Javelin

Although I'm following you, I didn't see this one pop up. Happy to see another bottle-project started. Already curious how you'll tackle that bottle-waterfall connection!

That's one very fantastic steel job! And at such a small scale! 👍

Thanks for all the likes and comments. On to finishing the hull before polyester application. First came the bulwark. Since the deck wouldn't remain pure wood, I decided to glue temporary blocks with the correct angle in place. I then shaped a bulwark from paper around that bow and transferred it to wood. I believe I used 3mm birch ply for this. Also the transitions from the forecastle deck to the main deck were made from that wood. You can also see the finish of the stem, using 2-part epoxy filler around the brass plate to reach a more or less sharp edge just above the bulbous bow. I used a very fine weave of fibre cloth with polyester resin. Since Polyester isn't really 100% water proof, the wood could start rotting underneath. I therefore treated it with a product called G4, which essentially turns the wood into plastic. First coats were thinned G4 to get it deeper into the wood, last coat was pure G4. Here is the G4 treatment. When drying it gave a satin gloss to the wood, but the colour of the wood turned back to "normal", eventually it was hardly visible that it had been treated. You can see small bubbles forming due to the G4 getting into the wood.

Here things got a bit fuzzy. Seems I finished that aft planking first. I believe I then put balsa blocks on the bow and near the prop shaft and then finished the part underneath the forecastle, since I wouldn't be able to reach it when the forecastle deck was in place. As mentioned before, I had started some major block construction in parallel (while the glue was drying on the planking I suppose). The front of the superstructure is just there for strength. Cutting all the windows from a 2mm thick piece of styrene is pretty hard, so I decided to make a false cover first, to maintain strength and then put a 1mm detailed cover in front. It's quite a piece, but it also had to be removable as it would give access to the motor and speed controller, so it had to be sturdy. Everything on those vessels is concentrated in 1 superstructure (apart from the cargo handling gear), so it also carries the funnel as well as the lifeboats and davits.

Only ones left are in the capital of our village . Come to think of it, with 2 ship modellers in 1 village, that will make the village the "ship modelling capital of Belgium" 🤣

Indeed, slamming, but in an extreme way. All ships can slam from time to time, depending on direction and period of the swell, but in this case it was quite extreme. I also forgot to mention one sister. The Cheshire was built for a different company (Bibby Lines from UK, if I remember correctly), as far as I know she was from the Courcheville/Chaconia variant of 165m length. Eventhough they were of the same variant, Courcheville still different from Chaconia in a considerable way. Courcheville had 2 deck tanks (1 small for Ammonia, 1 large for Propane/Butane), while Chaconia only had the small deck tank on portside of the deck. On the original vessels, the deck tanks were also mounted forward, while on Courcheville and Chaconia they were both mounted aft. Chaconia did receive an extra mooring winch instead of that large deck tank. Deck tanks are used to change cargo. They are not really part of the cargo carrying capacity. If you transport Propane and your next cargo will be Ammonia, then the deck tank is used to fill your tank with ammonia gas and later on cool it down with liquid ammonia from the deck tank, in order to get the tanks ready for the next loading operation. Since ammonia expands a lot more than Propane/Butane and needs to be cooled down less than Propane (boiling point of Ammonia is around -33°C, while the one for Propane is around -42°C), the deck tank for Ammonia is smaller. This is only an option chosen during construction. If the ship is not supposed to change much cargoes, 1 or 2 deck tanks can be left out of the design. When all old cargo is removed and the tanks are gas free, it is also possible to fill with gas (gas-up) and cool down alongside of a terminal. This costs time and money, but if required, it can be done. There was also a chiller unit, a special device that allowed to load warm cargo, cool it down with the chiller before it entered the tank. Although there was space for this unit, Chaconia didn't have it installed, Courcheville did. Not sure on the others. Time for the planking. I apparently started with the bow. The wood I chose was lime, which worked well. I did wet the wood and shape it before applying it. I used an epoxy construction glue that actually bubbles and filled gaps when drying. Glued the planks to the frames as well as to each other. Getting them smoothly connected to the flat sides was something of a challenge, not sure if I'd go for complete planking on a new build (that would be a lot more costly though). I soon figured out the planking went up towards that bow, quite steeply. Oh, and I forgot to mention, I completely left out shaping the frame edges to the hull shape, figured the glue would compensate for that🤪 So at some point I decided to make a cut, get a straight plank running aft to forward in place and continue straight. At that point, being young, not held back by any knowledge or experience in the matter, I always assumed I would "fix things later", something I don't do anymore, nor would I advice it to anyone. Although many things can be fixed, it takes an excessive amount of time and effort to do so. On this bow shot you can see a brass plate in place at the stem, in order to be able to make a sharp edge. Something I had foreseen to become a problem when using Polyester and car body filler (= "the solution"). The planking did end up more or less symmetrical. Then came the stern section, with even worse curves to negotiate.

