Javelin

Hi @KeithAug, Full load weight would be around 30kg (66lbs), but normally I sail with around 22kg (48lbs). I have indeed also seen converted aluminum ladders with a rope/chain hoist system that would lower ships to the water etc. However with this kind of weight it would be difficult to use that option. On the other hand, considering how she turns out, I doubt I'll be sailing a lot with this one. I need something more maneuverable for the future (that's going to take a while though). So exciting times (for me at least). I've now completed the top layer of pipes. Not without hurdles though. The deck, and mainly the hatch, has warped a bit, so it's difficult to get things straight and at the correct height. After the usual dry fitting etc. I painted it all, to then figure out that the pipes looked a bit too bent to my liking. It dropped down considerably towards the forward part, with all the straight vertical supports, it was a bit too obvious. Looking at it again, I actually had to drop the backside a bit. So I decided to do some surgery, cut off 3 supports on the aft and lower the aft end of the pipes a bit. Quite a stressful surgery since I had to cut with my knife in the middle of the forest of pipes and support. First dry fit. In following 3 positions I had to cut off the supports and realign the pipe (I removed one of the 2 pipes before cutting as well). And then, after this was successfully performed and all reinstalled, it was finally time to determine the level for the catwalk. I first had to decide the highest point of the piping. I then put my steel ruler on that position, resting it on some of the supports and leveling it out transversally. As you can see, I used a 0.5mm piece of styrene on those supports to level it out. I have a certain margin since I'm using L brackets (like the real thing) to level out the catwalk. The L-shape allows me to go up and down a bit on the vertical supports. I then glued the first transverse support on the portside. Once fixed, I glued one on the starboard side (arrow, underneath the ruler) And once I had the level at the highest point, I continued aft. I used a large diameter styrene tube as a ruler, since it's big/long enough, but doesn't weight much. I did the same in this direction, mounted the tube over the supports, resting its forward end on the new transversal PS support. Then leveled it out using a spacer on the aft supports and then glued the first L-shapes along the length. Forward part of the tube on the fixed support. And the aft end, with the first L-shapes glued in position (arrows) After contemplating several ways to make those catwalks, I decided to make them off the vessel and mount them when complete. The alternative would be to put L-shapes on the supports and later on put the gratings in. However, I'm afraid this way I'd have waved catwalks, also mounting the railing will be difficult, certainly around that deck tank etc. So the idea now is to measure everything out, make a template from cardboard or paper and then build the catwalk, including railing, on a flat surface. I'll then mount it and probably add the last transversal supports when the catwalk is ready. The catwalk construction will take a while I guess.

that is indeed how it's done nowadays. But as Eberhard mentioned, Jelly-fish can be a pain too. I remember clearing 600kg of them from the seachests in Kuwait at some point. A single one is not an issue, they'll be cut to pieces when hitting a sharp object or grating, but a full invasion of them is a totally different thing. The disadvantage of strainers inside is that you open a pipe to the sea below the waterline. You better be sure...

Thanks for the compliment Tim and everybody else. Launching is quite an endeavour. She goes in by pieces. Since she's quite heave, first I prepare everything near the water. Then I float the hull, 12kg (=26 lbs), followed by installation of trays with lead ballast and the battery. Lastly I mount the hatch and accommodation (in that order). The hull itself is rather easy to carry, without the accommodation and hatch, the reinforced coamings around the openings are good handles. Due to her size and freeboard, she doesn't have to stay upright during handling, the risk of water ingress while installing ballast etc. is minimal. I am thinking about a device to launch her, basically two loops with a bar at the bottom. 1 Loop would be near the bow, 1 near the stern, once waterborne I could then slide them fwd and aft and remove them. Still thinking of improvements on that though. All together she's a great learning experience, but also the reason I'm looking at Harry DeWolf for a next project. Harry is everything Chaconia is not... Light, small, little to no details and most of all, manoeuvrable!

