steamschooner

Just so you all know I do work on my model from time to time. Like most I have many spring and summer things to do and do not get to spend much time in the shipyard. I have managed to cast some deck cleats( twice ) The first ones I ended up not liking, in photo on the left. The second ones are more correct with the wood block base as I have seen examples locally. For my stays and shrouds I used some telephone wire That had four coated strands and each strand has 7 small copper strands. After cleaning the coating from the wires I separated them and twisted up 3 strands for my davits and stack stays also aft mast shrouds. For my main mast shrouds I twisted up 7 strands. I used a single strand as whipping to tie off eyes. the copper wire will take L.O.S. nicely.Now on to the shroud bars/ladder.

It's been awhile since I posted on my build. As some of you know I have been casting parts for my build. These are the latest, some anchors for the fore deck. I made up a master out of brass and copper. Made a vulcanized rubber mold to fit a tray a friend made for me. Spun up some anchors and added a cross arm made from copper wire with a small copper ring soldered on for a stop along with a couple small blobs of solder for the balls on the ends. Lightly sandblasted and drilled for arm, chain ring with a little color added.

Well I have gotten a little more done, Now have boat tackles made,name board on cabin top, oars for open boat.

Well now that summer is winding down I have had the chance to get back in the ship yard. Not a lot to show but did get the boat davits installed with their release handles and limit straps. They will still need to be rigged with boat tackles and davit stays ( term? ) Still plenty to do.

Not much of a update but I have my base nearly finished.

Engineering space is starting to come together

Just a few more shots of the engine, have added a few things have a few to go.

Just a teaser to show I have been working on my project. It's far from being done and there are a lot of temp pins holding things together. Once I have all the parts made than I will do the final assembly.

Well I spent a little time down in the engineering space and have put together a little work bench.

Well, It's been awhile since I posted a update. I have not gotten a lot done is why  Have been working on the boat davits but nothing to show yet. Did manage to put together the spot light mounted on the wheel house roof. First picture is of spotlight parts and the inside wheelhouse control. This is how the spotlight looks like on the cabin top. sorry for the dark picture.

Superstructure (cont)
 
The kit does not provide accommodation ladders but when I checked the BlueJacket 1/192 Merchant Ship PE fret that I had bought a while back there were 2 of them on there which fit fine on this build:

The remaining details were the engine room skylight, pelorus’, sidelights and the incline ladders. The kit provides solid-backed britannia ladders but I prefer the look of PE. I have a nice set from Tom’s Modelworks which have worked fine on 1/192 warships but they were a little under scale for this build - too narrow and a little short. Fortunately the BJ PE fret I just referred to has plenty of ladders that are more than long enough, just trim them to fit and they are good to go.


 
Next up will be the lifeboat davits and their handling gear.

The Ships

The lovely iron barque 'Ethel' was built in Sunderland in 1876 as the 'Carmelo'.  In 1891 she was sold to Australian owners who renamed her 'Ethel' and traded successfully until January 1904, when she was driven ashore on a small and remote beach on the southern Yorke Peninsula of South Australia in a severe storm.  One young crew member was drowned trying to swim a line ashore but the remainder of the crew were later rescued.



The 'Ethel' berthed in Hobart
 
The first vessel on the scene of the wreck was the Adelaide Steamship Company's S.S. 'Ferret', which was built at Glasgow in 1871 and later stolen by confidence tricksters and steamed to Australia.  The plot unravelled in Melbourne when a port official became suspicious of the ship’s true identity and the ship was seized and later sold to the Adelaide Company.  'Ferret' was unable to assist the 'Ethel' due to the severe weather at the time, but reported the loss and was later able to assist in the rescue of the crew.

 
In a bizarre coincidence, the ‘Ferret’ was caught in a sudden dense fog off the southern Yorke Peninsula in November 1920 and ran aground on the very same beach that had claimed the ‘Ethel’.  The ‘Ferret’s’ Master was censured by the Board of Inquiry for ‘not exercising due care’.




 The 'Ferret' in Port Adelaide
 
The Wrecks

The ‘Ethel’ was thrown high onto the beach above the high water mark by the storm that wrecked her, where she remained with her hull more or less intact until 1986, when another severe storm broke the weakened hull up.

