially on the Floating Drydock website. British ships may be found in the Greenwich Maritime Museum archives (expensive!) but some can be found elsewhere too. German ships can be found either commercially or some historical ships on Russian (!) websites. Andsoforth andsofurther.

So the question is: which particular ship do you want to model? If you can name it, then there are people here on the forum that might help finding the required plans.

Maarten Sch�nfeld wrote:So the question is: which particular ship do you want to model? If you can name it, then there are people here on the forum that might help finding the required plans.

That is the best advice. For some states, there are central archives, but even those usually contain not all ships, but for some of them other archives have the plans. General statements are therefore difficult. For Germany, I know probably 20 or more archives to contact depending on the ship.

Thank you both!

It seems I have been approaching it the wrong way - my thinking was: find an archive, look through what's available and choose something close to what I'm looking for. Seems I have some researching to do first to try to find ship name and/or model of what I'm after.

I think my first proper attempt of modelling a hull should be something smaller (just because my assumption that smaller vessel = simpler) and I was thinking of a tugboat to go with the steamer I'm currently working on (and also because modelling a lifeboat or rowboat, while definitely simpler, does not seem as exciting) . Will look into early XX century tugs and see what I can find. Is there a good place where I could start my research?

von_bednar wrote:Thank you both!

It seems I have been approaching it the wrong way - my thinking was: find an archive, look through what's available and choose something close to what I'm looking for. Seems I have some researching to do first to try to find ship name and/or model of what I'm after.

I think my first proper attempt of modelling a hull should be something smaller (just because my assumption that smaller vessel = simpler) and I was thinking of a tugboat to go with the steamer I'm currently working on (and also because modelling a lifeboat or rowboat, while definitely simpler, does not seem as exciting) . Will look into early XX century tugs and see what I can find. Is there a good place where I could start my research?

You might be surprised how complex the hull of a tugboat is! To be honest, any ship's hull is a complex shape to model in 3D - but then, I have no real 3D experience. To me, a viking ship with stem and stern being the same would probably the simplest form, but as soon as you add the clinker hull planks it's becoming complicated already.

A hull like the 'Hydrograaf' in itself is not very complex (better ask Iceman 29) but then the hull plating and the stern with rudder make it complex again. Yo'll find soon enough when you start. But any generic or diesel steam cargo ship is probably a good starting point.

vb,

Small hulls are not necessarily easier to model in CAD than large hulls. I found that modeling a 28 foot motor launch was about as challenging as the hull as a 610 foot cruiser.

Smooth hulls like canoes are pretty easy. But some hulls have irregularities like skegs (where the keel ends forward of the stern) or knuckles (sharp edges between smooth curves). The smoothly curved parts are easy to model. It is the irregularities than can cause you to pull your hair out!

Like Maarten said, a clinker hull is far harder to model than a smooth hull. And if you plan to model the hull plating you can count on a lot more work (and frustration).

However, after you have modeled your first complex hull you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you have accomplished something!

Phil

Thanks both for the feedback!

While I'm less excited about creating hulls for simple boats, you're both right that I should go with it for my first try. Once I've progressed more on my current project, I will look into plans of something like a viking boat.

I also had another idea of using scans of old paper models (those were quite popular in Poland, where I'm originally from) and recreate the "skeleton" of the hull (which is basically vertical cuts of the hull) and build the hull curves based on those... but, while this shortcut would let me make some complex hulls *now* it wouldn't really teach me what I really want to do Nonetheless, I found few models of Polish ships I might recreate that way in the future