Hi Kevin, glad to see you back! (I've been following all of your builds up till now). I have some plans (mostly used the General Arrangement plan up till now, but used other plans for the hull etc. as well) and a huge amount (seems I have 4000+ pictures). Also worked on the real vessel and a sister ship for several months, but that's a long time ago. Problem with all those pictures is that a lot of them are of the same areas, taken at similar angles, so I'm going through a lot of them to find a picture of a tiny detail that's not visible on 1 pic of the area, but might be, on an other picture of that area from a slightly different angle... Takes a long time. These pics were generally taken during surveys, so they take pictures from the same viewpoint to see the general condition (and change in condition, improvement or deterioration) of that area. Sometimes I find myself pondering over measurements or positions, estimated from several pictures, to eventually find out that these details were on the General Arrangement plan all along! On the other side, the pictures do show items that they either misplaced or omitted on the GA plan as well. The top layer of pipes that I'm installing now, is one of these cases. It's quite well detailed on the GA, but in the top view, the catwalk covers most of it. So the bend positions and measurements can be used, but the full run of the pipes, including where they tie in to the cargo system near the manifold, can not be seen. These are parts that I need to figure out from pictures.

Thanks guys. It's a bit on the backburner, although I must admit that everyday I'm looking at its design. I discovered a couple of issues with my drawings compared to the real thing. Carving could be an option, but it'll take a long time and it will be difficult to achieve the sharp knuckle lines of this design by carving and sanding. Additionally I do not have the actual drawings, but I do try to get as close as I can to the real design/shape by combining the things that I do have. So what I have: - A GA side view (giving me at least an accurate height and length of a lot of parts) - An outside view side drawing, showing the knuckle line and the prominent openings for the boats on the side as well as the fairleads and hatches. - some sketchy deck top views (luckily the main deck and 2 decks down, I do have my doubts about the accuracy of outline of those plans though) - Pictures of the megablocks during construction, this gives me a good view at some frames, allowing me to discern some important curves. On those pics I can see the longitudinal stiffeners, equally spaced in a transverse way. Combined with the width of the ship, I know the distance between those stiffeners. Combined with the height of the decks (combination of the pictures with the GA plan), I can determine some intersecting points to draw up those frame shapes. In the same way I determined the width of the bridge, hangar etc. The main issues are of course near the bow. In the above pictures you can see I thought that the lines from the knuckle up would be a continuous curve/line. This appears to be wrong. It seems they designed the bow from the knuckle to the mooring deck and then started a new curve/line from the mooring deck to the "roof" of the mooring deck. Doesn't make much sense to me, but I discovered it from some close-up shots of that bow and will change my frame plan accordingly. For those not familiar with the ship itself.

Thanks Glen, So working on several fronts now. I was waiting for a delivery of 1mm brass wire to continue that last layer of piping, so I continued with the second gangway (somehow always more difficult than the first one). At the same time I slowly started with the railing on the forecastle. That area is nearly finished, so I thought it was a good place to get started. A difficult place as well as the mooring fairleads are integrated in that railing, so it's not as straight forward as putting stanchions and adding the bars. In the meanwhile the 1mm brass has arrived, so I started on that as well. I did decide to first finish that second gangway before going any further. So, final layer of piping, dry fitted, with some scrap as supports for bending and measuring the bends etc. As you can see, that vent mast was quite annoying while working in that area, but I don't think I had much of an option on that one: And pipes finished and painted with a first coat. The unpainted supports were added before I finished the pipes. Those will eventually be glued to the side of the catwalk later on. The easy part here is that I'm building up in small sections, doesn't require too much fitting and trying. However, I did have to wait for the first PE stanchions (bought from Dean's Marine) to determine the height of the top bar. The aft middle bar is not parallel, not sure if I can fix that. Since it's an RC model, I drilled all of those things and glued them in holes to make it more sturdy. I did double check the position of those holes, so not sure what went wrong here... No pics of the second gangways yet, you've seen the first one, so it looks the same . Once finished, I will paint them and store them somewhere safe.

