Cathead

Wefalck, I apologize that I was not able to find two photographs of a perfectly comparable model railroad scene only with different levels of detail. Perhaps if I had spent hours sorting through stacks of old magazines, rather than a few pages of Google Image results. The point was simply to show the difference between a detailed and a spare scene. There are also sparely detailed urban scenes and highly detailed rural scenes, but I didn't feel the need to hunt any further for perfect examples for a free blog comment. As you note, this relates to the historical prototype being modeled, though I dispute your claim that "modern" landscapes are inherently less cluttered. As we both likely agree, to an extent the question of "how much detail" comes down to the spectrum between art and documentary. Do you intend to represent, or recreate? One more comparative analogy between two artists I enjoy, Don Troiani and George Caleb Bingham, both of whom portrayed realistic historical scenes. The former paints incredibly detailed works which are accurate down to the sheen on the belt buckles. The latter painted softer works that were representatively accurate but far sparer in detail. I will forbear giving specific examples to avoid more controversy. Both are attractive and accurate, but each conveys the theme in a different way, and each is instantly recognizable in its time and place. Part of what I'm trying to argue is that what IS realistic and what LOOKS realistic are not always the same. Thus, in my opinion, sometimes it behooves modelers to leave out details even if they are correct, if they will detract from the overall impression made on the viewer. This is the same process by which a painting may look realistic even if inherently less detailed than the pixel depth of a photograph.

Having been a model railroader for a long time informs my perspective on detail. For example, there are people who build super-detailed model railroads where every square inch is filled with some kind of "thing". Clutter, figures, mini-scenes. These layouts are like Where's Waldo pages. You can never stop looking at them, there is always more to see. Here is an example: There are other people who build layouts which are realistic but sparing with detail. They use empty space and careful focus to draw the eye to specific things while allowing the brain to fill in the rest. Like this: I am of the opinion that too much detail can be counterproductive. I feel that the eye has a natural tendency to fill in missing information, and that part of the art of modelling is to fool the eye into seeing what it wants to see. I much prefer the latter form of model railroad, because it tends to look more realistic to me. The former may actually be more realistic in terms of the amount of visual clutter in the real world, but my eye at least sees the modeled version as "too much", whereas a spare but careful use of accurate, quality detail looks much more realistic to me overall. The eye is very, very good at picking out things that don't belong, whether it's details out of scale, plasticky-looking figures, etc., but also very good at filling in empty space. I agree with those who list priorities, and skill, as important factors. If you like making super details, and can use them in a consistent way, go for it. A good example of excellent super-detailing is the Bounty Launch by matt.s.s. which I recently followed to completion. It has superb detail without overwhelming the visual impression. But you can also eliminate many details and allow the viewer to fill them in naturally (or not notice their absence), through the judicious use of proper detail. In literature, one might call this the difference between Dumas, Dickens, or Hugo (extremely detailed but sometimes ponderous) and Hemingway (precise but spare). I actually enjoy all those authors, but tend to be a Hemingway when modelling. Yet to each their own, as long as you and your intended audience are pleased with the process and results.

I've mooted that idea before in this build, and am still rolling it around in my head. If I had ever intended to cover all of it, I would have just built bulkheads and been MUCH further along by now. The initial concept was, and still is, to leave one side unplanked including hull and superstructure. I had wanted to be able to pose it from one angle and have it look complete and realistic, while from another angle you could see inside. But I keep reconsidering. As this takes shape, the idea keeps flitting around to do something drastic like not plank at all and just build the whole thing as an open framework including all the cabins and such. In that case I would do just enough decking to support necessary machinery. Of course that decisions puts me on the hook to build some really detailed machinery and that scares me a bit. I've also joked to Mrs Cathead about displaying the hull as a under-construction diorama, but I really want to build the superstructure, too, one way or another. Thanks to all of you. This is a really, really fun build and I'm glad there's some interest in it. While you wait for the next addition, here's another good river song, Big Scioty:

Quick update: The boatyard is hosting a special visit from the owner's wife and other important ladies. Pretty hard to climb around all that framing in corsets and hoop skirts. Progress made, all the guards (extensions of the deck beyond the hull) are in place. Really starting to show the boat's final shape now. Next up, installing bulkheads along the centerline (on top the keelson), slightly higher than the guards to support the deck's camber. Then deck stringers to complete the hull framing.

