LPG Tanker Chaconia by Javelin - Radio - 1/100

[Javelin]

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. 

 

 

Edited November 17, 2023 by Javelin

[ccoyle]

5 hours ago, Javelin said:

She's not the cutest of ships

 

You know the old adage about form follows function, and some of the homeliest ships perform some of the most vital services.

[Rik Thistle]

As Chris says. She was designed to do a specific job and I imagine she did it well.

 

Your photograph of Chaconia is fine....and taken from a good angle. I don't think she is bad looking at all 🙂

 

Richard

 

 

[Valeriy V]

Large body and many small details! It will be interesting, I will watch it with anticipation. Good luck in job!  

[Javelin]

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. 

[Glen McGuire]

Your choice of ships to build is always most interesting!  Looking forward to your work on this one as well.

[Mirabell61]

interesting project Javelin,

I`ll be following the progress....

 

Nils

[Jim Lad]

A good honest workhorse and well worth modelling - especially if she's one of your old ships.

 

John

[Ian_Grant]

Interesting looking ship; I also do not think she is ugly. But 30kg!!  That's a heavy RC model to lug to water........🏋️‍♀️

[Javelin]

@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. 

 

 

 

[Roger Pellett]

Naval Architects have an elegant term for that. It’s called Slamming!

[Javelin]

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. 

Edited November 20, 2023 by Javelin

[jerome]

Excellent build.

merchant ship are the best.

[Ian_Grant]

Looks like a great planking job to me, especially for such a voluptuous hull!

[Jim Lad]

Good work on that odd shaped planking, mate!

 

John

[Javelin]

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. 

 

[Mirabell61]

good looking superstructure Javelin,

the windowframes are nice and look like precise cuts

 

Nils

[Jim Lad]

Very nicely done!

 

John

[Javelin]

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. 

Edited November 22, 2023 by Javelin

[Javelin]

THe pictures aren't really ordered well on my pc, so here are a couple more planking pics of the stern. You can also see an inserted brass pieces to make a sharp transition above the propellor area. 

 

 

And an inside picture, showing the large volume inside the vessel.

 

Back to where I left off last time. After the G4 came the fibreglass job. Again, never did anything close to that before and it turned out a small disaster. 
First of all, I did this on a rather hot day, reducing the curing time of the polyester resin even further. Secondly, it appears the G4 was still curing/drying, although I was already quite long past its normal drying time. I believe this had to do with the diluted G4 inside the wood. 

 

The result of the first mistake was that the polyester cured extremely fast, resulting in piece of fibercloth still sticking out without time to put it down in place. Also the mixture may have been slightly wrong as there is very little room for error with a mixing ratio of 97% A qnd 3% B... Probably too much hardener. 

The second mistake resulted in bubbles below the polyester shell. All in all due to the fast curing, this didn't really deform the polyester. 

 

The bow came out quite nice. 

 

As I mentioned, most things can be fixed, but making a good job from the start will save a lot of time later on.... 

In this case I started sanding away the fibercloth that was sticking out and resorted to a full cover of car body filler (also polyester based), followed by a LOT of sanding. 

 

 

And this angle was chosen to verify if I captured that strange bow shape properly. This already gave me some courage to proceed (something I was slowly losing after the polyester set-back. 

[Ian_Grant]

What an awful lot of work over the fiberglass disaster! 😬 Nowadays you could use West System epoxy resin which comes with pumps to ensure the correct ratio. And less smell ....

[Javelin]

That was indeed the case Ian. All the above pics represent somewhere around 1 year of work, although I must admit it was very disturbed since I sailed 3-4 month contracts at that time. Since I was only home a couple of months a year, it was also very much weather dependent (had to be home in the right months of the year) and of course a lot of hesitation was involved since it was my first one in this scale and style. 

 

Epoxy was coming up as a modelling material at that time, but there was a lot of talk about toxicity etc. and I believe it was also a lot more expensive than polyester in those days. In any case, I'd use epoxy if I'd do this again. The slower curing is quite a requirement for this kind of job. 

