Cathead

I've started test-fitting the beams that support the guards. I'd initially planned to use single beams run all the way across the hull, set into the slots I laid out. But I got to thinking, does it need to be that way? It'd save a lot of wood to leave the center of each slot open and use a shorter piece on each side. The photo below shows both options: I'm thinking the right-hand option makes perfect sense. The deck planking will be plenty well supported; is there any need to actually fill all that middle space? Here's one side of the guard beams (mostly) test-fit this way. Notice the spacer block I'm using to get the ends parallel. What do you all think?

Fantastic work. Getting anyone DMing you about custom workshop jobs?

Kurt, no worries, you haven't missed much! Happy to have your insights as I proceed.

Yep, that's why I'm not worried too much about minor flaws in artisanship. I want this vessel to look cobbled together, well-used, and very local.

Planking is finished. Took many small bits of time, a few planks here and there in the evening, letting the glue set and coming back to do another. Once I had them all on I sanded things reasonably smooth, including knocking back the filler pieces to match the edge of the planking. The hardest bits were the parts where the planks dip past the waterline at the bow and stern. For these, I just glued full planks past the bottom of the hull, then carefully shaved them down flush once the glue dried. Next I gave a first coat of white paint. I plan to sand this down again and reapply another coat. Paint tends to bring out small imperfections in the planking, but on the other hand, this was a rough-built boat and these may actually give it that feel. A too-perfect hull would look awfully...naval. And again, most of this will be in the shadow of the overhanging guards. I also painted the bottom black, to help create a shadow effect underneath when viewed from the side, hiding any slight unevenness of the hull bottom or sides. This photo has a messed-up color balance because of the white/black contrast but you get the idea. Next step is a light sanding, another coat of thin paint, and another sanding. When I'm happy with it, I'll start adding the guard/deck beams. Thanks for reading!

Best wishes and glad to see you back at work!

So very, very cool. I look forward to a full photo essay when she's truly complete.

I think every one of my models has some of my blood in it. I've decided that's a good thing.

Hmm...I think my concern is that cosmetics and house-cleaning products aren't meant to have a long life when applied high-value surfaces. Both initially stay in tight containers, then tend to get washed off pretty quickly after application. Unless you know any women who keep their makeup on for 30 years without taking a shower?

To help clarify Roger's excellent question, I whipped up a diagram of how ovens like this work. On the left, you heat the oven with an internal fire. The masonry dome and firebrick floor absorb that heat, while the chimney carries away the smoke. On the right, once the interior is heated, you remove or push back the coals, close off the chimney with a metal door, and whatever food you place inside cooks from radiative heat. Ideally, an oven like this should hold temperature for at least 6-8 hours, declining very slowly. So for example, you start with pizza at >700°F, shift to loaves of bread as it declines into the 450-500 range, then replace that with low/slow cooking items like a venison roast or a big pan of mixed root vegetables. When the oven gets low enough, you put the next round of firewood in so it completely dries in the remaining ambient heat, ready for the next round another day. So with one firing using a small armload of wood, you can cook all day and produce large quantities of food for the rest of the week. Far more efficient than an electric/gas oven and the heat stays out of the house. If you visit a restaurant that uses these, like a nice pizza place, you'll generally see a small fire burning in their oven even as they cook. That's because they need to maintain the same temperature all day. But in a home oven where I don't have to produce pizza on demand from 11 am to 10 pm, a single firing will suffice if the cooking plan is set up to take advantage. And it doesn't always have to be that way, the oven is efficient enough that just firing it for a pizza lunch remains sensible. Wood is an inexhaustible natural resource here and in the natural course of our timber management for forest health we produce all the firewood we could possibly want for home heating and cooking.

Happy birthday and great work on the blocks. I enjoy seeing how folks improve on kits. I wonder, on the potato sails, whether there's any long-term concerns about biological effects, like attraction to insects or mold/fungus? The visual effect is lovely.

Very nice! Much better than my attempt at a similar product.

