Cathead

I agree. The deck is crisp and clean around those nicely weathered details; no sign of the anchor or rope ever having been dragged around, abrading the deck and leaving marks/gunk behind. I think it creates too sharp a contrast between the details and the deck. I think if it were me I'd trying using pastels to add just some hints of localized use on the deck.

No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting. Look, matey, I know a dead rower when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now. No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable rower, the Byzantine Red, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!

I think your approach captures the feel of the boiler nicely. At most I'd say the rivets are out of scale (too large), but this is minor. At times, I think over-sized details actually help enhance a model when they call attention to an interesting aspect. For example, the last time I made sails, I knew my bolt-rope stitching was out of scale but it looks nice from an artistic perspective and draws the eye to an interesting feature of the sails. So in this case, I think your boiler will look great when it's painted and in the shadows of the overhanging boiler deck. The consistent precision of the detail counts for a lot and the boiler looks nice.

To clarify, I'm planning on using the same stain to finish the model (Model Shipways walnut stain). I diluted it heavily for the initial staining as it's extremely thick, which made it far lighter. If you look closely at the hull shots you can see that some planks are different shades, which reflects staining batches at slightly different dilutions (I did it by eye and feel). I intend to dilute it less for later coats to (a) get a darker color and (b) keep it from penetrating as deep and not dissolving the glue. Depending on tests on scrap, I may mix in some black paint or just use pastels to darken the surface. Will show tests before doing anything. Thanks for all the supportive comments & likes!

And here's the model with two full strakes attached. It's nice outside, so I took it out of the frame and went outdoors for some better lighting. Almost got stung by a wasp that was nesting under this porch bench and didn't appreciate me using it. Maybe I'll paint this black and yellow and name it the Old Norse term for wasp. As I think I said before, I'm planning to repaint the finished hull for a darker, more tar-like tone so am not worrying about the uneven finish in the initial staining. You can see the really coarse wavy grain in the original wood, which is another reason I want to repaint the finished product. I also want to help blend the ends of the strakes into the keel, either by sanding them down or by using some kind of filler to extend them. I might even try to make false joints so it looks like the pre-formed stem/stern that many real ships used.

I've been pre-soaking the planks using an old rain gauge tube, which works great: After 20-30 minutes, I clamp them in place on the hull, let them dry, then attach with glue. Works great. One thing I really wanted to get right was keeping the strakes on both sides of the hull aligned at stem and stern so they'd look good when viewed from the ends. So I came up with this simple idea for ensuring consistency. Once the first side was glued down, I used a few binder clamps to "mark" that position equally on both sides. For example, here is the first strake glued on: One binder clip marks the very tip of the plank, the next two are parallel to its outer curve. Since the clamps are the same size on both sides, their edges mark the exact location where the opposite plank should go. So when I set the opposite plank up, I could nestle it right in among these clips and know it was right, without needing to mark lines. This also helped hold the plank in place. Here's another example, using the second strake. First, clip marking the installed strake's location: And opposite side showing exactly where the next one needs to go: Sharp eyes will notice that I've been having a devil of a time getting the strakes to fit inside each others' curves perfectly. I'm doing my best and expect to maybe use a tiny bit of filler. I think it'll overall vanish into the broader hull's pattern, and I'm learning how these interact as I go, so I think the upper (and more visible) ones will be better. I also think this one slid a little under the clamp, something I'm now being more careful about it.

My favorites are the single-color black-red and black-yellow.

Engines are a great detail, I'd just suggest studying some resources to get a good sense of what typical sternwheeler engines looked like. For example, here's a decent basic plan that you could work from (from this link): And here are a few views of the simplified engines I built for my Bertrand, which were intended to convey the idea without getting bogged down in details: Those may also give you a sense of one way to lay them out in the hull. Hope that's helpful.

Yep, real thing, hence the linguistic AND visual pun.

Nice job on my namesake!

You're well into what should be a nice model with a distinct style!

As a geologist married to a geologist, both of whom have strong interests in the intersections between natural landscapes and human activities, this sounds too good to be true. Could I use that with a standard digital camera to, say, scan a given rock face or landform and create a 3D model of it? I'm familiar with doing this by lidar, but that's really expensive. Probably shouldn't hijack this thread, so feel free to respond by PM.

Steven, great minds strike twice, as I did clamp the butt joint with a scrap piece behind the planks. As I noted above, I'm hoping others are right and that the clinker overlap will support these joints well enough from now on. Thanks for the ongoing support and advice!

That's beautiful.

Wow! What a fantastic way to explore and visualize a model. Is that something you have professional access to?

