Rudolf

Here are some of the deck elements.

I made two options for windows rats - cameras on the aft shells. I haven't yet decided what color I will choose for them.

Greetings, dear colleagues. I have made anchor closures. The absence of a lathe makes me look for other manufacturing options. First I made tubes of various sizes. Then I soldered a wire belt. I made one version of brass. I tried it looks  nice, but not authentic, on the ships they were made out of lead.  I'll try another version of iron so it's closer in color.Then I'll choose between  the two.

I have made protective grilles for the skylights.
For now I just made a fitting before blackening. Or maybe it's better not to blacken ?

I have made a galley stove. I had to redo it again, because of the failure on blackening stage. The first option had to be rejected. The technology is simple, all the details are soldered.  

The first option was canceled. Second option.    

I tried to cover it with oil. But the oil had highlighted some defects of the wood. I will probably have to replace some elements.

Hi guys,
 
as promised: here come more details and my current progress.
 
As I've said, I found the plans for the sloop on the internet. Via screenshot and Paint I secured the topview, sideview and "ribview" (pease give me the correct english words, if you may) in a seperate file and pronted the ribview to measure the dimensions and rescale the three plans to 1/35th scale. As noone would have guessed, this went wrong xD the topview came out in 1/35th, the ribview in 1/35,6 and the sideview in 1/47,9. So I measured them all again and re-drew them in said CAD programme. There I "built" it in 1/1 scale and let the PC do the magic to rescale them to 1/35th scale. Why easy, when you can make it difficult.
 

This is the sideview. Don't be confused, the stempost was too complex for the programme (or me) and will be taken directly from the original plans. the dotted lines show the height of the deck and cabins, the same hight minus the thickness of the planking (I took 6cm for deck planking and 3cm for the cabins, which scales to around 1,7mm for the decks and 0,9mm for the cabins)
You will notice the coloured lines. These are also marked in the two other plans and will help me to draw all needed bulkheads.
 

This is the plan for the backbone. It will be made out of 4mm thick plywood. All needed bulkheads are marked. The dotted lines extend to the topview to draw the tapering on each bulkhead.

This is the topview, again with all the coloured lines. At the points, where each dotted line coming from the bulkheads cross a coloured line, a line will orthogonally run to the ribview, where it will cross this same coloured line again. This will form the outline of each bulkhead.

This is said ribview template.
 

This is the template for the deck and cabins, already with a sketch for the planking. If you compare it to the original topview plan, you will see, that I took artistic license with the rear cabin.

From the original plans it is not clear, where the sides of the rear cabin are. Are they formed by the outlines of the ship (so does the cabine use the complete breadth of the ship) or any other construction? Is the roof flat or more a dome? Like are the side edges of the roof at deck level? There is not even an information about how it was entered (compared to the midship cabin, where there is this semicircular gangway-type of thing).
 
Wikipedia sais, that those packet ships could be used for passenger transportation too. So my guess is, that the rear cabin was used by the crew (as it is smaller) and the cabin amidships was used for passengers. Maybe it had some windows, a couple of simple beds and something like that.
Another question concerning the rear part is that of the tiller handle. In the sideview, you can see, that it runs hardly above the rear cabins roof (maybe around 5 - 10 cm above it) and merely protruding beyond its front edge. I think, this way the tiller would be hard to handle. Maybe someone can point me towards a possible solution. At the moment, I think about extending it a bit, so that the helmsman could stand before the cabine and handle the tiller.
 
The last thing I've already drawn are the top edges of bulkhead H to L, which form the walls and roof curvature of the midship cabin.

The red line is the water line. My plan is to draw the outlines of the bulkheads in the above mentioned manner on semi-transparent paper and lay this sketch then on top of these templates. In the bottom right is the template for the deck's curvature. The X marks the highest point of the deck, which will be taken from the sideview plan.
 
Yesterday, I tried to calculate the proportions of the mast and yards according to the charts Wolfram zu Mondfeld provides in his book. There are some big question marks concerning my results, but I will post them later.
 
Stay tuned!

The railing is attached reasonably well using superglue and a hand clamp to hold warped parts in correct position.

Time to stop and take an assessment of where she stands before the railings, smoke stacks and the stages with their lifting, and moving gear.  Also, all the rigging, those are things that make it look like a steam boat to me.  I am at step 44.
 
I like to photograph while I build because you can see things in the pics that you don't see otherwise.  She looks a little rough in places, but that is somewhat the fault of the kit and a fault of mine.  Again, when all the parts and rigging is complete, the confusion blends everything together and all is forgiven.
 
A funny thing I found while going over the build so far, taking a line down the center from bow to stern, the cabin sits about 1/16 off center to starboard. I noticed this also when adding the side chains.  The port side chains are a bit longer than the starboard.  I guessing it is the kit and not me.
 
I used Micro Soft Word to make the name boards on the pilot house.  I wanted to add people behind the railings before I glued the railings on, but they are not here today.  They are coming from China and are a mail stop away.
 
Well, when she is finished and in her case she will look good I think.  I am mostly pleased at my Robt. E. Lee so far.





 

Added some bull rails along the main deck.


 

Pyro's big pad eyes replace by filling holes and inserting smaller hand made ones.

Brass side chains shaped and chemically blackened.  Turnbuckles coming today.

The hurricane deck, the roof of the texas and pilot house are blue. (Tamiya AS-19 intermediate blue spray) The roof of the pilot house was described by a reporter, during the race, as "beautiful sky blue" in Benton Rain Patterson's book.  The hurricane deck was the roof of the boiler deck.

The starboard side chains are in place.   At this point I ran into a bit more warpage and fit issues, but taken as a whole the boat still looks ok.

These are the turnbuckles for the side chains.  A paper guide was used for uniform positioning.
 

The pilot house, texas and hurricane deck are temporarily placed together to see how things will look later.  The skylights above the hurricane deck were colored in black. Doing temporary set-ups helps to get a feel of how things are going, and is inspiration to keep plugging away.

Port and starboard side chains.

The rear of the boiler deck is in place with its wood deck.  (The decks from the bottom up are the main deck, the boiler deck, the hurricane deck, the texas and the pilot house. The boilers are on the main deck, the cabins on the boiler deck. ) This model is a series of parts stacked on or leaning against each other.  The fit is reasonably good, some places difficult, and there is warpage, sink holes, flash, and ejection pin marks to deal with. This kit is 61 years old. Since the fit of one piece depends on another's location, get the first out of place and the next is out of place.   Taken as a whole it looks ok so far I think. Not perfect. Also, you need to paint a piece, let it cure then glue it in place. A bit time-consuming when you can build another type model as a unit, then paint it.
 
This is coming along one step at a time.

The  remainder of the boiler deck, and its wood deck in place.  I used a plastic deck from my Lindberg parts.  The Pyro plastic deck was warped and more stiff than the Lindberg deck.

 

The first board for the rowers is laid. It is made of maple, and the wooden nails are made of ash.

I glued the wood deck on.  I did not get it lined up right before the glue grabbed.  I am not too good with adding extra purchased detail like photo etch and decks. 
 
It's not too noticeable when more of the parts are on. But it is a disappointment. It could have been better. It's one of those errors you make and live with, move on or quit.  Moving on.

Pyro did not put doors where they show on my plans. They look to be doors to the engine room.  I added them by sanding off some doors and windows from spare parts I had.

Preparing parts for assembly.

Parts painted ready for more assembly.