shipmodel

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

SS Mayaguez (c. 1975), scale 1:192 by Dan Pariser
 
 
Hi to everyone who followed me from the build log of the restoration of the bone and ivory POW model to this one, and hello to any modeler who might be interested in a completely different subject using completely different materials.  I hope that I can make this build log as informative as the last one.
 
The subject here is the SS Mayaguez, an American container ship that was involved in a famous incident of piracy at sea.  On May 12, 1975, about a week after the fall of Saigon, and a month after the fall of Cambodia (renamed Kampuchea) to the communist Khmer Rouge, Mayaguez was en route from Hong Kong on what was to be a routine voyage.  Travelling through a disputed area, the ship was accosted by a gunboat flying a red flag which fired machine guns and a rocket over the bow.  The ship stopped and was taken over by Kampuchean sailors.  The crew were captured and removed from the ship.  Upon learning of this, American planes were scrambled from nearby bases and photographs of the ship and gunboats were taken as hurried plans were made to recapture the ship and free the crew.
 

 
SS Mayaguez was launched in April 1944 as SS White Falcon, a Maritime Commission C2-S-AJ1 freighter built in North Carolina.  Type C2 ships were all-purpose cargo ships with five holds, but were remarkable for their versatility, speed and fuel economy. U.S. shipyards built 328 of them from 1939 to 1945 similar to this one shown in wartime camouflage. 
 

 
After her service in World War II the ship was sold to Grace Line and carried coffee from South America.  In 1960 she was converted into one of the first all-container ships, with a capacity of 382 boxes below deck plus 96 on deck.
 

 
To do this she was lengthened from 459 feet to 504 by adding a midships section and widened from 63 feet to 74 by adding oddly shaped and angled sponsons on each side.
 

 
  
To support and level the containers on deck above the curved sheer of the hull, structures similar to railroad trestles were built.  Because few ports at the time had equipment built to handle containers the ship was also fitted with two rolling cranes, one forward of the superstructure and one aft, riding on rails mounted on those levelling trestles. 
 

 
The cranes had wings that could hinge up to shuttle the containers out and over the docks and onto or off of waiting trucks or trains.  In this photo the wings are up and extended, while they are down in the prior one.  Notice that these are extended even though they are over the water side.  I suppose that this was done to help balance the ship during loading operations.
 

 
In 1964 the ship was sold to the container line Sea-Land Service and renamed SS Mayaguez after the city in Puerto Rico.  In 1967 she began regular container service in support of US combat forces in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.  After the US withdrawal in 1973 the Mayaguez began sailing a commercial route between Hong Kong, Thailand and Singapore.  It was on one of those runs that she was captured.
 
I was recently asked to build a waterline model on an ocean base commemorating the event for the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy museum in their preferred scale of 1/16” = 1’, or 1:192.  As usual, I scoured the internet for plans and images of the ship so my model could be as accurate as possible.  Unfortunately, I could not find any plans of the ship available from after its conversion to work from.  I even contacted Sea-Land, without success, so the project became mostly an exercise in photo interpretation.
 
I found many images, most of which were of only moderate resolution, but all of which gave me some information or viewpoint that let me develop the details.  I did locate a plan of a generic C2 cargo ship which gave me the general outline of the original ship.
 

 
I then located two photos taken by the US Air Force during and just after the incident that were of high resolution and taken from almost exactly overhead on the centerline.  These gave me the outline of the expanded deck which could be combined with the C2 plan and photos of the sponsons to give me a good idea of the final shape of the hull.
 

 
Armed with this information I could lay out the lifts that I would need to build the hull.  I first used Photoshop to resize both the C2 plans and the overhead photos to match the overall dimensions of the model (504 feet x 12 / 192 = 31.5 inches).  On the C2 plans I marked out ½” lifts from below the waterline to the beginning of the upward curve of the sheer of the ship.  A 5/8” tapered wedge at the bow and a similar 3/8” wedge at the stern gave me the basic curve of the deck.
 

