Javelin

Sorry Phil, but considering my own collection of colourful and rarely modelled ships, you had to know I was going to love it! Awesome refers to the ship as a model subject of the ship, not the ship itself 😁 Are you going to display it simply on a stand, or are you going to put some crew ( including yourself???) on or even deploy some of the sweeping gear?

Awesome subject Phil. Always a fan of the less modelled subjects. Love the story behind it as well. I'll be following this one!

And the subject of the build as well. I've never seen a paddlesteamer in a bottle before. It's true that the sharpness of the background is just beautiful, and the contrast of straight lines in surroundings with the flowing lines of the bottle make an interesting display! A masterpiece once again. I do however miss the penguins in the final result. Are they hiding under the jetty somewhere?

As promised, another small update. As you've probably become aware of my previous ramblings, I'm not building very straight forward anymore. It's more cluttered and all around the place now. So first I'll show the deck tank area. Lines are finally painted and installed (last light grey paint used now). I had also finished that aft PS bunker line. Here is a view with the hatch removed. Don't look at the dirt laying around, I just used my Proxxon with a cutting disk to reduce the piping on the pipe rack to avoid clashing with the piping on the hatch. I'll clean it up when I'm happy with the result. I also do need to fix this bunker pipe with some brackets to the stanchions behind it. You can also see a recent addition. The ship has 2 big dry powder guns (fire fighting) aft of the manifold on elevated platforms, one on each side. I've built the platforms now, but they'll need to be painted grey and would in any case be in the way if I'd install them now. I'll also fully detail them with railing etc. before installing them. And last but not least, I nearly finished pump dome 1. Both pump motors (covered by canvas) are installed and the support for the cabling is also installed between them. I had not planned to do the cabling when I started this build, yet without the cabling and support, something seemed missing from the cluttered pump dome, so I decided to add it as well. The cabling will be done with 0.2mm-ish copper wire. It's quite easy to cut and bend and the cables don't need to be as straight as the piping, so this should be ok. The plan is now to continue on the remaining pump domes. I'll also further adjust the piping around the hatch to finally solve this nagging issue. Additionally I'm now looking at constructing the remaining mooring fittings (roller fairleads and closed chocks and finalizing the chain stoppers for the anchor chains). All of those items are not grey so I should be able to finish those. And here is a picture of the real thing again. So the deck tank still needs the walkway on top and over the piping. That will be quite a difficult one, considering the round surface of the tank. And you can also see the dry powder gun platforms (red arrows).

Great planking job Ronald. Good decision to leave the lower part natural. Pitty on the slipped pin pusher, but I'm sure you will fix that! Keep this coming, as one of my superiors once said: "I love your perfectionist mindset, eventhough you don't achieve perfect results, at least you get closer than any of us"

Fantastic build. I personally regret not seeing it masted and rigged, but I also understand the amount of work involved in that. Love the finish and scale people. Congratulations on finishing it!

A marathon it is, a bit boring for you guys, but I guess this topic would be awesomely quiet if I'd wait with an update until I finished that piping completely. I need to tie up some loose ends, but at least the end is near. I did notice that making these unique items takes a lot of time for hardly any visible progress on the vessel. Tedious repeating jobs do give faster visual progress. Hadn't heard of Fandabadosey before 😂 Nice try Mr McGuire, you did pull that piece of sentence out of context. English may not be my mother tongue, I do believe "nor" in front of a piece of sentence means "neither" or "I did not" 😁. If I start something new, rest assured I'll make a build log for it. A couple of projects are taking form, most of them involving bottles, but none are truly 100% balanced at this point. Mostly issues with scale and bottle sizes and shapes. Thanks for all the likes and comments everybody. A real update will follow soon.

Just a sailor @yvesvidal, no plumber (although I do admit it has crossed my mind to change trade and go work ashore as a plumber in the past). So prodding on. Kind of forgot where I left off here. in the meanwhile the PS bunkerline has been installed. I marked its position in following picture. Then came the last part of that bunker line, since it's on the hatch, and the aft part is quite complicated, I decided to separate front from aft. Aft part can be seen in next picture. This was the second or third attempt I believe. In the foreground you can also see the finished safety valves installed on the deck tank and the line running from them to the vent mast. After extending the supports, my original liquid and vapour line from the deck tank were not correct anymore. I had to make them again and that took me quite a few attempts. However, currently they are ready and in primer. You can also see the extensions on the supports, nearly all of them are done in this area. On the right you can see a different view of the safety valves. The odd run of that line to the vent mast is of course there due to very fast cooling. The pipe is normally at ambient temperature, but if/when those safety valves open, it cools down very fast, so the turns in that line allow it to bend and shrink without tearing apart. Below picture also illustrates why I normally work bottom up. The vent mast on the right really is in my way when I'm working near that deck tank area, however I don't think I had another option at this point. The only major piping left is the connections from that deck tank going forwards where they connect to the other lines, passing over all other pipes, that's the final layer of piping. I did however notice I ran out of 1mm brass rod, so either I try to make it from 1mm styrene rod or continue building something else until I make another order at the model shop. The reason I'd use brass in this case is that those pipes also have 2 U-shapes and brass allows you to bend back and extend a bend a bit. 1mm styrene rod really looks odd when you bend it back and will also easily tear apart when bending again. I also finished 1 cargo pump with rope around the canvas etc. but no pictures yet. My shore leave is running out again, so I have to pick my fights. The grey mixed paint is also pretty much finished and I don't think I'll be mixing a new batch before I leave again. I'm currently not making my 2-part quotum, but at least the build isn't stalled nor did I start a new project in the meantime, so I'm ok with it.

