LPG Tanker Chaconia by Javelin - Radio - 1/100

[realworkingsailor]

3 hours ago, Javelin said:

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... 

 

 

The difference is how the stairwell is constructed. The modern requirement is for the stairwell to be sealed by A60 bulkheads and automatic self closing fire doors. This is to prevent the vertical spread of a fire, and it also allows the stairwell to qualify as a secondary exit. Many ships up until the 1990s were built with open stairwells, and accommodation blocks didn’t require the same degree of internal fire separation.

Although regulations still differ from country to country, the number of smoke detectors has increased (In Canadian ships, for example, every cabin is required to have a smoke detector). All insulation and panels inside the accommodation must be non-flammable material. The likelihood of a passageway becoming completely filled with smoke is significantly low, far lower than it used to be. You would have to be able to sleep through an extremely loud fire alarm for a significant amount of time before smoke becomes a problem (the alarm sirens are required to be “temporal”, ie they hurt your ears). 
 

I have, somewhere in my files, a digital copy of the LSA and FFA plans for a ship built in 2012. I’ll have a search and post some screenshots for you, so you can see the modern arrangement.

Andy

[Jim Lad]

Your latest update looks great!

 

John

[Javelin]

17 hours ago, realworkingsailor said:

The difference is how the stairwell is constructed. The modern requirement is for the stairwell to be sealed by A60 bulkheads and automatic self closing fire doors. This is to prevent the vertical spread of a fire, and it also allows the stairwell to qualify as a secondary exit. Many ships up until the 1990s were built with open stairwells, and accommodation blocks didn’t require the same degree of internal fire separation.

Although regulations still differ from country to country, the number of smoke detectors has increased (In Canadian ships, for example, every cabin is required to have a smoke detector). All insulation and panels inside the accommodation must be non-flammable material. The likelihood of a passageway becoming completely filled with smoke is significantly low, far lower than it used to be. You would have to be able to sleep through an extremely loud fire alarm for a significant amount of time before smoke becomes a problem (the alarm sirens are required to be “temporal”, ie they hurt your ears). 
 

I have, somewhere in my files, a digital copy of the LSA and FFA plans for a ship built in 2012. I’ll have a search and post some screenshots for you, so you can see the modern arrangement.

Andy

Hi Andy, that won't be necessary, I'm currently employed on a vessel built in 2019 and before that I was on a vessel built in 2016/2017 (and before that on a series of vessels built 2006-2012). The last two I followed up during construction in the yard and took them out of the yard later on. That's exactly where my doubts have originated. I believe Chaconia also had the stairwell construction of A60 already. 

The whole series of LPG tankers were built in the beginning of the 80's, with '70's technology, however they'd have to comply by the rules of those days and I do believe that fire integrity was already a requirement back then. 

 

Today's update is some of the detailing on the vessel. 

Each cargo tank was equipped with a "gas dome" or "vapour dome" and a "pump dome" containing all gas connections as well as the filling line of the tank and manholes for tank entry.

The pump dome being aft, containing the 2 cargo pumps, the level gauge and the bulkhead valve. The tanks are split in 2 longitudinally, for stability reasons, but there is a valve in the separating bulkhead to equalize the level in both sides of the tank. The top of the tanks, where normally the vapour phase of the gas would be, is also connected. 

 

I made the main structure of those domes from wood, but clad it with Litho plate, a very thin aluminum plate used in the printing industry. 

 

I also found a picture of the rudder under construction. The rudder is basically a brass plate on a brass rod, I then put a top plate for the shape and filled it with epoxy car body filler. Before all that, I added a ring, where the rudder support would come. The ring can turn independent from the rudder stock, and will be built into the support. (if that makes any sense) 

 

And here you see some mooring equipment. In the upper left corner you see 4 dry powder boxes, which are mounted on deck and contain fixed dry powder tanks for fire fighting. In the far left upper corner you see the start of the ventilation fans. Each tank had 2 large ventilation fans (with heating) installed near the vapor dome. These were used to heat up the tanks and gas free them for entry. 

