'Q' ship reissue

Hi, thanks for the images and explanation.  They help alot.

PF

Scratch built from Evergreen:

I was going to crop out a close up from a model build, but here is the real thing. I remembered it was on my FB page. This was in Sudan in the 70s. The steel battens are not on yet. They are spreading out the canvas tarps. There were usually three layers. When secured, the canvas is neatly tucked like a well made bed.

Thanks all. Yes, the freeing ports were tricky because on this ship they are rectangular. It's easy to drill a round hole, but a rectangular opening is a little harder. I drilled two holes at the ends of the opening and then carved the sides between them sort of straight until I could get a small file in there and ream it out. The file is from when we used to file down points on cars. Remember points on cars?

Scratch building hatches is not hard, just a bit time consuming, so I'm glad to re-purpose the Liberty hatches. They turn out to be just about what I estimated length-wise, and a little narrower across. There is a coaming around the hatch opening. It has a rim around the outside. The hatch cover is made of wooden coffee table sized sections. ( many of these old hatch covers actually became coffee tables!) But you don't see these wooden sections if the hatch is secured, because over the top goes a canvas tarp. So the color is whatever the color is of heavy canvas used. Dark army green was common, faded to whatever you want. I've used sand color too. Then the transverse strips you see are steel battens that go over the top of everything. Usually gray. I'll look for a close up pic.

Onyxman, your hull is looking great.  It looks like you've added "freeing ports (?)" to your bulwarks.  I kind of wish I had done that too, but that may have been a bit beyond my abilities.  I'm not fully sire how I am going to do my hatches yet.  I recently bought a 3D printer and have been playing around with the though of trying to model up something with it, but I'm not sure about attaching styrene and ABS plastic and whether it might be simpler to just scratch build something in styrene by hand.

I can't wait to see how your model and GMorrison's model turn out.

PF

PS.  If you get a chance could you post a close up of your hatches.  I've recently been surfing the internet to see what hatches from this time might look like and I'm especially curious about what the tops look like.

Got that right, kudos to all 3 of you.  Nice work.

 for such an interesting multi ship build.

 These are starting to look as if they were meant to be this way, especially considering the initial  model.

WOW, GUYS!

You are ripping into it. I'll post some pictures soon. I'm a ways from fussing with decks, but I spent some time on the hull. Rescribed the horizontal plating seams, added those mooring cleat openings and stuck on various gizmos like bilge keels and banana loading side ports. Fred's mystery booms too.

In the process of cutting the hull halves apart to reglue, I lost the rudder post and opening for the screw. Had to scratch those and kind of kicked myself for tossing out the scrap stern sections from the second kit.

Here she is with the decks and hatches from the Trumpeter Liberty dry fitted. I finished a scratch built anchor windlass.

Making good progress PFJN. I had a eureka moment yesterday when I decided to do some work on the 1/350 Liberty conversion I'm doing. Since the airplane transport version I'm doing has a different hatch layout from a standard Liberty, I have to scratch build most of the deck, which leaves the Trumpeter hatches free to join my spares bin. Since we are guesstimating dimensions on the Carolyn/Evelyn anyway, these hatch covers will do nicely!

Hi,

Work has been a little hectic lately, and I've been having some trouble with my Tablet, so I've only been able to work on my model a little bit every couple days or so.  Recently though I was able to start putting some of it together and make some real progress.

Overall I went ahead and sanded off most the surface detail from the decks and hull.  Next I went ahead and used some Squadron Green Putty to fill in some gaps, and indentations and such in the hull and decks, especially where I may have been doing alot of mods.  One thing in particular I used the putty for was to thicken up the bulwarks on the cargo deck.  The way the model is cast, the existing bulwarks there are part of the hull pieces, but they are a little thinner than the rest of the structure around them.  Since I modified my cargo decks to make them longer I either would need to try and thin up the hull edge along the main deck to make it the same thickness as the existing bulwarks, or thicken up the existing bulwarks to make them the same thickness as the rest of the hull.  Overall it seemed like it would be easier to thicken stuff up with putty than to try and sand some stuff down.  And since the bulwarks on a wooden ship might likely be thicker than on a steel ship I figured thick ones probably wouldn't look too unreasonable.

Next I gave both the hull sides and some of the deck pieces a coating of both Mr. Dissolved Putty and then Mr. Surface Primer, with some light sanding done in between to try and help smooth out the surfaces.  After that I glued the two sides together and added the Poop Deck and some internal stiffening to the hull to help pull the two sides together and make everything a little stiffer, because there appeared to be a little warping in my hull pieces.  After that I ended up having to do just a little additional filling and sanding on the bottom of the hull forward to help cover up a small amount of misalignment.   At this time I also glued in the Focsle deck to help make the front end of the ship a little stiffer, since I intend to give it a couple more coats of primer and surface prep, with some light sanding in between.