 

So next is the continuation of that hull. After the first layer, I sanded it all down again and once I was more or less happy, I put a first coat of sacrificial primer. I used gray as it would show the bumps and pits better. After that I filled the pits with more putty and sanded it down again. My mistakes at that point were that I filled too little. I learned that you had to fill a larger area around the pits in order to sand it smooth with the surrounding. 

In any case, this was followed by another coat of primer and a series of small patches to arrive at an acceptable result. 

 

 

 

 

I seem to have lost some pics from that phase as well. 

After the body work, I placed small litho (aluminum) plates around the anchor hawse pipes, since in reality the steel plating is thicker there to protect the hull from the anchor flukes. 

I afterwards added the two "warts" on top of those plates, that give the anchor a good position when it is inside. 

 

And the final shape of the bow. 

 

Edited November 24, 2023 by Javelin

[Mirabell61]

Beautiful recovery-work Javelin, after the polyester /glasfibre objection.

I can feel with you for all the patience in doing all the sanding work, great look now

 

Nils

[Roger Pellett]

A cautionary note about coating a surface with glass fiber cloth and resin (polyester/Epoxy):  You do not “glue down” the cloth with the resin.  In other words, you do not first spread the resin and then attempt to attach the cloth.  By doing so you trap air bubbles and wrinkles.  Instead, you first spread out the cloth and saturate it with the resin.  A plastic disposable squeegee is generally used to work the resin into the weave of the cloth.  While this may seem obvious, I only learned this after botching many projects.

 

Also, more hardener does not make Epoxy cure faster.  It just results in a sticky mess.

 

Roger

[Rick310]

The hull looks great!!!  Your patience has paid off well!!

I am also quite familiar with the’fear factor’,  starting a new phase of the build with zero experience and not wanting to mess up previous work.

Rick

 

[Javelin]

14 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

A cautionary note about coating a surface with glass fiber cloth and resin (polyester/Epoxy):  You do not “glue down” the cloth with the resin.  In other words, you do not first spread the resin and then attempt to attach the cloth.  By doing so you trap air bubbles and wrinkles.  Instead, you first spread out the cloth and saturate it with the resin.  A plastic disposable squeegee is generally used to work the resin into the weave of the cloth.  While this may seem obvious, I only learned this after botching many projects.

 

Also, more hardener does not make Epoxy cure faster.  It just results in a sticky mess.

 

Roger

I did read up on this before starting this whole endeavor, so I did put the cloth first. I didn't use a squeegee, not sure what I used, but when I started pushing the resin through the cloth, the edges of the cloth started raising (which is what you see in the pics), since it couldn't follow the curves of the vessel. A few extra cuts on the cloth or simply more time to push it down again would have fixed it. Instead, in this situation when I was trying to fix it, the polyester hardened (I'm talking about 5-10 minutes of working time) and since it's a big hull I was still spreading resin on the rest of the vessel when it already started hardening at the other side. That's exactly why I'd use the slower curing Epoxy next time. 

 

From here on my records are more fuzzy. I'll just show the pictures and try to keep it in a somewhat chronological order. 
When the hull was complete, I did a water tightness test with some stones to see if the weights needed were corresponding to the scale weight calculations. 

 

And I continued with the accommodation block. I usually wait with that for a hull to finish (also in small scale builds), because the bridge wings have to be matched with the width of the vessel. 

As mentioned before, I did the facing separately. You can see why... Drilling so many holes in a thick plate is not easy. 

They built those ships in the 80's, I guess they took in account escape routes much more than they do nowadays. The cabin windows were the escape route. There was a hammer on the inside to break the glass and then you could step out, use the small steps on the outside with the water spray system as a foothold and shuffle to the sides, where you could go down to main deck using a ladder (not on the model for now). 

