The Ship Model Forum

My first scratchbuild thread! Yay!

Subject: Burrard Pacific Breeze, the newest member of Vancouver's SeaBus fleet. You can read more about them in the CASF thread here, if you want!: viewtopic.php?f=51&t=51219
I'm planning on building her in subassemblies that can later be resin-casted.

First step is the hull (well, it's hard to define what the hull is for a catamaran, haha! Better just call this the main deck)!

Timmy,
Very nice. I'll be looking forward to watching this one come together.
Mark

Yep great ship, I was looking forward to it. Any progress so far? Once you get started with scratchbuilding... There's no end to it

Have been having some problems with programs not outputting drawings at the same size they were input, leading to the delays thus far. I should be able to get a paper test hull by tomorrow, if not tonight. Thanks for reading!

Good to see you with a scratch building thread , This looks an interesting if different ship. I'll keep looking in.
Dave Wooley

Thanks for the interest, Dave!

Ok, absolutely nothing astounding to see here - just a paper mock-up of the frames for the hull, and not even a complete mock up; it's just one quarter of the hulls

Hopefully I can get around to making the styrene versions this weekend!

One of the hulls is now constructed - waiting for the putty to dry and then it can be sanded. The frames, keel, and sides are .005" (0.13mm) styrene with paper superglued onto one side. The waterline plate is 0.5mm styrene and technically hangs below the waterline.

Today I attached the other hull! Yay! And they both look decent.

The second hull was made using the sandwich method, as I ran into depressions on the side of the first hull, requiring much putty and ugliness.

None the less, both are now attached (the one farther away from the camera is the sandwich one):

The anchor wells are also drilled out. Now comes the question of whether to make the anchors separately or molded on (as this hull structure will be molded as one piece later). While generally it makes sense to make them separate for the modeler to choose, the tiny size of the anchor may not make it feasible to do so.
As you can see below, the anchor is much smaller than the ones we see on warships: Any opinions?

I like it!!!

Hmm, good question. Molding them seperately will for sure make them very weak and breakable! To make the master, I guess even using a piece of PE sprue to cut out the flukes of the anchor. Perhaps leave the option for the modeller to do the same. It depends on what type of kit you want to make out of this. Something like a full kit, or a semi-kit, leaving some stuff to do to the modeller.
The PE piece would be the strongest for such a narrow thickness and small size. Molding them in will be very difficult as these small angles and spaces would be very difficult to mold (I think). I suppose those are easy places to get air bubbles in the mold. Just my opinion though, I don't have any real molding experience myself. Also perhaps the risk of breaking them off when releasing the cast.
So, the conclusion for me would be either make them seperately with PE or give at least a drawing, in scale of these anchors with the kit, to let the modeller make them himself.

Good luck with your build

Thanks Mark!

And thanks for your input, Neptune! In the usual way of doing things, I'm putting off on that anchor until a much later date

Today, work began on the passenger cabin. More complex that I was hoping, particularly in how to make the recessed doors.

Suddenly, a wild Update appears!

Now I just have to do this three more times.

In the upper left corner of the second picture, you can see the cross-structure and hull - note that I've added two (four, including the other side) bumper-type thingies amidships.

Yes! An Update!

Detailed this area of the bulkhead. Fingers crushed the right-hand side visor while the plastic was still "soggy" from the cement, but managed to make it somewhat acceptable with some shaping and slicing.

It's messy, but I'm still learning as I go!

Timmy any updates on this one? Did you actually finish your model (with or without molds?)

I had a 4-month pause as I was out of the country for an exchange in Istanbul, so was not able to work on it. I hopefully will be able to get some work done this weekend - thank you for thinking of it

Right then, here's what I got done last week. Finished the detailing on the port side bulkhead and added the bottom halves of the four curved bulkhead corners of the cabin. The cabin roof is not glued on (may have to be redone due to warping of the base )

Glad to see you back at it! It sure looks great!

welcome back home timmy the pacific breeze is looking good .styrene is tircky stuff sometime. on larger areas as decks and such i will use wood skined with thin styrene to eliminate this problem.

Thanks for looking in, Mark!

You're right, Russ - in retrospect, I should have glued a metal "spine" to the bottom of the base!

Got the fore/aft bulkheads roughed-in on Tuesday. Trickiest thing was to build the angled bulkheads on the four corners: