shipmodel

Chris - 
 
Just went through this build log and am truly impressed.
It is amazing how clean and crisp all your edges are and how you persevere in building all those tiny details.
 
PS - my vote is to spend for the 3-D printed hedgehogs and other fittings.
Sometimes it is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.
Flowers and a dinner at a good restaurant always eases those difficult conversations with my wife.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Just beautiful brass work, Keith.  I am always envious of your work.
 
Can you set up a link directly to this build log in your signature, the way you did for Altair?  My system is a bit clunky and I have to go to your profile before I can access this log.
 
Love following along, as always.
 
Dan

Chris - 
 
Just went through this build log and am truly impressed.
It is amazing how clean and crisp all your edges are and how you persevere in building all those tiny details.
 
PS - my vote is to spend for the 3-D printed hedgehogs and other fittings.
Sometimes it is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.
Flowers and a dinner at a good restaurant always eases those difficult conversations with my wife.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Just beautiful brass work, Keith.  I am always envious of your work.
 
Can you set up a link directly to this build log in your signature, the way you did for Altair?  My system is a bit clunky and I have to go to your profile before I can access this log.
 
Love following along, as always.
 
Dan

Just beautiful brass work, Keith.  I am always envious of your work.
 
Can you set up a link directly to this build log in your signature, the way you did for Altair?  My system is a bit clunky and I have to go to your profile before I can access this log.
 
Love following along, as always.
 
Dan

Chris - 
 
Just went through this build log and am truly impressed.
It is amazing how clean and crisp all your edges are and how you persevere in building all those tiny details.
 
PS - my vote is to spend for the 3-D printed hedgehogs and other fittings.
Sometimes it is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.
Flowers and a dinner at a good restaurant always eases those difficult conversations with my wife.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Chris - 
 
Just went through this build log and am truly impressed.
It is amazing how clean and crisp all your edges are and how you persevere in building all those tiny details.
 
PS - my vote is to spend for the 3-D printed hedgehogs and other fittings.
Sometimes it is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.
Flowers and a dinner at a good restaurant always eases those difficult conversations with my wife.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Chris - 
 
Just went through this build log and am truly impressed.
It is amazing how clean and crisp all your edges are and how you persevere in building all those tiny details.
 
PS - my vote is to spend for the 3-D printed hedgehogs and other fittings.
Sometimes it is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.
Flowers and a dinner at a good restaurant always eases those difficult conversations with my wife.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Got the camera back yesterday but too busy with other things.   
 
I'm sorting out the gangways.  Seems to "alternative" ways of assembling them and I think i'm going with the "do the knees first" and then the other items.  A bit of painting and some fettling of parts are in order.
 
Here's a couple of photos showing where I'm at.  Ignore the mess as it's very much a work in progress.

 

A short update in "size" but a time consumer for me.  Quarterdeck beams are all in place.  I'll give it light sanding just to make sure everything is smooth after doing the forecastle beams.  I did sand the char off the top of the beams (missed 2 but oh-well).
 
 

Chris - 
 
Just went through this build log and am truly impressed.
It is amazing how clean and crisp all your edges are and how you persevere in building all those tiny details.
 
PS - my vote is to spend for the 3-D printed hedgehogs and other fittings.
Sometimes it is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.
Flowers and a dinner at a good restaurant always eases those difficult conversations with my wife.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Step 22: Bow Details
 
Step 22 shifts the action to the bow, starting with a couple of bin-shaped stowage nets (I think life preservers were stored in these). Three laser-cut brackets are attached to the superstructure wall, and a bin sits inside these.
 

 
As you can see, the printed part makes a solid structure, which isn't a very convincing stand-in for the real thing. Darius built the prototype bins using some kind of actual mesh, perhaps tulle. That option seemed a bit intimidating, so I hit on a compromise. I made photocopies of the original parts, then cut away an original part's solid top and used one of the copied parts to create a double-sided mesh bin. I think this mid-level of detail is acceptable.
 

 
Cheers!

Step 21: Torpedo Mount
 
England carried 21" torpedoes in a triple mount. This sub-assembly consisted of 31 parts, 17 of which are from the laser-cut detail set.
 
BTW, I think the mount pedestal is upside down, but the diagram didn't give any hints about which side should go up. Don't tell anyone!
 

 

FINALLY . . . after over three weeks of painstaking work, numerous itty bitty parts lost and remade again, and liberal usage of 'special words', the stack is done. It was a real slog (no offense to Captain Slog), and I'm relieved to be done with it so that I can at last move on to something else -- literally anything else!
 

 

 

If it was up to just me, I would pull the trigger on this right now. But if my wife were to see the bank statement? 😲 😬😬😬💀
 

 

I did a bit more work over the last couple of days.
 
I finished off a number of medium sized single, double and triple blocks. The 3 sizes I have rationalised on are 5mm, 6mm and 7mm high.
 

Depending on the use / location of the blocks they have various attachment fittings.

I also needed to make more of the strop brackets for the main and foremast gaff bridles (5 in total). This time however I was a bit more economical making 3 parts from each fabricated ring.



I then moved on from the main boom to work on the main and fore gaffs.
 
Two single blocks were attached to the main gaff saddle. These will take the main boom topping lifts (one on each side of the mainsail).

Then a double block was attached to the gaff to take the gaff hoist halyard.
 

I then attached the 3 bridles to the main gaff. (I did this before yesterdays debate on simulating the leather protecting sheath). Depending on the outcome of experiments I may have to revisit this.

Two blocks are attached to the end of the gaff to take the sheets for the topsail.

I also attached the twin bridles to the fore mast gaff.

I then attached the blocks for the for topsail sheets as per the main gaff.
 
 
 
 

The wobbly truck has now been repaired.  I have completed making the gun tackle and breeching  ropes.  The gun tackle is frapped and attaches with hooks to the bulwark and the gun carriage.  The breeching is wrapped around the cascabel and attaches to rings on the bulwark.  The end loop on the breeching is formed by splicing; the splice and the loop are served.  I used a somewhat unusual tool to serve the loop...a crochet hook.  And not the kind that is used to make a quilt.  This is a #12 size, left over from when I used to make lace.
 
To prevent the carriages from moving, a #76 hole was drilled into the edge of the deck planking and the front axle.  A 24 G wire was inserted and glued with CA.  You can see one of the wires in the first two pictures.  Three down, eleven to go!



 
 

Hello again –
 
Thank you all for your well wishes on my health.  I do seem to be recovering, slowly, on the long covid front.  I can mostly sleep at night without coughing or sitting up, but it does come back with a vengeance from time to time.  The silver lining to this cloud is that I can get more done during the insomniac periods.  Hence, this post somewhat quickly after the last one.
 
As in most builds, especially with modern ships, I work on several sub-projects at the same time.  While the superstructure was still being finished I turned to the containers on deck.  In an earlier build of a container ship model for the museum, the El Faro (build log soon to be written), I had researched these ‘intermodal containers’.  I found that ninety percent of the global container fleet are closed rectangular boxes, almost all 8 feet (2.44 m) wide, and of either 20 or 40 feet (6.10 or 12.19 m) standard length, and with a standard height of 8 feet 6 inches (2.59m) as defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) regulation 668:2020.
 
The height and width of the containers on the Mayaguez seem to fit these dimensions in this photograph taken just after the recapture of the ship.  You can also see that they are stacked in sets of three, and in two layers. 
 

 
However, to my surprise, when I used Photoshop rulers and scaled out the length of the containers from the overhead shots, they measured out to only 35 feet long, a size that I had not encountered before.
 

 
Back to the books!  After a good deal of reading I located a single sentence in “An Act of Piracy, The Seizure of the American-flag Merchant Ship Mayaguez in 1975” by Gerald Reminick.  There he says that when Grace Line sold its Santa Eliana, ex-White Falcon, to Sea-Land Service in 1965 the ship was sent for a second conversion where the container cells on board were enlarged to accommodate the new 35 ft. containers.  It was Sea-Land that changed her name to Mayaguez later that year.
 
Now that I had confirmation of the correct sizes, I had to determine the details of their structures.  Modern containers have sides of pressed metal with the corrugations quite close together, like those in a cardboard box.  Instead, the 1965 containers had smooth sides reinforced with square section battens spaced much further apart.  In the detailed photographs of the Mayaguez containers only 16 of these battens can be counted.  With the two ends there are 17 panels, so in 35 feet the battens must be close to 2 feet apart.
 

 
I tried a number of ways to create this look.  I started with looking around for what was commercially available, but none of the Evergreen Plastics sheets were close.  Neither their railroad car, passenger car or siding extrusions were close to what I needed.  Then I tried making them myself, gluing 0.01” square strips to smooth plastic sheets at a spacing of 1/8”, but I could never keep the long strips straight.  If I did it by eye, they wandered all over before the glue dried.  If I held them against a metal or wood straightedge, then they got glued to the straightedge.  This happened even when I used thin glue meant just for plastic, which melted the plastic, but the melted plastic then would attach again to the straightedge.  I tried cutting narrow parallel channels with a thin blade in the Preac table saw, to be filled with thin strips, but the depths could not be cut consistently. 
 
Ultimately I decided to compromise on the look a little in order to get it done.  Evergreen has a product which represents a metal roof with batten supports (#4521).  It comes as a sheet 0.04” thick with channels 0.015” deep set 3/16” apart.  These channels are to be filled with thin strips 0.01” x 0.03” which are supplied with the sheet.   Doing this is a tedious process, to say the least.  Each strip had to be turned on edge and set into the start of the channel.  It was tacked there with a small drop of Tamiya extra thin plastic glue (which is mostly acetone), which welds the strip to the sheet.  Then the rest of the strip, still set upright, had to be fed into the length of the channel and glued there. 
 

 
There was a distinct learning curve and a good bit of wastage of these expensive sheets before I got the hang of it.  The final product looked very much like the photos of the container sides, although the spacing of the battens was 3’ rather than 2’ apart.  As mentioned before – GEFGW.
 
With the strips in place the six pieces for each rectangular box had to be designed and cut.  Each had to be sized to compensate for the thickness of the material so that the final assembled size was 0.50” x 0.53” x 2.19” (8’ x 8.5’ x 35’).  I also had to compensate for the various edging strips that were added to make up the look of the corners of the boxes.  Once all the calculations were done, the pieces for the sides were parted off the sheet on the Preac.
 

 
These ribbed side pieces then had to have edging around all four sides, made from strips 0.02” x 0.06”.  The final piece is shown in the insert below.
 

 
The final components are shown below.  These are the ones needed for a set of three containers.  To minimize the number of ribbed pieces only the outside sides, ends and tops of the containers are ribbed.  Where the side will not be seen it is not ribbed.
 

 
The first step to assemble each container was to set a side piece against a top piece using wood blocks to hold them perpendicular.  Thin plastic glue was fed along the seam and held until it was hard.
 

 
Turning it over the matching ribs can be seen.
 

 
The second side is attached in a similar manner, but using a specially cut wood spacer to keep the sides parallel.  I marked it in blue so I would not throw it out by mistake.
 

 
Each end was installed using the spacer block again to make sure it was vertical.
 

 
Finally the open box was turned over and laid on the base, which had been cut a bit oversize.  When the glue was dry the excess was trimmed and the container complete.
 

 
To give some differentiation and interest to the containers they were randomly painted in three different metallic colors: dark steel, flat antique nickel, and titanium silver. 
 

 
Placards with the Sea-Land logo and name were created in my computer and printed out onto thin acid-free paper.  Two different styles for the larger side labels and small ones for the ends as seen in the photographs.
 

 
With the labels attached the containers were attached in sets of three to an underlying base plate and stacked on deck to judge how well they fit.
 

 
Here they all are, 8 stacks of 12 containers each.
 

 
Sitting here you can see the curve of the sheer of the deck.  Without some levelling structures the cranes would not have been able to move them consistently.  Those structures will be covered in the next installment.
 

 
Thank you all for following along and for your interest and comments.
 
Be well
 
Dan 

Hello again to all –
 
Thanks for all the likes and comments.  Keep them coming.
 
Sorry for the long delay since my last post.  I have been fighting a long covid problem that gives me bronchitis which makes me cough, especially at night, so I am having a lot of trouble sleeping.  Also I have had cataract surgery on both eyes, which has interfered with writing this blog.
 
But enough about me – back to the model.
 
At the end of the last segment I had completed the basic structure of the hull and was proceeding to work out the superstructure.  This began, as with the rest of the model, with a careful examination of the photographs of the ship.  Fortunately there were a few images of high resolution like this one of the entire ship.
 

 
Once enlarged I got a good, if a little fuzzy, picture of the 5 decks and deck houses of the superstructure.  I was able to tease out some sense of the complex shapes of the various decks and overhangs.  Porthole, door, and stairway locations can be seen, as well as the fact that the top deck house is taller than all the others.
 

 
In this slightly clearer image I could start the actual analysis of the dimensions and relationships of the shapes that can be seen.  I started with the assumption that the original superstructure footprint had been retained, which is the lowest deck house with the curved fillets on either side.  Then, when the hull was widened by 8 feet on each side, some changes were made.  The supports for the lifeboat davits had to be built out and supported by pillars reaching to the outer edge of the deck.  There is an overhang to the right of the lifeboat that extends to the new deck edge and is supported by three diagonal braces.  The bridge wings had to be extended, and a number of other small details all had to be changed.
 

 
These images and analysis was integrated with the information from the overhead photos of the ship taken during the incident and rescue, such as this one from just after the recapture.
 

 
The image was enlarged and straightened out to give a top view that could be worked with.  Always being aware that the image is not precisely taken from directly overhead, I could make out many more details, such as the stairways marked with the red arrows.  Hours of staring at these images, individually and collectively, were needed to determine what the various elements and details were.  I am still not 100% sure of all of them, and even where I am sure of the shape of things, I am not sure of their purpose.  But since this is for the US Merchant Marine Academy, it is good enough for government work.
 

 
Other images which were not full pictures of the decks and deck houses also informed a number of details of railings, stairways, overhangs, supports, etc.  Here, for example, is one of the Marines taking control of the ship.  I would not have seen the tall ventilator/filter under the stairs at the side of the bridge except for this picture.
 

 
So, taking all the information in hand, I laid out the shape of the lowest deck house over the top image.
 

