The Ship Model Forum

As if I didn't have enough unfinished projects already (I use my planning skills for my real job) I have decided to start another one.
Swedish American Line's third Kungsholm was the last true ocean liner built at De Schelde shipyard in Flushing back in 1953. Not the largest or most innovative from that shipyard, that honor goes to Willem Ruys of 1947, but certainly one of the most beautiful liners ever built at De Schelde. It's local nickname was "De Witte Reus" which means "The White Giant" as SAL liners were always white. Last year I bought a book called Kungshom/Europa/Columbus C by Nice Guns which contains 1/345 scale deck plans and a large number of pictures. I also ran into the WHV paper kit of Europa, Kungsholm's name during her second life in Norddeutscher Lloyd service, which will give me good porthole patterns. So I cut out a keel plate and a longitudinal cross section, assembled them as straight as possible and left it on the shelf for a while. Last friday I decided to start again. Average deck height in 700 is about 4mm so I bought some 4mm thick balsa sheet and started cutting out deck plans en glueing them to the keel plate . After one evenings' work it looked like this:

First deck pieces added and the hull sanded into shape. Getting the tumblehome right was rather difficult.

Oh man, and this is the guy who's asking me when my diorama will be finished????
Good luck with this one, hope to see one of your ships finished some day... Maybe after my next voyage?

Looks nice, is that Balsa? How does it shape? Does it develop any pits? Or does it sand really smoothly so you can paint directly over it?

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The merchant shipyard

Yes, I'm the guy who asks you when your diorama will be finished. I just don't ask you to finish it this century.......-:)
And I did finish some ships, Hashidate and Zenta can be found in the gallery for example.
Anyway, about the balsa, the balsa I'm using is very flexible and does not hold shape that well, that's why I'm using a styrene keel plate and cross section and I'm glueing it in layers. The CA glue between the layers gives some extra strength. The flexibility also makes it possible to correct small mistakes by simply applying pressure. After the sanding stage I'm covering it with .3mm styrene and start a few rounds of filling, priming and sanding. This will be a white hull which means every small mistake will show up in the end. I'm using balsa sheets instead of frames for shaping the hull and carrying the skin as frames should really be the right shape and at a 90 degree angle to the keel parts while a balsa core (or modeling clay like Onno Heesbeen of The Debrisfield is using ) gives you some leeway. Sanding balsa is much easier than rebuilding a frame after making a mistake. And balsa gives a much larger glueing surface. I think balsa is not suited for a direct skin as it has a very open grain and it does not take putty very well.

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First round of hull plating. Getting the ice-strengthened bow shape right was difficult, parts of what you see in these pictures has already been replaced.

My AMS cure seems to have worked, so its back to 'reality'. I've decided to throw in one more round of puttying and sanding and 'freeze' the hull shape after that. First the application of putty and some extra styrene sheet to the bow area.

And after sanding all this into shape. No, this is not a swedish liner in dazzle camouflage...

Interesting subject--good to see you started another model...

JIM B

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Nicsssse!
Somehow I always enjoy building the basic hull shape the most: it gets you from a pile of plastic to the ship real fast. Everything after that is details. AMS-inducing details. Grrr... (staring at the hull of the Moreno... )

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If all else fails, a complete pig-headed refusal to see facts in the face will see us through. - General Melchett

Carving the hull that's the way I like it . nice job .
Dave Wooley

I know that feeling though Kungsholm's bow shape made that 'real ship' rather difficult. So its now either start working on the first deck details or do something with that bad quality scan of Arcadia's GA drawings I found on the internet yesterday.......-:(>

It's Sunday so this must be Amsterdam.....-:(
Finally some time to work on Kungsholm. Now that the hull shape is frozen I could start the porthole pattern. I decided to try something new. I started by glue-ing copied down side patterns from the WHV paper kit on the starboard hull and use a combination of a pin and a .5mm hand drill to drill the portholes in the upper deck and main deck sides.
Big mistake.
Drilling through the layer of glued down paper threw off the drill bit ever so slightly, so I had to apply force instead of letting the drill do the work. This always happens in a random pattern. After an hours' work the starboard side started to look like a marching band after a few rounds of Jameson. So starboard is now filled up again with Tamiya filler and will get another few rounds of priming and sanding. For the port side I decided to go back to the oldest method in the book. I took a straight but flexible strip of wood (well.....I cheated and used styrene instead), and used the porthole pattern to tape this strip to the hull (.3mm lower). I put the smallest drill I am comfortable with (.3mm) in my pin vise and started drilling, being very careful this time not to apply any pressure. After an hour things looked like this.

And like this with the strip and tape removed. 139 portholes drilled, 489 to go.

Makes me really glad that I swore not to build any liners after my QM2!!!!
However, looks like an extremely nice job and the result will be all the more satisfying. (although I see a lot of suffering ahead )
Good luck with this one! Hope to see some progress on her soon!

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The merchant shipyard

I've decided to go slowly on this one, no more than one line of portholes at the time as I tend to loose concentration after a while. But the port side is getting there now.

Nice built pieter
finally an dutch ship
(pss im dutch so i like dutch ships )
keep up the good job.
(ur dutch to? i see a weard language under ur posts but dutch newspapers.)
Mitch

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New Ships Planned For Shipyard:
USS.Missouri 1.545 scale to new jersey desert combat
Ships in dock:
USS.Saratoga 1.535 scale Desert combat (currently on hold)
Ships in repair:
SMS Tirpitz 1/540 (adding new radars and fixing the main guns)

Yup. I'm dutch. I grew up some 10 miles east of the Koninklijke Maatschappij de Schelde ,where Kungsholm was built, and I now live close to where her rival ms Oslofjord was built at the time. Now if someone would have good drawings of Oslofjord (3) and could lend it to me....
BTW Kungsholm was very swedish, not that much dutch input in the design.

No, nobody has plans, abandon the idea now and continue with your tug!
great job, I'm not Dutch, I just like all of your work

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The merchant shipyard

That's mutual admiration then. I really like your tankers.