Thank you for your reply Waholic , but now I'm on to another problem. I would like a tramp steamer. I just like the romance of those old ships . Going from port to port, eking out a living above or below board. From hard wheat from Australia; to disassembled p-40's in boxes marked Singer sewing machine. Bound for Rangoon, with the beautiful Madame Chiang Kai-Shek paying the freight. And the seafarers who served on this tramp steamer are the flotsam and jetsam of the Freight trade who have dropped out of the labor pools of the great ship companies for one reason or another. And the only man that can control this crew of miscreants and cut-purses is a hard fist ofan Aquavit drinking Swed by the name of Skip Town(ah)sen. He may have a wife in every port but the Sea is his only love. Sorry for going all gum shoe on you. Back to the problem at hand. The ship I'm thinking of is the Mamiya, a Japanese food supply ship. It's of good size 39.58" with a beam of 5.088"and the draft is 2.33"and a displacement of 15,820 long tons 16,074 tons standard. Launched in 1923, sank in 1944. I am without plans so I'm thinking of just winging it. "There in lies the rub" I have one photo of it at anchor. Sitting very high with the large part of the rudder exposed So just where is the waterline? And how much do I add for the freeboard? I'm thinking of taking the size of the water tight door in the picture and use that as a measure of 1/2"and walk it down, to what appears to be a waterline. Do you have any idea how many ribs I can put in at 1/4 ply wood? I doubt I can make an exact copy of the Mamiya . So I was thinking of changing the name to Rhapsody in Glue Maru. Cheers Skip Town Edit: Mod Note: The above post was split from this thread: https://rcwarshipcombat.com/threads/ijn-suzuya.443180/#post-506644 to form a new topic.
Rib count depends on your rule set. If you're following IRC rules (which, if you plan to play with the locals, you should, assuming you're still in the Seattle area), then your hard area is 15% of the overall length. So 39.58 OAL gets you 5.937" of hard area. You get up to 2 inches of that in the bow, and 1 inch in the stern, leaving you with 2.937inchs, or slightly less than 12 1/4" ribs. Since 1/4" ply is rarely actually 1/4", just call it 12 ribs. I'd hazard a guess that your waterline is the top of the black there. Locally for a cargo ship we don't really care if you had plans or not, so long as the result is reasonable. You can build something that looks vaguely like that picture, meets the dimensions you cited and call it the Mamiya Supremo/Deluxe/Royal with Cheese and we'll be ok with it and not demand to see plans/etc. A good place to start might be to look up the Maru plans in the free plans section and do a bit of upsizing.
Standard bow, clipper stern, length between can be whatever you want (plenty of ship measurements on the web).
http://freeshipplans.com/categories/free-model-ship-plans/cargo-ship-plans/page/2/ http://freeshipplans.com/free-model-ship-plans/wooden-cargo-steamer-ferris-design-ships/ Not japanese, but they all shared the same basic designs as most ships were built in a few yards back then. Heck, a lot of WW1 japanese ships were built in British yards
French cargo ship in the time period you want. http://www.themodelshipwright.com/high-resolution-ship-plans/cargo-ships/cargo-ship-mekong/
Food for thought (pun intended), look on the net for paper model ship plans (they come in books). Take that to a printers (kinkos) and scale the plans to 1/144th. Then use it as templates on wood and put it together with as much detail as you want. That being said, it is going to take you a lot of time/learning curve and materials for a one-off hull. Say $100.00 when it is all done. You are better off getting a hull from Strike or another vendor and changing the top side to be whatever you want. This way you are on the water having fun, and not throwing it all away later on... Just my .02 cents after being in this hobby for a while.
Don't worry about being precise about the waterline. Unlike a warship, a freighter's waterline varied by feet depending on whether it was empty, full loaded, etc. Look up "Plimsoll line"