 
Using this as my basic starting point I laid on the shapes of the stairway platforms and lifeboat davit supports to the first level.  Then using the relationships seen in the photos, I drew on the shapes of the second and third decks, deck houses, and overhangs in contrasting colors, giving this image.
 

 
Based on these drawings I cut ½” planks of basswood to the shapes of the deck houses (less 0.04” all around) and sheathed them with 0.02” styrene (restoring the full sizes).  The decks were cut to the full size of the deck houses and painted grey before being edged with styrene.  This gave a pleasing delineation to the decks, which can be seen in the photos.  The edges extended just a bit above the deck level, making a lip that anchored the photoetched railings when they were added later.  Portholes are the brass dollhouse electric circuit pieces, while the handrails are 0.015” round rod.  Here the superstructure stack is about half done, with all the upper details still to be done.
 

 
Here is an enlarged shot of some of the details.  Notice the diagonal supports for the overhangs of the second deck and bridge wing.  The railings and stairways are photoetched brass from Gold Medal Models’ ocean liner set.  It is expensive, but makes for a very convincing impression when painted, folded and installed.
 

 
The railings come in long frets four scale feet tall (1/4”) with horizontal rails numbering from one to five to be used as needed.  The photos of the ship show that the railings mostly have three rails, so these were the frets that were used.  They were spray painted gloss white before being cut apart.  Unfortunately the paint was a bit brittle, so it chipped off when bent, as can be seen in the last photo, but that was easily touched up later.
 

 
The stairways come as part of a larger fret with hooks, steering wheels, etc.  They have a central length of steps flanked by angled wings for the side railings.  They come in three different lengths.  Mostly the middle length was used, but occasionally the short or long ones were needed for a particular location.  Small adjustments to length were made by trimming the bottom of the stairways.
 

 
The basic stairway is made by bending up the wings of the piece to form the railings at either side of the steps (left image).  But this is meant for use on the ocean liners, so it is wider and less steep than the stairways on merchant ships.  To make them steeper the railings are pressed down towards the steps till the supporting posts are vertical when the stairs are at the steeper angle (middle image).  Where the stairs had to be narrow, one side railing and some of the width of the steps was cut off and the stairs supported by an added strip of styrene (right image).    
 

 
Work continued on the superstructure with detail added as they were identified in the photos.  Note the cross supports between the lower and upper bridge wings and the fact that the front facing of the upper bride wing is taller at the bridge house than it is at the outer end.  The funnel has now been sheathed and is set in place so I could determine the location and size of the many details on the upper decks.
 

 
While this analysis and work on the superstructure continued I was also starting to puzzle out the size and shape of the 96 containers that had to be installed on deck, and how to build them in a reasonably efficient manner.  This will be the topic of the next segment.
 
Till then, may your health be better than mine.
 
Dan

Marc, nice to see you having a great time/trip with your family.
 
 In regards to the above quote. If you'll note in the photo below, there are no gun tracks for the Parrott rifle (on the right as you're viewing the photo) to move across and into position. If it's a 60 LB rifle the weight is a little over 2.5 tons, if it's a 100 LB rifle (which is my guess because of the size) the weigh is almost 5 tons. If a deck was going to get ripped to shreds this lump would be the one to do it. 
  
 Gun carriage trucks (wheels) could have been iron banded. Sea battles were intense but its not like they were happening on a daily basis. Deck plank repair is a simple task and could have been carried out by the carpenter's apprentice with the aid of a couple of crew members if needed. 
 

While this is not directly connected to 17th C. ship ornamentation, it is nonetheless a fascinating exploration of the role of color in original Greco-Roman sculpture work.  I believe Bill Morrison mentioned this very subject, earlier in the thread.  The embedded video is particularly fascinating for the use of technology to re-create the specific earth pigments that would have been used to color this Sphinx sculpture.  The results are quite remarkably vivid: 
 
https://apple.news/AiERjAV0wTgSTSpC9R-26ag
 
This husband and wife team of color archeologists make an interesting argument for the essential role of color in illuminating the allegorical narrative of important sculpture works and building facades.
 
Soleil Royal’s continental figures are classically influenced, and I will color them accordingly, as I did the Four Seasons figures.  This may or may not have been the historic reality of 1689, but I think it will make for a more thought-provoking presentation, with at least a plausible connection to classical traditions.  I’m still a ways away from it, but it will require some research to think more specifically about what SR’s allegory is conveying and how those ideas might inform specific color choices in the classic tradition. The Uber Den Wellen exploration of the Royal Louis will be particularly helpful, in this regard, as it explores 17th C. French classicism in court painting.
 

Now, all of that aside, there is of course support for the more conventionally accepted appearance of SR.  This is the clearest resolution I have yet found for one of a series of portraits by Peter Monamy, depicting the Destruction of Soleil Royal.  The portrait is attributed to the first decade of the 18th C.:

On a separate note, it has been pointed out to me by several members that the gun carriage wheels would not have been banded in iron, as the metal would have torn the deck to shreds.  This is a simple enough fix to scrape away the black bands and re-touch with red.
 