The ‘Ferret’ was not as fortunate as she was wrecked in the surf line and quickly broke up.


Much of the cargo from both vessels was able to be salvaged at the times of the wrecks, apart from several barrels of beer from the ‘Ferret’s’ cargo which was washed up onto the beach and went ‘missing’!



The 'Ethel' and the 'Ferret' on Ethel Beach shortly after the 'Ferret's' stranding
 
Today

The remains of the ‘Ethel’ are still easily visible high up on the beach today and are very easily recognised as a shipwreck, in spite of the work done by the 1986 storm.

 
As the ‘Ferret’ broke up in the surf there is very little to see of her now.  Sometimes the sand will wash away from a part of the wreck as it had on the day of our visit a few weeks ago, leaving the end plate of the boiler just protruding from the sand – the rest of the boiler is buried under the beach along with the remainder of the wreck.



The Remains of the 'Ether' today
 

Faceplate of the 'Ferret's' boiler just protruding above the sand

I decided to add most of the fittings to the deckhouse at this point, working from top to bottom. The Stack and cowl vents went on first:

 
The open conning station was made up of a kit-provided grading, fittings and the railing and sunscreen supports were fabricated out of wire. The canvas sunscreen is painted paper with some pinpricks around the edges to imitate where the tricing would have gone:

I’m adding this photo for anyone who decides to build this kit. The instructions say to add the aft gun tub supports but do not show them on the plans. After some online photo research and looking at the inclined ladder placement I decided this is the best fit - the large opening needs to go inboard to allow for the ladder and leave enough along the outboard and aft deck edges to allow PE railing to be placed.

The 03 level is basically done except for the railings which I will leave off until the build is almost done because it is a lot easier to dust the model without those in the way.
 

Hi again to all, and I hope you had an excellent holiday.  Thanks, as always, for the likes and comments.
 
So, with the stern decorations done, I could work inward and upward without having to turn the ship upside down any longer.  This set me up to permanently install the two partial decks at the stern.  The first was the E level deck house topped by the D level deck with the added gun platform.  It was placed so the perimeter was exactly above the caprail below it.  Once it was glued in place I slid stanchions down through holes that were previously drilled in the deck. 

The stanchions were made from 0.032” brass rod, painted grey on the port side and black on stbd.  They were clipped short so they sank below the level of the upper deck.  The holes will be covered by a margin plank and the base of railings yet to come.

Forward of this area the D deck house sits back from the sides of the ship, creating an open walkway for a portion of its length.  The shape of the house was taken from the plans, then cut, sheathed and painted.  The windows, doors and handrails were added and it was secured in place.  Along the perimeter two pillars of 1/8” square stock hold up C deck where it overhangs the deck house and gives a roof to the walkway.    The C deck piece was carefully aligned and glued in place, then stanchions were painted, located from the photographs, and installed as before.

The small D deck house island had to be located so its perimeter stanchions rose exactly above the ones below.  To do this I slid in extra-long rods through the holes in both decks and adjusted them until everything lined up.  Then the island could be permanently glued in place.

The remaining stanchions were drilled through and installed, completing the stern structures.  Photoetched stairways and railings add detail and a sense of scale.  The one stanchion that is a bit askew was later corrected after examining this photo.

Continuing up and in, the large C deck house was built in the usual sequence.  I am finally happy with how the dark windows and doors set off the grey of the troop ship side.

The aft end of this deck house is labelled on the plans as the ‘veranda’, with a feature that I could not understand.  There were no photographs of the area because it is deep under the overhang of the deck above.  I chose to interpret it as casual seating with a plain wooden bench for the troops but upholstered seating for the paying customers.  No one will see it, but I will know that it is there.

The deck house was installed, leaving an even wider and longer open space than the walkway below.  At the perimeter of the ship ten pillars support the overhanging B deck and divide the area into sections.   The edging is quite low, almost at deck level for most of the length of the area, but with raised solid railings in two of the sections.

