The beginning of the hull.

With the workshops now behind us we are full blast into building the Viking ships for the Motiongate project in Dubai. Between the workshops we kept the MultiCam CNC plasma cutter busy and cut through tons of steel plate. These custom cut pieces will form the shape of the hull at each level. They have been cleaned up and bevelled where they will be welded together.

We also brought in many hundreds of feet of heavy square steel tubing, pipe and angle iron which will be used to build the complicated structural framework of the ship.

Yesterday, we cleared the shop and began welding the precept pieces into place. It quickly became apparent just how massive the Viking ships will be... measuring almost forty feet long, seventeen feet high at the figurehead and fifteen feet wide through the beam of the ship. They fill up our shop in a hurry! The first section is below the waterline. The upper portions of the hull will bolt on top of this, disassembling to fit into the galvanizing, then partially bolted together for building and fitting into the shipping containers. It is BIG!