Our biggest hangup on the true DIY wasn't the shape, we figured we could build a decent form one way or another. It was the nature of the dome material. This has to be right, as it takes the brunt of the fire's heat, and if it cracks later on you've got a deep problem (pun intended). Plus, we found various DIYers referring to have some material spalling off their dome on the inside, and the first time you crack a tooth on a piece of sand or something you've just paid for a professional dome but it went to your dentist instead. The dome we ordered is made from a high-end proprietary material and designed by experts, they sell these to private and commercial users all over the world. This isn't a part where it's easy to just start over if you screw something up. So we felt a lot better about the quality and reliability of that particular piece, knowing (believing?) that we could do the rest ourselves.

Fair question. The fire is built within the dome, heating it internally. You don't cook directly with the flames or coals (like a grill) but with the radiative heat retained in the dome. The masonry and insulation hold the heat for many hours, so once you've fired it, you can roast/bake/cook for a very long time. Potentially 8 hours or more. The rounded shape helps ensure even circulation and heating. If you build a hot fire at one end and put food in right away, you'd get very uneven cooking. Ovens have been used this way for thousands of years in various cultures. Some cultures also built barrel vaulted ovens, but these are harder to cook evenly in because the heat doesn't circulate right. I know, we built a homemade version as a test case years ago and that's what happened. Barrel vaults are so much easier to make, but ours proved to us that the firing and cooking wasn't even enough and we wanted a true dome. Which is one reason we went with a kit instead of a true DIY because a DIY true dome is a lot harder to engineer, so we compromised between true DIY and a completely premade oven, which would be both far more expensive and nowhere near as satisfying. The chimney carries away the heat and draft from the active fire, but once it's time to bake/roast, you close the dome off from the chimney with the metal door seen in my photo above, retaining the heat within. At that point no more air or draft is needed because the fire isn't needed. To answer a related question that gets asked a lot, the space beneath the dome is not directly related to firing or baking (i.e. the fire does not get built down there). It's just empty space created by the foundation, no point in making that a solid mass. The most common use for it is storing firewood. The traditional cycle is that, once the oven has started to cool and you're done using it, the next round of firewood is placed within the dome, where the residual heat cures it extra-dry and it's ready to go. The space down below holds many rounds worth of wood out of the rain and so forth.

Planking has begun. It took me a little while to figure out how to clamp planks to this solid hull. I'm more used to bulkhead construction where clamping is easy. I finally figured out that some large binder clips would engulf the entire hull, pressing down on the planks in the middle. I'm doing both sides simultaneously. It's sporadic; cut/glue/clamp a couple planks, let them dry a while, come back and do a few more. As photos tend to do, this one below is bringing out a few minors faults, like a bit of gap at the most extreme curve in the bow, and the somewhat angular transition from flat center deck to the rise of the bow, despite my attempts to sand that to a smoother curve. I don't find these as obvious in person and they'll be partly hidden anyway by a combination of paint and the overhanging guards. Overall this is going smoothly. Got a busy day today but will probably be able to get a few more on between other tasks. Thanks for reading!

Absolutely, but this speaks more to the quality of the manufacturer/kit than to the style of the kit. You'll get a more accurate hull from a manufacturer who produces a well designed/produced POB or solid-hull kit, and you'll get a less accurate hull from a manufacturer who produces a sloppy version of either. And in either case the modeler can always improve a sloppy kit with enough work. Everyone's personal experience is certainly valid. Mine has been that I find POB easier, more intuitive, more enjoyable, and more educational than solid-hull.

Back on track, here's the first round of stucco freshly laid. We've been keeping it misted when we can, and wrapped it more thoroughly with plastic to help maintain humid curing conditions. Here it is initially cured this morning. The next round won't happen until Monday, we'll need to take some time away from work to do it, can't get to it today. Looking like a proper oven, though!

Speaking just for myself, and for the sake of argument, I'd generally rather plank a bulkhead hull than deal with a rough-cut solid hull. To me, if the bulkheads are reasonably accurate, the natural run of the planks creates a reasonable hull shape. If the planking isn't meant to be seen, then it doesn't have to be perfect and is easy to finish using filler. In comparison, getting a solid hull right means manually getting every inch of the hull shape right, which the natural curve of planking does for you on a bulkhead model. It also strikes me as easer for scratchbuilding, since you can take station lines off a plan and, again, let the planks do the rest, rather than trying to manage every square inch of a solid wood surface. And while rough planking isn't the same as "how the real thing was built", it's a lot closer than sanding down a block of wood! Even my earliest attempts at planking taught me quite a bit about the geometry and physics of bending wood, inspiring an interest to know more. Whereas shaping a solid hull feels more like making a Dutch shoe. I can easily see how things might be different for more modern vessels with, as Roger says, complex hull shapes that don't have the simple lines of a traditional wooden sailing vessel. Interesting economic perspective from Mr. BlueJacket, thank you.