 
½” basswood sheets were cut for the lower lifts according to the plans, then attached with wood glue colored black with acrylic paint.  This gave me indelible horizontal guides to guide the shaping process, especially the waterline.  Here the bow has been assembled and the 5/8” sheer wedge has been planed to shape and attached.  The wedge was sanded to a smooth shallow curve and the 1/8” deck piece was cut a bit oversize to allow for adjustment, then secured.
 

 
At the stern the same process was used, just with a flatter wedge.  The raised fore and stern castles were cut to shape from the photo and attached, fairing them to the lower hull.
 
The hardest part of the hull construction was to fashion the sponsons, which had to match the overhang of the deck piece, fit snugly against the curves of the original C2 hull, and match the shapes seen in the photos of the sides of the hull.  They were built up in several pieces, being pinned to the hull temporarily with wooden dowels during shaping.  Several attempts had to be made to get everything to fit, and even here in this photo of my third stern sponson there were problems (notice how the bottom edge of the aft piece is curved and not straight) and the piece was discarded.
 

 
Eventually I learned from my mistakes and the sponsons took on the shapes that I wanted.  Once that was done the entire hull got a thin coating of plaster of paris to seal the wood and fill the larger joints. 
 

 
This layer was mostly sanded off to give me a smooth surface for the first of half a dozen primer coats.  These were individually sanded as well until any small defects were filled and smooth.  The hull then got a color coat of rust resistant red paint below the waterline and a navy blue coat above, as seen in the few color photos.  The deck was also filled and sanded, but left with just the primer coat.
 

 
While this was going on I was also fiddling with the layout and construction of the superstructure.  That will be the subject of the next installment.
 
Until then, be well.
 
Dan

Thanks for the likes and nice comments.
 
Upper deck framing is now completed.
Next steps will be the waterways, port stops, bulwark planking up to the next deck clamps and then the stern framing.
I also have to start thinking/designing how much of the upper deck will be planked and how much I will leave open so the framing and lower deck can be seen.
 
ben
 
 

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 

Looking good, Dan.  I think your containers are a very acceptable compromise.
 
John

Aiiee! What a job to create all those containers. Nicely done. Did you consider making a single master and casting the rest of them?

Marc - 
 
I think that you have perfectly illustrated the many puzzles that we all have to solve to achieve a fully realized ship model.  In your case you are even more limited by the basic structure of the kit.  There is only so much kit-bashing that can be done, and you are doing it extremely well.  I was worried that you would not be able to justify the various levels, heights, and angles of the headrails, but your solutions are elegant and beautiful.
 
Looking forward to seeing more great work.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Marc - 
 
I think that you have perfectly illustrated the many puzzles that we all have to solve to achieve a fully realized ship model.  In your case you are even more limited by the basic structure of the kit.  There is only so much kit-bashing that can be done, and you are doing it extremely well.  I was worried that you would not be able to justify the various levels, heights, and angles of the headrails, but your solutions are elegant and beautiful.
 
Looking forward to seeing more great work.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Marc - 
 
I think that you have perfectly illustrated the many puzzles that we all have to solve to achieve a fully realized ship model.  In your case you are even more limited by the basic structure of the kit.  There is only so much kit-bashing that can be done, and you are doing it extremely well.  I was worried that you would not be able to justify the various levels, heights, and angles of the headrails, but your solutions are elegant and beautiful.
 
Looking forward to seeing more great work.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Thank you Jim, Druxey - 
 
Yes, I did consider casting, but my previous forays into those mysteries were less than perfect, and I did not think that these shapes, with the many undercuts, would lend themselves easily to the process.
 
Dan 

Marc - 
 
I think that you have perfectly illustrated the many puzzles that we all have to solve to achieve a fully realized ship model.  In your case you are even more limited by the basic structure of the kit.  There is only so much kit-bashing that can be done, and you are doing it extremely well.  I was worried that you would not be able to justify the various levels, heights, and angles of the headrails, but your solutions are elegant and beautiful.
 
