ss Nieuw Amsterdam, Holland-America Line

[scon10]

Hello, Forum friends, greetings and a prosperous New Year to you all!

After having finished the model of the Douglas DC-5, see the Aviation section, I would like to start the new year with the recently issued model of the Nieuw Amsterdam, published by Scaldis ( HOME ).
It is a modernization of the old Veritas cardmodel of the 1950's, but reprinted in a very high and beautiful quality, a real eye pleaser.

As a little boy back then I have built this model, but while it is an accurate model, it is not highly detailed, and even back then I thought that was a pity. With this re-issue, it seems a good opportunity to correct this.

Pic 1 shows the model in book form, size A-4, and in scale 1:350. It comes with a choice of the original black hull, or the dove-grey one of the late 1960's.
Pic 2 gives an impression of the print quality and the two hull colours.

I find a scale of 1:350 somewhat small, most of my shipmodels have scale 1:200 or 180, so that you can use figurines of the railway scale NN. However, my copy-shop said that coying the model with 193%, making it scale 1:180 would require a separate scanning process and a special printing session, costing around 35 Euros. A little too stiff at the moment, so I decided to enlarge the A-4 to A-3, which is 1.42 times as large (square root of 2), giving a scale of almost 1:250, good enough for me. Besides, the model in 1:180 would be around 1.25 meters long, so a smaller scale is more practical.

Pic 3 shows the result, it looks quite impressive to me. I'll have to start thinking how to increase the detail level, so I'll let you know what I will do.

[Wyvern]

Where can Scaldis kits be purchased?

Wyvern

[ashevilleangler]

Wyvern, look closely at the upper left corner of the first photo. The website "http://www.scaldismodelclub.nl/" is printed under the logo. This site is worth the visit just to see the vast model collection that's for sale. They have most of the european models that have ever been in print. Or at least more than any other site that I know of.

Hope this helps,

Curt

[scon10]

Also, I included a link, that says "Home" in the text. I hope it works. But if you google Scaldis, you'll get there too. I just noticed that their site seems to be only in Dutch, but there are e-mail links, so you can most probably contact them in English. Good luck.

[Don Boose]

An excellent project for the New Year.

Don

[scon10]

Thanks, Don, the great liners of the pre-Atlantic flight era have always fascinated me, and the Nieuw Amsterdam is one of those beautiful Ladies of the Seas. Pity the English called it New York, instead of New Amsterdam, it would really have befitted the ship's name when arriving at the Hoboken Pier.
Anyway, so much for poetry, it's cutting knife and glue what I want to hold now...

Construction is a normal affair, see pic 1, but the relatively thin paper makes the waterbase plane a bit floppy, so I thought it best to put a sort of backbone onto the base, see pic 2. It is a thick cardboard strip of around 3 cm's in size, and I glued a smaller strip to the bottom, to make it true straight, see pic 3. Next step will be to glue that in place on the center line.

[deckape]

Originally Posted by scon10

Thanks, Don, the great liners of the pre-Atlantic flight era have always fascinated me, and the Nieuw Amsterdam is one of those beautiful Ladies of the Seas. Pity the English called it New York, instead of New Amsterdam, it would really have befitted the ship's name when arriving at the Hoboken Pier.
Anyway, so much for poetry, it's cutting knife and glue what I want to hold now...

Construction is a normal affair, see pic 1, but the relatively thin paper makes the waterbase plane a bit floppy, so I thought it best to put a sort of backbone onto the base, see pic 2. It is a thick cardboard strip of around 3 cm's in size, and I glued a smaller strip to the bottom, to make it true straight, see pic 3. Next step will be to glue that in place on the center line.

Ahoy Scon
To make it easier for you before get to far ahead on the base plate go to a staionary store like office max or such, buy some vanilia file folder envelopes glue down your base plate to the vanilia card it will make the structure bvery stiff less flimsy. Nex get your self a work board and spot glue the bottom base plate to the work board it will prevent your hull from twisting and it will keep everything straig reinforce your bulkhead formers as well. when the construction of the model is done take a butter kniff applying presure on the work board and saw out the base plate but don use to much cement just spot glue the baseplate down. a suggestion I will like to add. Turn To continue ships work.

Boats

[scon10]

Thanks, Deckape, for the good suggestions, I have been thinking of attaching the base to a ground plate, at least temporary, because the problem with the design of this model is that there is no main deck on top of the hull. Therefore, the hull is not torsion stiff. It will get so, when the whole promenade deck is put in place, but that is still a long way ahead. But as soon as the photo's are done, I can show you, that the backbone structure does make the ship at least longitudinally stiff. However, I will most probably scatch-build a main deck to attach to the hull and make it torsion stiff.

[Marco]

Very nice! I checked some time ago with Wim from Scaldis is there are any plans for a new design of the Nieuw Amsterdam now that Scaldis has published excellent new designs of historic Dutch liners Rotterdam V and Willem Ruys, but there are no plans for this in the near future. So, it's nice that this existing model has been re-issued.

[scon10]

Dag Marco, last time I read your threads, you were I think in Africa, and now in Asia. A small world.
The last few days I have been thinking how to get a little more detail and correct shape to the hull.
As you can see, I put in a central longeron ("backbone") to stiffen the construction. To anchor the shape of the hull, I then put in place the foredeck, see pic 1, and a support for the lower promenade deck, pic 2. Also, I put strips on the edges of the bulkheads, to give more grip for the hull skins.

Next, I thought about getting that nice hollow look of the bow, which also at the same time curves outward to follow the outline of the foredeck. That means the shape of the hull at the bow follows a double curvature, something that paper cannot follow properly, especially the large flat shape as you can see in pic 3.
Some German model designers resolved this by designing lengthwise strips for the waterline part, a middle part, and a top part following the curvature of the deck. You do get a nice hollow shape in that way. I tried that system with a crude prototype, made out of two copies of the front part of the hull, see pic 4. You can see the strips holding the middle part together. Because of the hollow shape, there is more surface needed to cover the hull, than is provided by the original flat shape of the front part of the initial model, therefore you need two copies to cover this increased area. The disadvantage of this system, I saw in the prototype, pic 5, is that it is difficult to get an accurate shape of the middle part.
so I decided to do it otherwise. By cutting the skin in vertical sections, you can also achieve a more or less double curvature. But in this case you need to take into account some additional surface needed in the lengthwise direction, but that is relatively easy to correct, see pic 6. Besides, I had already made double copies of the hull, in anticipation of using the first method.
I will start with the bow itself, and measure out and fit the parts as I go backwards to the stern.
Meanwhile, I decided to put a little more surface structure in the ships side, by slightly indenting the portholes with the back tip of a painting brush, pic 7. I also inscribed some rivet lines as you can hopefully see in pic 7.