The reason I'd go for a solid cone of multiple pieces, is that anything hollow, like a funnel shape, might be difficult to keep "water"tight. If there's any leakage, it will start to fill up or get the funnel stuck in the resin. I guess the first question we have to ask is: what kind of diameter (and height) whirlpool are you looking at? A lot bigger than the bottle neck?

I've actually been thinking the same, make a cone out of several pieces to insert in the bottle, but make sure you can disassemble it. Coat it in something like vaseline or use transparent foil that can stay inside the epoxy. Then pour and remove the cone once set. I do believe removing the cone once the ships are in, would be a challenge... Not sure on the cheater brand, I've actually thought about it being cheating as well, but just an eenie-weenie- bit 🤏, it would be only a tiny hole at the bottom after all 😄

I've actually thought about drilling a hole in the center bottom of the bottle, then plug it. Fill with epoxy and while it is gelling, remove some epoxy by syringe trough the center hole in order to create a through. Not sure if that's feasable and it would definately require very precise timing. And practice of course! Clay is indeed an option, but much like you, epoxy or anything else transparent, looks waaaay more realistic. The problem with transparent substances to build up in layers us that you will see the edges of the layers. Certainly with silicone... Acrylic gel could be an option, but it shrinks too much and takes ages to dry when applied too thick.

Good decision Great job on that pile driver, great weathering, looks very real!

I'm with Rick. Many thanks for that explanation about the panels (and sponsons). Great results on both. She'll look awesome.

I've following for a while as well, just being very slow in showing myself. Been pondering about ways to make that whirlpool... Really can't come up with any ideas. I'm really curious how you'll do that!

Thanks for all the likes and comments. Despite having started a small project (Harry DeWolf), my main focus is still very much on Chaconia. Thought not to bore you with endless detailing, so here is the first gangway. It's not entirely finished yet and I'm thinking of keeping it off the ship until I put the railing inboard of it, if that's possible. Knowing myself, I need to start the second gangway soon in order to keep the momentum and not forget how I built the first one! There is fixed gangway at each side. It hinges outward and downward. The steps are triangular in shape with a rounded part. This allows it to be used under different angles. In most cases it can be used for pilot embarkation as well, sometimes a combination with a pilot ladder is requested (mostly when in ballast). On larger ships you'll see a white-red marking called a 9-meter mark. The separation between the white and red part of the rectangle marks the height at which there is 9m of freeboard. If that's visible that means you need to make a combination of a pilot ladder and a gangway (sort of compulsory, but still subject to pilot requirement). The pilot ladder will then be used to get from just above the water surface to the 9m mark and there the pilot can switch to the gangway to get to the deck. Nowadays with the really, really large ships, there is often a door in the side of the vessel so he doesn't need to climb that high on the side of the vessel anymore. The inboard part with the collapsed railings. And a dry fit in position. 4 supports are required on the inside for stowage, but I decided to line it up first between the fore and aft parts and then add the supports in order to get the height of the supports correct.

Hi Ian, I'll be following your upgrade project. Immensely handsome ships. Can't really help with any detailing though. I'll keep my eyes open if something pops up about the Splendid Cats. I do know HMS Iron Duke had the catwalk around the stern as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if Lion had it at some point. I do agree it was a bit outdated and rare by that period.

