Hi,
Recently, I was talking with my partner's father and discovered that, at 15 years old, he joined the merchant navy. His first ship was a 18,000 ton H Class tanker called the Forthfield. After a little research I discovered there was an old Vic Smeed plan for an H Class tanker they had named the STS Dilysia. The Forthfield was originally commissioned by Shell but was sold to Huntings (I believe) prior to her completion and this was the vessel my partner's Father sailed on.
Having acquired a copy of the plan from
http://www.vintagemodelplans.com , it has sat on my workbench for a few months while I built up the courage to start building. I have never built a boat from scratch, or from plans, so it was quite a daunting prospect. Finally, today I grabbed the bull by the horns (or more correctly, the band saw) and decided to get started. I am totally new to "from plan" building so this will be an interesting journey with, no doubt, a few mistakes, and I am sure a lot of learning but I thought I would try, over the next few months, to detail the build here.
So, day 1 has been tracing and cutting parts, then building the jig. Tomorrow will be cutting the parts for the breadboard bow and stern. The parts in the photos are just stood in place, so no real assembly has started yet.