 

 

And a detail shot of the mooring winch. The ones in previous picture were mounted on a plate with the drip tray around it, since they were for the aft section, the bottom plate is used to hide part of the rudder access hatch. The other winches are mounted directly on deck, without bottom plate, also with a drip tray around them.

[Javelin]

Time for a larger update. 

Finalizing the hull. 

Since I had only built 1/700 scratch builds at that time, I had no way of adding names or lettering to a model. This model required it of course. So after some thought I decided to cut masking tape and paint the name etc. For the draft marks I bought some vinyl draft marks from BECC in the UK. 

 

 

I then built the anchors. 

 

For the aft marks, I had to improvise, considering the curve of the hull. So I cut up the vinyl ones, divided them to where they were acceptable, and then filled up the missing ones on the strongly curved part by painting. 

 

 

Second part of this update is the mooring station forward. As I was busy with the anchors, I decided to finish that part first. Part of the windlass. If I remember correctly, I first cut the circles, then carved the inside, and then laid a strip of Evergreen (clapboard or something with a similar groove) around it. In the upper left corner you can see the other wheel in progress. 

 

Lining up the whole thing. You can also see the evolution of the entrance to the forepeak/Bsn store in following pics. The little frames are made of litho again, as it's sturdy and narrow, perfect for this kind of detailing. 

Not sure where I got the anchor chain, but I do remember it's slightly over scale for this ship. 

 

 

[Jim Lad]

Beautiful work, mate!

 

John

[Javelin]

And here is the access hatch aft, underneath the accommodation block. On the bottom is the motor and then I made a level on top for the radio receiver and ESC. I don't think I left the motor like this, I think it's aligned better, but I'd have to check. Haven't looked at that for a while.

 

You can see a small metal plate in front of the access hatch. This is part of a door magnet system, the other part is glued inside the accommodation block, it keeps it nicely in plate. Also the accommodation block fits nicely around the coaming to stay in position. For releasing the magnet, I tilt the back of the accommodation up and hinge in on the front edge, which releases the magnet from the plate. 

 

And slowly made my way aft from the forecastle. You see the mooring winch in place and the outline for the wavebreaker that protects the forward tank equipment.

 

Close-up of the detailing. A spare anchor seat, although I don't think she ever carried a spare anchor.

 

The mooring winch hydraulic lines (yes, I know, I probably overdid that...🤪)

 

Currently I'm trying to put 2 parts per day on this ship. There's an enormous amount of stuff to be placed. Which is why I stopped back then. However, by forcing myself to build and/or put 2 parts on the ship each day, I'll slowly make my way. Some parts take a long time to build, some less, however when time is too limited, I shift from a larger, more complicated piece, to a smaller one that's manageable within my available time. In the end, all parts have to be made after all... 

[KeithAug]

On 11/26/2023 at 9:31 AM, Javelin said:

After the initial coat of bright red,

From the earlier posts I had wondered about how well the hull would turn out. I shouldn't have worried - it turned out really nice.

[Javelin]

Thanks Keith, 

 

is that judging with your good eye or the bad one? 😁

As mentioned in the beginning, you can fix everything, it just took much longer than it probably should have. 

 

Next going aft was the wave breaker on the main deck forward. As you can see there was an "original design" and then some extension on starboard to protect the ventilation fans. A lot of dry fitting to get everything arranged. Those ventilation fans are still not glued into place. I still need to do some work on the center part and I want to avoid resting my hands on anything more outward. 

 

 

 

 

And my very old-school way of putting bolts on steel hatches. And yes, even the amount of bolts is correct.  

 

 

[KeithAug]

1 hour ago, Javelin said:

is that judging with your good eye or the bad one?

The good one😀

 

The deck fittings are very neatly done. Were the hatch bolts individually marked or do you have some secret technique for getting them so precise?

Edited November 30, 2023 by KeithAug

[Javelin]

I used the the page in the first picture with the marked bolts as a template. I then overlaid it on the litho sheet. The bolts were then individually punched with a sewing needle through the paper. Only then I cut out the hatch. 

Litho is also quite easy to file, so you can file around the edge of the hatch to have it nicely centered around the bolts.

The paper can be reused for more hatches. 

 

I do believe that at a later stage I drew some in Paint, sized and printed the templates. 