Looking forward to seeing more great work.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Thank you Jim, Druxey - 
 
Yes, I did consider casting, but my previous forays into those mysteries were less than perfect, and I did not think that these shapes, with the many undercuts, would lend themselves easily to the process.
 
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 

Marc - 
 
I think that you have perfectly illustrated the many puzzles that we all have to solve to achieve a fully realized ship model.  In your case you are even more limited by the basic structure of the kit.  There is only so much kit-bashing that can be done, and you are doing it extremely well.  I was worried that you would not be able to justify the various levels, heights, and angles of the headrails, but your solutions are elegant and beautiful.
 
Looking forward to seeing more great work.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Marc - 
 
I think that you have perfectly illustrated the many puzzles that we all have to solve to achieve a fully realized ship model.  In your case you are even more limited by the basic structure of the kit.  There is only so much kit-bashing that can be done, and you are doing it extremely well.  I was worried that you would not be able to justify the various levels, heights, and angles of the headrails, but your solutions are elegant and beautiful.
 
Looking forward to seeing more great work.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Marc - 
 
I think that you have perfectly illustrated the many puzzles that we all have to solve to achieve a fully realized ship model.  In your case you are even more limited by the basic structure of the kit.  There is only so much kit-bashing that can be done, and you are doing it extremely well.  I was worried that you would not be able to justify the various levels, heights, and angles of the headrails, but your solutions are elegant and beautiful.
 
Looking forward to seeing more great work.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Thank you Jim, Druxey - 
 
Yes, I did consider casting, but my previous forays into those mysteries were less than perfect, and I did not think that these shapes, with the many undercuts, would lend themselves easily to the process.
 
Dan 

I have completed the prototype for the cathead support knee.  This knee is directly under the cathead and is quite complex.  It twists and turns while tapering thinner as it gracefully extends down and connects with the lower rail.  The frieze follows the same look and feel as the contemporary model.   This piece is kind of assembled like you guys did for the cheeks and hair brackets...if you are wondering.
 
This will be built in two lengths.   Each length is of course made up of many pieces.  I will detail the assembly process soon when I make it for the other side.  There will be templates laser cut to help you and assist in the shaping and positioning.   Once the other side is finished I will make the fourth "half" head timber that is positioned between this and the main rail.
 
Here are a couple of pics of the cathead support knee on the port side.  I am happy with the results considering that the pieces were all laser cut.   I have made these from scratch before and these seemed to come out just as good.   Its the first time I tried out this concept and laser cut approach.   I believe you can now start to see how the finished headwork will look.  Hopefully you will agree that it doesnt look like any kit you have ever seen before.
 



 
 

So a quick recap...Proceeding with headwork.
 
First....
 
Use the handy jig I showed you to mark the locations of the first 3 head timbers.
 

 
Second...
 
Build the two main head rails as I described in length.   Test these on the model but dont glue them in position.  You will need to test them and retest them and retest them as you shape the head timbers next.
 

 
Third....shape and test your head timbers...
 
Rubber cement is your friend.  You will need to temporarily position all of these elements while shaping the head timbers.  Rubber cement works well for this and is easily removed by rubbing it off with your fingers.
 
Here is a photo of the three head timbers ready for shaping.  They are laser cut and etched on both sides.  There are laser etched reference marks on both sides to help you shape them...In the photo below you can see both sides of each timber with their etched reference lines.
 
Start by sanding both sides clean and dusting them off to reveal the etched lines more clearly.  Then start shaping the first, smaller head timber.  All three are shaped in the same way.
 

 
Begin by sanding the bevels indicated on the top and bottom of the head timber.  This is needed to establish the correct slope (for and aft) so you can slide this first head timber over the stem knee and test it.   You can go ahead and test it.  You may well be adjusting the angles from time to time as we proceed through all three head timbers.  If you have to widen or deepen the slot in the head timber so it sits directly down onto the stem and hair brackets you can do that.  This photo shows the top and bottom beveled to the reference line.
 