Another option which hasn't been mentioned: try a model with planks that are pre-cut for you. The Model Shipways Bounty Launch worked very well for me in my first attempt at building a planked kit. Having pre-cut planks helps you understand the geometry of planking and you really can't make many mistakes if you're methodical and sensible. Doing this will help you practice bending, shaping, and gluing. Another benefit of the MS kit: if you mess up a plank, you have two easy ways to replace it. One, trace a new one from the laser-cut outline left by the original one. Two, trace a new one from the included plans, which have all the planks drawn on them. Look at the build log in my signature to see how it went for me. I have to consider the MS Bounty Launch pretty close to foolproof as a teaching tool. The only drawback is that it's an open boat, so you see both sides of the planks and can't use filler blocks, but I never felt I needed them, the kit was designed so well.

Thanks, folks. You all have a higher opinion of the framing than I do, but I reckon that's better than the other way around. In the meantime, while you wait for the decking to take shape, here's a nice period tune. Waiting for the Federals, also known as Shelby's Mule, in honor of Confederate Jo Shelby's raid through Missouri about a year before Bertrand began operations on the river. https://youtu.be/Ij4iN79Vm88

I have made it through some very tedious work on the Bertrand, getting the hull framing virtually done. Here is how she looks now, though you will have to look closely to see changes from the last photos: What has happened since: Finished framing bow & stern, including inserting lots of little futtock braces into all the bilge corners. A very fiddly task I am glad to be done with. Finished interior bracing with various stringers along sides and bottom of hull. This includes the reinforced keelson, built from multiple layers of wood. Sanded and shaped frames, including the tight turn of the bilge. Will likely need to do a bit more touch-up before planking, once I start testing the lie of planks. Doesn't sound like much, but it was a lot of detail work without major visual progress. All projects have this sort of task. But the hull is now solid and sound. What's really neat is, it's just as flexible and strong as the real thing. You can take it in your hands and flex, bend, and twist it like a snake's skeleton, which is just how the prototype boats needed to be to navigate the sandbars and shoals of the shallow Western rivers. I may have to take a short video of this to share; it's a very different architecture from the rigid hulls of ocean-going vessels. Here are closeups of the bow and stern: I haven't yet trimmed the upper ends of the futtocks, so they look very ragged. I won't do so until all the decking beams are in place and I'm sure of the final geometry. I closed in the final part of the sterm with a piece of scrap wood on each side, to provide a better surface for planking. This area won't be seen in any angle, so I decided to make it easier on myself. I'm not a master craftsman, and it shows in certain areas. For example, here are two less-than-ideal results along the hull: At top, you see the upper internal stringers. The deck beams are supposed to rest on this. But I didn't get it installed perfectly level on both sides, it wavers up and down a wee bit in places. So I filed notches into it where necessary to get the deck beams to sit evenly across the hull. It won't be noticeable in the final product, unless a real craftsman is looking really closely, but I was annoyed to discover my error. At bottom, you see an example of futtocks that didn't come out straight. Trying to clamp all of these perfectly onto the stringers was difficult, and in places I didn't succeed. More annoying sloppiness, but only noticeable close up. Once the model moves back from the eyes, it all blends into the whole. Still, were I to do a hull like this again, I would be more careful somehow. At least, I'd like to think so. What comes next? Before any planking begins, I'd like to install the interior framing and the deck beams. This will strengthen the hull more for planking, and the planking also depends to an extent on where the deck beams are. This is because Bertrand has guards, extensions of the deck that reach beyond the hull, so the guard support beams need to penetrate the planking. I've decided it will be easier to install the deck beams first and plank around them, than plank first and cut a bunch of holes/slots for the guard supports. The decks beams themselves will be a bit fiddly, as the deck has a slight camber that I'd like to recreate. This will mean some very careful installation of internal framing to get the camber right, and produce a deck surface that doesn't look like a wavy fun-house floor or skateboarding rink. Working on this will likely take me a few more weeks before any update comes; this continues to be a very busy time of year in the real world. It's been strawberry season here on the farm, and all that picking does a number on my back, making the idea of bending over a model workbench for fun just a bit less attractive. In other news, the weather lately has been good for wrecking steamboats. Tons of rain in the Missouri River basin, the river rising rapidly, carrying lots of fresh woody debris into the channel. Were this 150 years ago, it'd be a deadly time for boats like the Bertrand. Not to mention, almost impossible to work their way upriver into the flood currents.

