Chesapeake Skipjack Kathryn...

[rmks2000]

Very nice. Question - on ship plans the hull former/bulkhead templates are shown in half profiles - one side displaying the mid to aft profiles combined and the other side mid to bow. How do you create the formers from these halves? Do you redraw and mirror them via a paint program, or trace them using a light table, etc.?

[Maltedfalcon]

I would love to build this model

One day in 1979ish-80 a friend and I were heading out a country road toward Chesapeake bay to Scuba dive, I cannot remember where exactly probably along the pautuxent river.
but we came around a corner and there were several maryland state trooper cars s with their lights on and flashing, we were directed to the side of the road, I'm not sure what I expected but the trooper came up to my window and said we were invited to a boat launching party and to pull in and park up ahead.
Hey if a trooper told me to pull over and party who was I to argue we pulled in and walked into this boat yard, tons of people and a band, and a beautiful new Skipjack on a trolley waiting to be launched. At the time I new zero about Skipjacks but soon learned this was the first one built in ages...
they had all kinds of free food, and drinks but especially Oysters halfshell, raw, chowder, fried, etc...
The troopers were doing a good job the place was packed, and then a couple hours later we all got to watch the skipjack get launched very cool( it got stuck a little on a sand bar, but they pulled it off) I have always wondered what happened to that boat.

[Kugelfang]

Thanks, Fleetsailor, RMKS and Maltedfalcon.

@RMKS: I do all the modeling electronically. The attached screen shot shows how I arrange the drawings in the modeling program. The program I use, Wings3d, is a solids, subdivision (or extrusion) modeling application. What that means is that once I've imported the drawings, the boat starts out as a simple cube which then has its sides stretched, shrunk, extruded and beveled into shape. I work from the midpoint of the boat, extruding the cube forward to a frame location in the side view, then add vertices to the edges and tweak the positions of the vertices so that the shape matches the fore/aft and top views. Once the side matches the shape of the bulkhead, I extrude the front side to the next bulkhead location, shape it again, etc., until I've reached the forward end of the hull. Then, more to your question, I'll typically flip the drawing and work on the hull from the midpoint to the stern. Normally, I only create one side of the hull. Once one side is complete then it is easy enough to mirror the entire shape to create a complete, symmetrical hull. If you're familiar with 'lofting' in a 3d program, then this technique is similar. Poor man's lofting!

To make the actual '3d' bulkheads, I make a copy of the hull (and hide the original). I then slice the copied hull model at each extrude line which corresponds to the bulkhead locations. I can then 'chip off' the cross section, extrude it a tiny bit to provide some thickness to the bulkheads. I then delete the dissected copy of the hull and make the original hull shape visible. Thus I end up with separate bulkheads and the 'skin' of the hull for laying over the bulkheads.

I hope this makes sense. I've been thinking about doing a more extensive tutorial. My process is pretty labor intensive, though. I'm not sure anybody would be willing to do things the way I do!


@Maltedfalcon: There was a limited number of new skipjacks launched in the time period you mentioned. You might be able to figure out which one you saw by visiting Skipjacks List . Or not….