A 1/64 scale cargo ship hull

[rshousha]

I generally don't work in small scales, but I had an interesting request from a professional builder. He wanted a 1/64 scale model of a contemporary cargo ship, the Bjugnholm, a Norwegian general cargo ship. We did not have a GA drawing from the company and the scale was driven by the simple fact that the backhoe that is seen on the deck is available as a die-cast model in that scale! It's amazing what drives design sometimes.

I use SolidWorks and Rhino to design my kits. In general, I use Rhino first, as it is a good solution to draw organic shapes, and then I insert that shape into SolidWorks to draw up the parts that will be laser-cut. In this case, since the shape is not complex (like a sailing ship with a keel, for example), I decided to simply create the surfaces in SolidWorks directly and then draw up my frames from those.

Well, I'm glad I did that because once I was about 90% of the way through the design, I realized I was unhappy with the stern area or the sheer at the stern and so it was easy enough to tweak the shape. Since SolidWorks is parametric, some of the parts of the seven or eight frames near the stern followed along with my tweaks. I think if I had use Rhino for the original shape, it would have been much more difficult to make the changes. Well, hmm, actually, if I had used Rhino to start, I wouldn't have had the weird problem in the stern in the first place!

• The first picture shows the simple, "bread-and-butter" drawing we had to work with. I think that's about the weakest information I've had to start a project. Onwards!
• The second picture shows the backhoe that drove the decision to go with 1/64 scale
• The third picture shows the sort-of/kind-of positioning of the those so-called shapes from that little bread-and-butter drawing. I used those approximate shapes to create some guide curves for the hull shapes
• The fourth picture shows the frames opened. It was at this point that I said to myself, "hmmm, that doesn't look right"
• The fifth picture shows the weird sheer that didn't make sense to me.
• Back to the drawing board with the stern

 

[rshousha]

It took me surprisingly little time to redo the stern. I was expecting it to take me about five hours, but I was able to get things sorted out in about three hours.

Once the frames were sorted out, I created a floor for the motor, the battery and other odds and ends. It's a small model, so the floor should be left loose so one can add ballast way down in the hold, under that floor. I think there's enough space down there.

Then I also created a deck. Both the floor and the deck are in 1/16" plywood.

As the fellow who is building this model is a professional builder I will leave it to him to create the openings in the deck and build up the superstructure. As the rest of the model is made up mostly of rectangles, there's really no need to get fancy with laser-cutting and surface work in something like SolidWorks.

Once I get some pictures of the actual construction, I will add them here! Overall, it was a fun little project.

• The first picture shows the new stern with a much-improved sheer
• The second picture shows the bow surfaces and the bulb. As you can see, in SolidWorks I made the hull using multiple bits of surfaces. With a Rhino parts, it becomes a single part and is a bit easier to manipulate. However, the nice thing about using the surface features of SolidWorks is that I can tweak stuff, as it was needed in this project.
• The next picture shows all the parts that will be laser-cut. Note that because this is such a small model, at just over 35", I did not include my usual T-rail. I did, however, leave all the tops of the frames at the same distance. So the builder can still create a surface of sorts, if they want to do some planking with the model upside-down.
• The last picture shows the surfaces included with the frame parts. I can supply full-length planking now, and this has really helped create interest in my kits and my design services!

Great fun! Time for the next one!

 

[AllanKP69]

Not my normal area of interest, but I will be following along. Looks like a terrific project.
Allan