I thought the crap table was usually located near the bow?

Thanks, all! It may be a few weeks before another update, as I have some work-related travel coming up and other time commitments that will push Bertrand aside temporarily. Feels good to have the stern fixed, though, so I can come back with interest rather than trepidation.

I've been working to fix a major goof, which came about through ill-advised efforts to fix a minor goof. Apparently I would make a good politician. Unlike most politicians, my final fix has produced a better result than where I started. Perhaps this makes me unelectable. You may recall that I had begun bending the stern stringers, as Bertrand has a rounded but squared-off stern. I had made individual forms for the stringers, assuming they would retain a reasonably similar shape after bending and I could install them one-by-one. Things looked like this, as in the last update: Subsequently, I glued each stringer carefully in place, aligned with its mate along the inner hull. Unfortunately, I did not realize until all were in place, that their curves really didn't line up well. The stern had a clearly odd warp to it, and any attempt to fix it by attaching cross-braces didn't work. So I conceived the brilliant idea of soaking the whole stern assembly, such that I could bend all these stringers back into place and clamp them in a consistent curve. At this point, I had removed the hull from its taped-down security on the build board. So I boiled a pan of water and propped the hull stern-first into it, with the water at a depth just below the first (last?) hull frame. This did not work. I had even rebuilt my forms to fit exactly on top of each hull stringers, but to no avail. The stringers did not re-bend well; rather they straightened out 90% of their original curve, while kinking badly when I attempted to re-bend them. Clamping did not work and I was in danger of damaging the hull itself. I played Sailor Scrabble with my vocabulary and took a break for a few days to think the problem over. Here's the drastic but effective solution, which at first glance looks quite like the last one: Yet in this case, I rebuilt the forms AGAIN to exactly match the pattern of the stringers, and recut the curve on my bandsaw with the whole thing assembled, to ensure the curve was consistent. In the meantime, I delicately cut out all the stern-most stringers back to where they'd been before, to allow grafting the new assembly on. This was painstaking work so as not to damage the lower frames. I made sure, after initial inattention, to stagger the scarf joints so the hull wouldn't have any weak points (I had done the whole hull this way, anyway, and somehow momentarily forgot this obvious point when cutting out the old stringers). I soaked new stringers and bent them onto the frame with copious clamping, as seen above. When dry, I removed clamps from the curve (but not either end), and glued a series of frames along the stringers to ensure the assembly retained its proper geometry when removed from the forms. This was key to my success this time. When I did finally pop the whole thing off, it held its shape beautifully. I then, very carefully, cut all the stringers to match the scarf joints on the hull, and glued the whole thing in place, propping it up with scrap wood to ensure I got the curve and elevation I wanted: Next I installed the rest of the upper longitudinal stringer (already in place from midships to bow), the first stage in shaping and holding the stern in place. Other supports will come soon. But now I have a proper stern with proper curvature. The price of all this was a few less than perfect joints between the stern and other stringers, as they inevitably didn't dry in exactly the right orientation. I don't think it'll be terribly visible in the finished model, and the overall result is much better. Since the last update, I had also mostly finished framing up the bow. I did this by installing the upper stringer, clamped to the midships futtocks and bent to the proper curve, and glued to a brace on the stempost. Then it was a basic matter of cutting each individual futtock to fit and gluing it from frame to stringer. As far as I know, such boats eschewed curved frames for simplicity of construction: Here's an overhead view of the mostly-completed hull framing, set next to the plans: Next on the to-do list: - Finish installing stringers along bottom and sides of hull. - Finish installing futtocks at bow & stern. - Cut & install lots of little angle braces along the turn of the bilge, everywhere I couldn't prefabricate a frame. - Trim the futtocks to final length. At that point the hull will be strong and easily handled, and I can begin interal framing and/or planking. I'm very relieved to have fixed and improved the stern assembly, and looking forward to handling a completed hull. If only real crises could be solved with knives, profanity, and glue (actually, maybe we've tried the first two enough already).