Binho, thanks for that. I have been poking around on the Skuldelev 2 part of that site, but hadn't stumbled on the reconstruction gallery yet, which has lots of good images. The strakes should clearly be composed of many shorter planks rather than a few long ones. I don't fault the kit for this, it makes sense to have it designed as it is for ease of construction. If someone wants to up the realism ante and go for shorter strakes, good for them. The kit's problem is solely in the instructions' total lack of clarity on how you are expected to build the model as scarphed butt joints are impossible under the kit's design. Anyway, last night I worked out how I wanted to approach this and put the first strake on. I wanted to simulate more shorter planks and initially just decided that I would cut the pre-spiled planks into shorter lengths and deal with the butt-joining as best I could. So I marked some locations and tried to use my chopper tool to ensure a clean and square cut: However, the planks are actually quite tough across the grain and the tool only scored the surface. This gave me a rather good idea, in which I realized that a scored joint would look about as good as a full joint without actually compromising the plank. So I did the same all the way along and used a narrow file to widen the "joint" scar slightly since I assumed that subsquent painting/staining would swell the fibres and close it up again. After all, I just want a hint of this pattern as the real joint would naturally be pretty tight. I then did some serious sanding to put the proper angle into the edge of this garboard plank (so it would sit properly against the keel). This angle got broader and broader as the strake curved toward the stem, until by the end I was mostly sanding the plank flat so it would sit flush against the keel rather than on-end to it. Here's a view partway through that sanding. The stain is actually really helpful for judging exactly how far the sanding has progressed. Having done that to my satisfaction for both halves of this strake, I installed one at a time using wood glue and a lot of clamps" It's hard to tell in that evening light but it came out nicely. Will try to take better photos later. I'm going to lay the same strake on both sides of the hull before moving up (rather than planking one whole side first) to help ensure (a) that the hull stays straight and (b) that the strakes line up at stem and stern across the keel as they'll be REALLY visible if they're offset. To handle this first butt joint, I used a scrap piece as a clamp glued behind the two planks. After this, further strakes may not need this given the support of the clinkered plank below; we'll see. Thanks to everyone for helping me talk through this and figure it out. I probably complained more than I should have but it was frustrating there for a bit and I'm kind of on edge overall. I appreciate the patience and the support. This ought to get more fun and interesting as the planking develops.

Richard, thanks for that. The documents listed there also clarifies that various scarph joints were used, which makes perfect sense. It's clear that the original didn't space the butts over ribs because these ships were built as open shells and there weren't ribs at that stage of construction, especially in the upper hull. What I'm referring to is model design, because the thin scale planks can't easily be scarphed and it would seem to make life a lot easier for the model building if the joints were designed to fit over the frames during construction. At the very least the instructions could explain what the designer intends the builder to do here. Also forgot to thank Binho for chipping in those insights from the original wreck!

Louie, thanks, I know about staggering plank ends and scarphing from previous models. The kit is already designed to alternate plank lengths so that you get a two-strake shift and that can't really be changed given where the planks are already cut. My goal was to at least shorten the planks so there was more than one joint per strake, distributing the look more evenly. However, this is getting even wierder than I thought. I found even more frustration last night when messing with the planking. My initial assumption was wrong: the planks can't be butted over a frame the way they're designed. I rechecked the plans and tested setting two lines of strakes; there is no way to butt the two halves of a given strake over a frame that also makes the plank ends line up properly with the stem and stern curves. Here is what the correct alignment at stem and stern looks like for the first two strakes: You can see how the both planks follow the curve of the keel properly and how the inner one will curve nicely into the outer one. This has to be right; you can't shift these more than a few mm in either direction or the whole assembly is thrown off. However, here's where this places the two butt joints: Why??? Why not design this so these joints fall over the frames? They're not that far away! But there's no allowance for how you're supposed to join these ends. Scarph joints won't work because these are pre-spiled to a pretty tight tolerance. The instructions say absolutely nothing about this. This also screws up my plans to cut these into shorter planks and do a more staggered butt pattern, because I'd really want that centered over frames. For the first strake this will be manageable because I can just glue a wood-scrap clamp behind the joint, as long as it's buried beneath the deck. But I have no idea how this is supposed to work once you get above the deck. And I want to define my butt-joint pattern now rather than altering it partway along. This is the downside of pre-spiled planks. They make life easy when they're done right, but also allow for very little adaptation. WIth a bunch of strip wood, I could design my own pattern and cut them where I please, but I have to work with these or cut all my own planks from new stock, which I'd really rather not do as (a) I don't have it (b) I don't want to and (c) this was meant to be a relaxing model, not another scratchbuild. A final point: All the frames above the deck are just for construction, as this vessel didn't have frames extending up that far. What you're supposed to do is plank the whole hull, then cut out the frames above the deck, leaving a hollow planked shell (this is also not obvious from the instructions and I had to confirm it through PMing with Binho; I was going to mention this when I got there as anothe flaw in the directinos). Which means that all the butt joints above the deck won't be supported by anything. So how does the kit expect those joints to be made in a way that stays strong enough? Is the assumption that the clinker overlap will hold them in place? Maybe that is the answer, the more I think about it. Still seems odd, and it should certainly be explained in the instructions as it's not typical for modellers used to carvel planking. Just going to keep mulling this over and see if something brilliant occurs to me. As no one has recorded a log for this model before, I don't have a direct reference. Binho built the 1:72 version, but that one was small enough it looks like all the strakes came in one piece, so this wasn't an issue. I reviewed a few logs for the Dusek 1:35 Gokstad ship just in case the design had a similar flaw, but they didn't mention this problem and just show a nicely planked hull with joints that seem to be over the frames.

