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SS South Gare - 1:72 Coaster


Bangseat

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Evening all.

 

I do love a good ship, even if I've been entirely absorbed by aeroplanes for most of my modelling life. For the past couple of years I've been absorbed by making aircraft kits using 3d printing. The need to make a model for myself is now overwhelming.

 

Whilst renovating my charmingly dilapidated victorian semi, I've often thought a nice ship would look good on the wall, and also be a good excuse to make a model. What ship. Well, I like a funnel. I first thought something contemporary with the house would be nice, like an Edgar class cruiser. My house is a bit of a protected cruiser I fancy, not a dreadnought but not a puffer either. But, I have a peculiar aversion to any scale other than 72nd. An Edgar would come out at 1 metre 60, and the walls wouldn't cope. Then I inherited this:

2022-11-28_05-05-40

It is the SS South Gare. It was owned by my wife's great grandfather, and sunk by a U boat in 1918. His son, my grandfather in law, rebuilt the family shipping business into quite something until he sold it in the 90s. I don't think we'd live in a nice house if it wasn't for him (he was very generous to his grandchildren).

 

All I have is the photo. Judging by Jack on deck, I estimate the ship is 57 metres. I made a very quick drawing:

Screenshot_20221128-170619_OneDrive

..and I got designing on cad. My plan is to 3d print the basics, and to add to it with traditional modelling. 

Screenshot_20221128-170556_OneDrive

Ive just set the bow on to print...

Screenshot_20221128-170551_OneDrive

...so we'll see what we get in the morning!

 

 

 

 

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I should say, I clearly have no plans for this ship. I don't know whether they would be likely to exist or not, but I would guess if they did it would be a job for a very diligent historian. I have based the hull form on this commonly available plan, and taken inspiration from SS Robin which can't be a million miles off.

Screenshot_20221128-170605_OneDrive

 

 

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18 hours ago, Bangseat said:

It is the SS South Gare. It was owned by my wife's great grandfather, and sunk by a U boat in 1918. His son, my grandfather in law, rebuilt the family shipping business into quite something until he sold it in the 90s. I don't think we'd live in a nice house if it wasn't for him (he was very generous to his grandchildren).

 

All I have is the photo. Judging by Jack on deck, I estimate the ship is 57 metres. I made a very quick drawing:

Uboat.net is usually good at showing details of ships attacked by Uboats, but a search for South Gare didn't show anything, was she re-named by any chance?

https://uboat.net/wwi/ships_hit/

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2 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

Uboat.net is usually good at showing details of ships attacked by Uboats, but a search for South Gare didn't show anything, was she re-named by any chance?

https://uboat.net/wwi/ships_hit/

You are right - a bit of family legend getting in the way of the truth as it turns out. It seems she was sunk in convoy (from the caption of the photo I inherited) but due to accident:

https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?65647

Also some stats on the ship. 63 m rather than 57, and now I have the beam as well!

 

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1 hour ago, Bangseat said:

https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?65647

Also some stats on the ship. 63 m rather than 57, and now I have the beam as well!

Yes, another useful site that had slipped my memory, I found some info on there about the SS Northfield which was lost to a torpedo in 1918, my 19yr old great uncle was lost along with all hands. I've got entries from Lloyds list for dimensions and a contemporary painting/postcard but no photo's. https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?77622

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After a couple of printer false starts, I got a good print of the bow a few days ago:

20221203_173401

 

20221203_173327

 

I'm saying this is my prototype - I have actually adapted the design since printing, so I'll be doing this all over again! It's an all night print, about £5 worth of resin, and there are 6 sections in total so this will take a while, probably printing on weekend nights as my printers work on my kits Mon-Fri, but I hope to have a hull by the new year.

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  • 3 months later...

Well, as ever, time marches on. This weekend however transpired to be a good window to actually print my hull. The hull is in six sections, each a 12 hour print on a large format printer. Luckily I have several, so in the end it was 36 hours on 2 printers. I also realised I had accumulated some spare resin;

20230313_094709

some old elegoo grey that seemed to be a bit unreliable making delicate stuff, some translucent resin ordered by mistake, and some E-Sun hard tough - good stuff, but didn't solve the problem I had originally envisaged. So, I made my witches brew, and 36 hours and 3 litres of resin later...

20230313_094716

So yes, huge. Sticking it together will be fun. And, scale excepted, rather different to my usual stuff:

20230313_094741

 

 

 

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Having great fun here slapping on P38 and watching my copious sanding dust dancing in the gentle breeze..

 

20230323_101711

 

20230323_101655

Here for scale is Jack (actually an Airfix U Bootmann)

20230323_101721

 

 

Next task is a plasticard deck onto which I will apply planking. Also, I want to make some effort to render the plating and riveting. Here, I am on a learning curve. I'm looking at pictures of plated hulls:

Screenshot_20230323_101954_Chrome

(SS Robin, covered in patches of course)

 

Screenshot_20230323_102315_Wikipedia

(Lusitania, looking brand spankers)

 

Anyone got any tips - a handy web page primer maybe on how ships were plated in the 1890s?

 

 

 

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

Update time - much delayed, but this is a 1 hour pw project at the moment with everything else going on.

 

Hull is substantially complete, and pieces of superstructure are starting to appear:

20230609_132133

 

The hull plating is done with masked stripes of filler primer and scribed vertical lines (this bit still very much progressing)

20230609_132142

 

I envisaged scratch building most of the non-hull, but 3d printing is working out very well so I have expanded the scope of the digital design:

 

2023-06-09_01-56-52

 

Once the hull has at least the basic black and red oxide on it, I'll be planking the deck, a fun first for a plane builder like me. I've got my planks ready and waiting...

