Cathead

Is there any mechanical reason it would matter? I assume the flywheels are equally balanced/constructed around their circumference, so in theory it wouldn't matter, but it seems an interesting quirk.

Thanks, Jim. I sure don't know anything about Australian river craft. The most obscure steamboat reference I remember came while reading a history of the Ottoman Empire. The author, in passing, mentioned the British using shallow-draft steamboats both as gunboats and troop transports on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers during their WWI Mesopotamian campaigns against the Ottomans. Crackers, I've never heard that, and a quick internet search didn't turn up anything, so can neither confirm nor deny.

Kurt, that's a good point, I should probably coat my lines anyway to help them hold up. Redoing them would be...distressing.

Crackers, no, the two are very different riggings and incompatible. Any landing stage (hoisted gangplank) would interfere with the grasshopper rigging. Louis Hunter states that landing stages only came into use in the 1870s, and Bertrand was built in 1864. Also, I've only ever seen such stages on lower-river boats, where they probably partially served as an accomodation to fancy passengers. Most boats heading up the Missouri probably had grasshoppers. It is an interesting question whether Bertrand was initially built with grasshoppers, as it was originally intended for the Ohio River trade. It was later purchased by a new owner and placed into the Missouri trade, so it's possible it was refitted with grasshoppers at St. Louis before heading up the Missouri. I've found no discussion of that anywhere in literature about Bertrand, so we'll never know. In any case, my model represents Bertrand as she might have appeared on her final voyage in 1865, so the grasshoppers are certainly accurate for that. As stated above, most steamboat model kits focus on lower Mississippi or Ohio River boats, from a later era when photographs and records make designing the model easier, and so those are far more likely to have landing stages, like Chaperon does.

Grasshopper spars Western river boats often dealt with very low water conditions. The upper Missouri River, in particular, was characterized by shallow, ever-shifting channels among myriad islands and bars. Running aground was a fact of life, even for boats like the Bertrand with less than 5' draft even fully loaded. Boats needed to be able to cross bars, not just back off them, as the water simply wasn't deep enough for regular navigation. Thus, specialized equipment was developed for upper-river boats to handle these conditions. Louis C. Hunter provides a good general description of grasshopper spars, so-called because of their appearance like grasshopper legs on the boat: Also, at times, the wheel would be reversed, sending a strong current of water forward under the bow, in hopes of washing away some of the bar and freeing the boat that way. Grasshopper spars could also be used to push a boat backward off a bar if desired. Hunter also notes that: The hull shape of western river boats helped here, too, as the flat bottom slid more easily over bars and the long, flexible hull could actually slither over them in a way that would break a strong-keeled ocean vessel. Here are the grasshopper spars I built for Bertrand. No one knows exactly how hers were rigged, but these are based on contemporary examples: Each spar is suspended from a boom, which in turn is supported by two lines to the hurricane deck. These lines, with blocks and tackle, could be adjusted horizontally and vertically to place the spar as needed. A separate line with blocks connects the spar to the boom; this line runs back to cleats near the chimneys and is used raise and lower the spar. Finally, a fourth line runs from the spar down to a block on the deck; this line is used to raise the boat on the spar. There is a steam-driven capstan at the bow, whose engine is below-decks, connected to the boilers, used to run these various lines. So to use the spars, one would: · Position the booms away from the hull, with the spars suspended over the bar. · Lower the spars until they rest firmly in the river sediment. · Connect the lowest lines to the capstan, and haul in to hoist the boat up onto the spars, while driving forward with the wheel. · Lower the boat, then use the capstan to raise the spars again, repositioning them manually, going back to step one. · Repeat as often as needed to get over the bar. Repeat for however many bars you strike on the way to Montana. Rigging these spars was really tricky, as both the booms and the spars essentially hang in mid-air from their lines. I used a few clamp to balance the booms in place, as shown below, until I could get their lines tightened. Once I hung the spars, I attached clothespins to their base to add more weight and ensure they hung down properly (the wood is pretty light). All of these were shaped from square stock and stained. I also hand-made the blocks, the first time I’ve tried this. They’re not real pretty, but they get the job done and have about the same optical accuracy as the rest of the model; within 6” you can tell things are hand-made, beyond that it looks great. Good enough for my purposes. Doing this took forever, though, lots of fussy adjusting of blocks and lines to get the two dangling booms and spars into comparable orientations. At the end, I glued the spars to the side of the deck for more stability; I just don’t trust them dangling out there on their own, and they’re not heavy enough to hand properly anyway. I’ll include the chimney braces in this chapter, too, as they’re pretty straightforward and the photo also shows the coils I made on the hurricane deck for the boom lines. I did these by carefully coiling line onto double-sided tape, which held each loop in place until I got the diameter I wanted. Then I brushed each coil with wood glue and let it dry before peeling the coil off the tape and gluing it in place. You’ll see another example of this when I write about rigging the yawls. Grasshopper spars are a pain, but they really add visual interest to the model. And it’s something that makes this kind of upper-river boat unique; I haven't seen any steamboat kits out there based on boats with these spars; they’re all lower-river packets that didn’t have to worry about shallow-river navigation. But grasshopper spars were essential to the river traffic between St. Louis and western Montana, so they’re a fun detail to add and understand. One other detail to discuss here: the jackstaff. Seen in the first photo, this is the large white pole mounted at the bow, with a ball partway up it. I’ll let Louis C. Hunter explain this, too, as I can’t improve upon his words: If you look carefully, you’ll see that the red ball is at about the same height as the pilot house. I made the jackstaff by shaping a long square piece of stock, rounding it at the top and middle, while leaving a square section at the ball’s location, and at the base. Then I glued chunks of wood all around the ball’s location, creating a big box, from which I carved and sanded the final ball. In the next update, I'll add the yawls, letter the name, cut & stack some firewood, and so on.