A particularly knowledgeable contributor also noted that the headrails I am making would not have had these induced bends that I am forming.  The fact that the headrails would have been flat is well established, and I do not refute that.  Unfortunately, reverse engineering to the pre-established Heller architecture sometimes means perpetuating certain errors of the kit.
 
In this instance, Heller situated the turret seats of ease so far outboard that straight headrails can not make a reasonable connection to the f’ocsle sheer rail.  My relatively flat cardboard template illustrates this problem pretty clearly:

Interestingly, this esteemed person pointed out that the winged figure carving, just aft of the headrails, would have concealed any smaller gaps that would have existed in this area.  I will explore the possibility of moving these turrets in-board, but the curves I induced really just mimicked what Heller had produced, in the first place:

I would also like to point out that the name badging that I included on the quarters would not have been a feature of French practice:

While I am copying the color gouache by Pierre Vary, which shows the name, the original Berain draft does not:

I think it is important to note when my artistic interpretation of this vessel diverges from known practices.
 
As I write all of this, I am waiting for my flight to New York from Honolulu to board.  This has been an incredible vacation and bonding time for my family:
 

 

Our trip to the Mighty Mo was particularly fascinating.  All-in-all, we saw so much in 10 days, and I can only hope that we make it back to this magical place some day.
 
On the way through the airport, my daughter noted that this glass-art backdrop evokes the lava flows that Hawaii is famous for:

And just like that - I had the inspiration for the  Art Nouveau writing desk that I have been wanting to design for the past four years; I will use the idea of these pyro-plastic flows to create my “magma” desk in varied hues of bubinga, teak, and koa.  I don’t quite have the shape of the thing in mind yet, but the drawer console, bordering the writing surface, will in some way evoke the mountainous topography of the islands.
 
That’s a project for another time, though.  For now, I look forward to pressing-on with Soleil Royal. Thank you for your time, your interest and for looking in!

This is very high praise coming from a person who’s work I very much admire - thank you B.E.!

Hello again –
 
Thank you all for your well wishes on my health.  I do seem to be recovering, slowly, on the long covid front.  I can mostly sleep at night without coughing or sitting up, but it does come back with a vengeance from time to time.  The silver lining to this cloud is that I can get more done during the insomniac periods.  Hence, this post somewhat quickly after the last one.
 
As in most builds, especially with modern ships, I work on several sub-projects at the same time.  While the superstructure was still being finished I turned to the containers on deck.  In an earlier build of a container ship model for the museum, the El Faro (build log soon to be written), I had researched these ‘intermodal containers’.  I found that ninety percent of the global container fleet are closed rectangular boxes, almost all 8 feet (2.44 m) wide, and of either 20 or 40 feet (6.10 or 12.19 m) standard length, and with a standard height of 8 feet 6 inches (2.59m) as defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) regulation 668:2020.
 
The height and width of the containers on the Mayaguez seem to fit these dimensions in this photograph taken just after the recapture of the ship.  You can also see that they are stacked in sets of three, and in two layers. 
 

 
However, to my surprise, when I used Photoshop rulers and scaled out the length of the containers from the overhead shots, they measured out to only 35 feet long, a size that I had not encountered before.
 

 
Back to the books!  After a good deal of reading I located a single sentence in “An Act of Piracy, The Seizure of the American-flag Merchant Ship Mayaguez in 1975” by Gerald Reminick.  There he says that when Grace Line sold its Santa Eliana, ex-White Falcon, to Sea-Land Service in 1965 the ship was sent for a second conversion where the container cells on board were enlarged to accommodate the new 35 ft. containers.  It was Sea-Land that changed her name to Mayaguez later that year.
 
Now that I had confirmation of the correct sizes, I had to determine the details of their structures.  Modern containers have sides of pressed metal with the corrugations quite close together, like those in a cardboard box.  Instead, the 1965 containers had smooth sides reinforced with square section battens spaced much further apart.  In the detailed photographs of the Mayaguez containers only 16 of these battens can be counted.  With the two ends there are 17 panels, so in 35 feet the battens must be close to 2 feet apart.
 

 
I tried a number of ways to create this look.  I started with looking around for what was commercially available, but none of the Evergreen Plastics sheets were close.  Neither their railroad car, passenger car or siding extrusions were close to what I needed.  Then I tried making them myself, gluing 0.01” square strips to smooth plastic sheets at a spacing of 1/8”, but I could never keep the long strips straight.  If I did it by eye, they wandered all over before the glue dried.  If I held them against a metal or wood straightedge, then they got glued to the straightedge.  This happened even when I used thin glue meant just for plastic, which melted the plastic, but the melted plastic then would attach again to the straightedge.  I tried cutting narrow parallel channels with a thin blade in the Preac table saw, to be filled with thin strips, but the depths could not be cut consistently. 
 