Going out at sea brings a lot of crazy ideas. This is one of them. It all started with my last trial of LPG Chaconia in my home pond. After rebuilding the pond, she seems to be short of space in order to fully turn around. That meant that either I needed a bigger pond, or a different boat to sail. A bigger pond (again!) was not an option, so I decided for a smaller RC ship. Having learned some lessons from Chaconia, mainly that a heavy ship is not very handy for RC sailing (getting it in and out of the pond is quite a task). Additionally for fun of sailing, a single prop ship without bow thruster is quite boring and limited in things you can do with it on the water. In parallel to this, it should be known that I've been collecting any icebreaker plans that I could get my hands on in the past 15 years, having a myriad of ideas with them, but never quite using them. All of this led to the latest Canadian Arctic Offshore Patrol Ship, named Harry DeWolf. Most recent icebreakers use azipods or Z-drive propulsion, which isn't very practical for RC, and although conceived with such a propulsion, Harry DeWolf was eventually built with a regular twin rudder - twin prop configuration (with a bow thruster). Given her length of about 104m and wide 19m beam, she'd make for an ideal RC ship for my pond in 1/100 scale (in which I already have 2 ships). Not sure where this will go. Might be Harry DeWolf itself, might end up being one of the other units (or none at all). The disadvantage of the vessel? Well she's relatively new, which means no real plans are available. However, if you look well, you can find parts of plans. In addition, they've been very open about its construction, proudly showing a lot of pictures of their block/megablock construction in the process. Add to the mixture of plans and picture some common sense and shipbuilding knowledge, and off I went making my own plans. During my last stay at sea, I made a lineplan, drawn in 1/100, but decided to make a prototype in 1/400 to validate the frame shapes. I was pondering finishing the 1/400 model, but to save me some time I think I'll just do the lower hull to see if that shape is plausible. The prototype will be quick-and-dirty, with an eventual decent finish on that lower hull, adjusting frames where required. It won't be 100% accurate, given the lack of actual plans, but I can live with that. She is quite a sleek shape with relatively few small exposed details, so the large version shouldn't take too much time to build neither. I've been working on this for 2 days now. The prototype is also giving me some additional insights into the future construction method/approach of the big version. We'll see where it all goes, considering I'm still working on Chaconia as well. 2 gangways with 44 steps each to build... First lesson I learned was that I had forgotten to draw a frame. Marked it on the longitudinal drawing, but forgot to set out its shape... Corrected that by now. Additionally you can see on the frame with the cut-out that the shape is off. It won't form a smooth line with the frame in front of it. I corrected its shape a bit, but not sure if it will be sufficient. You can see the black marking near its bottom. This is the correction. I'll file it down to that black line and see if it's credible. The idea is to fill and sand the lower hull shape and see which frames are good and which ones need correcting on the plan. When the plan is then corrected, I can go forward with planning for the real sized model.

Good is an understatement, she's looking gorgeous! The original ship has of course pleasing lines, but your model is of excellent quality, love the choice of colors and level of detail.

It looks better than the props I buy for RC ships from a professional company. I do indeed wonder what you'd completely be satisfied with?!

Definitely true, what a gorgeous model this is! Love the shape of the vessel as well as your wood tones (call it "choice of colours", if you want)

Not entirely so. Normal regulations (SOLAS) for cargo ships dictate 100% capacity in lifeboats on each side (if it capsizes, one side is unavailable), however on passenger vessels, some of that capacity is offset by liferafts rather than only lifeboats. Cargo ships do have liferafts as well. I assume the Navy has its own regulations as they do not have to follow SOLAS. That said, love your build Brad. Good to see some paint, the red will really make a big difference too, for me it always takes a build to the next step!

Thanks Keith, So, after determining the way to build those fairleads, it was off to mass production. Finished all of them by now. As you can see there are left and right combinations of rollers and closed fairleads. The seperate plates in the midle of the picture are for single closed fairleads. On the main deck the sloped side of the base plate is much longer than on the combinations or single roller fairleads, while next to the accommodation block it's somewhere in between the two. I assume this has to do with the reinforcements under deck. And finally an overview picture with the fairleads dry fitted in place. It's the first time I actually put the accommodation block in place since I continued building her. I assume her overall appearance will not really change that much with the catwalk on. Largest items that are still missing are the large gangways on the deck edges on both sides.

Depends what you call a gooseneck I guess. You have regular ones for accommodation spaces etc. which are indeed just bent pipes, but then there are also types used for tanks etc. which are located on deck. The latter require a sort of non return system that lets air or gas out, but blocks water from coming in. Most of the time this is done using a ball that lays down. Air is then escaping from the top down around the ball. When water comes over deck, the ball floats up, blocking the pipe and keeps the water from entering in the tank. Generally those devices are looking rather big and clumsy. I'm assuming the ones on Cangarda are an effort to create a better looking one. I believe there is a floater in the small cylinder that blocks the connection between the two pipes when it floats up to the top plate I may of course be mistaken...

