Since my last post showing the Viking ship frame we have made significant progress. The engineer required us to use heavy steel members with plenty of welding. The ship has to withstand lots of moving as we put it together, it travels to the galvanizer and also the long journey to Dubai in the middle east.
To facilitate it’s removal from our (rather small) shop at to fit into the galvanizing vats it will break into six sections on each level. The portion that will sit in the water is thirty inches tall. The joining flange is made from eight sections of 3/8″ thick plasma cut plate steel. Identical pieces were bolted together to form the seam.
We then began welding up the floor section of the hull. It is essentially a giant truss. We will finish the ship frame to this degree before unbolting the six sections and taking them out of the shop. We will reassemble the piece outside in the parking lot before we build the sides and upper keels of the ship. It will all be test fitted before it gets disassembled once more to go to the galvanizers. When that is done we’ll reassemble the hull in two large sections for the concrete sculpture work. Two of these need to be built in the coming weeks.