Nice update. Interesting research on the boilers, that's something I hadn't considered either. Thanks for keeping us informed and learning. Looking at a couple paintings of Yellowstone, it does appear that the boilers (if represented accurately) stretch across the entire width of deck above the main hull, contrary to my concern that such an arrangement would take up too much of the narrow deck space available. I, for one, heartily approve of including the repair. Whether or not it's literally accurate, it's highly representative of the boat and its times, and isn't that the core function of an educational model? People will learn more by seeing that repair represented, and will not be misled in any meaningful way. Question: looking at the two flywheels, do you know if the spokes lined up or not? Was there any reason to arrange them that way, versus to not care? In what I assume is a test-fit in the photo, they're not quite aligned, and it made me wonder if it mattered one way or another.

Here's another reason to be careful reposting pictures: those photos are still hosted on the original server. That means, whenever someone loads a MSW (or any internet) page with a linked photo, the computer goes and grabs it from the original server, creating traffic for that site. Sometimes, reposting a photo that a whole bunch of people see means really elevated traffic for the original site. Great, right? No. Because some sites, especially smaller or personal ones, have bandwidth restrictions based on what they pay for hosting. If a photo on that site suddenly starts getting a ton of traffic, it can bump that site out of its paid bandwidth, and either shut the site down for overuse, or cause the site's owner to get a bill from the hosting company for extra service provided. As someone who manages his own site for business purposes, and has a lot of photography there, this is a real potential problem. The internet is often compared to a plumbing system. In this case reposting photos is a bit like tapping into someone's water line to taste their water. In small doses it often doesn't matter, but 1. it's still stealing, 2. if you add that straw and lots of other people start using it, you're really stealing and driving up their water bill, and 3. it doesn't benefit them because the other drinkers don't realize whose awesome water they're drinking. We all do this from time to time, it's too easy not to. And sometimes it's from a site that really is public domain or otherwise not a problem. But thanks to Chuck for helping us all think about how and why we do it.

This may be a bad idea, but I've used a sharp knife before to initiate fairing in places where there's a lot of material to be taken off, like near the bow where it's a sharp angle. Using either burn marks or my own pencil line as a guide, I scrape the knife blade along to gently peel off the first wedge of material. With a steady hand it doesn't go too deep, and it saves a lot of initial sanding. The other thing I like about this method is, I find it easier to get about the right initial angle with the knife than working down a sharp corner with sandpaper. There's less stress on the frame, and once the angle is roughly established, the sandpaper already flows across a somewhat smooth surface rather than grinding over a resisting sharp edge. But it's also riskier since you can take off to much with a slip of the hand. Just the two cents of a young amateur. Maybe try it on scrap wood first to see if you can control the knife to your satisfaction? Finally, I found an adjustable stand really helpful. My hand is steadiest at certain angles, and such a stand meant I could position the model in whatever orientation let me hold my hand at its ideal orientation for cutting. I wouldn't want to try it with my wrist at an awkward angle to a static model.

Glorious!