Next, Sand/carve the sides of the head timber up to the reference line.  Keep the surface or face of the head timber flat when doing so.  This is needed so the cover boards will sit in position neatly later on.  
 

Next...the dreaded notches for the lower rail...
 
These are etched onto both sides.  But they are not in the same position.   To make filing this notch easier, and so you get a sense of the crazy angle you will need...go ahead and draw the width of the notch along the side of the head timber.  Basically connect them with a reference line using the laser etched notches on both sides with a pencil.   See below.  Does this make sense???
 

This notch is not only angled but it is deeper on one side than the other to accommodate the angle of the lower rail.  If not for anything else, this will help you gain an understanding of the complexity of these rails.  Many compound angles exist.  You may want to make them slightly wider/deeper as the lower rail is 1/16" thick.   Making them slightly wider gives you some wiggle room on the lower rail without having to make these notches super huge.   That is usually the case on most kits.   It looks horrible.  See below, one side is completed.
 
Once finished with it, sand off any remaining laser char and paint the entire head timber black.   Test it on the model and also test the main rail on top of it.  Adjust the angles a bit if needed.  Proceed with the same process on the two remaining head timbers. Test and retest and retest.....really.
 
 
My head timbers started out perfectly vertical when testing them on the model but as I started to test the second and third head timber these were adjusted.  There are a lot of optical illusions which you will find yourself compensating for.   Just keep testing until all three head timbers fit while the main rails sits properly on top of them.  What you see below is just a test fitting.   Nothing is glued into position yet.  
 
Yes I did go ahead and make the lower rail at this time also.  You can do that.  Its just a matter of sanding off the char and rounding off the outside edges.   I also ran some sandpaper down the fancy grooves to clean them up a bit.  It removed some of the char from the laser etching and enhanced the fancy molding appearance.
 

 
A few notations.....
 
Note: The top, bottom edges and back side of the lower rail will be painted black as well.   But do a lot testing first.   The lower rail is cut slightly longer than needed so you can adjust to fit you model.
 
Note:  The aft side of the lower rail is beveled to sit flush against the hull.
 
Note:  The top of the stem has been sanded down flush with the hairbracket scroll and main rail.  We will be gluing a bolster here soon.
 
Note:  The lower rail sits comfortably in the notches of each head timber but the notches are NOT too big.  The lower rail does indeed sit in those notches deep enough that the cover boards will sit flat on the outside face of each head timber.  If they stick out and stand proud you should adjust your notches to suit. 
 
Note:  that the outside faces of each head timber as tested above are NOT flush with the bottom edge of main rail.   They need to be inset a bit to accommodate the cover boards we will add shortly.  Otherwise the cover boards will stick out and sand proud of the main rail which is not correct.
 
When you are 100% satisfied with the test fitting of all these elements, you can paint it all as described.  The inside of the head work is all black.  Fill any gaps and glue everything into position permanently.
 
Cover boards and bolster below.

 
Thats it....nothing to it....
 
Here is a shot of the inside of the head work so far.  Everything painted black and neat and tidy.   Note the black laser cut bolster now glued to the front/top of the head rails.  It is laserboard.  Just trim it if you need to so it fits and glue it on top.   It will hide all of those joints if they didnt meet your standards so no worries there.
 

You can even sand the interior sides of the head timbers at this point to bevel them if you want and make them cleaner then touch up the black paint.   Most of that wont be seen however under the head gratings.
 
The cover boards are laser cut for you and have a laser etched and recessed center.  They are very thin and should be glued onto the outside faces of the head timbers.  Make any adjustments before gluing them on.  The friezes were glued onto them before they were positioned permanently.  Note how they are finally flush with the outside lower edge of the main rail which is what you are shooting for.
 