Kurt, Multiple sources discuss possible paint schemes for Bertrand, though little is known for sure. Most similar boats were painted white, with some trim in other colors. The main deck was often either red or natural wood. The model on display at DeSoto NWR, of which I included a photo in the opening post of this build, seems to match the color scheme most commonly attributed to Bertrand based on my reading. Here's another view of it:

Oh, don't worry, I'm just speculating. It doesn't affect anything yet, I intend to fully frame and at least half-plank the hull before deciding what to do next. It'll be a while... Thanks for all the likes!

The hull is developing nicely. I had a close shave with my floors, having estimated the required pieces too close for comfort, and not being sure until the very end that I'd have enough. Phew! All the vertical frames are assembled and in place, attached with stringers. As the futtocks at bow and stern are angled, I plan to install them one at a time, to fit. Thus I'm now working to bend and attach an interior stringer at the deck line, to which I can measure & attach each futtock. For example, here's the bow: I soaked these two long pieces in a cookie tray of boiling water, then bent them around a jury-rigged frame to the correct curve. Once they're dry, I'll glue them in place and have a solid reference point for the rest of the futtocks. Note the gentle sheer leading up to the stem. Here's the stern: It's a bit simpler here. The stern is squared off, with a simple curve leading up to the deck. I cut out appropriate molds on my bandsaw, then glued them into an appropriate arrangement for bending the internal stringers. Like the bow, I soaked these in boiling water before bending them into place. As shown, they represent the actual shape of the stern (upside down) quite well. Once these are in place, I'll connect them to the existing stringers in the rest of the hull. Note that the last 8 futtocks are extra-long; this is because the stem also has a rising sheer, beginning there, so I cut those pieces longer to allow for trimming to the exact length once a final stringer is installed. Other notes: while I could have installed all the internal stringers as one long piece, my internal perfectionist got the better of me and I instead cut them into regular, scarf-jointed planks (the actual builders wouldn't have had planks over 100' long!). These joints don't show up in the overexposed photo 1, but they're there. Also, the keelson will need to be built up with several layers of planking, but I won't do that until later. Coming up next, I'll build the stern and connect the deck-level stringer all the way around, and start the tedious job of custom-cutting and -fitting the ~100 futtocks needed to complete the hull framing. This has been great fun so far, and while I'm not particularly looking forward to all the fussy cant frames coming up, I love the geometry of open full framing. A voice in my mind is suggesting that I change course dramatically and build this simply as an open-hull model, with no superstructure at all, perhaps with the deck half-planked at most. What think you all?

Jim, Indeed I feel fortunate, though as you'll discover later on, the fortune only lasts so far. None of Bertrand's superstructure was present by the time of excavation, so while the hull was thoroughly documented, everything above the main deck is based on conjecture and extrapolation. I'll delve into that when we get there. My original plan was just as you say, to leave one half of the hull unplanked. However, when I realized just how close the frames would be (unlike my first set of plans), I became worried that you wouldn't be able to see in enough, and so started considering other options like holes in the hull or a removable main deck. I have been considering and experimenting with different approaches on the side, and will discuss that more, later as well.

