SD 14 General Cargo Ship

NYC Irish

Member
Hello everyone how are you all doing today? Well someone had to do it and I decided to give it a try, Its going to be a long long haul so please feel free to ask questions and any requests you may have about it. Contact me for anything you might be wondering.

Well I managed to save enough pennies up to purchase a copy of the SD 14 GCS from Marcle Models in the UK. http://www.marcle.co.uk/sd14.htm I have had great experience with Mr. Cooke and he was more than helpful with some hiccups during the order. (Thanks to the Irish Postal Service for threathening a Strike as soon as my order shipped) but anyway...

The kit arrives in a large package and is quite huge, Ill get into price later. Its over 180 pages of very heavy cardstock with the Parts as B&W Photocopies onto the pages themselves, Its an old kit, from sometime in the 80's and is hand drawn. A simple but effective tool kit of a steel ruler, long tweezers(which has saved my sanity so often) and a knife with snap off blades. With this dense cardboard, You would go through a lot of them.

Basically you are building the ship piece by piece as if you were a giant machine cutting steel plates shaping them and welding them in place, from the bottom shell plates and the double bottom to the top of the crane masts and everything in between.

The Price.......well its messy here. Its quite expensive, $400+ and if I had not needed something to do while I was laid up it woud never have been an option. I do not think that it was ever meant for modellers but for exhibitions and design firms as a center piece so that may be its fault as I do not believe production could be the reason.

But thats that....
I decided I was too chicken to attempt cutting the origional kit first go so i copied it to approriate stock and began by cutting the Bottom Shell Plates...

So it begins...
 
R

rickstef

Good Luck John John,

Looking forward to this monster being built

Rick
 

murban

Member
Hello John John,

the model was indeed never designed for modelers. It was designed for harbor firefighters - by building the kit, they should familiarize themselves with a ship of this type.

At first only the bow part existed - the middle and stern piece were added later when the model became popular.

Check here to see a model being build:

Bow: http://www.kartonbau.de/thread.php?threadid=678&sid=&hilight=sd14
Center section: http://www.kartonbau.de/thread.php?threadid=1494&sid=&hilight=sd14

regards,
Michael
 

gera

Member
Good luck with your build..............180 pages!!!!! what´s the timeframe you have set up for this project...... :roll:
You must be a very patient man...................My God. :lol: :lol: :lol:
 

NYC Irish

Member
.

Hello again, Thanks Michael for the links, I suppose they were possibly the biggets reason I began the kit and definetly a great help as I went through the stages. Lots of assembly was not as detailed as I would have liked in the instructions...most notibly the items are names rather that numbered in order of asembly...By the time im done with this I will be applying to do a course in Nautical Engineering.

So on to the Double bottom floors...These were the beginning of the mind numbing repetitiveness that will plague me for a few months...

But its fun
 

NYC Irish

Member
and

and then once that is finished I moved onto Tank Top plating which covered all my work over.

THe kit is built in three sectionsBow Mid Section and Stern.....each completed before the next is started, I did consider doing the whole 7.5 foot bottom shell plating and going from there...kinda fun but I do not think it would have worked...

From what I see of the Kartonbau build I have decided not to put on the Sheer Strakes and Plates (The hull Skin) and as much of the decks as possible to leave more of a structural model. What do you guys think???
I just dont see that the Strakes and plates were designed good enough for it...

I hope it works out...

Ps How do I put 2+ pics into one posting??

Thanks John John
 

jrts

Active Member
Hi John John

I will be watching every post to see how your doing with this monster.
I had a look at doing this a while ago but thought my building skills where not good enough yet.
If I did build I would have the assault and battery side of things from the wife as well to deal with :lol:

As for how to build the finished look, its your model and only you know what you want from the kit. BUT WE WANT TO SEE YOU DO IT :lol:

If you want more than one photo, this is how I do it.

Add the first photo, hit the preview. The first photo shows up, if you scroll down to the browes box it will be empty again. click browes and pick another photo and preview it again. You now have two photo's, do the same with the third. finish the text and click submit and all three will show up in the post.

More build when you can, soon hope

Rob
 

NYC Irish

Member
yeah

Yes this is the Divorce Package. My wife may go postal too... :shock: :shock:

I have found that some of the cutting allows for a sit down with others and talk as you use a scissors to do some of the slits for the interlocking....Like I said there is a lot of repitition. I dont think that skill comes into it as its not complicated.....just there is a lot of pieces...Tha last big boat I attempted was DN's Yamato...Unfortunaelty a way ward cup of tea (Not a Guinness Gentlemen) destroyed the deck so that got shelved...
If this kit was Pre Cut or Laser Cut it would be great but Im also looking for a 1:33 Airbus A380...and it aint going to happen
Another picture of the Tanktop Longitudinals:
 

Jim Krauzlis

Active Member
Outstanding start, John John! :D

This is one of the more interesting paper model projects out there, showing in extreme detail the actual construction process of a steel merchant ship. It seems to me that this is not only going to produce an unique and outstanding ship model but also affords the building a unique education on how ships like this are made...short of being an apprentice at a shipyard, I'm not sure how else you would get the same experience.

I for one am looking forward to more on this thread...I have seen the Kartonbau threads, and it always makes my jaw drop when I see the detail this kit provides.