Hi Phil, During dredging we do 12 hour shifts, so 12 hours on, 12 hours off. In our case we work from Noon to midnight or from Midnight to Noon. On other dredging vessels they often do from 0700 till 1900 and 1900 to 0700, so there you effectively have a day and night shift. They then change somewhere in the middle of their rotation so the dayshift does the night and opposite (with a transition of 2 backbreaking 18 hour shifts). Due our Noon to Midnight shifts we don't have a need to change and just do the whole trip, the same shift. For sailing it depends, if it's a short trip of just a couple of days or a week we generally stay in our 12 hour shifts, navigating instead of dredging. When it's a longer trip, it depends on what we agree on. Normally we'd then go to 3 8-hour shifts with some overtime adjacent to that. This creates one long break for relaxation. Dredging business is essentially a part of construction business and not really related to transportation business. It therefore works a lot less strict and without much hierarchy compared to the merchant marine/navy. In the merchant we kept the normal 4-hour watches with overtime in between, but this breaks your time off in several small breaks, not allowing for any normal 8-hour sleep. With current regulations regarding MLC (Maritime Labour Convention), the merchant sort of creates their own problem. With the dredging system it's a lot easier to follow those rules and their multitude of requirements (maximum 14 hours of work in any 24-hour period, maximum of 3 breaks of which one needs to be at least 6 hours etc. etc.) On to the closed chocks/fairleads. First things first, I'm in favor of roller fairleads. A lot of ship owners are going for the much cheaper closed fairleads nowadays, but in my opinion that's often a mistake. Rollers allow your mooring rope to move in all directions without really damaging the rope (they do require more greasing and maintenance). This is particularly important in ports where you are exposed to a lot waves/swell and during ship-to-ship transfers (which are done very frequently nowadays. As an owner you may think you're not going to do such things, but very often a few years later they end up doing it anyway. Closed fairleads often chafe the mooring ropes/wires with resulting breakage and in some cases unwanted break-away. This is one of the arrangements on Chaconia. The reason for the closed fairlead is for tugboats. You don't want to put a tug line through a roller fairlead, as forces are much higher when using a tug than when in any normal moored situation. Tugs can also exceed their normal maximum pull forces by pulling sideways, in this case the winch will not render the rope, even when set at a certain maximum. For the time being I settled on following method to make the closed fairleads. First I make the front and back plate with the oval holes as shown in last post. Then I insert a 2mm thick piece of styrene tube. I put this one quite off center, with its side at the bottom of the fairlead. I then add small pieces of strip on each side of that tube to mimic the plates on the real one. And lastly I sand/file the strips flush with the edge of the tube and add the front/backplate. Later on I file/sand the whole thing to shape and hollow out the hole in the central tube to match the front and backplate. It's not a perfect copy as it's not rounded between the front and backplate, but I don't feel like adding filler and sanding on each one of those. The shape of the hole is also not quite as squared as the real thing, but I'll see if I adjust my oval hole later on. Here you see the fairlead standing up under an angle, looks fine for the time being. Here is one of those combination rollers-closed leads. The roller is built the same way as explained above, the base plate is just bigger to accommodate for the closed fairlead. That's it for now. On to mass production again. I need 16 closed fairleads (10 of which are mounted in a combination with a roller fairlead).