The Bertrand, version 2.0, is underway! Above, you see a set of mid-hull frames assembled and laid out at the prototype spacing of about 15 scale inches. Astute observers may notice something different from earlier in this log: these frames are built at a 90 degree angle (floor to futtock), not canted outward. The more I compared my purchased plans to the original archeological drawings now in my possession, the more blatant errors I found. I've now pretty much abandoned those first plans and spent some time scanning and resizing the new drawings to 1:87 scale and hitting the reset button on pretty much everything involved with this project. Hence the delay in updating this log, along with a busy few weeks in real life. According to the actual archeological notes (from here on referred to as the Petsche plans after the leader of the excavation team), Bertrand very definitely had squared-off mid-hull frames, with angles only occurring at stem and stern. In other words, this plan view and the frames I built from it were totally wrong: So I designed a new set of frame molds and have been busy mass-producing frames: I do these eight at a time, pre-cutting the floors and futtocks on my trusty cutter (upper left), then assembling them around the wooden molds seen at right. These are pinned to a piece of foam board, holding everything in place. I pin a floor in place, dip each futtock in wood glue, then fit it in place along the side of the form, using another pin on each side. Then I use the cutter to create the tiny angle braces, smear some more glue across the joint, and use tweezers to install each angle brace on top. Below is a detail of several of these assemblies: When these are dry, I use the cutter to lop a small 45 degree angle off each bilge corner, where a bilge plank will go. These areas were not rounded as on a sea-going vessel, but angular, which made construction much easier for the craftsmen assembling these boats in the American wilderness of the upper Ohio River. Note that the molds have a 45 degree angle cut out at the turn of the bilge. This is so I can glue the bilge together without anything sticking to the mold. The remainder of the frame is sufficient to hold the pieces at a proper 90 degree angle. Anything that sticks to the foam board is popped off with a flat knife blade and sanded smooth. Here's an overhead view of my hull setup: A copy of the inner hull plan is attached to the build board with double-sided tape. Several layers of wooden strips line both sides of the hull to provide consistent support for the frames (also attached with tape). The plans then have four thin strips of double-sided tape run on top, to hold the frames in place during assembly. I use wooden spacers to support each frame, keeping it at the proper distance from its neighbors and properly vertical. In these photos, I've removed some spacers temporarily so you can see more detail. I've used tape for everything to allow adjustment is necessary, and it works great. This jig was very much inspired by the Cairo build suggested earlier in this log (thanks, Ken!) As each batch of 8 frames is ready, I add them to the hull jig. It takes 15-20 minutes to build 8 frames, then a few hours for the glue to dry. I basically do a batch any evening I have a short stretch of time to spare, and slowly but surely work my way toward the daunting total quantity needed. This means I don't get overwhelmed trying to do them all at once, or keep count. Once I reach the beginning of stem and stern curves, I will have to build the frames custom-in-place, but as the standard square frames make up much of the boat's total length, this will be manageable.When all the standard frames are done, I'll start installing the keelson and other stringers to hold the structure firmly together, then proceed on the more complex ends. So that's where the Bertrand stands this weekend. I will do another update when these square frames are completed and I've started in on the interesting challenge of stem & stern. Hopefully the wait won't be as long this time!

Ken, I think you're right about the cherry frames not quite sitting tight with the forms. A number of mine had just a bit of space after drying, they never quite fit perfectly. You almost have to bend them TOO far to get them to rebound to just the right shape. Be interesting for someone to try sanding the molds down a bit too far, and see if the frames bent onto them ended up just right. I also suspect this is why some of us needed stealers. If the molds are absolutely tight, then the planks as pre-cut may fit just barely right. If there's any spreading at all, then naturally the hull becomes a lot wider and you end up needing stealers. Just a theory, but it makes geometric sense to me. Otherwise looks just right so far!

These are cool ideas and examples. Cogitation is underway. Going to be a busy week for me coming up, including this weekend, so apologies for a slow return to this project.

