Javelin

Well there it is, cat's out of the bag now. After a lot of thought and a tremendous amount of ideas, bottles and tests, I finally decided upon Scheldt River for my next SIB project. Unlike @Glen McGuire, I simply collect bottles instead of going to a liquor store to pick them out. I had a lot of trouble finding a decent bottle for my first SIB (Sea Installer) and actually poured the liquor in a different bottle in order to use the bottle I wanted. So ever since, I'm just collecting decent looking bottles. And yes, the one with the really long neck looks appealing... The wooden guy lost an arm, so either I fix it, or I try to get him out and use the bottle, since it has an interesting shape! In any case, I wanted to use one of the very large ones, trying several ships in it, but it simply didn't look right. Seems those bottles are too large (which leads me to think that I will put multiple ships in those bottles? I'm also quite specific about scales, so I actually wanted to put a 1/700 modern ship in it. That would have filled the bottle properly in length and height, but the it would have been a real issue with that neck, cutting the hull in 3, 4 or more pieces just to get it in, simply seemed to much to me. 1/2000, same scale as Sea Installer and Spartacus would have made any ship too small to fill the bottle, so eventually I decided on something in between. 1/1250 is a rather common scale and would reduce a ship's beam to an acceptable level to fit inside a bottle neck. Then of course the length wouldn't fill the bottle at all, so I decided on a slightly smaller bottle, é voilà, there we are: The drawing is just a drawing of course. Scheldt River is what they call a Trailing Suction Hopper Dredger (TSHD), which is a dredging vessel that drags a draghead on a long pipe over the bottom of a river or port. This dradhead is equipped with teeth and spray nozzles to stir up sediments, which are then sucked up through the draghead and pipe to the vessels hold/hopper. There the sediments are slowing down and sink to the bottom of the vessel while any excess water goes back to the sea/river. When the hopper is full of sediment, the hopper raises the draghead onboard and moves to an area to discharge. This can be done by opening bottom doors or pumping it to a floating line (bow connection) or rainbowing (spraying it up in the air towards a beach, also through the bow connection). In short, they are either used to keep rivers/ports at depth or to build islands/ports by bringing sand/sediment to the required places. Scheldt River has 1 sister called Meuse River. Scheldt River is a special dredger as she was one of the first TSHD's that were able to run on LNG (cleaner fuel than the regular heavy fuel or diesel). Although my earlier idea was show her dumping sand from the bottom doors I have decided to try to depict her while dredging. Further info about the idea (probably with a sketch) will follow in a later post. I've started construction of the vessel itself. Still in early stage:

Great job on those winches. What material did you use to make them?

Very sharp work, with a very high quality and consistency! Amazing work.

Thanks guys, so time to finish that piece of catwalk, and finally most of the back part of this ship. Note the finished pump dome of Tank 3, the davit was only dry fitted and later on removed again since I was hitting it a lot of times... That little railing on the back was something I hadn't quite thought about in the past. I wasn't planning on placing those, but since I was at it, might as well place it right? Valve wheels are also in place now, the only thing left there is a small platform next to the dome with a small stair going to the deck. Also both cargo tank safety valve (white lines from tank dome 3 to vent mast) are now mounted and painted. And a larger overview of the whole mess. And with a 30cm (1 ft) ruler in front of it. Decided to spend my some remaining time on cleaning up the workshop, including some new furniture etc. instead of continuing on the vessel itself. Still undecided if I'll keep all the stairs for the end of the construction or if start making them as I go forward. Mass production is boring, but on the other side a lot more efficient... Looking at what I did the past weeks and what lays ahead I believe that I should be able to finish her in perhaps 1 year?! Depending on other projects and family/home situation of course.

Not sure, from the first angle, I'd probably prefer the right one, however in the second shot, the right one is much less bulky than the other two. I know the wheels are equally spaced, but the narrower carriage looks better. So in the end, I don't know....Definitely not the middle one.

Very impressive! Both the ship, and primarily, your skills!