[Javelin]

And some more detailing. Start of the pipe racks on deck. Unfortunately they didn't use any pre-assemblies or standardized things yet. All the supports seem to be just put wherever they had to be put. I tried to replicate it as correct as possible, based on all the pictures I have. 

Then the first thing was the lower tier on these racks. Generally those are electrical cables and hydraulics, I decided to simplify that a bit by using a thin plate, which is actually there on the real thing as well, and put sewing thread on it to represent those cables. It would look a bit empty if I didn't do that. 

 

 

Here you see the "lid" of cargo tank 2 at a 90° angle on top of the hull. Part of the manifold drip trays are extending over the edge. Back then it seemed a good idea to camouflage that seam a bit, by having as much equipment overlapping it as possible. Nowadays I think that was a stupid plan. Things hamper from time to time when removing or installing the hatch. This sometimes results in damage or tearing off parts. 

 

 

You also see the ballast tank entry hatches appearing around the vessel. As mentioned I'm going inside out and bottom up. The Vent mast, to release overpressure from the tanks in case of emergencies, is just temporarily there. This is to line up things, but I keep it removable, so that it doesn't hamper any detailing work afterwards. 

[Dr PR]

Neptune,

 

I thought this ship looked familiar. Good to see it being finished!

 

The plumbing, cables and walkway railing work is especially nice.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Dr PR

[Javelin]

Thanks Phil, 

 

As you may remember I also thought about finishing it back in 2020. I did a small effort then, the mistake was that I took the obvious easy things first. I started doing some railing on the accommodation block and assumed I'd "get into the mood" to carry on. Eventually I ended up at the same road block. 

 

This time over I've started by handling that road block first, starting by making quite detailed plans before starting. 

 

Back to the updates. This is about 2 years after starting the build. 

Testing of the drive. The propeller is indeed spinning in these pictures. I had to adapt the framing a bit to line up that motor as good as possible. You can also see a small hole drilled in the outer tube of the shaft. This was made to be able to oil the tube. I eventually made a small tube rectangular over that hole, it makes things easier for oil and gives a slight addition pressure. Since I didn't have much experience, everything was a trial. It worked quite ok. The hull did act like a soundboard during this dry run. In the water, the sound disappears. 

Funny enough they are the only merchant ships I ever saw with a 6-blade propellor... A bit strange as an even amount of blades creates strong vibrations as there are always 2 blades passing the rudder at the same moment. This is somewhat compensated by the use of a skewed propellor, but a peculiar choice nonetheless. I believe it was done to reduce the propeller diameter and therefore minimum draft of the vessel. Due to the variety of the cargo, it meant that these ships would only sail at design draft when loaded with a very heavy cargo (I believe VCM was the heaviest), while they were very far from that draft when loaded with ammonia. The limiting factor was always volume rather than weight. 

 

 

 

I was also busy with the deckhouse at that moment. On those ships, the Cargo Control Room (CCR), was placed on top of the compressor room. A strange arrangement that was quite uncomfortable during operations, since you had those whining compressors just behind you. It was done for practical purposes, since most valves were manual, so adjustments for the pumps and and flows to the tanks were all performed on the tank domes. With the CCR in the center, you were always close to those tank domes. 

The second reason, a much more important reason, was the avoidance of an air lock. The compressor room is a hazardous space, with possible gas leakage. The motors driving those compressors were not intrinsically safe (not safe to work in gas hazardous zones) and were therefore placed in a separate motor room. If the entrance of that motor room is inside a gas hazardous zone, you'd need an airlock for it. It also has a relative overpressure ventilation, while the compressor room has a relative under pressure ventilation which meant that any gas leakage would be directed to a safe place outside instead of leaking towards that motor room with its potential ignition sources. 

By putting that cargo compressor room on top, the motor room entrance inside that CCR, they didn't need an airlock (with sensors and separate ventilation etc.). 

On modern vessels, most valves are hydraulically or electrically controlled and the CCR is therefore simply inside the accommodation block. 

 

The above is also mostly the explanation for all the mushrooms and goose necks you see around this deck house. Unfortunately I painted the text, with moderate success. Nowadays I'd simply cut a stencil with my stencil cutter, but I didn't have that back then and I'm not going to redo all of this. 