The arrival of a long-awaited reference book through inter-library loan has helped to clarify some important design questions for this build, while forcing me to start over. The new book is Jerome Petsche’s 1974 “The Steamboat Bertrand: history, excavation, and architecture”, the official account and documentation of the National Park Service excavation of the wreck. I had expected this book to help me later on with obscure details, and so hadn’t worried about waiting for its arrival (having no idea when it would show up), as I trusted my purchased plans to be accurate enough for beginning basic hull construction. However, the more I’ve studied the plans, comparing them to other things I’ve read about the Bertrand and steamboat architecture in general, I’ve developed a few concerns. Petsche’s book has justified three of my concerns and shown me the proper way forward. 1) Spacing of hull frames. The plans’ side view show twice as many horizontal floors as vertical futtocks (see above, left). This struck me as odd, because I’ve seen no other references to steamboats having this design, and the futtock spacing was twice as wide as dimensions listed as typical for steamboats of this era. My references say that frame assemblies generally varied between 13-15” apart, which is how the floors are drawn. And other examples of steamboat framing I’ve seen are very closely spaced. Petsche’s more detailed architectural drawings (above, right), done directly from the wreck itself, clearly show floors AND futtocks always paired, and at a spacing just over 12”. Also see the overheard view, below. I don’t know why the plans omitted half the futtocks, but it appears that accuracy demands a full and closely spaced set of frames. I will have to think about what this means for a view into the completed hull. 2) Shape of bow. Riverboats of this era generally followed two bow designs: model and spoonbill. Model, the earlier version, came to a sharp point at the stem much like a regular ship’s bow. Spoonbill, which became widely adopted in the 1970s, carried a much broader curve, which evolved with the need for upper river boats to slide up, over, and onto sandbars and river banks rather than slice through water. My plans show Bertrand with something much closer to a spoonbill bow (above, left), though she was built before their widespread adoption, and built originally for the Ohio River, where spoonbills wouldn’t have been necessary anyway. Sure enough, the Petsche plans clearly describe and show a much sharper model bow (above, right), with very different lines than my plans. 3) Cant frames. My plans don’t have an overhead view of the internal framing, but the side profile doesn’t show any cant frames in the bow, implying that the futtocks are perpendicular to the keelson all the way to the stem. This, too, struck me as odd, and the Petsche plans bear this out. They show cant frames beginning virtually at the beginning of the bow’s curve, with no beveled frames to be seen. This is an exciting discovery, because I think it will make the hull easier to build, and also gives me a more accurate frame of reference for getting started. I suppose one moral to all this is, don’t get started until you’ve completed ALL your research. But I find that I learn by doing, and while I did quite a bit of pre-reading before starting this log, I also felt like getting started and figuring things out while underway. I use the same approach when building full-scale structures (I’ve built most of the outbuildings for my farm, including our dairy barn). When translating a 2-D plan into a 3-D model, there’s nothing like holding the actual timbers in your hands and seeing how your paper idea fits together in real life. I’ve lost a bit of work that I will have to do over. But I’ve learned quite a bit, too, and don’t regret getting started. I didn’t expect my purchased plans to be so off in basic hull design, and had no idea when my deeper references would arrive. Getting started made me happy, gave me something to do and share, and produced an experience that I (and hopefully some of you) learned something from. So no worries, and when next I can get back to the work bench, I’ll start anew on laying out the hull to my new, truly accurate plans’ design. In the meantime, a question for the commentariat: Given the close spacing of the frames, and my stated desire to have the interior framing of the boat visible when completed, what's the best course of action? Do I leave out half the futtocks & floors on one side after all? Do I leave a big hole somewhere for viewing? Something else I haven't thought of yet? Ideas welcome.

Ken, Those are great links, thanks. I'm intrigued by the rod-based building jig and may tinker with that. The Cairo link is particularly fun to find, as I visited that myself in Vicksburg a few years ago and have some nice photos. Also on the brown-water front, we visited Shiloh this spring and enjoyed standing on the river bluffs there imagining Grant's steamboat fleet filling the river and desperately shelling the shore to disrupt the Confederate advance. Have you been there? Everyone else, Thanks for your support and interest! I fully expect to rely on your expertise to help figure out some of the fiddly bits on this build. I'm still working through some of the implications of the plans and will likely have a few questions to group-source before I proceed much farther. For example, the plans show twice as many floors as futtocks, and I can't decide whether this is accurate or whether half the futtocks are left out for some reason. Some other riverboats (like the Cairo Ken linked to above) are framed so closely they're nearly solid. Yet if I do that here, you won't be able to see into the hull much to observe the interior framing. Will update more when I have a chance to take photos and lay out the design questions more visually, rather than in a text dump.

Well, John, that's pretty much what I proposed by making my building board (see quote above), except I thought that parallel dados in the board would hold the frames more consistently than lots of spacer blocks. Am I missing something?

From the second-to-last paragraph: As for how to assemble all these, my current plan is to make a building board with parallel grooves at the spacing & depth of the hull frames. I can then set all the frames into this pattern while attaching them as on the prototype, with a variety of internal stringers and a strong keelson. This, incidentally, is another reason to use my slightly over-sized stock: it’s the same width as my table saw’s dado, making this process very convenient. The trick is, using just internal stringers and keelsons, the hull has to be assembled right side up. I've only done upside-down hulls on a mold, where it's easier because you fix the keel in place and attach everything else to it. I haven't thought of a way to fix an internal keelson in place in the same way; am I missing something?