Marvelous ! 👍

Thanks Keith. It's actually a piece of the vessel where I got my captain's promotion. The funny part about it is that it was a Belgian flag vessel and somehow the Plimsol marking is in Dutch. The abbreviations ZW are for Zoet Water etc. Which I hadn't seen on any vessel, including a lot of other Belgian flag vessels before. Normally those markings are in English... Since it has a blue freeboard I used that blue as a background for a large cork world map, where I marked a lot of voyages I did. Still working out a way to actually connect the dots though. Putting pins in the cork is not an issue, but I'm not too keen on putting pins in the wall for the "sea waypoints". So for the time being there are just pins in port locations. I used different colours for different vessels/voyages.

Hi Tim, Problem is, I live in Belgium. It's not really allowed to use RC ships (or swimming) in any public water. What little water that is available or remote enough not to be noticed, is difficult to access. The pond that I used in the past is actually a buffer for the fire brigade in an industrial zone. It's sides are built up by rock in mesh cages, placed in a stair/step way. Driving a cart inside with the ship on it is therefore not possible. Most of our ditches are also way too steep to drive a wheelbarrow-style cart towards the water. I will however keep looking for an easier way. Since my break is nearing its end and I have to get back to sea, I had to set a target, I guess that will be the installation of the catwalk on the aft part. I believe it's achievable since most of the details on the aft are now complete. Here you see the rollers and plate system for the mooring lines dry fitted over the piping. Although some details are not strictly necessary to be placed before the catwalk goes on, I did decide to really go aft to forward and complete whatever I can. Starting with gluing the parts you see on the right edge of the above picture. I then moved to the pump dome of tank 3 and so on. I had a slightly oopsie with the catwalk. Adjusting the length of the brass top wire, I dropped the pliers on it. Seems the supports couldn't handle the force. Luckily they are brass and I was able to bend them more or less straight again. And here it's partially painted and dry fitted in position. The stairs are just there to show how it should be arranged. They are not the stairs for those positions.

Well worthy of being placed in a museum somewhere. Great quality of construction along with a rare subject with educational value.

I don't think that's poor planning at all. It's basically the point of SIB's. If it's not hard or just straightforward, then what's the point? Adjusting the bottle or the scale just makes it easier and that gives a less brilliant effect. Having all those pieces fit nicely would also require so much planning and even construction that you'd already be halfway in the build before you discover all possible issues... That way you'd never really start a build! ( and that's not your style is it? 😋)

So the tedious job of catwalks has started. In one way I looked forward to it, since it's the beginning of the end, but on the other side I wasn't too keen on starting it, since it's a tedious job of cutting out all the stanchions from the PE sprue and measuring and fitting etc. First things first, a paper template to get some correct fitting. It has a few platforms on the side where stairs are mounted. Some of those are on the GA plan, but some are omitted, so the paper template really is necessary to get the position of all of them correct. On top is a styrene L-shape. As you can see, they aren't quite straight over such long lengths. The idea is that the steel grating inside will give the strength and rigidity to the catwalk. However I have already some experience with these gratings and cutting them. They have a tendency to bend quite strongly. This is a very narrow strip that I tried for a small scale project. And this is the now 10-year old catwalk from around the deck house. Much less pronounced, but as you can see it does bend the styrene L-framing as well. I can probably fix this one by supporting and clamping though. The solution for this very long catwalk was to cut tiles. I basically cut 3cm long tiles (in reality the grating is also mounted in pieces rather than one long length, so no issues there). I glued the tiles in, with some weight on top to keep it all flat while gluing. Later on, I used the same trick to mount the railing on both sides. I glue the railing stanchions to the horizontals, so it also adds some rigidity to the whole thing. In the meanwhile I figured I can finally go ahead with the final detailing on this aft part. The catwalk is the top layer, so once it's mounted this part of the vessel would be finished near the center. I'm now checking all details that are still missing from aft to forward (of this section). Some of it was already made, some I still need to make. Here is a bridge with rollers on both sides to pass the aft spring line from the starboard winch over to portside of the vessel when mooring portside alongside. You can also see some manholes etc. that will be mounted just in front of that accommodation block. Time for measuring and gluing.

You definately built that hull sturdy 😵. What is her empty weight (without that ballast)?

I would also go for glue first, paint later. In case of first painting and then gluing: If the curve doesn't fully match with your hull, you'd have the risk of it coming loose since it would be glued to the paint instead of directly on the wood. You could of course paint first, with the position of the sponsons masked (and glue them on later), but that would be difficult with the risk of having to touch up on the paint later....

Looks brilliant. Museum quality!