Cathead

My next project will be the USS Cairo kit from BlueJacket. This vessel was an ironclad gunboat designed and built during the American Civil War for service on the Mississippi River and its tributaries, as part of the Union's push to control the West's inland waterways and cut off Confederate supply lines, communications, and commerce. Her actual service was unremarkable, and she sank less than a year after her commissioning upon hitting several mines near Vicksburg, Mississippi. However, she became immortal when her wreck was discovered mostly intact in the mid-1960s and eventually salvaged, restored, and placed on display at Vicksburg National Military Park. I've visited the display and associated museum, where it's absolutely fascinating to be able to actually walk around the vessel and peer into her depths. When completed, this will join my scratchbuilt Western River steamboats Arabia and Bertrand, two other examples of mid-19th century Western River steamboats salvaged from old river channels in the American interior. This kit is a much smaller scale than those two models (1:64 and 1:87, respectively), so will nestle comfortably alongside the Bertrand. For inspiration, I'll have on hand this simple paperweight acquired at the Cairo museum! Announcing the start of this build feels unusually good, as I've had a forced ~7 month hiatus from modeling building due to a complicated situation involving a serious hatched-derived wrist injury (with subsequent surgery and long recovery) that, for a while, had me unsure if I'd regain the dexterity and strength necessary to keep building scale models (much less the larger-scale timber management and building work I do in real life). The Cairo kit is a 43rd birthday present but also a celebration of a return to reasonable normality. Thanks for looking in! Next post, I'll cover why I chose this model and what I hope to achieve with it.

I love the lines of that hull.

Yeah, that looks fine for a first build. Keep at it!

If you do try to sell cases, my advice would be not to under-price them. Not only does this not reward you for your skill and time, but it undercuts professionals who need to get a certain price for their work. Cheap work undercutting skilled work is already the bane of the model-selling world, no need to add to it with respect to cases.

Cool! Can't wait to see how the new planking flows back there. The bow looks so much better with a nice smooth run. Well done.

Nothing a little 1:1 project can't fix...

Wow, nice work on those finicky details.

Have fun with what looks like a pretty cool kit with some room for interesting upgrades, based on existing build logs.

Hey Mike, welcome to MSW! You've asked a good question, but posted it in the Build Log section, where members document the progress of their builds. It's an awkward place to ask a more general method question like this. I'd suggest going to the Framing and Planking section of MSW, where you can (a) have a better chance at an answer, and (b) do some quick searches for content related to your question, since fairing and sealing hulls has been discussed in the past.

Wefalck, only pulling forces might be the normal case, but Mark makes a really good point about a combat vessel having a steering rope shot away and needed to exert both force directions from the other end, all but necessitating a solid connector (as you suggest). Now I don't know what to think again. Brian, this area was exposed at the stern, right? Easy to fire on and damage but also easy to repair? Also exposed to elements? (as opposed to being enclosed in a way that protects against damage but prevents easy access) If so, does that argue against any rope being used until the lines were inside the hull? So maybe that apparent wire rope does run through the pulleys into the hull, and there was a solid bar attaching the tillers?

That's got to hurt, I'm sorry! I've been there. But since your goal is to learn, I think you'll be happy in the long run. But I do feel a little bad! Keep going, you'll be thrilled when it comes together.

Thanks, Brian, I see it clearly now. Certainly access to the video helps.

I have no educated opinion, but I certainly see your point that the thing dangling from that rudder looks like stiff wire cable rather than dangling rope or chain. Is it possible that, instead of connecting to the rest of the control system, it's a short length of wire that connects the two tillers internally (since you imply that something did so, and this would have to be strong)? Also, in that photo, it looks to me like there's a semi-circular feature connected to the upper-left part of what you've marked as the tiller. This would appear to correlate to the semi-circular part of the tiller opposite the rudder (at the internal end of the tiller), as shown in your first drawing. If so, that wire/cable is coming off the opposite end of the tiller and thus wouldn't be anything from the control system since that also attached to the inner end of the tiller. I can't tell from the photo whether the tiller is at all attached to the rudder or is just dangling loose. For my theory here to be true, it has to be dangling loose and rotated nearly 180º. But if it's still attached, what's that semi-circle doing at the rudder end of the tiller?

Great job! Such fun to follow along, thanks for taking the time to share it all with us.

Don't feel bad, you're doing fine and as you noted, the whole purpose here is to learn and practice. Mine had all sorts of issues that I would (hopefully) do better next time!

So here's what my framing looked like pre- and post-fairing (you can also see how uneven the original frames were in my kit). I basically just kept removing material, checking with thin battens, until I got a run that was smooth. I didn't write anything about this part of the stern in my log, unfortunately, and my memory isn't clear. I rechecked @tlevine's instructions, and it seems like my fairing was pretty similar (see, for example, her photo 97 and mine here) but it's so hard to interpret this stuff from flat photos. In my opinion, more important than trying to emulate any exact shape is to make sure the shape you end up with has a smooth run with no knuckles or awkward angles. Use thin battens obsessively until you're sure every plank will flow across that space and end where you want it, including the butt ends. It can even help to use several side-by-side to help see places where sudden changes occur along a frame (one can lay flat and the next start to knuckle).

Google "knitted military tank" and you'll find quite a few creative results, like this: Very cool model so far. I haven't really dabbled in the non-ship parts of MSW before but this is too interesting to let go.

That run of planking looks so much better! Well done. Here's how it looked on mine prior to planking: During planking: And after: Hope that's helpful in visualizing one way (not necessarily the only/right way) to do it.

I answered this in your original thread, but I'll repeat here. AL, like many manufacturers, provides digital version of instructions on their website. I found it through an easy Google search: https://artesanialatina.net/en/ships-advanced/459-tuna-fishing-boat-marina-ii-wooden-model-kit-8421426205060.html

The AL site, like those of many manufacturers these days, has all the instructions provided digitally on their website's listing for the kit. Look for the tab "Instructions and downloadable contents". I found it in a few seconds of Googling: https://artesanialatina.net/en/ships-advanced/459-tuna-fishing-boat-marina-ii-wooden-model-kit-8421426205060.html

I remember seeing a finished version of this on display at BlueJacket when I visited in 2016. It caught my eye as a really attractive vessel and model. Great to see a build log of it here, BlueJacket often seems under-represented on MSW for the quality of their kits.

Nice job so far, and great work learning from mistakes and keeping a good attitude toward it all!

A few years ago I wrote up my method for making paper sails using bond paper and pastels. I think it works quite nicely and the thread generated some useful discussion of different techniques. See here: Here's what these sails look like the way I made them: Hope this helps!

I had a lot of problems with the provided frames not being right and needing to be reduced or built up. That in itself is a useful learning process, though, as it'll happen in almost any kit! There's definitely an awkward knuckle in those lower planking runs. I also recall the intended counter method being very difficult to understand.

My goodness, that's a problem. While I know nothing about Norwegian model sources, I suggest using the MSW community map to locate members in Norway and contact them. A quick look showed 46 members listed there, so if you send enough PMs, presumably someone will respond! You can also look at their profiles to see how active they are and choose contacts accordingly.