The hulls of western river boats are quite different from those of ocean-going ships, and this presents the first challenge of this project. For example, the Bertrand has no keel, meaning I will have to work out a new way to lay out the hull’s framing without an external keel to anchor everything on. There are good reasons for this oddity. While early river boats were built like regular ships, with projecting keeps and deep hulls, it was quickly determined that this didn’t work on the shallow, fast-flowing, curvaceous rivers of the region, for several reasons: 1) Keels provide resistance against leeway. This was not only unnecessary for steam-powered boats, it was actually a detriment to the maneuverability needed to handle the sharp turns and shifting currents of the rivers. Riverboats were amazingly nimble, and large keels just got in the way. 2) Keels strengthen the hull longitudinally. This, too, quickly proved to be a detriment under western river conditions. While the long, narrow hulls of steamboats were very prone to hogging, they also needed to be flexible for the inevitable need to scrape over sandbars or even rock shoals. It has been claimed that steamboat hulls needed to flex two feet vertically to handle the river conditions they were subjected to; an overly strong keel could break the back of a steamboat like a ship on a reef, rather than allowing it to slither over shoals. We’ll explore the steamboat designers’ flexible solution to hogging later in the project. 3) Deep hulls provide stability and cargo capacity, but shallow channels made this impossible. Steamboats quickly evolved to barge-like hulls carrying all their machinery and most of their cargo on the deck; their long, flat-bottomed hulls provided all the buoyancy they needed. The Bertrand was only about 14 feet shorter than USS Constitution at the waterline, and almost as wide on deck, but with about 10% of the draft and displacement. Bertrand would have lasted mere minutes in the open sea, but Old Ironsides couldn't have made it thousands of miles upriver to western Montana carrying tons of cargo. None of this would matter much for the model if I intended to simply plank the hull; in that case I would either cut bulkheads or shape a solid block, and just plank over everything. But I want to show off the unique internal framing of the craft, and so have to work out the best way to assemble it in place. The Bertrand has something like 60-70 internal frames, including some cant frames in the stem. Above, you see examples of a typical midsection frame. These aren't curved the way a ship’s are, just a straight floor joined to two straight futtocks at an angle. There were multiple ways to make this joint; on the Bertrand this was a cocked-hat chine in which the two pieces were simply butted together at the turn of the bilge and braced with a triangular timber. I will need to make about 40 of these assemblies, plus 20-30 more that slowly change shape with the curve of the bow and stern. You’ll notice that my frames are a bit thicker than the scale plans imply. This is intentional, as I feel that truly scale timbers would be extremely difficult to work with. They need to be strong enough to hold their shape against fairing and handling, and I don’t think would have enough surface area to hold glue joints properly in some of the unusual arrangements I’ll need to do. This is especially true as I intend to leave a large section unplanked, such that the frames need to hold their own. When the model is completed, I don’t think the slightly overscale timbers will be noticeable, but the model will be much stronger. I made these by first cutting an internal wooden pattern to the exact shape of the mid-hull, as taken from the plans. The pattern is from slightly thinner stock than the frames. I then cut and lay out the three pieces, with a small dab of wood glue in the two joints, with the pattern holding them to shape. When the glue is tacky, only a few minutes, I spread more on top of the joint and lay two broader pieces at an angle across the joint to create the “cocked hat” brace (this is why the pattern needs to be thinner, so it doesn’t get glued to the brace). When the assembly is dry, I use a sharp knife to carve away the excess, including the plank-width area at the outside turn of the bilge. One broad plank will be used here between the side planking and the bottom planking, as on the prototype. While it might seem that making 40+ of these would take forever, each one takes only a few minutes. I simply make one, set it aside, and work on something else. Doing this in the background means I’ll have them all done by the time I work out the rest of the hull plan. As for how to assemble all these, my current plan is to make a building board with parallel grooves at the spacing & depth of the hull frames. I can then set all the frames into this pattern while attaching them as on the prototype, with a variety of internal stringers and a strong keelson. This, incidentally, is another reason to use my slightly over-sized stock: it’s the same width as my table saw’s dado, making this process very convenient. In the next installment, I’ll explore the bow area, and how I plan to tackle the framing in that area. In the meantime, I’ll be making a lot of hull frames! In the meantime, any comments, questions, and suggestions are quite welcome.

Oh, no question, all along the West Coast. I've explored the wrecks of several steamers along the banks of the Yukon, where the northern climate preserves them quite well. There are some great stories about early steamers on the Columbia running the rapids and proving the river was navigable farther than originally thought. But as far as I know, all those boats followed the basic designs first developed in the Mississippi basin, which is why I find these early steamers so fascinating: they're like watching evolution in progress. Nothing like having the sternwheel right there to bury the evidence!