Coming along nicely. Very sharp cutting of all those tiny holes!

Welcome aboard. Almost impossible to believe, a large international community of people in a rather small hobby (definately in Belgium) and you live in the same village as me....

@Ian_Grant, 30kg would be full load. I've already sailed with her in the past and I only went to 20-22kg, basically assembling it in the water. I just put the hull afloat, and then add ballast and battery. If I remember correctly the hull itself is around 12kg. I'll try to update daily until I am at the current situation (and then it will slow down considerably). Here is one pic with that cargo tank in place. I sure was ambitious back then. The cargo tank was a sort of educational piece that could also open to show the inside structure of the tank and the pumps etc. I did get further than what you see in this picture, but when it was clear I wouldn't have time for that, it got shelved and eventually scrapped. You can also see that the outside corners of the frames adjacent to the tank (and more aft) were cut. This was already with the idea that I'd insert a quarter rod of wood to resemble/model the rounded edges of the decks which are typical for tankers (this avoids excessive stress on the corner joint of the main deck and ship's sides). Next was fitting the decks. As you can see in the next pics, once I was more confident on that hull coming together, I started with the large block construction using styrene. The deckhouse, also called cargo compressor room is here in place. This room houses the three cargo compressors (1 for each cargo system + 1 spare that could be put on either of the 2 systems to give more capacity to that system). In below picture you can see how much camber the hull has. The camber allows green water to be evacuated quickly over the sides. This of course meant the main deck would be cut length wise to compensate for this angle on both sides. Here the main deck is already cut to pieces and the quarter rod on the edge is places in the frame corner cut-outs. The part below the cargo compressor room, what housed the cargo tank 2 model, would remain removable. This appeared to be a good choice later on, as it gives an easy access to the batteries and ballast. And what I forgot to mention about that bow shape... By leaving out the fuel tanks forward, the bow was very blunt. They wanted to maximize the cargo tank capacity, which meant the forward cargo tank was still quite considerable in volume and the bow was shaped to accomodate this rather big, blunt tank. The blunt bow shape did give a very "strange" behavior in certain sea conditions, resulting in the ship colliding with the swell on occasions. It felt like going from full ahead to a dead stop whenever you hit a wave. This (or at least it was thought back then), eventually led to some structural issues in the forward part of the vessels.

The product I use only mentions masses/weights, not volumes. Kind of normal considering chemistry is mass based. Volumes change with temperatures and pressures for a given mass. (although arguably less important for epoxy than with polyester with mixing ratios of 97%-3%) I use Epodex, which has two very different sizes of bottle (hardner and resin) and the mixing ratio is therefore also different from 50-50. It's practically made two mix the bottles completely, they don't really consider partial mixes. That said, it can be easily calculated. The only issue is that they don't give densities, so when you need a certain volume of epoxy mix, you need guess the densities and convert it. It did work so far, although I believe I used too little hardner in my first trial, resulting in too much hardner remaining in the end...