Rather than being a promenade, as is present on most ocean liners, this open area houses some of the many lifeboats that the ship carried, even as the Vaterland.   Was this a change made during construction in response to the Titanic sinking only two years before her launch?  The exterior location and ‘added on’ look of the boat cranes that you can see in the photos perhaps points in that direction.  An interesting question, but one I do not have time to explore now.

The port side received the same pillars and railings, only in grey rather than white.  Now I could give the entire troop ship side its coat of dark grey primer.  This visually flattened out all of the rivets, portholes, doors and moldings that I worked so hard on, leaving only a sense of rough texture.  This was just the look I was going for.

With the B deck piece set in place you can see how the solid and open areas are forming and defining the unique look of the ship.

It turns out that this is a good point to pause in the structural construction.  B deck actually extends out beyond the lower hull.  The overhang is only about 18 inches on each side, but it makes a distinct shadow line that appears in this photo and many others, and has to be accounted for on the model.  

Above this line the design of the ship gets very complicated and intricate, so I took the opportunity to do the final painting on the lower hull while the masking was easy.
 
Next time – the dazzle scheme.
 
Till then, be well.
 
Dan
 

Cargo Winches
 
The kit provides some nice castings for the winches, although they are pretty small they still provided 3 separate parts which makes them much more realistic:

 
The casting are dimensionally correct for length and width but when I placed one next to a cargo hatch I realized that I would have to raise them a bit so that the capstan heads are at least as high as the top edge of the hatches. A piece of 1/16” wood glued to the bottom raised them 1 scale foot which was just right. I made the wood slightly narrower than the bottom of the winches so that I could add some triangular gusset plates for a little more detail (the holes are so I can pin them to the deck since they will be under tension):

 
The only detailing I did on these was to add the vertical steam manifold, some associated piping, the throttle lever and the drum brake lever. Their small size and the fact that there are 10 of them kept me from spending any more time trying to detail them - they are good enough:

 
After painting I placed on wrap of the rigging thread I will be using for wire rope on each winch drum since I could not wrap them in place. I will not glue the drums in place until I rig the associated boom, then I can just lay the rigging under the drum, glue the drum to the winch and then draw the thread tight and glue it in place.
 

The result after grinding on the photo:

Taken on our recent trip to South Australia, these are the sad remains of the paddle steamer 'Wagga Wagga' near the bank of the Murrumbidgee River at Narrandera in New South Wales.
 
Not much is known about the early history of this steamer.  She was a typical Murray/Darling cargo steamer, built about 1884 and used for towing barges of timber, wool and produce, mainly on the Murrumbidgee River.  She was finally abandoned when she sprung a leak and sank at Narrandera in November 1918.
 

 
This is one of the few photos of the 'Wagga Wagga' when she was in service.

 
John

Just caught up on your build, doing a super job.

Individual Hatch Covers
 
 
I needed to make 81 individual hatch covers to account for the ones removed from the open hatches. I dragged my feet on it because I knew it would be pretty tedious but then I found this tool, the Chopr, from Micromark for about $20 and it did the trick for me:
 

 
It was just a matter of finding some strip wood of the right width, sanding it down to a scale thickness of about 4”, staining it and then chopping it to length with my new toy. It only took about 5 minutes and the cuts were so smooth that no sanding was required. I blackened the ends with a Sharpie pen to simulate the angle iron reinforcements and used a piece of wire to press the 2 corner depressions for the lifting straps in the ones that would be on top of the stacks and then glued them together in sloppy stacks. It must have been hairy work removing those covers in the rain where one man had to walk on a slick hatch beam over the hold. These stacks will be placed in the scuppers near the open hatches in a random fashion.

Cargo Hatches
 
After too long away from this build it’s time to get back to work so I’ll start with some modifications to the cargo hatches.
 
The kit provides some nicely laser-etched wood that replicates the individual hatch covers, they are mounted on a smaller supporting piece:

 
I’m going to show hatch nr1 as “secured for sea” with the hatch covered by it’s tarp. Using the appropriate width of Tamiya tape, with each piece overlapping the previous one to the smallest degree possible, I was able to get the effect I was looking for - a tarp with prominent seams. There is more to do on this hatch to include the straps that hold the tarp in place but I’ll get to that later.
 


