Kallisti Posted June 26, 2016 Share Posted June 26, 2016 (edited) I'm putting this in Marine as I'm not sure where else it should go - this is a North Sea Oil rig so I think its appropriate... For my next forey into the weird and wonderful "different" models to build, I decided to have a go at something industrial. There is method in my madness as it may play a part in a future model show display for my club... more of that anon (maybe!). Anyway, I managed to find on on eBay that wasn't silly money, although you do get a LOT of plastic for your wonga... Its a BIG box, but this one has been through the wars. The sprues inside were still inside their plastic bags, and there were lots of them! There is also a decal sheet and a large instruction booklet. Now one of the things I indent to do with this is to extend the model down to the sea bed. So to do this I needed to find a plan of the underwater structure. Thankfully I found a PDF from BP which described the dcomissioning of the NW Hutton oil platform which is of the same design as North Cormorant and this provided soem very useful diagrams eg So first order of the day is to start on the support structure as provided by the kit. THis comes together with 4 pieces which fit together like this THis gave me my first suprise of the day - its BLOODY HUGE!!! 16 inches long by 6 tall and 6(ish) wide! My intention is to extend the legs about a foot below sea-level which is the table in the above photo. So after measuring up the legs I ordered a load of evergreen plastic tube, the 8 main pieces of which are for the main support legs. White waiting for them to arrive, I painted the whole thing with XF 9, Hull Red which would be the base primer colour for the structure out in the N Sea. I then gave this an overcoat of Klear (the new scented stuff - not wasting my valuable bottle of old Klear on this!) as I intend to do some hairspray paint chipping later. While that was drying yeterday the postman arrived... So I test fittted the 8 pillars to see how big the base would need to be since these are angled outward... this is what I ended up with The base board is 18 inches by 12 inches! I've got an acrylic sheet coming that will be the water surface so I'm intending to split the model in two parts for ease of transport and storage later on, with the kit being one part and the scratch built subsurface structure the other. If I do it properly, the model built from the kit will sit on the water surface and appear to be connected to the legs below. So as not to make things too easy for myself, I've been toying with the idea of lighting it - there will be lots of lights on the rig for illumination and warning... I'll have to think about that aspect... Edited December 2, 2016 by Kallisti 20 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitestar12chris Posted June 27, 2016 Share Posted June 27, 2016 Look forward to seeing this one done Kallisti, The company i did my traineeship with made heli-decks, had my hands on a fair few for the north sea and overseas, in the drawing office. All the best Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colin ritchie Posted June 27, 2016 Share Posted June 27, 2016 Platform .. it fixed.. Rig denotes a movable installation - pardon the pedantry - I worked on the hookup and commissioning (onshore) of the Original North Cormorant platform way back when ...! Damm thing was held together with seemingly endless amount of titanium stud bolts .. and no I know nothing about the washing machines that were supposed to be shipped offshore but weren't!!!! Nice start on the kit ! - By the way if you want to see what one of these beasts looks like - check out the aberdeen maritime museum - they took the 1/24th scale model of the topsides of the Murchison , a Steel Jacketed like the North Cormorant ,(which the designers used to use before 3d Cad) and added a full scale jacket, its 5 stories tall - biggest model I know of! http://www.offshoreenergytoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Taqa-completes-works-on-North-Cormorant-platform-1024x679.jpg How it looked back in 2013 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davecov Posted June 27, 2016 Share Posted June 27, 2016 Can't wait to see this built. I have one in my stash but will have to wait until I move house before I build it. In the meantime I have had to make do with this. Dave 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kallisti Posted June 27, 2016 Author Share Posted June 27, 2016 Thank you for the correction, I should have known it - I did work for BP back in the 80s and spent a day on one when I was supposed to be training the drillers how to use a computer connected to a satellite phone... that was a "fun" day! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colin ritchie Posted June 27, 2016 Share Posted June 27, 2016 Drillers - Plumbers with delusions of grandeur - as one old veteran described them to me .. I spent years in the oil patch , I'm aberdeen born and bred, and came out of College in 1981 at the height of the first oil boom - good days ... most of which ended with Piper alpha ... I've got the NC model in the loft and one day!!! - you know you can get a 1/200 oil supply vessel from Revell as well - Smitt Lloyd something of other - and there are 1/200 Architectural figs from Preiser - if you look hard enough!.. yup I planned this one out ages ago , but never really found the time to devote to it 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darby Posted June 27, 2016 Share Posted June 27, 2016 This is going to be one build I don't want to miss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foxy Posted June 27, 2016 Share Posted June 27, 2016 Nice build this going to be, look foreword to seeing this come to fruition . foxy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moaning dolphin Posted June 27, 2016 Share Posted June 27, 2016 Not your normal everyday Maritime build, but I'm in, looks interesting! Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gremlin56 Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 Beautiful choice of model, I spent years of my life underneath these things waiting for the deck cargo or bulk to be off loaded, either that or if they were semi-subs dragging their anchors around Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beefy66 Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 looking forward to see how you tackle this with your idea of a split surface and under water scene Beefy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k5054nz Posted July 2, 2016 Share Posted July 2, 2016 This is madness and I can't wait to see it come together! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kallisti Posted July 2, 2016 Author Share Posted July 2, 2016 Thanks for the interest guys. Well since the last post things have gone forward then back then forward again. I began to build the support structure, which I now know is call the Jacket, using some phiotos I found from google search.However these were not of North Cormorant so was of the wrong design. Thankfully I remembered that my brother-in-law used to be an engineer in the oil industry before he retired and it turns out he consulted on the North Cormorant decommissioning! So using some reference he provided I was able to get a photo of the NC jacket being towed out to sea in the 70s. Its a grainy photo from a book but I enhanced it in Photoshop to show the structure better and from this I've been able to build a more accurate representation of the jacket structure I won't be posting the original picture from the book because I respect other people's copyright although a case could be made that my PS enhancements constitute a 30% alteration which could classify it as a derivative work but I'm not going to split hairs I've had to order some more 1/4" evergreen tube as I'm going through it like there is no tomorrow, already used 6 packets of 3, only got 2 left. I have a plan for the conductors that will be in the middle of the jacket - these are the pipes that the oil flows through. The kit supplies 56 black plastic tubes that are more like straws, 5mm in diameter. I think the cheapest way to extend these is to use plastic straws... just need to find enough that are 5mm diameter... 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevej60 Posted July 2, 2016 Share Posted July 2, 2016 This is going to be very interesting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob G Posted July 2, 2016 Share Posted July 2, 2016 Two things, neither a criticism. I had one of these kits until a few years ago, decided that I'd never be able to do it justice and sold it for more than I'd paid for it. I'll be following along. Also, for those moments of downtime, I highly recommend the book 'Don't Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs, She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse' by Paul Carter. Very funny, even if you know nothing about oil or heavy industry in general. No doubt the real oilmen here will scoff, but I very much enjoyed it. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LE BOSCO Posted July 2, 2016 Share Posted July 2, 2016 really original as project.....I like it!!!I will follow with pleasure cheers Nicolas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colin ritchie Posted July 4, 2016 Share Posted July 4, 2016 (edited) there's a sequel to Paul Carter's book This Is Not A Drill: Just Another Glorious Day in the Oilfield , again well worth a read , if nothing else it'll make you thankful for a boring office job! Edited July 4, 2016 by colin ritchie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delta7 Posted July 4, 2016 Share Posted July 4, 2016 (edited) Wow I didnt even know these existed. I work on the Eider which is a satellite platform feeding the North. I hope you have a lot of rust products as these are very weathered. And youll have to change the sign as shell sold it to TAQA. Edited July 4, 2016 by delta7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kallisti Posted July 4, 2016 Author Share Posted July 4, 2016 Anyone know where I could get a 1:200 scale Sea King? Thanks for the reading suggestions Rob and Colin, still ploughing through my Pratchett collection from when he passed away last year and there is a stack of books waiting for the end of that marathon, so we'll see about them... Bit of a hiatus this weekend as it was the Smallspace SciFi model show yesterday which was great fun. I'll return to Earth later today hopefully 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob 1 Posted July 4, 2016 Share Posted July 4, 2016 This is an interesting kit, will enjoy watching this building up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Housesparrow Posted July 4, 2016 Share Posted July 4, 2016 When I was about 14 y.o, we had a class for modeling scale models at school. I remember one of the other guys was building this kit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kallisti Posted July 4, 2016 Author Share Posted July 4, 2016 Further progress has been made, the jacket is taking shape now so here it is with the side structures complete and the water surface added, represented by a 5mm thick shee tof clear acrylic (still with the protective film on both sides hence the green colour). There is still a lot of internal cross members to add, but I've run out of 1/4" tube! I've got another 4 packs on order from someone or other so hopefully they'll arrive in the next day or so. I've got LOTS of small pieces of tube left over but none of them are big enough to be used anywhere 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichO Posted July 5, 2016 Share Posted July 5, 2016 This is wak, Kallisti ! I like the idea of the scratch built sub structure, very cool. And you know me, I'm all for lighting everything. Watching closely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phildagreek Posted July 5, 2016 Share Posted July 5, 2016 Excellent idea! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beefy66 Posted July 5, 2016 Share Posted July 5, 2016 looking good will you be doing the under water part as a picture box effect or will it be all left open Beefy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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