SD 14 cargo ship

[romanmodels]

I got this marvellous model as a birthday, Christmas present in 2007 and have been building it on and off at weekends. Since then. So I thought I would post some pictures of the build here.
ok some info the model was designed and illustrated by Capt G.B. Robinson and is sold under licence by Marcle models http://www.marcle.co.uk it costs £280 oversee orders £310 for the complete model the individual sections forward midships and after each cost £105 overseas £120 the scale is 1:70 and is about 7 feet in length link for railing is http://zeistbouwplaten.nl
The model comes in three sections bow middle and Stern of the ship, each section consists of two boxes of A3 Manila card with the printed parts on them, and the instructions for that section.

The model builds the basic steel structure for British registered version of the ship. So extras like propellers, anchors, engine and engine room machinery are not included.

The designer of the model made it as a teaching aid for cadets and firefighters, so you build the model as if it was a real ship.with the cardboard taking the place of steel sheet and it gives you an insight into the structure of ships.

I decided not to build it with cutaway portions and that I would add an engine and add in oil and water tanks and workshops and provision stores on the engineering flats and the engine room shelter deck's.
SD14 stands for shelter deck and the 14 is the 14,000 ton displacement of the ship, shelter deck is a secondary deck inside of the forward part of the hull.
the good reference book that shows all the ships made and their history is SD14 the full history by John Lingwood. isbn 1-901703-64-9. It also contains a reproduction of a general arrangement drawing of one of the ships.
I started off with the intention of making each section in turn from the bow but then changed it to making the ship completely in one go from bow to stern as I thought it would be easier to build not having to worry about damaging the finished bow section while building the midsection, especially when it came to putting the hull plates on as it need to be turned on its side and the top.
I started off building the model on an inch thick piece of ply the looked flat but it wasn't and I ended up with a banana boat well just the bottom. I then got some MDF with some strips screwed to the underside to keep it flat and then made sure it was level on top of a planning chest strip of MDF is about 14 inches wide by 8 feet long gives a little bit of room to manoeuvre the model on.
Also handy is in metre rule just check the model is flat. I used to separate table to cut out the parts,a 50 cm rule is also useful to cut out some parts as they are longer than a foot.
Sorry to the mix of measurements but I am dyslexic and started school when metric was introduced in the UK. That's enough text to now go the first group of pictures of the start of the bow bottom.
the pictures show the buildup of the double bottomed Hull under number one hold and part of number two hold, the double bottomed Hull is split into separate tanks, port centre and starboard and are used as ballast tanks to trim the ship.

[Tim Crowe]

Taking shape already.

This kit seems to give a real insight into how ships are build.

Tim

[Papercut]

Oh man, I love this kit. I will have one someday, the price keeps backing me down. I look forward to seeing what you do with it.
Rick

[Marco]

Allright, someone else is going to tame the monster! Good luck, and reserve plenty of time for this!

[papermodelfan]

Oh Bravo! Have been looking at this one on the Markel Models website, and wondering just what it would take to actually build it - this must eat up a whole room in your house! Thank you for sharing it with us. This is going to be better than a long running television series. Is it like the fellow who built a boat in the basement and had to move the house off to get it out? Will you be able to take it outside (but then maybe you don't want to)? Anyway, I'm going to pop popcorn for this one! Rob Tauxe

[billy.leliveld]

Definitely one of the 'Ultimate Models"

[Diderick A. den Bakker]

I recently saw an SD-14 at half size - still an impressive 1 meter (ca 3 feet) in length...

[papersurprise50]

I got to admit , I thought my cruise ship was big (4'7" ) but this beats all . wow! papersurprise50

[romanmodels]

Thanks all anther fix.
The first picture in this post is of the instructions you get as well as showing how to construct the model they also have pictures of the real ships being constructed and snippets of information about the ship these snippets are also on the sheets of parts which are shown in the next picture. The third picture is of the railings laser cut by a third party Zeist Bouwplaten a Dutch models site and are about 35 euro. The fourth picture is of extra parts I have brought, three anchors 2 the bow and one spare and 2 propellers again one is a spare. Picture five shows the number one forward bulkhead with frames and stretcher's that make up the bow.

[romanmodels]

and some more
The first picture shows the number two watertight bulkhead in place, along with the hold pillars and centreline plates.
The next four photos show the addition of the longitudinal box girders and transverse box girders that make up the support of the shelter deck and the pontoon Hatch covers. The two longitudinal box girders are a bit fiddly to glue up as for part of their length. They have a step to take the Hatch covers but they also have formers inside the box girder that poke through this step.they also need dry fitting to make sure that they are not too out of square. Once they are glued and dry . I found that they needed the slots that fit over the corrugated bulkhead trimmed or opened out so they fit my corrugations. The final picture shows the edition of the web frames which are wider frames that help support their ends of the transverse box girders.