Thanks for all those likes and reactions. Some more progress. I'm still looking at how many and what kind of pictures I have from those days. A bit of history on the what and why: Chaconia was 1 of a series of LPG tankers built in the Belgian Boelwerf at Temse. The series started with the slightly smaller Tielrode (later renamed Oscar Gas I believe) and Gent (both 155m long), and was followed by the slightly longer Courcheville and Chaconia (both 165m long) and by the even larger Sombeke, where the main deck was level with the foreship. They were Midsize LPG tankers (as opposed to the standard 236m long Very Large Gas Carriers) built to transport different cargoes. Mostly they carried Butane and/or Propane and Ammonia, but they could also carry VCM (Vinyl Chloride Monomer) or Propylene (basically anything with a boiling point down to -48°C. They had 3 tanks, arranged in 2 seperate cargo systems. Each system consisted of 1 Vent Mast, 1 cargo compressor (= reliquefaction unit) and 1 or 2 tanks. The systems could also be connected to a single system and the middle tank could be connected to either of the 2 systems (basically creating 1 single tank system and a seperate 2-tank system). All this allowed flexibility in the amount of each cargo to be carried. Their rather odd bow shape was the result of the lack of a fuel tank forward. Normal merchant vessels have fuel tanks adjacent to the engine room, but also fuel tanks forward. These tanks are normally transferred to the tanks near the engine room once space allows (during the voyage). These tanks also allow to shape the bow in a hydrodynamic way when required. In this case they chose to omit those forward tanks. Reducing the need for a forward fuel transfer pump station and fuel piping on the forward deck. Next series of pics is the framing job. As you can see, there is a flat bottom, allowing for the use of flat wood plates. I used this plate as a sort of building board, but you can imagine it wasn't very straight. Big mistake, wouldn't do that again, but not a disaster after all. The frames on these pics were also still dry fitted and a bit wiggly, so they look more out of line then what they'd eventually be. Also it appears I used the wrong tool to cut those frames, I'd do a better job on that as well. Merchant ships also have flat sides nowadays, so I opted to use wood plates for the size as well. The parallel body is in most cases also drawn on the vessels drawings, this allows to see if mooring at certain terminals with certain fender arrangements (or ship to ship transfers at sea) are possible. The last shot has a ruler in it, you can see the size of the beast. The midship section was to have a real model of a cargo tank inside, that's why the frames and keel in that position are shaped differently. I did start that tank as well, but discarded it by now. It is however a good spot for the ballast and batteries now. In loaded condition the model should weigh around 30kg.

True that in this case it remained enclosed in a glass jar since I didn't pour it. The actual piece would have a much larger surface vs thickness ratio. The final piece is 14cm x 14cm and somewhere between 1.7 and 1.9cm thick. That would also allow bubbles to escape faster. On the other side, too much hardener does create a faster chain reation, creating more heat in a shorter time. I've ordered new epoxy and this time I will weigh it carefully. Should arrive somewhere next week. She's on hold for the time being, since I won't put additional time in this until I'm sure the epoxy works fine. (worst case, I'll saw the whole bottom off and it becomes a waterline diorama 😁) Thanks Nils, not that accurate I guess, but a very different way of building than large scale. In this tiny scale you have to very carefully consider what you will and won't represent.

Well a very old project of mine started back in 2010. It's been around ever since, working on it on and off until now. It's been bothering me ever since, she's the reason why I don't like to have a shelf of doom with long lasting projects. With every new small scale project I start, she's standing behind me, nagging for attention. As of late I've been busy planning to finally finish her and since the Spartacus project is on hold for the time being, I've slowly restarted construction on Chaconia. At first I built in a continuous period, however the pace slowed down during the detailing phase and eventually I've abandoned it. At first it would be temporary, just to take on a smaller project and finally get something finished, but as you can imagine, then came another "quick" project and another... Sometimes I did put her in the water and did some small jobs, but it never became my main project again. Now I'm intending to promote her again to the main project. So what is she? Chaconia is an LPG tanker, carrying Butane, Propane (or both) or Ammonia. Back in the days, she was mainly used to transport Ammonia from Trinidad (and other places) to the US (Gulf of Mexico area) for fertilizer production. She also brought Ammonia to Chile for production of explosives for the mining industry. She's not the cutest of ships, but back then it sounded like a good idea. In the end, so many years later, I must say that my period onboard that ship was probably, travelling wise, the most interesting voyage I ever did, covering a large part of South and Central America, including Maghellan Strait and Panama Canal passages. Since I didn't have a lot of resources back then, she was built in sub-optimal conditions and I also didn't have any expertise for such a project, having just started scratch-building in small scale ships. I shouldn't have done a project like that as a first large scale scratch build... In any case, she's there now, so I'll need to finish her. I'll bring you up to speed in probably quite a few posts with pictures. Basic construction was a wooden frame and hull, covered with glass fibre. From the start the R/C idea was incorporated and that complicated things. I had seen a lot of R/C projects online, but they were always twin screw warships. Having a straight, single-piece, keel, which wouldn't work for my project. So I had to get a solution. It's also my first- and only- planking job till now. The rudder post in position. Rudder post and propellor shaft spaces created.

Noticed someone making an angled surface in his carriages rather than a regular top/bottom straight edge. I can't remember in which topic this was, but I remember someone asking whether there was any evidence. Since I came across this one in Rotterdam recently, decided to put it here for future reference. Any additional info on it would be welcome as it was placed at the entrance of the maritime museum, as a sort of attraction to lure public rather than inside the museum itself. No info was near the gun. I assume, considering there are no eye-bolt etc. that this might be an older type of gun/carriage? As you can see it does have that angled edge between top and bottom piece, much like I remember seeing someone doing here on his model guns.

