MORE HANDBOOKS ARE ON THEIR WAY! We will let you know when they get here.
×
Cathead
-
Posts
3,418 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Gallery
Events
Everything posted by Cathead
-
Good progress so far and I hope you keep updating this. -
That's a lovely hull. How's the project coming along?
-
I visited the current Niagara just before the pandemic kicked in. Looking forward to seeing your progress on this.
-
Welcome to the forum! I hope you'll keep this updated, I'm curious to see how you go about improvements.
- 8 replies
-
- 1
-
-
- Plastic
- Constitution
- (and 2 more)
-
Nice work! I'm curious about the decision to leave the cylinder timbers (the angled wood supporting the engines) as an open lattice rather than a solid stack of beams as on most prototypes. Aesthetic preference or did you find an example of this approach?
- 238 replies
-
- 1
-
-
- Robert E Lee
- steamboat
- (and 3 more)
-
I love that you're working together on this. My wife and I both trained as geologists and are serious naturalists, so a Beagle is high on my project list. I'm learning a lot from the various builds that are improving on the kit, and looking forward to seeing what you do.
-
Any further progress?
-
It's a nice job for a first build, something you'll be proud to display. Thanks for starting the log and it'll be fun to see how you finish!
- 10 replies
-
- 1
-
-
- Viking Longboat
- Artesania Latina
- (and 1 more)
-
A question occurs to me regarding that anchor storage arrangement: did they have to take down the lines running through the stanchions every time they deployed or stored the anchor? Otherwise it doesn't look possible to thread the anchor in there.
-
Just stumbled across your log, though I've been following Hakezou's for a while now. Like many others, the Shackleton story has long fascinated me and seeing a decent kit of the Endurance is inspiring. Great work so far and another good tutorial in how to improve the kit.
-
Gotta be careful with your wording on a nautical website; for a second I thought you had a local dealer in Chinese sailing vessels. Model looks fantastic. I've definitely considered the aquarium case idea before, seems reasonable. Can't wait to see the final version. As for the rope fuzziness, when I submitted my Viking ship to the NRG contest, one of the judges at first criticized the fuzziness of my lines, then backtracked to wonder whether it was intentional and/or accurate for the rough hand-made ropes of the period. So that can always be your excuse, too!
-
Glad to hear you like it! I was reminded of a bit of advice after using mine last night: the cutter can handle some relatively thick stock, but as you go thicker it gets easier for the blade/arm to deflect and produce a non-square end. It isn't like a miter box where the cutting blade is locked in place. So just be aware of that, at times I've needed to square off cut ends with a file or other tool. Other times I've used the cutter to mark a precise cut and then finished it with a miter saw to be sure the cut was square. Also, change the blades as soon as you feel it's not cutting right. One of the great things about this tool is it's designed to use basic razor blades, not some custom design, so it's easy and cheap to keep sharp. Happy Holidays to you as well, I look forward to this project coming back on the table, so to speak.
-
Just don't forget that on many sternwheelers, the heads overhung the wheels for obvious reasons of disposal! So maybe check the wind direction first (not that that means much on winding North American rivers).
- 109 replies
-
- 2
-
-
-
- Finished
- Artesania Latina
- (and 1 more)
-
So that makes sense, but is that the case for something like the image below, which you shared earlier? It just stretches my logical/factual brain to see those right-hand shrouds as being intended to represent the port-starboard mirror image of the correct ones aft of the mast, since they're carefully placed at a completely wrong angle symmetrical to the right ones. In addition, the three forward shrouds are even drawn as combining with what appears to be a forestay before reaching the mast, different from the aft three (oddly, there's no aft stay at all). I realize these aren't blueprints and that art in this period was somewhat abstract, but it boggles and fascinates me to try to understand the mix of detailed realism and perspective inaccuracy. It's like trying to learn a truly foreign language with some recognizable patterns but fundamentally different grammar (like Japanese numbers). ] Not trying to take this thread too off course, I'm just fascinated, and part of the theme here is understanding what we can learn and understand from these images.
-
Some of those images seem to show shrouds both fore and aft of the mast, while your prototype shows them only aft. Thoughts as to why?
-
To me, one of the significant tradeoffs is how to handle details at scale. The larger you build, the easier it is to get details in scale, but you're also under more pressure to include those details and get them right. The smaller you build, the harder it is to get details in scale, but you can also start eliminating them. Examples in wooden ships could include treenailing, rope thickness, wood joinery, sail stitching, and even just the texture and grain of the wood itself. As for examples of large-scale ship models, here I am a few years ago with a 1:20 model of the Esmerelda at the Museo Maritimo Nacional in Valparaiso, Chile.
-
Not as such, given the damage to the wreck, and the museum just displays one full engine/wheel assembly out of context. But in the thread I linked above are several photos of the wreck that show the boilers and engines in place, which give a sense of the overall setting. Details are gone, washed away by the river, but from various things I've read the area might have included a small blacksmith's shop and other workbenches (boats generally had to do their own repairs, even on the relatively civilized Mississippi River).
- 238 replies
-
- 1
-
-
- Robert E Lee
- steamboat
- (and 3 more)
-
Great find of the engine drawings! That'll be a challenging but fun project. In case you hadn't run across it, when I was planning my Arabia build, I made a separate thread to share the various photos I'd taken at the museum and found in my research; these include a lot of views of the engines and wheels, both at the museum and from the original excavation. You might find it useful to look through that for real-world views of the actual machinery, which does look very similar to the plans you show above. I can also look for additional photos in my collection if you're trying to see a certain viewpoint not shared in that thread. Regardless, can't wait to see how you approach this.
- 238 replies
-
- 2
-
-
- Robert E Lee
- steamboat
- (and 3 more)
-
Keith's suggestion is good, you can set up a pretty simply jig using a clamp and a piece of wood as a stopper at the right length; just butt the piece to be cut against the stopper and you'll know that the saw is working in the right place. As another option, I strongly recommend the Northwest Short Line chopper: It's excellent at making accurate, consistent-length cuts at various angles. I even use it for pieces that are too thick for it to cut on its own, by using the blade to mark each piece accurately. The divot made by the razor blade becomes a natural guide for a razor saw. But if I'm right about the scale of the pieces you're showing, the Chopper would make short and accurate work of them, one after another. I'm not a big tool collector overall, but this one is simple, affordable, and fantastically useful for all sorts of modeling applications, which inevitable require that you cut small parts to consistent lengths (or angles).
-
Welcome! I just finished that half-hull kit and found it very useful. I'd strongly recommend going back and forth between the instructions and the official build log, as each have details and insights lacking in the other. Have fun!
-
Everything looks crisp and consistent. I like how the red fits into the overall color scheme, too.
- 109 replies
-
- 1
-
-
- Finished
- Artesania Latina
- (and 1 more)
-
These are things they taught in the builder's yard, father to son, master to apprentice. Most of us are trying to make a shortcut across hundreds of years of accumulated skill and knowledge.
- 341 replies
-
- 3
-
-
- Sophie
- Vanguard Models
- (and 1 more)
Our Emblem ®