Ultimately I decided to compromise on the look a little in order to get it done.  Evergreen has a product which represents a metal roof with batten supports (#4521).  It comes as a sheet 0.04” thick with channels 0.015” deep set 3/16” apart.  These channels are to be filled with thin strips 0.01” x 0.03” which are supplied with the sheet.   Doing this is a tedious process, to say the least.  Each strip had to be turned on edge and set into the start of the channel.  It was tacked there with a small drop of Tamiya extra thin plastic glue (which is mostly acetone), which welds the strip to the sheet.  Then the rest of the strip, still set upright, had to be fed into the length of the channel and glued there. 
 

 
There was a distinct learning curve and a good bit of wastage of these expensive sheets before I got the hang of it.  The final product looked very much like the photos of the container sides, although the spacing of the battens was 3’ rather than 2’ apart.  As mentioned before – GEFGW.
 
With the strips in place the six pieces for each rectangular box had to be designed and cut.  Each had to be sized to compensate for the thickness of the material so that the final assembled size was 0.50” x 0.53” x 2.19” (8’ x 8.5’ x 35’).  I also had to compensate for the various edging strips that were added to make up the look of the corners of the boxes.  Once all the calculations were done, the pieces for the sides were parted off the sheet on the Preac.
 

 
These ribbed side pieces then had to have edging around all four sides, made from strips 0.02” x 0.06”.  The final piece is shown in the insert below.
 

 
The final components are shown below.  These are the ones needed for a set of three containers.  To minimize the number of ribbed pieces only the outside sides, ends and tops of the containers are ribbed.  Where the side will not be seen it is not ribbed.
 

 
The first step to assemble each container was to set a side piece against a top piece using wood blocks to hold them perpendicular.  Thin plastic glue was fed along the seam and held until it was hard.
 

 
Turning it over the matching ribs can be seen.
 

 
The second side is attached in a similar manner, but using a specially cut wood spacer to keep the sides parallel.  I marked it in blue so I would not throw it out by mistake.
 

 
Each end was installed using the spacer block again to make sure it was vertical.
 

 
Finally the open box was turned over and laid on the base, which had been cut a bit oversize.  When the glue was dry the excess was trimmed and the container complete.
 

 
To give some differentiation and interest to the containers they were randomly painted in three different metallic colors: dark steel, flat antique nickel, and titanium silver. 
 

 
Placards with the Sea-Land logo and name were created in my computer and printed out onto thin acid-free paper.  Two different styles for the larger side labels and small ones for the ends as seen in the photographs.
 

 
With the labels attached the containers were attached in sets of three to an underlying base plate and stacked on deck to judge how well they fit.
 

 
Here they all are, 8 stacks of 12 containers each.
 

 
Sitting here you can see the curve of the sheer of the deck.  Without some levelling structures the cranes would not have been able to move them consistently.  Those structures will be covered in the next installment.
 

 
Thank you all for following along and for your interest and comments.
 
Be well
 
Dan 

Hello again –
 
Thank you all for your well wishes on my health.  I do seem to be recovering, slowly, on the long covid front.  I can mostly sleep at night without coughing or sitting up, but it does come back with a vengeance from time to time.  The silver lining to this cloud is that I can get more done during the insomniac periods.  Hence, this post somewhat quickly after the last one.
 
As in most builds, especially with modern ships, I work on several sub-projects at the same time.  While the superstructure was still being finished I turned to the containers on deck.  In an earlier build of a container ship model for the museum, the El Faro (build log soon to be written), I had researched these ‘intermodal containers’.  I found that ninety percent of the global container fleet are closed rectangular boxes, almost all 8 feet (2.44 m) wide, and of either 20 or 40 feet (6.10 or 12.19 m) standard length, and with a standard height of 8 feet 6 inches (2.59m) as defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) regulation 668:2020.
 
The height and width of the containers on the Mayaguez seem to fit these dimensions in this photograph taken just after the recapture of the ship.  You can also see that they are stacked in sets of three, and in two layers. 
 

 
However, to my surprise, when I used Photoshop rulers and scaled out the length of the containers from the overhead shots, they measured out to only 35 feet long, a size that I had not encountered before.
 

 
Back to the books!  After a good deal of reading I located a single sentence in “An Act of Piracy, The Seizure of the American-flag Merchant Ship Mayaguez in 1975” by Gerald Reminick.  There he says that when Grace Line sold its Santa Eliana, ex-White Falcon, to Sea-Land Service in 1965 the ship was sent for a second conversion where the container cells on board were enlarged to accommodate the new 35 ft. containers.  It was Sea-Land that changed her name to Mayaguez later that year.
 