Because a picture says more than a 1000 words... The bubbles were not visible, even after 1 hour, only after that, it started to feel warm and the flakes seemed to dissolve, creating strange "streams" from the bottom to the top. Back then it even still looked smooth, but with those flows going up, the surface had lines in them and isn't even flat anymore. In any case, luckily I didn't push through.

Had a narrow escape today. I was all geared up to get that pouring job done this morning, but when I checked the contents of my remaining resin, I had my doubts about the remaining quantity. I required around 0.4L of epoxy for this diorama, and the resin bottle was only around 50% remaining, I forgot the wastage from the Sea Installer tests and the actual project. Together with the hardener I might actually have enough... In any case, it was open for a while and I had to use it sometime. During emptying the resin bottle, I did notice some white particles inside the liquid and when I was mixing with the hardener, those flakes remained in the mixture. During mixing however, the mixture remained opaque rather than turning back to clear, considering the low amount, I decided not to do the pour at all. When left to harden, the flakes slowly went down, but bubbles formed. The mixture also turned very hot, I was kind of lucky I mixed it in a glass jar rather than a plastic one. It also started to smoke (slightly), so I put the thing outside, where it was also colder than inside. Eventually it hardened, but there were certain "lines" in the mixture and large bubbles (what looked like a boiling reaction) formed from the bottom up. I 'm assuming there are 2 reasons for this: a) the stuff was too old / too long in opened condition before use or stored in a wrong temperature and b) the mix ratio was probably not good. I didn't weight this mixture as I had done several mixtures which worked ok, and I needed all of the remaining liquid. I suppose there was too much hardener left, creating a very rapid curing, releasing a lot of heat in a short period of time. I guess I was lucky, since I assume it would have melted the model if I had poured it in. Would have also been stupid if the amount was just enough to touch the bottom of the ship and not reach the waterline... She's shelved for the time being, need to order some stuff for several builds (finally need to finish that Sea Installer build as well). I'll see when I get to another attempt.

Great job you are doing there. There is also a material called Elforyn, a synthetic substitute for Elephant or Mammoth Ivory / tusk. Not sure how to glue it, but I'm pretty sure that company will help you with that. If it needs gluing of course. I suppose you can buy it in whatever size you need it, considering it's synthetic. https://www.elforyn.de/en/

Stupid question from somebody who never did this: did you pre-drill the holes for your screw pins against splitting of the frames or was this not required? Great planking job so far!

One more rigging pic. Here you can see the lay-out better, with a white background. The stopper wire is not tight of course and will be hanging partially in the epoxy. Last steps before epoxy. Something I haven't done nor tested before, is applying a coat of acrylic gel over the sand. I hope this will seal cavities and give a more smooth surface for the epoxy. I suppose, and hope, that this will eliminate or at least reduce the amount of air bubbles that are released from the cavities in the sand during the curing process of the epoxy. On previous tests, these bubbles were sometimes released only when the epoxy was in an advanced stage of curing, causing bubbles to get stuck midway, unable to rise to the surface, let alone get released on the surface... Although I haven't tested this separately, I assume this will count as a good test. Then comes the box. The sandwich of plates at the bottom wasn't very smooth on the sides, I could have sanded it smooth I guess... But I got impatient. In any case I built the box around it, glued it with CA in some places and then applied regular silicone to seal the gaps. When the bottom was done, I squeezed it on a rectangular plastic lid. The edge of the lid will contain any leakage and the bottom itself squeezed the silicone into the gaps. I never used CA on the transparent polyester plate (Vivak) of the casing. I see it's not really causing fogging, so that's something I've learned for the future as well. Apart from CA, it seems MEK is the only thing that can glue these plates together properly. I also sealed the corners of the box with silicone. You can see the dried glossy acrylic layer on top of the sand base in this picture. Next step will be pouring the epoxy and mounting the multicat and floating line. I'll go for a lighter shade of blue than on the Sea Installer build. You might remember this picture from that log. This is the shade I'll go for. This was also the test bottle to see the effect of wires in epoxy, where I had the Spartacus project already in mind.

Yes, that is what he means, however I doubt that any ship designers ever took such a practical point in account. When a right hand propellor turns in reverse, to slow down a ship, it creates a swing of the bow to starboard. This is called "the propeller effect". Therefore the easiest mooring manoevre is on portside, approach going forward, put a forward spring line on the quay bollard and then reverse the engine. Since the bow is kept fixed by the mooring line, the stern is pushed to the quay and can be made fast. With the quay on starboard this doesn't work, as reversing the engine, to slow down, the bow is pushed in the quay and the stern pulled away from it. As mentioned it's doubtful designers ever took that in account as other factors would also have an impact on the mooring operation and side of mooring.