Also known as politicians' attitude toward the public. But I digress... Brian, it's certainly true that people have been building ovens for thousands of years without ceramic insulation. We discussed, at great length, the option to do this entirely from scratch with traditional methods. But the outcome would have been far more uncertain and we already do so many things that way. For once we compromised and bought a kit, with the inevitable tradeoffs that involves. And yes, I would pause at the thought of my pizza bearing a certain odeur de cheval. As for mushrooms, we actually do raise shiitakes and oysters, but we do them on outdoor logs.

Agreed. And the oven kit came with about twice as much as we needed, which is frustrating since it's a waste of energy to ship all that excess across the country and now we have to either find someone who would want it (time investment) or chuck it (what a waste).

OK, nearly a month later, but we took a major step forward by completing the insulation and preparing for the stucco outer shell. The first step was to cut away the excess ceramic insulation board around the dome: Then we started adding layers of ceramic insulation blanket; there should be a minimum of three inches all the way around. This stuff is nasty with lots of microfibers coming off that can cause skin, eye, and lung irritation, so protective gear is required. Not ideal for summer, we'd hoped to get to this before early July, but that's how it turned out. It also shreds everywhere and I spent a long time collecting fragments from across the landscape when we were done; you can see some on the concrete pad and imagine how many quickly floated off into the surrounding area. Once the insulation was complete, it was time to cover the insulation with a tight layer of wire mesh, to hold it down in place and provide a base for the stucco. This was a difficult job because such stiff mesh does not like to form nice spheroidal shapes. Step one was to place a screen across the whole front and wrap the rest in an upright cylinder: This is held on by concrete screws and washers around the face and the lower perimeter: Then we used hand and power tools to cut the mesh into strips that could be folded over the dome then secured and tightened in place by lots of wire ties. Here it's almost done, except I haven't cut out the door area yet. It was very difficult to get the shape consistent and I don't think we succeeded entirely, but like scale model projects, at some point you accept "good enough" and realize that most people won't notice a lack of perfection. And here it's actually fully ready for the stucco: We weren't able to get to the stucco right away, so hung plastic sheeting around the least-protected sides to make sure any rain couldn't dampen the insulation. We're in a severe drought, but the forecast held various chances, so we took the precaution. Nothing came of it, but no harm in being careful. We've actually begun the stucco now, and so far so good, but I'll share that work in a separate post when it's all done. We're letting the base coats cure right now and will do the finish coat soon.

A little progress made on the holiday. I was going to start planking the hull when I realized I needed to add the support posts for the rudders at the stern. I have no imagery showing these, so am just copying Bertrand and giving her four. These will be barely visible but I'd feel wrong leaving them out. I cut four very small pieces and hand carved/sanded them to match the slight inward curve of the stern: One benefit of a waterline model is that it sits nice and flat on a workbench, making it easier to get details squared away! I like this feature... And here are the completed rudder posts: Next I planked in the stern, leaving some overlap from the final planking run: Then trimmed/sanded the planking flush with the bottom and sides of the hull: Next step is to add a stempost and then start planking. Unless I think of anything else I should do first. Happy July 4th to my American (and British!) readers, and thanks for following along.

I missed the beginning but am thrilled to be catching up. This is way outside my wheelhouse which means I'll get to learn a bunch.

Yeah, I feel like I'm going to be really happy with that approach. She's definitely a much smaller vessel; as a reminder Peerless was 21'x97' (hull) as compared to Arabia (31'x181') or Bertrand (33'x161'), so 30% narrower and 40% shorter than the latter. Here's a photo of the hull next to Bertrand (same scale). In model terms, you're right, she's a lot closer to that tiny Cairo than the other steamboats, though at least the scale is bigger so the details are easier to work with. Sure doubles down on having more workspace in the new workshop!

Video is a great way to highlight a finished model, what a cool idea. Now I want to do that for a couple of mine. Just gives so much more real-feeling context for a three-dimensional object. Agree that it looks spectacular.