The question is, does the veering off course happed due to wind or simply due to minute differences in the oars? If it is the latter, you might add a longitudinal skeg on the bottom, the length of the keel. This would make her more "course stable", however it will make her less manoevrable as well. I don't really expect a real issue when really turning on the oars though. The rudders will have even less effect if you do this. It could however reduce the veering off-course. On the other hand, if she just gets blown sideways, this will not help too much. If it's of any comfort at all, I'm also having issues with the wind on Chaconia, I really need a big calm pond to sail it as she doesn't have a bow thruster and the turning with the wind gives a very large turning radius.

Mr McGuire that's a brilliant piece of water. Great call on the grey wash between the layers!

Well actually... This is quite normal on workboats. Tugboats nowadays can work both directions, some even have 2 sets of portside and starboard side navigation lights to shift. On cutter suction dredgers it's also often like that (Spartacus being an exception to that rule, having her gantry forward). They use "navigation SB/PS" and "dredging SB/PS" or just SB/PS for regular vessel and left and right for dredging direction. On top of that, there is an icebreaker called Baltica that has an assymetric hull and breaks the ice sailing sideways That said, great job on this pile driver and the boiler Keith. Making great progress. Curious about the supporting vessel already.

Very sorry to hear that Ian. Not unexpected though, normal rudders on ships also hardly work when the propeller is stopped, regardless of the speed the vessel is making. The skeg idea is unlikely yo work though. Ships rotate around their pivot point, which, at full forward motion, lays around 2/3 forward of the stern. It is the point that makes a circle in the water, yet the vessel rotates around it. When stopped, that point moves to the center, when moving astern, the pivot point moves astern of the center. So moving forward, the rudders have a very good mechanical moment/arm to rotate the vessel (but bow thrusters are limited in effeciency to a speed where they become truly useless). When moving astern, a rudder is almost useless, but a bow thruster gains in efficiency. Adding a skeg midship is not going to change the behavior of the pivot point. I believe enlarging (clip-on perhaps) the rudder surfaces or angle might be more beneficial. Regardless if everything is on scale, unfortunately "water" does not behave on scale (Froude number et.). That's also the main reason manned models for navigation courses are in scale, but prop and rudder are way out of scale to get to a realistic manoeuvering characteristic. This is not to discourage you and if you can test the skeg in an easy way, I'd be happy to be proven wrong. I just don't want you to have too high expectations of that solution and encourage you to think of plan B and C to get this to work. She does look awesome after all!

Thanks for the clear explanation. Even if the waves/ripples wouldn't hide creep up, for sure they'll merge the front pilings with the water surface. A very sharp result and good reference for future projects.

Those front pilings are a great solution to the creeping epoxy, but how did you fix them? Drill a larger hole and then used some epoxy glue? Or is it simply a tight fit and did you only glue the bottom of the piles? And does the epoxy glue you normally use also have a tendency to creep up? Great job overall. Looks very sharp.

Incredible work Igor. I wouldn't even know how to start something like this. I love the way you pour the epoxy early on and add partially submerged objects later on.

You have your first follower. Just a minute ago I posted in your Alert log and my curiosity is already satisfied. If this will be even just near your Alert quality, it will already be a very impressive model. That said, it's going to take a while to complete, since scratch building is going slow, but so much more satisfying for the builder.

What a great result. Nice to see what can be achieved from a kit. Yet as a first build, this is pretty awesome. That paint job on the stern and sharp rigging really make it stand out. Curious about that next build as well!

I believe @KeithAug is talking about stability rather than keeping the ship level. Indeed with such a small beam and draft I also thought this would be tricky, considering the height of that tower. On the other side, the center of gravity and weight of the pile wouldn't be that high up... The machinery above deck doesn't help much though. Interesting concept in any case. Great job on the build so far. Love the choice of wood, the colours are really matching.

One of the SIB masters has returned! Your builds are an inspiration and I'm happy to see a new build. Great job so far.