Now that I had confirmation of the correct sizes, I had to determine the details of their structures.  Modern containers have sides of pressed metal with the corrugations quite close together, like those in a cardboard box.  Instead, the 1965 containers had smooth sides reinforced with square section battens spaced much further apart.  In the detailed photographs of the Mayaguez containers only 16 of these battens can be counted.  With the two ends there are 17 panels, so in 35 feet the battens must be close to 2 feet apart.
 

 
I tried a number of ways to create this look.  I started with looking around for what was commercially available, but none of the Evergreen Plastics sheets were close.  Neither their railroad car, passenger car or siding extrusions were close to what I needed.  Then I tried making them myself, gluing 0.01” square strips to smooth plastic sheets at a spacing of 1/8”, but I could never keep the long strips straight.  If I did it by eye, they wandered all over before the glue dried.  If I held them against a metal or wood straightedge, then they got glued to the straightedge.  This happened even when I used thin glue meant just for plastic, which melted the plastic, but the melted plastic then would attach again to the straightedge.  I tried cutting narrow parallel channels with a thin blade in the Preac table saw, to be filled with thin strips, but the depths could not be cut consistently. 
 
Ultimately I decided to compromise on the look a little in order to get it done.  Evergreen has a product which represents a metal roof with batten supports (#4521).  It comes as a sheet 0.04” thick with channels 0.015” deep set 3/16” apart.  These channels are to be filled with thin strips 0.01” x 0.03” which are supplied with the sheet.   Doing this is a tedious process, to say the least.  Each strip had to be turned on edge and set into the start of the channel.  It was tacked there with a small drop of Tamiya extra thin plastic glue (which is mostly acetone), which welds the strip to the sheet.  Then the rest of the strip, still set upright, had to be fed into the length of the channel and glued there. 
 

 
There was a distinct learning curve and a good bit of wastage of these expensive sheets before I got the hang of it.  The final product looked very much like the photos of the container sides, although the spacing of the battens was 3’ rather than 2’ apart.  As mentioned before – GEFGW.
 
With the strips in place the six pieces for each rectangular box had to be designed and cut.  Each had to be sized to compensate for the thickness of the material so that the final assembled size was 0.50” x 0.53” x 2.19” (8’ x 8.5’ x 35’).  I also had to compensate for the various edging strips that were added to make up the look of the corners of the boxes.  Once all the calculations were done, the pieces for the sides were parted off the sheet on the Preac.
 

 
These ribbed side pieces then had to have edging around all four sides, made from strips 0.02” x 0.06”.  The final piece is shown in the insert below.
 

 
The final components are shown below.  These are the ones needed for a set of three containers.  To minimize the number of ribbed pieces only the outside sides, ends and tops of the containers are ribbed.  Where the side will not be seen it is not ribbed.
 

 
The first step to assemble each container was to set a side piece against a top piece using wood blocks to hold them perpendicular.  Thin plastic glue was fed along the seam and held until it was hard.
 

 
Turning it over the matching ribs can be seen.
 

 
The second side is attached in a similar manner, but using a specially cut wood spacer to keep the sides parallel.  I marked it in blue so I would not throw it out by mistake.
 

 
Each end was installed using the spacer block again to make sure it was vertical.
 

 
Finally the open box was turned over and laid on the base, which had been cut a bit oversize.  When the glue was dry the excess was trimmed and the container complete.
 

 
To give some differentiation and interest to the containers they were randomly painted in three different metallic colors: dark steel, flat antique nickel, and titanium silver. 
 

 
Placards with the Sea-Land logo and name were created in my computer and printed out onto thin acid-free paper.  Two different styles for the larger side labels and small ones for the ends as seen in the photographs.
 

 
With the labels attached the containers were attached in sets of three to an underlying base plate and stacked on deck to judge how well they fit.
 

 
Here they all are, 8 stacks of 12 containers each.
 

 
Sitting here you can see the curve of the sheer of the deck.  Without some levelling structures the cranes would not have been able to move them consistently.  Those structures will be covered in the next installment.
 

 
Thank you all for following along and for your interest and comments.
 
Be well
 
Dan 

Hello again –
 
Thank you all for your well wishes on my health.  I do seem to be recovering, slowly, on the long covid front.  I can mostly sleep at night without coughing or sitting up, but it does come back with a vengeance from time to time.  The silver lining to this cloud is that I can get more done during the insomniac periods.  Hence, this post somewhat quickly after the last one.
 
As in most builds, especially with modern ships, I work on several sub-projects at the same time.  While the superstructure was still being finished I turned to the containers on deck.  In an earlier build of a container ship model for the museum, the El Faro (build log soon to be written), I had researched these ‘intermodal containers’.  I found that ninety percent of the global container fleet are closed rectangular boxes, almost all 8 feet (2.44 m) wide, and of either 20 or 40 feet (6.10 or 12.19 m) standard length, and with a standard height of 8 feet 6 inches (2.59m) as defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) regulation 668:2020.
 