 
Hatch nr2 will be partly open with 2 rows of hatch covers removed and hatch nr4 will be completely open with all the hatch covers off.
During my photo research I came across a lot of different styles for hatch beams to include oblong weight reduction holes, beams shaped like trapezoids, and some with bars and rod braces. Fortunately for me the ones used on the Hopkins were about as simple as possible; I-beams with circular holes and the ends notched to fit into the beam brackets so it was simple to fabricate them out of plastic I-beam stock. With the exception of 1 beam left in place on hatch nr2 the rest will be placed on the deck, where with the hatch covers they were just stacked on the unengaged side while the hatch was open. The beam brackets are just plastic strip.



Next I will fabricate the individual hatch covers that will be shown in stacks and modify the hatches some more.

Well I finally found a hobby that is even more expensive and time consuming than messing around with model boats - messing around with a real boat. After several months of unanticipated costs and hiccups I finally have my new boat the way I want it so I have time to get back to my old boat (model).
 
I finished up the aft deckhouse, the only things left to add are the .50 cal machine guns and the single strand lifeline around the big gun tub, which is too delicate to add this early. The kit plans did not include any stanchions under the forward part of the deck overhang but pix of the real ships and common sense made it easy to figure out where to place them. The line reels are aftermarket PE. The flagstaff, stern light, ammo hoist and 4" ready service racks are scratch. I decided to paint the RS racks in navy Haze Gray since, like the gun itself, I figured they would have been pulled out of Navy stores (or off a mothballed 4-stack DD) and craned aboard at the last minute since like the Hopkins' weapons suite was a grab bag of whatever was available and had no similarity to the "standard" Lib ship suite that started to appear just a few months after the Hopkins was delivered.

Final Foc’sle details and Main Deckhouse
 
I wanted to include the breakwater and the roller fairleads to the foc’sle. The fairleads help direct the mooring lines straight onto the capstan heads and can also be used to pull anywhere up to 90 degrees off the axis of the capstan. You can see both of them here:

I scratched the breakwater out of plastic sheet:

 
The roller fairleads were a little harder until I found some small walnut bullseyes in my spare parts locker. The main body is just some wood rod turned down with a Dremel. The bullseye is fitted on top. The piece of metal that helps keep the mooring line from slipping off is just brass rod flattened. The donut hole in the top of the bullseye is filled in with putty. The bottoms are angled because the fairleads have a "tilt" to them to help keep the lines from slipping off.

The finished products:

I added the main deckhouse to the deck. It is also pinned with some brass rod since it will be under tension with the rigging and its weight is enough that it might work loose otherwise. As always, when sanding a flat surface to match a cambered deck I always get one corner that is a little high (or 3 that are a little low) which leaves a gap where it meets the deck. If it is small enough I generally just use some white glue which, although transparent, gives the optical illusion of a solid, which works really well if you have 2 different colors involved. If the surfaces are not pre-painted (like they are here) I usually fill the gap with wood filler or a shaved piece of wood. In this case I just covered it with the thinnest piece of strip styrene on hand (not shown in this pic). It is not really noticeable and is often “correct” in that many deck to bulkhead joints have a flange piece extending up the bulkhead up to a foot high.

The only details I added to the deck house a this point are the deck supports. The gussets are part of a kit-suppied laser cut plastic fashion piece that covers the deck edge. As always a photo picks up flaws that I would otherwise miss. Looks like I'll have to fill in some gaps along the 01 level deck edge.

Thanks for all the kind words Carl, Nils & JPAM.
 
Foc'sle
 
I placed the anchor windlass in position and added the anchor chain. I was a little surprised to find no evidence of chain stoppers on the Liberty's, apparently they just let the anchors ride on the windlass brakes - must have made for some excitement in heavy seas.

The forward gun tub was next to be added. I'll wait on adding the guns to the very end of the build because they are fragile and I don't want to have to try and dust them.

There are a few more items to add in the bow area and then I will probably add the main deckhouse.

Anchor Windlass - final
 
The final details have been added to the windlass.
 The capstan heads and hand wheels are after-market, the brake bands, hand cranks and other stuff are scratch.
 


 
 

Eric, I think you nailed it on the deck planking, looks great!
Steve