Star Clipper by FreekS - FINISHED - 3D puzzle

[FreekS]

I think I had this idea after an episode of “The repair shop”, a UK TV program. Someone brought in a model of a ship, cut into puzzle pieces.

 

Having done a trip on one of the nicer sailing cruise ships, I thought it would be nice to have a puzzle of the ship. 

 

“Star Clipper” is a 115m 4-master sailing ship (with engine, note smoke coming from the mizzen mast) from 1992. It can carry up to 170 passengers and has the first mast square-rigged and the others “Latin” (is that barquantine?). It’s a wonderful holiday opportunity, sailing in the Mediterranean or Caribbean depending on the season.

The basic idea was to construct a “bread without butter” model of the ship, with each board representing a deck of the ship. Each board/deck would have its actual layout painted on it, and then the boards were cut up into puzzle pieces. 

I happened to have in my vacation photos a picture of the safety poster showing deck layouts (and sail layout). I did not have any plans and thus I’m warning the community that this is fun-quality rather than museum-quality!

Here the first three boards (and the deck layouts prints of my photos below the). These represent the ship above the waterline. They will sit  on two additional boards that contain the sea and the below waterline hull. The 5 layers will be held together by the 4 masts only, for which holes have been drilled under the appropriate angle. The hull was shaped by hand with the boards in a vice using a plane and sandpaper.

next, the deckhouses, tenders and masts were added. 

I made a simplified deck planes, with color coded spaces (white-common spaces, red-passenger cabins, green-crew spaces)

now turned all boards over and drew the puzzle pieces. A couple of days on my dremel jigsaw and numerous saw blades later I had around 300 puzzle pieces, still neatly arranged by deck.

off the starboard bow is even an orca in the sea. Assembled:

and then came the main test:

it took about three hours to revert from the puzzle pieces to the model again. The normal strategy of finding the corners and edges first does not work, as there are so many of them….the motorised jigsaw was critical, as each puzzle piece must be cut perfectly vertical or the puzzle won’t fit.

 

 

finally (and a few years) I added 16 more pieces in the form of 3D printed sails. She looks great and the puzzle has been completed several times!

 

 

thanks for reading!

[KeithAug]

Very novel approach to hull building. I like it.

[Dr PR]

This is the most unique ship model I have ever seen! Congratulations on finishing it.