I also added a couple small "angle" shape pieces of styrene in way of the cargo decks to help support those decks once I finish them up.

Anyway, below are a couple images showing the top and bottom of the hull with the focsle and poop decks installed with some of the other parts that I am currently working on alongside.  In the overhead view you can see some fo the extra reinforcements that I added to help make the hull stiffer and to reinforce the glue joints,   I also added another image showing the model from above with the partial cargo decks and superstructure decks in place, just to show how the "angles support the decks.

Pat

GM, on your photo of the guys loading bananas, there is a diagonal...something, that appears to be just above the gangway. I don't know for sure what it is, but if you folded that thing back up against the hull it could match those horizontal bars in the other picture. Maybe it's for supporting hand lines. The hand loading of bananas onto non-refrigerated ships is a bit before my time!

sharkbait

wreck of the mary deare the (1959)

Try google.

like THE GUNS OF NAVARONE it is as good a movie as the book. HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER is good book and movie too.

Yeah they look kind of like overhead tracks for a barn door. But I don't see the barn door itsel, and the actual doors would have to be at least somewhat watertight, right?

Yeah they look kind of like overhead tracks for a barn door. But I don't see the barn door itsel, and the actual doors would have to be at least somewhat watertight, right?

onyxman

They also say a PBY is a four engine plane.

Could be a misprint, as a PB4Y is a four-engine bomber based on the B-24 Liberator.

Would be a major misprint if the JRM Mars flying boat was meant, though.

Tanks, I've never heard of that Curt Jurgens movie. I did a google search and it was called "Time Bomb!".

Were not the wood frieighters based on an existing steel design? At least outwardly in terms of dims.

modelshipsinthecinema.com/.../1073

wreck of the mary deare the (1959)

Try google.

Never mind the Abananyays ;

I seem to remember an old Humphrey Bogart film ( with Ingrid Bergman of course ) In it the old ship that got in trouble sure looked a lot like this thing . I think I will just do a " mindless build " on her.

   Meaning of course , that she will be built to serve up a memory , a very foggy one . I seem to remember the ship's name as Mary Deere . You know Hollywood . And then there was the old junky ship that Bogey and Robinson were in in the Tropics along with Peter Lorre . Just do that and the Heck with accuracy .

18.00 bucks for just the fun of trying to re-create on of the old movie beasts ! Plus an even rarer story in which Kurt Jurgens was a tramp steamer captain and part owner . Sinking the thing for the insurance on the cargo . I might just do that !    Tanker - Builder

Come Mr. Tally man, tally me bananas!

That explains the double door too.

And... back on Nov. 21 I posted a starboard view that I now see is Carolyn. Take a look but I don't see those doors.

Which bars are those? I'm looking at your pic of Carolyn.

There's a number of verticals on the hull that look like rub rails, and the side ports have an overhang. Then the doors themselves I can't tell what's going on. There look to be a double set of man doors with view slots, and some other blank area with a bunch of indeciferable detail.

They'd be humping sacks of sugar up the gang planks I think.

How many and where? A guy could go a little nits. But I think it's a great period detail. I'll draft something up and show you before I cut any styrene.

I never noticed this for the reasons stated earlier.

I wonder if those horizontal bars are spars for tying up boats/lighters? That would make sense near the side ports, though it's more common on old warships than on a merchant ship.

I would go with them being sister ships and being identical. Whether they had them on only the port side is possible. If you are going to use them, just dock portside to. But I think they'd at best be just some scribbing and not very visible on the black hull, unless you had them open! There is some kind of horizontal bar there too. Not sure what that is.

I looked through my pictures for the side ports. Here's my opinion.

SS Carolyn/ USS Atik had them at least on the port side before and after conversion. I can't find any starboard views of her.

SS Evelyn/ USS Asterion did not have them on her starboard side both before and after conversion. I can't find any port views of her.

And I'm less than sure about the accuracy of the labels on either in wartime configuration. But I feel pretty certain that my prewar Evelyn pictures are correctly identified (I can see the name of the ship on both the stern and the bridge.)

So there's four possible combinations here.

Since I'm building Evelyn, I have half of the answer. And so would the Carolyn builder.

Is it possible that they were the same design and both had side ports on the port side only? Would that make sense? I'm leaning that way.

Hmm. I did not consider if those side ports could be part of the Q-ship re-fit. I'll have to take a closer look at the pre-war photos to see if they are visible then. But I still like the idea of a line of longshoremen loading bananas by hand! Those were the days!

Wow, look at that. Learn something new every day.

I wonder if those were a part of the Q ship scheme?

Imagine the surprise of our U boat commander when the door opens and he's staring down the barrel of a 75mm pack howitzer????