 
Yes you will have plenty of paint touch up as I now have.  I recommend that you remove the figurehead and swivel guns while doing this work.  Examine the rails and headwork at multiple angles as you proceed and make any adjustments....no matter how small.  Just take you time.   I know its a bit involved and not like any other kit on the market but then again you wont see results like this on any other kit on the market.   You will have questions trust me so feel free to ask when you get to these.
 
Yes spare parts for these elements will be available.  Go slow and be methodical.   Test a lot.  Ask a lot of questions...and study....really study the images of the contemporary model.  I know I may have forgotten some details but we will address them all as time goes by.
 

 Next the cathead support knee and connecting with the lower rail.
 

Well, Ian, thank you!  I have been known to practice a little home dentistry, when necessary, so I suppose those abilities see some light of day.
 
There hasn’t been a whole lot of time to put into the ship this past week, as a dear friend from Sweden has been visiting.  It has been an extremely social and active time for me.
 
I have managed to continue detailing the port headrails.  This is very time consuming because all of these fine border mouldings have to be cut and fit by hand.  I decided that the best course for the middle rail was to affix the top moulding and leave the bottom moulding off until I had fit and secured each section of the bellflower garland:
 

The forward end of the headrails gets an inside bevel so that I will have some glue surface to attach to the upper knee of the head, just behind the figurehead:

As it stands, I am modeling the bellflower garland.  This is, naturally, time-consuming, but the effort is always worthwhile:

After that is complete, I will make the inside lamination for the horse carving from 1/16” styrene.  Most of this figure, as you will see in a minute, rests above the f’ocsle sheer rail.  As with the drift-rail serpent ornaments, I want a more 3-D appearance for this carving.  It will make a tremendous difference, in the end.
 
So, at this point, I wanted to really suss-out what my exact headrail positioning will be.  It is complicated by numerous considerations and hard realities of the kit.  It is impossible to do this perfectly, and according to actual practice of the times.  What I can do, however, is prioritize those aspects of the construction that I most want to improve upon.
 
To that end, I have already lowered the forward scroll below the level of the sprit-mast.  Next in importance are the transverse support timbers for the headrails:  I wanted to create enough open space for elegantly arching supports, instead of something that  was more flatly aligned with the horizon.  I think that this spacing provides for that:

The fundamental problem with the kit architecture is that the forward sheer of the lower main wales rises too dramatically.  The whole knee structure of the head should, in fact, be a good bit lower.  Consequently, I am having to choose to position the horse carving a little higher on the f’ocsle sheer rail than I would ideally like.  I can live with this.  There is another important implication concerning the run of the beakhead grating that I will discuss in a moment.
 
On the plus side, the lowest point of the headrails does not dip below the level of the middle main wales.  I also really like the harmonic sweep of the knees and the headrails:


Really keen observers will note that the Berain/Vary drawings show the forward and aft headrail medallions in the same plane:

However, super-keen observers will note that both of these drawings mysteriously and completely ignore the presence of the f’ocsle deck, which would have raised the f’ocsle sheer a step.  So, I don’t think I am wrong to represent the aft medallion as being in a higher plane.
 
Although, as discussed, I still find it necessary to incorporate some shape to these headrails, I do not find it to be terribly exaggerated or noticeable:


And, finally - the second complication of the abruptly rising sheer of the lower main wales; the beakhead grating on French ships of the period should run behind and follow the curve of the upper headrail.  I, on the other hand, have chosen to prioritize the sweep of the headrail support timbers.  Consequently, I will run the beakhead grating in-line with the middle headrail:
 

It isn’t exactly correct, but it will make it easy to tuck my new seats of ease between the beakhead deck and the headrails, as Michel Saunier did here:
Photo, courtesy of Marc Yeu
 
Next, I have to pierce the beakhead bulkhead for the cathead timbers, so that I can figure out the ideal placement for the cathead support carvings.
 
None of this is exactly right or perfect, but considered in its entirely it will be better and closer to the truth than what Heller has presented out-of-box.  As always, thank you for stopping by.  More to follow…

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