American western river steamboats represent a unique form of shipbuilding. Designed and built on the American frontier during the core of the 19th century, such boats rapidly evolved to fit the specific needs of the great inland river systems that drained inland North America. In this build I will replicate a typical specimen of this design, the steamboat Bertrand, trying to accurately duplicate the features of these fascinating vessels. I hope you’ll follow along, both to enjoy the construction, and to learn about this obscure but fascinating (to me, at least) part of maritime transportation history. These boats are almost, but not entirely, unlike an ocean-going vessel of the same period, in large part due to the demands of their specific riverine habitat. Below, my updated workbench with Bertrand profile on the wall for inspiration. The “western” in western river steamboat refers to the landscape between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains. Over the course of the 19th century, this area went from the mostly unknown wilderness of Lewis & Clark’s 1804 expedition up the Missouri River, to a land mostly settled and integrated into the United States by the dawn of the 20th century. Most of this landscape centers on the Mississippi River basin, including its major tributaries such as the Ohio and Missouri Rivers. This system drains over 1 million square miles (almost 3 million square km), covering parts of 31 American states and 2 Canadian provinces. Almost all the rivers in the system were navigable in the 19th century for most of their lengths, creating a vast trade and transportation network across the continent’s interior long before railroads appeared on the scene, when roads were all but non-existent (map below from National Park Service). The Bertand, built in 1864 and sunk in 1865, was a wholly typical and unremarkable western river steamer, except for its rediscovery beneath a US Wildlife Refuge along the Iowa/Nebraska border in 1968. The boat and its cargo were remarkably well-preserved, due to quick burial beneath river sediment by the quickly changing channel of the Missouri River, and the anoxic environment thus produced. The Bertrand’s mint-condition cargo is now on display at a fascinating museum at the DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, which also hosts a detailed large-scale model of the craft (shown below). The archeological excavation of the craft resulted in a plethora of information about period steamboat construction. In pairing with the later, but similar, discovery of the sunken steamboat Arabia along the Kansas/Missouri border and subsequent founding of a similar museum in Kansas City, the two wrecks represent a spectacular repository of historical and maritime knowledge and preservation. Below, the gorgeous large-scale model of Bertrand at DeSoto (FWS photo). I live and farm near the Missouri River, and have long been fascinated by the history of its steamboats. My first-ever attempt at wooden ship modeling was a scratchbuilt version of the Far West, perhaps the most famous of its class, a sternwheeler which ascended the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers to extraordinary distances, and carried General Custer’s troops to and from the infamous Battle of Little Big Horn. The Bertrand is a similar craft to the Far West, which was built to ascent the shallow, treacherous river to Montana, while the Arabia was a sidewheeler more typical of the lower Missouri River below Omaha, Nebraska (and the Ohio and Mississippi). I had initially intended to build the Arabia next, but due to a lack of available plans, and my inability to make it to Kansas City to do research at her eponymous museum, I changed my focus to the Bertrand. Below, my model of the Far West for context: I’ve had plans for the Bertrand for several years, having purchased them at the same time as my Far West plans, and consulted them on that project. Now, the goal is a similar boat but at much greater detail: I would like to build the Bertrand frame-by-frame, just as initially constructed in the riverside yards at Wheeling, West Virginia. I have a shelf of texts on western steamboat history and construction, and several more detailed references on the excavation of the Bertrand on order through inter-library loan. I intend to leave one side of the hull unplanked, and possibly the same side of the superstructure, to show full detail throughout. Below, longitudinal internal section of the Bertrand from the plans I'll be using. I hope you’ll join me on this (likely) wordy trek through a relatively unknown period of American maritime history and design. Few other steamboats grace this site, so I'd like to fill the gap a little with this project. I’ll try to interweave build details with explanations and demonstrations of why the boat was designed and built the way it was, to give context to this project and help share my love of these steamboats and their (my) home. This project is a significant undertaking for me, a serious step up from my previous Bounty launch kit and various smaller and less-detailed scratchbuilding efforts. I hope to be open to suggestion and advice, and I hope readers will be patient with the slow progress I'll likely make as I juggle this project with the summertime demands on my time, as well as the budget necessary to do this with my uncertain income as a self-employed farmer and writer. Welcome aboard, and unlike most boats of this type, we'll hope this one doesn't sink or blow up on the journey! UPDATE: Build completed and index available. I finished this project in January 2016, and compiled an index of the general steps involved, with links to each one. You can review the build index here, in a post at the end of this log.

Looks like I had the link wrong in the first post. It's fixed now. Also, here's the photo from my log showing what this looks like.