 

Once that facing was finished, I mounted it in place. The large holes on the thicker plate in previous post were made to make sure the windows of the final facing would be clear. 

 

 

 

 

[Roger Pellett]

Very nice work Javelin.  Here in the US, one of the Marine grade Epoxies (West System) is “modular”.  The resin can be paired with either of two hardeners; fast cure and or slow cure.

 

Roger

[realworkingsailor]

10 hours ago, Javelin said:

 

They built those ships in the 80's, I guess they took in account escape routes much more than they do nowadays. The cabin windows were the escape route. There was a hammer on the inside to break the glass and then you could step out, use the small steps on the outside with the water spray system as a foothold and shuffle to the sides, where you could go down to main deck using a ladder (not on the model for now). 

 

 

 

I’m not sure of the precise wording of the rules, but if I recall correctly, every cabin door must be within ten meters (I think) of at least two exits. Where the distance to a second exit door exceeds 10m  or is on a “dead end” passageway, alternate provisions for a second exit must be made (via a window, for example). 
 

The emergency exit design in your ship has become outdated due to improved interior layouts, and the fact that clambering down on the face of an accommodation black is inherently dangerous!

 

Andy

[Jim Lad]

Very nice looking accommodation block.

By the way, when I was at sea, escape routes were more in the nature of 'see if you can find a way out!' 

 

John

[Javelin]

Thanks John.

 

13 hours ago, realworkingsailor said:

I’m not sure of the precise wording of the rules, but if I recall correctly, every cabin door must be within ten meters (I think) of at least two exits. Where the distance to a second exit door exceeds 10m  or is on a “dead end” passageway, alternate provisions for a second exit must be made (via a window, for example). 
 

The emergency exit design in your ship has become outdated due to improved interior layouts, and the fact that clambering down on the face of an accommodation black is inherently dangerous!

 

Andy

That's exactly what I mean, I don't see that improvement in interior lay-out corresponding with your stated requirements. If I look at ships built after the year 2000, in most cases I have no idea what your alternative route would be in case there was a fire in your alleyway. If you are in a forward cabin nowadays, I don't see you reaching any escape door or staircase (in most cases there is only 1 staircase after all). I assume that to comply with regulations, they see the second transverse corridor (which was lacking in the older vessels) is considered an alternative, but in reality that second corridor, since it doesn't have any doors, will fill up with smoke equally fast as the other one.

So if I'd have the option to go through the front window instead of going in a corridor filled with smoke, without really having an idea where the fire is located, I'd opt for that front window. It's dangerous yes, but passing through a smoke filled corridor, potentially ending up near a fire source, is more dangerous still... 

 

Some more accommodation finishing. You will also see later on, that the sides of the accommodation are used to protect the lifeboats from any deck fire. Something that isn't being done nowadays neither. Probably it's the larger beam of ships that prevents it, but it was quite a good idea at the time. It also appears the same accommodation blocks (and modifications of it) were used on other types of vessels built by this yard (Boelwerf at Temse). 

 

The small hatch in below picture is an access to the rudder itself. The servo powering the rudder is mounted below the accommodation block, but the rudder itself and its connected linkages are below this hatch. It was blended in later on with filler for a better fit with the surrounding. 

 

I assume I was waiting for the weather at that time before continuing on the hull. After the initial coat of bright red, I marked the waterline to continue with darker red as anti-fouling. 

I also immediately made the markings on deck, as they'd be difficult to do once the detailing had started. 

 

 

I then started detailing with the mooring equipment. First I did the forward and aft mooring areas. And the I started with the central, cargo part. Generally I started from the bottom upwards and from the center outwards to avoid interference while mounting and detailing things. 

 

Here is one of the mooring winches. This is where I put myself into trouble. Starting with this level of detailing, you force yourself to maintain this level on the whole ship, and eventually that's what bogged me down and stopped the build (not before continuing for a few years though). 

 

Edited November 26, 2023 by Javelin