 

20230609_132224

 

 

Then its a case of gradually filling the deck with various nautical detritus and making her look a bit lubberly. No references here, I'm just learning as i go and trying to use a bit of semi informed imagination...

20230609_132157

 

Cheers all

 

 

 

 

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On 3/23/2023 at 10:39 AM, Bangseat said:

Anyone got any tips - a handy web page primer maybe on how ships were plated in the 1890s?

 

To offer a suggestion: see if you can find any videos showing how the Titanic was built, there was a very good documentary on the Idiot Box recently showing how the ship was constructed which described how the hull plates were rivetted together and attached to the frame of the ship.

 

31 minutes ago, Bangseat said:

 

20230609_132133

 

 

I fear you might be tempting the "Modelling Gods" to do their worst by leaving your excellent creation balanced on the corner of your desk like that :)

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3 hours ago, Richard E said:

 

 

I fear you might be tempting the "Modelling Gods" to do their worst by leaving your excellent creation balanced on the corner of your desk like that :)

Ha - at this scale, if I knock it I reckon I'll come off worse than the model...

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1 hour ago, Bertie McBoatface said:

 

I gather you are a kit producer. Whic is your company?

 

Bertie - I'm VFR Models, Cessnas, Pipers and the like in 72nd scale.

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1 hour ago, Bangseat said:

 

Bertie - I'm VFR Models, Cessnas, Pipers and the like in 72nd scale.

 

That gives you a very particular set of skills. Skills acquired over a very long career. Skills that make you a hero for people like me. I expect you to find all of the potential problems in this build ... And kill them. 😂

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Just found this thread. What a treat! :popcorn:

 

I just checked my Ships In Focus Record issues 1-7, and I don't see South Gare. FWIW, there are a number of coasters in issues 1 & 2. I wonder if Coasters In Focus may be of interest? :shrug:

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Think i'll pull up a chair for this one. Great progress so far.

 

I'm currently building a round table minesweeper in 1/96th scale and am also at the hull plating/rivetting stage. I've gone for these which so far seem to be going on fairly easily and look about the right size. They also do them in black and in double rows.

 

https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/QRV-022?result-token=GUlyk

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20 hours ago, dnl42 said:

Just found this thread. What a treat! :popcorn:

 

I just checked my Ships In Focus Record issues 1-7, and I don't see South Gare. FWIW, there are a number of coasters in issues 1 & 2. I wonder if Coasters In Focus may be of interest? :shrug:

Yes it is 🤗 - I've only got one of those books (Blue Funnel) but I'm always looking out for them on fleabay.

 

19 hours ago, theskits62 said:

Think i'll pull up a chair for this one. Great progress so far.

 

I'm currently building a round table minesweeper in 1/96th scale and am also at the hull plating/rivetting stage. I've gone for these which so far seem to be going on fairly easily and look about the right size. They also do them in black and in double rows.

 

https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/QRV-022?result-token=GUlyk

That is a great call. A ships rivet is probably ca 0.5mm in 1:72 scale, so they really ought to be there. At this rate, i expect to be painting in mid 2025...

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On 6/12/2023 at 1:45 PM, Bangseat said:

Yes it is 🤗 - I've only got one of those books (Blue Funnel) but I'm always looking out for them on fleabay.

 

That is a great call. A ships rivet is probably ca 0.5mm in 1:72 scale, so they really ought to be there. At this rate, i expect to be painting in mid 2025...

 

I've just spent the weekend rivetting and thought you might be interested in the way they look before painting (which will probably make them invisible of course) !!

 

rivets1

 

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21 hours ago, theskits62 said:

 

I've just spent the weekend rivetting and thought you might be interested in the way they look before painting (which will probably make them invisible of course) !!

 

rivets1

 

That's exactly what I'm after! Great stuff. I ordered some rivets last week, they're currently en route from Kazakhstan.

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  • 1 month later...

A brief update as I stagger from crisis to crisis outside the serene world of ship modelling. Entire family laid low with Norovirus this week…

 

The hull is taking shape and the long process of scribing and riveting the hull (Quinta Studio rivets thank you very much) is about 60% through, once finished the hull can be painted and the wood deck can be laid.

 

2023-07-21_11-33-17

 

 

The details are the most fun as ever, so I have a head start on these even though I could clearly wait until I have a finished hull to stick them to…  

 

20230721_113805

 

20230721_113852 20230721_114104

 

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The impaled carbon fibre rod in the pictures is not a final mast rest assured (there are 2) so I’m going to have to put my big boy pants on and learn to do this properly. It turns out, these cannot be 3d printed…

20230721_114255

 

 

Anyone got a hack for masts, or is this the domain of the master woodcrafter with a mini lathe?

 

A fascinating project so far. What I have concluded is that resin printing, even if you have giant machine, is probably not the way to go for hulls, masts and anything big due to the tendency for warping. If I get into this in a big way, I’ll be in the market for a giant FDM printer – I’m already making day-dreamy calculations around what can be done with the biggest hobby printers (pre-dreadnoughts yes, Lusitania still a stretch!)

 

Happy Friday all

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Your droopy mast made me spit my tea! 🤣

 

Use wooden dowel for the mast. Taper it by spinning it up in an electric drill and caressing it with sandpaper. Be careful of the dust and don't goo too fast, especially when the far end of the mast is unsupported because it might whip itself to bits and hurt you.

 

That's my way to do it but if you search YouTube for Tapering Masts, I bet you find a dozen different techniques practiced by the wooden boat modellers of the world.

 

You could probably 3D the rings etc???

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