Thanks a lot guys for all the comments and likes. It's probably because of your active feedback that I have the drive to actually get this thing finished. Probably wouldn't have continued construction after the long hiatus if I hadn't found this board with its great members! Currently all cargo pumps are installed, but the wiring was proving difficult. I'll give that another go when I get back from sea with a fresh mind. Being at sea is like a short prison sentence. You're very limited in your choices. Each day you work the prescribed hours (and/or more as required), but you have to eat whatever they give you (and during several weeks you get to see a lot of things a lot of times...) and you're also limited in the things you can do during your free time, so you end up in a certain routine for weeks. I can follow build logs over here since we do have internet, but it only makes you want to create something yourself even more... So whenever I do get home, I really have a drive to get on with it. So last things I want to finish before I go were the rollers and chocks (if not finished, at least I wanted to get a working procedure and jigs to create them). First were the single rollers, I needed 8 of those. Afterwards there are another 10 of them that are combined with closed fairleads/chocks and then there are still 8 closed single fairleads remaining to be made. On top of that there is another emergency towing chock in the back, which is a bit larger and stronger than the others. So for the rollers, each consisting of 4 rollers, a base plate, side cheeks and a top plate, I decided to go for drilling rather than just gluing. It's still a sailing model, so I want those things to have at least some strength. First I made a jig for the two horizontal rollers to fit in the side cheeks. That's Number 1 in following picture. Then I scribed a line at the width of the cheeks, but kept it connected to the plastic plate for easier handling (Number 2 in the picture). Then I put my drilling jig on top of that strip and drilled the 2 holes. Then I marked and again scribed a line. Then came the next holes etc. The cheeks are rounded at the top, so I maked that curve (shape of the jig) to file them rounded later on. Last but not least, Number 3 is just a larger diameter tube with a 1.5mm hole in the center, it has the length of the rollers. So I just put a 1.5mm rod inside of it, push it flat on my desk and then cut it off. Later on I punch out the roller with a 1mm drill. Like this I had to create 4 rollers for each roller fairlead, so 72 of them. I then cut off the cheeks by following the scribed lines and filed the rounded top edge. Afterwards I made another "jig" (Number 4 in below pic), at the other side of the cheek jig for the vertical rollers. I then used the same method of scribing a strip and drilling the holes. The inside of the base plate is also beveled. (Number 5 in below pic). Then I glued the vertical rollers in place. And afterwards the horizontal ones in the cheeks. While the glue is still wet I then mounted it against the vertical rollers to make everything square and fit (Number 6 in above pic) Last action, not visible in the pictures yet, is filling the top of the vertical rollers and the cheeks flat and level at the top and add a tiny plate on top. The methodology is basically the same as with the piping, leave an end open that you can adjust. In this case it's that top of the vertical rollers as well as the sides of the cheeks. I can file those flat and level, which allows me to have slight offsets in length or even slightly angled cuts on those styrene rods. This in turn makes the process go quite fast, mainly being limited by the drying time of the glue. Next came the double rollers, where I made a small mistake by scribing the strip for the base plate too narrow. This resulted in the cheeks being too wide to fit on top. Luckily I could recover the rollers themselves and I only had to remake the base plates. After that came the closed chocks. I'm still somewhat looking for a good method, but I did discover that I can put a mill in my hand drill and actually use it to make the shape of the holes nice. For now it looks like the method will be to drill the holes like in the picture. Then mill out the hole to a nicer oval shape. The strip and the first holes were actually drilled some 10 years ago. I still remember where I wanted to get with that, but I didn't see the way to that target back then. We'll see where we get. I won't be installing those anytime soon though, they are integrated in the railing, so I'll be drilling holes to insert the railing in these later on, when I get to the stage of railing.

Well here is the grating I meant. Found it back on SB side just behind the lifeboat davit. If you remove the gratings side of the hinge, I bet the hull part of the hinge looks familiar... The boom you now show is indeed for boats/launches. Battleships of that age also had such booms to embark boats. They even hung rope ladders on them to board the boats from that boom. It's possible that in Cangarda's case it's only used to hold boat in place? In your picture you can also see a white rope going to that forward feature on SB bow (shown in detail in the pics you posted on page 1), that holds the boom in open position. I assume it's removable since I don't see it in collapsed/closed position in any of the other pictures (but you might find it in other pictures you have). Those battleships did fold it in, like the booms for the torpedo nets.

Hi Keith, seems to be a fixture of some kind. You have a better view in some of the pictures in page 1 of this log. Additionally, it seems very similar to the fixtures of a horizontal grating that hangs overboard (as pictured in page 1, but not sure where that grating is located). In any case this extention looks a lot like the hinges of that grating, except that the grating has 2 such points and in your location there is only 1...