Keep at it, mate, and more when you can! :wink:

Cheers!

Jim
 

NYC Irish

Member
..

And we move on to the corrugated wall that is Water tight bulkhead #2. This little piece of work also had a ladder on the fore and aft which stretched up to the Tween Deck (Mid Deck for those of us who were not paying attention during Sponge Bob the Movie)
I havent encountered any difficulty to speak of, As you know with models that have numerous pieces the slightest discrepency leads to murderous alignments down the way but this seems to be holding itself together very well.

The two buldheads were joined by a pair of Tween Deck Longitudinal Box Girders... :shock: :shock: Across these will go the Tween Deck Transverse Box Girders. A square hole with allow for the Pontoon Hatch covers.

Im not stating the obvious but There is no joke that you are building it as if it were the real thing...I do not believe tha there are any kind of supports or extra pieces to strengthen the model.

I do not know if I am babbling here so If possible Id ask you to ask me questions if the construction doesnt make sense

John John
 

jrts

Active Member
Hi John John

No it all makes sense :lol:

It would be tempting to build two of these, one a complete ship and another as a half ship to show off all the internal work and layouts :idea:

Its looking very good already, the kit does look as if it holds true to ship construction. Me's a thinking "I GOT GET ONE OF THOSE" :lol:

Just to be a pain MORE please

keep at it, love the build

Rob
 

NYC Irish

Member
I suppose a bit of history of me and ships would be a good point to throw in now, that and how my penpal managed to buy himself a 900 ft 169080 tonnes Super Ore carrier for a Single Irish Pound…. :shock: :shock:


In December 1986 the Ore Carrier Kowloon Bridge was able to scrape its way into Bantry Harbour in Cork Ireland. A vicious storm had struck and other ships were not so lucky. From what was told after the Captain was ordered by the Ships owner to leave and make the delivery on time. It left Bantry and was out at sea when it radioed it had lost its rudder and was drifting. It ran aground on a rocky island called the stags and eventually sank its oil created pretty much the same thing that the Exon Val. did to Alaska. To avoid helping financially with the clean up the owners sold it to a Scrap Merchant called Shaun Kent for a n Irish Pound... :shock: :shock: I could have given them twice that :twisted: :twisted:
It was all over the news in Ireland and one day my Dad pointed out a picture of Mr. Kent to me and in the background of the picture was a 10 foot model of the ship sent to him by the builders for research.
I agreed with my dad that it looked great but didn’t clue into his train of thought until he said “What do you think he will do with it when he is done†So I at the age of 8 wrote a letter to Mr. Kent asking for the model when he was done…Unfortunately he had to return it to builders but did promise me a souvenir from the wreck. I never got to pick that up but I have always been interested in big models.

Some links
http://members.lycos.co.uk/irishwrecks/details/KowloonBridge548-ImagePage.htm
http://www.uwscotland.com/ireland
 

NYC Irish

Member
To

To help with some stability I now had to attach some of the frames, The Ribs that would hold the ships outer hull and then attach the Tween Deck Longitudinals to allow me attach the remainer of the frames...Its really looking like a ship now :shock: :shock:
The frames are a simple strip with a 90 degree bend, they fitted very well even with the amount of pieces and thus opportunity to misalign the whole kit.
Once I had attached all the Tween Deck Transverse Beams I decided not to floor the model as it took away from the purpose of the kit I believe.
The Tween Deck Longitudinals were a bit flimsy but did workout after
 

Gil

Active Member
NYC Irish,

Totally Cool! An amazing build..., one thing though, where's the dry dock?

Best regards, Gil
 

NYC Irish

Member
hehe

I managed to secure Planning Permission from the relevent Autorities(Bribed with a box of Chocolates, which is pretty cheap for Bribing Officials in Cork these days) so the spare room had been turned into the Dry Dock. I will not however keep the finished product...I will donate it to something, any suggestions???

However looking at the size of Logans Mid Section on the Karton site...Im going to need a bigger box of chocolates for the final product...

Once the tween deck beaming had been finished now came the not too bad part of attacing the frames. The model strength is quite good, no noticeable warping or hassle that could be so easy. I managed to get the repitition to a point where it doesnt bother me by just doing a page at a time..Score everything on the page, cut them all out, attach them...repeat... Did work well I think

Im having a lot of fun with this kit, Its definetly my kettle of fish
John John
 

Jim Krauzlis

Active Member
Amazing, just plain amazing work, John John! :D

This is a truly epic undertaking, I'm sure it's a bit tedious to you in some respects with all those frames, etc., but the end result is just fantastic!

Glad the relevant Authorities were kind enough to allow you to establish a shipyard so we can all enjoy watching this build. :wink:

More when you can, mate.

Cheers!

Jim
 

NYC Irish

Member
IM going to try that on

Im going to try to get this post done properly...my second attempt..
Once the Tween Deck was fully beamed I had to repeat the execrcise for the Upper Deck and then slighty again for the Fore Castle Area. It was fairly easy work and a pleasure to see it take shape and other that the foremost Frames everything looks good (In my humble opinion).
 

Jim Krauzlis

Active Member
The forward section is starting to fill out into something resembling it's final shape, John John. :D Seriously, I am amazed at how quickly you are putting this together, what with all the framing, ducts, etc., that have to be built. Awesome job!

Cheers!

Jim
 
Top