Cathead

An extra-nice detail: in the "Ladies Cabin" location on the boiler deck (go inside the main cabin and head toward the stern), there's an 1845 painting of fur traders on the Missouri River by Missouri artist George Caleb Bingham on the wall. A slightly odd choice as Chaperon was an Ohio River boat in a much later era, but as I love Bingham's work documenting scenes of American western rivers during the early steamboat period, it was really cool to see this one hanging there.

That is really wild! Thanks for sharing.

No idea, never tried to do what you're trying.

Just catching up after spending a few stressful weeks dealing with an in-law crisis. Your work looks great and I empathize with trying to get a detail right that you know isn't quite how you want it.

Sorry for the late reply, I've been away for a few weeks dealing with a major crisis with my in-laws. I'm no expert, but I believe hull planking was commonly ~20-30' long, bourne out by various comments on this thread: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/14226-questions-about-plank-lengths/ EDIT: Also found this nice story in American Scientist magazine about the Beagle, might of interest to you.

Congratulations on finishing! Always a good feeling.

Thanks so much for updating this! Missed hearing from you. Lovely work.

That's beautiful. As you say, I really like how the different lighting conditions bring out different aspects of the plating. You're also spot-on with the podcast idea; for me it's audiobooks but the concept is the same.

The standard method for simulating treenails often uses a drawplate, but that probably wouldn't work if you intend them to work structurally rather than aesthetically. If you're going to sacrifice authenticity for practicality in this case by abandoning rivets, why not just use glue and simulate the rivets? It'd be a heckuva lot easier and would look more authentic. I can't help on your actual question, I have no experience with that.

Good idea. Here's a few quick shots on the floor (too hot and sunny to go outside). They were similarly sized: Arabia: Length 171', beam 29' (hull; with guards, around 48'), tonnage 222 Bertrand: Length 161', beam 32' (hull; with guards, around 40'), tonnage 251 I also made a mistake in the last post (now corrected); Bertrand was built at 1:87, not 1:72.

Two last shots of Arabia in her display location in my model/nautical corner of the house. We might move her somewhere else once I get a full case figured out, but this is good for now. I like that the bookcase opens on both sides so it's easy to view the open and closed sides of the model. Out of shot on a lower shelf is my model of Bertrand, another open/closed sided steamboat, so the two go well together here. Note that the Arabia and the revenue cutter behind her are the same scale (1:64); I think it's a fun visual comparison. Some of you asked about my next project. Having bought a Byrnes table saw over the winter, I had been planning to shift to scratch-building full-time using wood harvested on my farm. I have billets of maple, cherry, and various fruitwoods that have been drying for up to two years and will provide all the modelling wood I could possibly use. My goal was for the cost of the saw to replace the cost of kits and wood in our budget, which it should. There are a variety of interesting Missouri River craft on the agenda, including the boats used by the Lewis & Clark expedition and some smaller steamboats used on tributaries of the Missouri River. However, the last few months have been extremely stressful for reasons from personal to global, and my brain is a bit fried with trying to keep track of this complicated build. Moreoever, the libraries and historical societies I might otherwise visit to do primary research in Missouri craft are closed or restricted. So I bought one last kit as a simpler relaxation project: the Dusek Viking longship in 1:35 scale (note that the scale of my builds keeps going up, from 1:87 Bertrand to 1:64 Arabia to 1:35 Viking ship; this could be a problem down the road). I am of Norse descent (my beloved grandfather was extremely proud of his heritage), my father-in-law was a scholar of Old English and the Saxon period, and I'm a huge fan of Bernard Cornwell's long "Saxon Tales" series of historical novels (better known as "The Last Kingdom" once a TV show based on it was launched). So this will have some meaning for me while at least letting me follow someone else's instructions. I do plan to make some modifications for authenticity/uniqueness and to replace some of the kit wood with my own home-cut-and-milled; I may also use the plans to build several versions using my own wood. I'll launch a build log eventually, but will likely be dormant for a while. The next few weeks will involve helping my elderly in-laws move closer to us, which would be a massive enough undertaking if there wasn't an ongoing pandemic, so I don't think I'll have a lot of free time until sometime in July. I'll post a build log link here once I start it, for anyone who wants to follow along. Thanks once more for your support and interest.

Seems reasonable from what you've described.

No worries, thought I'd mention it just in case.

Great choice, looking forward to following along. In case you're interested, MSW user Kurt Van Dahm has a great digital guide to building this model that has a lot of useful tips and insights for this kit; I highly recommend it. Here's a link where he describes it and explains how to order.