 

 

[Javelin]

After adding some details to the poop deck, it appears that I made the first sea trial at around that same time. I believe somewhere after 2-2.5years of construction. 

 

I picked a local piece of canal, where I had a more or less decent access to the water level. Although we have lots of water, it's not really allowed to use it for RC boating. It's also generally quite wild and not accessible. There were some yachts alongside in this canal, but nobody called the police, so I guess I was lucky. 

I believe she was around 18 or 20kg in this trial. 

 

After that I went back to the yard. Time for more outfitting. Time to start the piping. 

Not all piping is of the same diameter and I had to find some solutions depending on the diameter of the pipes. Normal styrene rod is generally used, but when bending it, you often get stretching, flattening etc. If a certain diameter was only available in hollow rod, I inserted copper or brass wire and make a separate bend. By filling the tube, it didn't flatten during bending. The wire inside also helped to maintain the bend, so the styrene wouldn't bend back. 

 

For larger diameters I used a pipe bender tool to bend it, then slightly overstretch to compensate for the returning effect of the styrene. And in one of the medium diameters that I had to use a lot, I used electrical wire. I made separate bends, so I could simply connect lengths of tube at both sides of the bends, this allowed for easy adjustment of lengths as well. 

 

The first step was of course putting transverse beams over the "cable trays" to form the second layer. The piping would then go on top of those beams. 

After the forward tank, I moved aft to the second tank, just behind the deckhouse. In the background you also see other tools that I use a lot. There is a pipe cutter, which helps to cut the styrene rods straight. And you also see the leather punch for belts. I use it to make flanges and circles of different sizes. You can punch through 2mm styrene with it, so it's quite usefull for different thicknesses as well. 

 

 

The electrical wire used for bends in 2.5mm piping. I strip part of the insulation so I can use the copper wire to connect to the tubes as a centering pin.

 

 

And the pipe bender tool next to a few bends. 

[Javelin]

Seems I made a mistake in the chronological order. On previous picture, she probably was at 22kg weight. 

The first trial happened a few months before that. In this case she was about 18kg if I remember correctly. I first tried without accommodation block or midship hatch, just in case...  

 

Once I was sure it staid afloat, I added the beginning of the accommodation block. In second picture you can see the lead battery standing near the backside of the midship hatch. I chose a regular lead battery as they are cheap and weight definitely isn't an issue. 

 

 

It appears that I then continued on that bridge including the masts. 

 

 

Next time I'd probably use more brass for these masts. 

 

And then the continuation of last post with the piping. The difficulty is that I have the nominal diameter of some pipes, but that's of course not the same as the actual outside diameter with the insulation added... I therefore tried a few different estimated diameters for all piping, then tried to fit them in the pipe rack to determine whether it would fit or not (and adjusted them where required). 

Once the diameters were determined I had to pick a starting point. I chose the aft tank, then started connecting the piping and worked my way forward. 

 

 

This is the aft pump dome, where the liquid pipe is connected inside the base of the pumps. The pumps will then be built up on top of that connection (just like the real thing). All pipes are also color coded, you can see some of that in the picture above this text. 

 

[Glen McGuire]

Whoa!  That piping work makes rigging jobs look easy.  Amazing!!

[Rick310]

Beautiful!!!

[Ian_Grant]

Lots of spare channels in that receiver; you could use them to switch on lights, sound a horn, etc. Maybe we'll see that you did as this epic build unfolds......

[Jim Lad]

She looks great on the water. I love the detail work on the deck.

 

John

[Javelin]

Thanks for the comments and likes. 

 

@Ian_Grant, I only have a 4 channel transmitter, of which I only use 2 channels. I had a smoke generator in mind, with a valve system so I could send it either to the funnel or aft vent mast. I do have the generator, and a computer fan to drive the smoke, but I cancelled the idea in favor of first making progress on the vessel itself. I'll probably switch this transmitter to another vessel I bought afterwards, that one does have a bow thruster and 2 propellers and rudders, so I can use the full 4 channels on that one. 