Erik, You're not the only neat freak, though I tend to work in cycles. Mess builds up temporarily while I'm in the middle of a step, then I go on a whirlwind of cleanup to get things trim again. It's about a weekly cycle. My work station, about the size of yours, is right in our living room, which helps motivate the organization. In any case, I'm really intrigued by this new twist on "kits", and will happily learn from your experience. As another model railroader turned ship modeler in the last few years, we're on a similar trajectory! Similar name & age, too, didn't know I had a long-lost twin.

You make use of forums like this, and elsewhere, to research kits and manufacturers. There is a wealth of personal experience and testimony about the subject, here alone much less on the internet at large. You look for build logs for that kit, and read what experience builders had. You then contact those builders and ask their further opinion. You post a general question, if it hasn't already been asked, about a given manufacturer and kit. It's why MSW has this section: Particularly if you aren't experienced with kits, actually handling the kit may or may not teach you much (for example, misunderstanding the laser burn marks as a defect), whereas crowd-sourcing opinions and reviews from many builders will given you a better understanding of the kit or company overall. I've purchased three kits, each of which I researched in this way, and each of them as been as I expected when I opened the box because I did my homework online. In an ideal world, we could all also go to a nice local hobby store with floor-to-ceiling kit boxes to peruse, but almost none of this live in that world. The next best stage is learning from our peers, and I've found that I can trust the folks here to provide useful and accurate information.

If you're judging all possible model kits by the one kit you saw from one manufacturer, that's your loss.

The value is partly intellectual property. What do you value a professional's time at? OK, consider all the hours you would put into figuring out how to scratchbuild a given model, add on more hours to figure out how to represent that process to customers, add on more hours to figure out how to design kit pieces to be easily/cost-effectively manufactured and useful to the customer, add on more hours for drafting accurate plans, and so on. That all has to be in the price of a kit. Most hobby builders (most hobbyists in general) ignore the intellectual cost of what they do, but any good businessperson can't afford to do that. An example from my own experience. I'm a vegetable farmer, among other things. It drives me berserk when someone comes up to a farmers market stand and challenges me as to why X produce is so expensive at Y $/lb, when they easily grow it in their garden or neighbor Bob gives it to them from his garden. Well, those people are hobbyists. They aren't charging themselves a living wage for every hour they spend in the garden, they aren't counting the intellectual time it takes to plan out a full-scale farm, they aren't trying to support a family and health insurance and retirement savings from their fun little garden. It's not a fair comparison. As for contents, those dowels may well be standard hardware store dowels. But the point of a kit, at least most kits, is that it's self-contained. People who buy kits don't necessarily want to open it, and see the instructions start with "now go buy these other things or you can't build the kit". Would you buy a lawnmower that didn't come with sparkplugs, even though they're easy to get at a different store? Of course there's a markup. There's a markup on everything you buy. Pretty much any retail product has a markup of 30-50% from wholesale, because the retailer is an independent business that has to pay for everything involved in modern life from the profits of the business. Then there's a markup over cost to reach the wholesale price, because the manufacturer has to pay for everything involved in modern life, plus the cost of developing the product in the first place. So, yeah, of course the "value" of the kit's contents don't add up to $350 in terms of what's physically there. But only someone who doesn't value others' professional time would think it would. None of which is to say there aren't better and worse kits out there. I know nothing about the kit mentioned above. But, boy, a great way to get under a businessperson's skin is to complain that you could do it cheaper and better yourself. Fine, go do so, and be proud of yourself. I'm in awe of good scratchbuilders. But most of them realize they're paying themselves pennies per hour, whereas everyone involved in designing, producing, and selling a kit is trying to make a living doing it.

Looks nice Paul, good work! As for your question, I installed the floor first, before adding the thwarts or squeezing the hull. It worked well and I had no trouble with the latter, as you're really only changing the shape of the upper-most portion of the hull. And installing the floor after the thwarts would be a real pain. I did, however, wait to install the quarterdeck until after I'd squeezed the hull, as it meets the hull much farther up the sides and I was concerned it would be affected by the reshaping. So I didn't insert the second-to-last thwart (the one that covers part of the quarterdeck) until after I'd shaped the hull. It all worked out fine.

I agree with Bob, I really appreciate the step-by-step photos and detail you're sharing, something I've been far worse about on my build. It's interesting both as a model builder, and it helps me better understand how this machinery works.

Daves, as a business owner myself, I very much support what you've said in this forum. Customer reviews are a double-edged sword. Obviously you want to know what your customers think, but those thoughts aren't always fair, accurate, or well-informed.