Thanks Glen Enough of that rigging for now. Both side wires, anchor wires and stopper wires are now in place. So technically the main subject is ready for epoxy. So now the focus has shifted a bit towards that multicat and the floating line. I've also inserted another bracket in the bottom for anchoring of that floating line. So here's the bottom of the multicat, with its propulsion and rudders added (indeed an odd 3 propellors and rudders). I'll go as far as finishing the hull, so I can insert it in the epoxy, the rest will follow later as it'll be easier to handle once it's fixed in the block of epoxy. (Same for the dredger itself, a lesson learned from bottling the Sea Installer). And the attempt for the floating line. Not sure how I'll do this, I guess I'll try to insert it when the epoxy is nearly hard. If that fails, I can still lay it on top of the epoxy as I'll finish the surface with acrylic gel after all. And I'm also getting the box ready for the epoxy. It won't be filled to the edge of course. Technically I could also use a cheaper, non-transparent material for the boundaries, but I'd love to see what I'm doing when filling, so I chose something transparent. This will be sacrificial, so no need for extremely clean edges. I'll also use some silicone to seal the corners and bottom edges to avoid the epoxy from leaking out. The painted waterline of the dredger will be my indication for filling the box. Some small paint jobs left on the dredger (tumbling sheaves, "chain" that connects the anchor hoisting wires to the anchor) and then I'm ready.

Great to see with what you started in the pictures at the top of the page and seeing where it's going now! She could really use some attention. Great job so far

Although not strictly related to the model, as I'm not building the pumps, I thought I'd share a picture of one of the 3 dredge pumps on this beastie. Gives an idea of the size. Furthermore I've continued with the spiderweb of wires. Added the first anchor hoisting wire, the easy one... Glen's trick doesn't work on the Uni Caenis as it's a monofilament, which doesn't absorb any glue. It does work on the Veevus, as that's a multifilament, basically soaking up CA glue. I've also tried to stretch the Uni Caenis with a clothes pin and then treated it with acrylic gel to keep it straight. It seemed to have worked more or less. At least it's an improvement over the "dry" Caenis. I've also started by gluing it at each sheave and stretching it along the way, then glue it to the next sheave etc. To keep it in straight lines. The free hanging part that goes to the bottom was fixed there with acrylic gel, so you don't really see where it's glued. Sorry for the bad pictures, but the Caenis is that fine, that's hard for the camera to catch it without proper contrast. I guess at some point I'll use a white background or hold it into the light to show it in a better way. Since those wires are the last thing before pouring resin, I'm also proceeding with the multicat workboat. Added the bridge, crane pedestals and currently working on the large double winch. For the winch you can see I've outlined the contour on a 0.3mm sheet, then drilled a hole for the smaller winch, where I inserted a piece of 0.8mm brass, while for the large, higher placed, winch, I've added a small disk of 1.5mm diameter to the side of the winch. I'll then drill a hole in the center of that disk for the shaft. The disk is also 0.3mm thick, made in the same way I've shown before. I'll soon start with painting on this boat. I've also been pondering on the floating line. A piece of 0.8mm brass with small cut-outs for the separate parts of the line wasn't feasible. Either it broke, while trying to cut or the cuts (with file edge) were too coarse and varied to be plausible. I've now found a piece of telephone wire (with several small wires inside) of appropriate diameter, where I can simply cut the insulation as a cut-out, while maintaining the copper wires inside to hold the thing together and bend it as I want it. We'll see how that effort works out. Since those floating lines are also anchored to the bottom, I'll have to find a way to represent this as well.

Sea chest is indeed the official name for that. This appears to be the high sea chest, normally used in shallow water, while you normally also have a lower sea chest in the bottom of the ship, for use in deeper water (normal). Not sure if this system was already applied at that time period or if they just had 1 sea chest. Not sure on that hole in the drawing. Is that hole located above the waterline? I believe Ventil (with a word I can't really read), may mean overboard valve, not sure of which system though. The hole is also only located on Port side (nur BB).

Yes, the name is there. It says opening for "wasserkasten", which as far as I know is a cooling water inlet. It does say BB, which would mean it's only on the portside and not on starboard (the note about overlap of plating does mention BB and SB). Great job on that hull so far. Very sharp and professional result!