The height and width of the containers on the Mayaguez seem to fit these dimensions in this photograph taken just after the recapture of the ship.  You can also see that they are stacked in sets of three, and in two layers. 
 

 
However, to my surprise, when I used Photoshop rulers and scaled out the length of the containers from the overhead shots, they measured out to only 35 feet long, a size that I had not encountered before.
 

 
Back to the books!  After a good deal of reading I located a single sentence in “An Act of Piracy, The Seizure of the American-flag Merchant Ship Mayaguez in 1975” by Gerald Reminick.  There he says that when Grace Line sold its Santa Eliana, ex-White Falcon, to Sea-Land Service in 1965 the ship was sent for a second conversion where the container cells on board were enlarged to accommodate the new 35 ft. containers.  It was Sea-Land that changed her name to Mayaguez later that year.
 
Now that I had confirmation of the correct sizes, I had to determine the details of their structures.  Modern containers have sides of pressed metal with the corrugations quite close together, like those in a cardboard box.  Instead, the 1965 containers had smooth sides reinforced with square section battens spaced much further apart.  In the detailed photographs of the Mayaguez containers only 16 of these battens can be counted.  With the two ends there are 17 panels, so in 35 feet the battens must be close to 2 feet apart.
 

 
I tried a number of ways to create this look.  I started with looking around for what was commercially available, but none of the Evergreen Plastics sheets were close.  Neither their railroad car, passenger car or siding extrusions were close to what I needed.  Then I tried making them myself, gluing 0.01” square strips to smooth plastic sheets at a spacing of 1/8”, but I could never keep the long strips straight.  If I did it by eye, they wandered all over before the glue dried.  If I held them against a metal or wood straightedge, then they got glued to the straightedge.  This happened even when I used thin glue meant just for plastic, which melted the plastic, but the melted plastic then would attach again to the straightedge.  I tried cutting narrow parallel channels with a thin blade in the Preac table saw, to be filled with thin strips, but the depths could not be cut consistently. 
 
Ultimately I decided to compromise on the look a little in order to get it done.  Evergreen has a product which represents a metal roof with batten supports (#4521).  It comes as a sheet 0.04” thick with channels 0.015” deep set 3/16” apart.  These channels are to be filled with thin strips 0.01” x 0.03” which are supplied with the sheet.   Doing this is a tedious process, to say the least.  Each strip had to be turned on edge and set into the start of the channel.  It was tacked there with a small drop of Tamiya extra thin plastic glue (which is mostly acetone), which welds the strip to the sheet.  Then the rest of the strip, still set upright, had to be fed into the length of the channel and glued there. 
 

 
There was a distinct learning curve and a good bit of wastage of these expensive sheets before I got the hang of it.  The final product looked very much like the photos of the container sides, although the spacing of the battens was 3’ rather than 2’ apart.  As mentioned before – GEFGW.
 
With the strips in place the six pieces for each rectangular box had to be designed and cut.  Each had to be sized to compensate for the thickness of the material so that the final assembled size was 0.50” x 0.53” x 2.19” (8’ x 8.5’ x 35’).  I also had to compensate for the various edging strips that were added to make up the look of the corners of the boxes.  Once all the calculations were done, the pieces for the sides were parted off the sheet on the Preac.
 

 
These ribbed side pieces then had to have edging around all four sides, made from strips 0.02” x 0.06”.  The final piece is shown in the insert below.
 

 
The final components are shown below.  These are the ones needed for a set of three containers.  To minimize the number of ribbed pieces only the outside sides, ends and tops of the containers are ribbed.  Where the side will not be seen it is not ribbed.
 

 
The first step to assemble each container was to set a side piece against a top piece using wood blocks to hold them perpendicular.  Thin plastic glue was fed along the seam and held until it was hard.
 

 
Turning it over the matching ribs can be seen.
 

 
The second side is attached in a similar manner, but using a specially cut wood spacer to keep the sides parallel.  I marked it in blue so I would not throw it out by mistake.
 

 
Each end was installed using the spacer block again to make sure it was vertical.
 

 
Finally the open box was turned over and laid on the base, which had been cut a bit oversize.  When the glue was dry the excess was trimmed and the container complete.
 

 
To give some differentiation and interest to the containers they were randomly painted in three different metallic colors: dark steel, flat antique nickel, and titanium silver. 
 

 
Placards with the Sea-Land logo and name were created in my computer and printed out onto thin acid-free paper.  Two different styles for the larger side labels and small ones for the ends as seen in the photographs.
 

 
With the labels attached the containers were attached in sets of three to an underlying base plate and stacked on deck to judge how well they fit.
 

 
Here they all are, 8 stacks of 12 containers each.
 

 
Sitting here you can see the curve of the sheer of the deck.  Without some levelling structures the cranes would not have been able to move them consistently.  Those structures will be covered in the next installment.
 

 
Thank you all for following along and for your interest and comments.
 
Be well
 
Dan