@Glen McGuire, @Rick310 and @KeithAug, thanks for the comments. Everyone thanks for the likes as well. Keith, I'm not exactly sure... After sailing on those gas carriers I went to dredging. There's a lot less pipes there. On the other side, they are much much much larger, so I'm not sure if that means I'm in rehab or if it's getting worse. In any case, I guess what comes next will confirm your verdict. It's the voices really, can't argue with them... So what happened next, well, progress wasn't exactly as fast I imagined it would be. Mostly due to garden chores and summer holidays for the kids. However, I got to a rather complex point. I installed the extensions of the stanchions and that portside bunkerline (part of it anyway). Aparently I didn't take a picture yet of the finished thing. I'll do that soon. However, I wanted to finish that bunker line with the aft part (mounted on the fixed part of the ship, not on the hatch, when I figured out I had to cross some lines etc. That's where I found out I had to cross the safety line. That's basically a line that connects a whole bunch of overpressure valves to the vent mast. Each piece of pipe that can be blocked in between two closed valves is required to have such a valve mounted on the pipe. They are small, mostly spring loaded, valves that relieve the pressure when the closed-in liquid or vapour starts to expand by temperature. Whatever that is released is sent either back to the tank or to the vent mast. I was not really intending to build it when I started this build due to its complexity and varying sizes. I was also "allowed" to leave that decision for the future as it's location is on the outside of the pipe rack and it would therefore be possible to add it later... That said, I guess it wasn't possible to postpone that decision anymore and something would definitely look amiss if I left it out completely. It's a rather large line and it's painted white, a nice contrast with all the grey around it. So off I went. Here's a picture of the real safety lines. 1 is the long one, the other crosses it and comes from the deck tank overpressure valves. And the deck tank with its safety valves. So I decided to start with the hardest part, some overpressure valves/ safety relief valves. These are just dry mounted, flanges and valves aren't yet glued to the brass wire below them. I decided to only partially install the safety line on the vessel. At least it won't look like something's missing, it just won't be complete. These safety valves are the largest onboard, all the others are 1 or 2 sizes smaller and would be very difficult to build properly. And then came the lines themselves. Haven't completed them yet, but it looks like it's heading in the right direction. This however also forces me to paint and fix that aft vent mast in place, something I'd prefer at a later stage as I still need to work in that area for the deck tank piping and catwalk. That said, it is what it is and I'll have to work around it. She's slowly getting as crowded as the real thing by now.

Great job Glen. That funnel was soooooo recognizable. Twisting stuff in tweezers by very slightly releasing your grip until it's just enough, or it just drops out Those side wheels were a nice example of my earlier statement, working out of the centerline with tweezers isn't easy. You can't align pieces with the ship when your tweezers are under an angle from the centerline. You did handle that nicely though. Second funnel really went smooth. Awesome job overall !!!

Very impressive build. Echoing the above, the crew really brings it to life. The sharpness of your construction keeps amazing me! Splendid work!

Good to see another project. Work boats allow for so much more to show than regular navigating ships. They interact a lot more with their surroundings which kind of forces you to build the environment and show their main activity. I'll be following along to see where you are heading with this one!

That sure is a challenge. Setting the bar higher once again. Assembly into bottles is much underrated given the blocking effect of the bottleneck on tweezers.

Well @Ian_Grant, that layer is actually not that much. Sounds like a complete layer, but all in all it's just the bunker line on PS of the manifold. It runs just on top of the cargo piping and therefore represents a "layer". On the rest of the vessel that layer is not present. There is one more layer and that is the deck tank piping, this runs over that PS bunkerline and therefore is considered a new layer (by me). So sounds like a lot of work, but all in all the piping is mostly done. I also still need to connect the cargo piping to the deck house, which is probably going to take me a while as well. In the meanwhile I've been stalling over those stanchions... Finally finishing my Spartacus diorama didn't happen by coincidence last week. I really did not look forward to extending all of those stanchions and was really upset that I could have avoided this from the beginning. I did however discover how it happened. I started with those stanchions on the fore part of the ship then going aft. I forgot that there is a step in the catwalk just aft of the deck house. This also means that at least all those stanchions next to and in front of the deck house won't need extending (yay). That said I needed a grip on this issue and get a hold of a starting point. I started with some left out supports on the aft part of the manifold. They had to be built top-down since they'd be hanging over the edge (see pics below). Those stanchions were attached to the piping on top and then I had one hovering pipe that was halfway supported by those supports as well. That one needed to be placed first as the PS bunkerline is adjacent to it. That bunkerline, along with the deck tank piping are the determining factor for the minimum stanchion height for the catwalk. So that was my starting point. I put some arrows in below pic to show the new parts as nobody would probably figure out what was new and what wasn't... I didn't mark all of them, but you get the idea. As mentioned it's a hovering part, a lot of installing and removing of the hatch. It also forces me to adjust the edges as I still have occasional collisions when installing the hatch and that should go smoothly. I must say this spaghetti does hide the edge of the hatch quite well. Then came the initial bunker line (unpainted, white) with its bends and the extensions. I decided to go the more labour intensive, but more correct way of making small strips that fit inside the L-shape of the supports. I will then add small lengths of L-supports to extend the originals. The other idea, which would have probably been easier was making inverted U-shapes and glue those in the edges of the supports without adding L-pieces, but it probably would look very odd. I then made a small measuring tool, a piece of 2mm rod with a marking (also carved) and a small foot to keep it standing. I then add the strips to the correct height. Later on the L-support will follow until I attach my bunker line. Once that is approved, I'll do the SB side supports and have a steady level to extend the rest in between. Bear with me, it's going to take some time. I'll probably do some jobs in between as well, like finishing those cargo pumps, adding wheels to the discharge valves of those pumps, perhaps do the deck house piping etc. to get some distraction from the tedious strip cutting and installing.