 

As for today, more piping works. First the base of the hose handling crane and some boxes for pressure gauges and indicators. I actually did make the gauges inside and put a small transparent window in the doors, just like the real thing. They'll be mounted on the tank domes. 

 

Vapor dome piping in progress. You can see the small strainer etc. on the condensate line. This small line is the return from the reliquefaction plant (compressors) to the tank. It's either sent to the bottom, when the tank is loaded, or sprayed on top, to keep the tank cold during the ballast voyage. This creates of course more piping and valves. You can see the top and bottom manual valves on the dome here. 

 

And here a closer view at the pump dome. Just after the pumps, there are manual discharge valves. I had to put the "body" of those valves on the piping before installing of course. 

 

And here is the crane base in position, it appears the jib I made has the wrong shape. I built it from the plans, but judging from pictures that wasn't the correct shape. You can also see the pump dome being readied for piping installation. The flanges are there as well as the discharge valve bodies. 

Mounting the catwalk supports in this area was probably a mistake. It helps to line up things, but I guess just marking them would have been a better plan. At this moment I'm hitting them and breaking them off all the time. 

 

[Javelin]

And we continue with more piping. It also seems I've taken her out to the water more than I can remember. 

 

Mainly concentrated on the Inert Gas line - vent mast etc. For the vent mast top I used a small Proxxon Lathe, but my main issue was that I didn't have rods of proper diameter to turn it from. Turning styrene is also tricky since occasionally the chisel grabs the styrene and the whole things get pulled out of the chuck. 

For the forward vent mast I glued styrene tubes of consecutive diameters into each other, but I guess I was very lucky to get that vent mast head done as I've done around 4 attempts for the second one and never succeeded in that... Nowadays however things are easier to get, so guess I will get a proper rod to turn the head of the aft vent mast. 

 

 

 

 

 

And the start of the lifeboats. To save myself some time, I used a balsa construction on styrene plating. I used the top and side view of the boats, filled the open spaces to create some hull volume and then added milliput epoxy filler over that to smoothen out the hull. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FriedClams]

Excellent work and a great looking model, Javelin.  The piping and other details are fantastic and more than is normally seen on R/C models.  Very nice.

 

Gary  

[Jim Lad]

She looks really good on the water. Lifeboat is coming along well.

 

John

[Javelin]

Thanks for the comments and likes. 

 

I guess I chose to detail it this far was because I wasn't planning on sailing too much with it... Furthermore I was used to build in small scale, detailing as far as I could and got a huge load of reference pictures of the whole vessel. Eventually having too much reference material is also a curse as you can basically make out every bolt on a ship, and in my case, feel obliged to replicate it. 

The large size of the vessel also allowed for this amount of detailing, with a her freeboard there is not much water coming on deck, I'm also only using it in calm weather. 

 

Here are both lifeboats in later stages compared to their smaller 1/700 brother onboard LPGc Donau (one of my earliest scratch builds). 

 

I needed to replicate that typical inside colour, although nowadays it's more yellowish white in the newer lifeboats. 

 

And with some strips and bits added. A big rectangle with raised edges was added on top, on these boats this was the obligatory means to collect rain water. Nowadays they put some small bucket, again a lowering of standards... Although the top surface of the boat is unlikely to be really clean, at least you'll catch some rain water. Although the bucket will be clean, I doubt you'll catch any decent volume of fresh water with it. 

 

The small holes in the side are made to attach the grab ropes later on. 

 

 

And with a coat of paint. I tried to replicate the "reflective SOLAS tape" by small silver rectangles. Additionally the boats are marked with the mother vessel's call sign (always beginning with ON for Belgian merchant ships, OR for Belgian working vessels) and the number of the boat were also marked on the top. Hooks were also added, The aft hook has a small brass rod at the bottom, in reality this is used to keep the seafastening lashings in place, but in my case it also adds to the strength to hold the hook, and boat, in place in the davit. Wouldn't want the hook to break off the boat during sailing. 

 

 

 

And the start of the davits. This is a dry fit. I built them according to the drawings, but always check to see if it actually fits. This way I want to make sure it doesn't look "off" in the end, by having short arms etc. Lots of test fitting before finally gluing. 