Skipper, I don't see it as "justification", necessarily, but rather as an interesting exercise in how and why we make the choices we do. Sometimes, by judging or assessing others, we learn things about ourselves. There's certainly a line that can be crossed, but I don't think it's inherently unreasonable to question why something is done.

One aspect I haven't seen discussed (or possibly I missed) is mental. Now that I'm nearly done with my Bertrand scratchbuild, definitely the most complex model project I've ever tackled, I'm quite looking forward to building something with instructions. The biggest different between scratch and kit building is in your head; in the former you have to think everything through ahead of time, have a complete plan for order of operations, ordering parts, making sure items are ready when you need them, doing steps in the best order, etc. Even a kit with poor instructions gives you some sense of where to proceed next, and the comfort that someone has thought through how that project works (even if they thought about it in another language). I'm taking on Chuck's longboat next, and can't wait for him to tell me what do to for a little while; it's going to be very relaxing after nine months of constantly thinking about the next ten steps in my build. I can easily imagine how many people would enjoy gussying up a kit while still wanting that basic framework of instructions and such. The mental leap to personally "designing a kit" is pretty large, in my opinion. Added thought: I don't at all buy the argument that ship modelling is too expensive. It's only true if you have no sense of personal economics or self-control. If you buy a soda or a candy bar every day without even thinking, you've just spent the price of a good model kit annually. My Bertrand has cost less than $300 in materials and was built with basic hand tools. I'm self-employed and live on a very tight and careful budget, and I can afford to build models because I budget for them, and make choices based on what I can afford and justify, not what I want or dream about.

Thanks for the names. I asked so I could look them up in my copy of Way's Packet Directory, which lists most known riverboats from 1848-1994, and see if I could identify a boat the kit might be based on. Unfortunately, there are no listed boats with names anything like Matthew Spress or Bourbon (anything), so that was a dead end. Regardless, I'm very interested in how you approach this kit. Thanks for the profile photo, there's definitely still some sheer there!

I'm excited to follow this build, as I don't know much about these kits and want to learn more about their content and quality. I agree, every steamboat kit I've seen looks foreshortened to me, like someone squeezed the plans in their drafting program. Do the included materials say anything about what they based the design on? I can't tell from the photos, but does the main deck have any sheer to it? My understanding is that decks gradually flattened over time, as builders realized they didn't need to copy ocean-going vessels in that regard. It would certainly make various aspects of the kit easier!

It's not just the title, the log itself needs to be in the proper area (this thread is under news and reviews). You could either start a new thread within Kit Logs, just copying over the content of post #8 to start it out, or a moderator could move the whole thread over and rename it. Just starting a new one would seem easier to me.

Cap'n, thanks, I remember that now from your build and will go re-investigate. I'm reluctant to try the chisel approach on a nearly-completed model, especially on a surface which has overhangs on two sides. Perhaps I should have done it very early on. Ken, my original plan was to order turnbuckles from Grandt Line along with all the windows & doors for this build. When I decided to scratchbuild all the latter, it threw that order out the window and now I'm reluctant to pay shipping for just one tiny item. I think, at this scale, I'm best off as you say just using a really thin piece of material to simulate the effect. I think they'd be rectangular rather than tubular, though. Chborgm, Bertrand's wheel was estimated at 18' diameter and 28' across. I honestly don't know how much variation there was in wheel size among boats of different eras, builders, and intended regions of use. I will say, for whatever it's worth, that every steamboat kit I've seen "looks" generally out of proportion to me in the photos, and was one factor driving me to try scratchbuilding.

Oops. Thanks, Kurt, for catching that goof.

Chborgm, if you're starting a build log, may I kindly suggest doing it with a separate thread in the Scratchbuild Log section: http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/forum/11-build-logs-for-scratch-ship-model-projects/ Once there, check the red-highlighted link for guidance on the proper way to title your log. MSW has been trying to standardize the way people present build logs, and you'll make the moderators' jobs easier by following the guidelines. I'll happily follow this build, as I don't know much about steamboat kits.

Posted this on your build log, but figured I'd share it here too if anyone else wonders the same question: Based on my experience, go straight at it with carpentry clamps: This issue scared me, too, until various nice folks on my log assured me that it was a common quirk and quite fixable. So I just tackled it head on and hoped for the best. I found that when the thwarts are glued in, they're enough to hold the hull in place without spreading, which made installing the gunwales easy as the hull was now stable and the proper shape.