 

I jumped from piping to the lifeboats to get to something with an end. The lifeboats were a project on their own, one where I could see the goal, which is difficult in the large piping job. Just to keep me motivated before switching back to piping. 

That said, we are nearing the actual situation. A few more updates and we will have arrived at the point where I got stuck/uninterested. 

 

 

Edited December 13, 2023 by Javelin

[yvesvidal]

On 12/6/2023 at 2:57 AM, Javelin said:

Fantastic view, but it definitely needs more weight to be realistically poised on the water. Take full weight of the real ship divided by the cube of the scale (100x100x100) and you should have the exact value of the model weight.

 

Yves

Edited December 13, 2023 by yvesvidal

[Valeriy V]

7 hours ago, Javelin said:

Eventually having too much reference material is also a curse as you can basically make out every bolt on a ship, and in my case, feel obliged to replicate it. 

 

This is a very accurate remark! I have had to verify this many times.
Great job, Javelin!  

[Jim Lad]

The boats turned out well, mate!

 

John

[KeithAug]

The pipework is well impressive. 👏👏👏

[Dr PR]

Javelin,

 

That curse of details is so true! I was designing a 3D CAD model of a winch, and put in all the bolts and such. But close up photos clearly showed the manufacturer's name cast into the gear case. Should I model that also?

 

The letters were cast with compound curve surfaces, and those are tricky to model. I could do it - I have modeled worse - but would take longer to do that the rest of the winch. Well, the letters were about 0.25 inch (6 mm) high and 0.25 inch wide. If printed at 1:100 scale they would be 0.0025" (0.06 mm) high and  0.0025" wide. There was no way that was going to come out legible, even with a magnifier! So why bother?

 

You have to set a minimum size that you will try to model and skip the details smaller than that.

[Javelin]

2 hours ago, Dr PR said:

You have to set a minimum size that you will try to model and skip the details smaller than that.

Hi Phil, 

Although it's one way to approach it, I do believe it poses a few "problems" as well. Occasionally I evaluate smaller objects on credibility as well. For example the ballast hatches, I could leave off the bolts and handles as I'm really not going to model everything the size of a bolt on that vessel. However, that leaves the hatch as just a rounded off plate, which looks rather toy-ish when looking up-close. That's why I modelled at least something resembling a bolt. 

 

I was at some point in the past looking at some very nice modern RC frigates, I believe also in 1/96 - 1/100 scale, however they looked a bit bland. So I started wondering what the issue was with these very nice models. After a closer inspection I noticed the watertight doors didn't have cleats/handles and gratings weren't truly represented as gratings. Small details that would have made a world of difference. 

 

I believe also the rivets on Nils's Ergenstrasse are a good example, they may be a bit over scale, but without them, I believe his model would not breathe the steam-age atmosphere it is breathing out right now. It gives that little extra that makes a model shine. Does that mean he really needs to model everything the size of those rivets? I don't think so, as it would at some point, even when just slightly over scale, clutter the vessel and make it less credible again. 

 

All in all I believe the real problem with this is that you have to evaluate for every little object whether it's worth the effort to make it and whether it would improve or deteriorate the quality of the model, keeping in mind a certain balance throughout the vessel (cannot put fire boxes on one part of the vessel to give it some credible detail, while leaving them off on other parts of that same vessel...) 

 

You will also see in some pictures of the lifeboats in the future, that I did put the grab lines on the side, while in fact, and most people won't notice without intricate knowledge of the matter, I left off the spray system. Lifeboats on tankers have a spray pump that pumps sea water over the top of the boat to protect it from burning oil/gas on the water surface during an abandon ship situation. 

This piping is larger in size than the grab lines, but would have been very difficult to build and, in my opinion, add very little to the overall impression of the vessel. That's why I left that off. The grab lines on the other side, are something seen on even old lifeboats and add the impression of a super detailed and complete lifeboat model. 

 

For the name on your winch, I believe the same is true. It wouldn't really add to the quality of the winch if all, or at least some detailed handles and plates are modelled on it. Nobody would be looking for a manufacturer name on something like that (but if it didn't have brake or clutch handles, I'd definitely notice 😜)