I agree that the walnut looks better to me. The mahogany has a reddish-maroon tint that doesn't really match my sense of a tarred hull.

All the planks in this kit are pre-spiled, so I pre-stained them within the laser-cut sheet so that the framing around them would minimize unwanted warping: The thin sheets these are cut from have a pretty strong swirling wood grain that creates some strange patterns on the planks (not at all realistic for scale wood grain). My goal is to repaint/stain the hull, especially the outside, once it's assembled to minimize this effect. For now, I just want the planks to have a base color that stays relatively dark if/when I have to do minor sanding or shaping. The instructions, once again, leave much to be desired when trying to explain how to actually do the planking. Each strake is made up of two pieces (labelled a and b by strake number, as in 17a and 17b), but nowhere do the instructions specifically tell you in which direction these are meant to go on the hull. Each planking sheet has an arrow referred to as "planking direction", and one could assume the arrow points toward the bow, but it never actually says this. They also never explain how to handle the butt joint between the two strakes. It would make sense to me that these are meant to go over one of the frames for maximum strength, but one of the 3D drawings in the instructions clearly shows butt joints shifted away from the frames, which makes no sense to me as you'd have to use some kind of parallel reinforcement and that would ruin the look of the planking in an open boat. I think that drawing is just sloppy, but it's concerning as there's no clear answer. The plans have a full-scale side view but don't show butt joints (each strake is shown as a single piece). There's also no guide for how and where the tips of the planks are supposed to run up the curved stem and stern; you're just supposed to guess? I think I have to proceed on the assumption that planks are butted over frames. A test fit of the first garboard plank (below) implies that placing its end over a frame puts the tip in about the right place on the stem. This would mean that, in theory the location at stem and stern would take care of themselves as the precut plank lengths will determine where the tips go. Still makes me nervous to have so little guidance. So far, the kit itself seems to be reasonably well thought-out but the instructions leave out a LOT of critical information regarding how you're actually supposed to proceed. There will be more examples of this soon, but I'll cover them when I get there. For now, I'm waiting for the stained planks to dry and probably won't get back to this until sometime Sunday as I'm spending the rest of today helping my in-laws and have to work part of Sunday to make up for work time lost during the week to other issues. Thanks for reading, let me know if any of this doesn't make sense or if you have other ideas. As always, talking about builds like this is so much better than just going it alone. EDIT: I meant to ask another question. The fact that each strake is made up of only two pieces makes for unnaturally long planks and only two butt joints in the whole hull. I'm thinking about cutting these down to make shorter sets of planks that are still butted over frames but far more often, as I think this would look good and more realistic. GIven the pre-spiling, I don't think this would hurt anything? Thoughts? How long would a typical plank in this era be? I know 20-30' is a good guess for the later Age of Sail, but have no idea for this era.

And here I thought all these dudes needed tattoos to keep things straight. NO, Thermocles, your OTHER starboard! Nice revision on the arm method.

Agreed, hard to say what it's "supposed" to look like but it creates a really nice weathering effect. One thing I learned long ago from model railroading was that models often look best when they "feel" right rather than when they "are" right. Sometimes that means actually making them less than perfect in order to hit the eye the right way.

Right now I feel like they're pretty firm and don't need a temporary gunwale, but it's a good suggestion and I appreciate it.

Here's the upside-down stand I cobbled together from the existing one, basically by turning the vessel upside down and adding some vertical supports using scrap wood and hardware from my workshop. This won't allow me to plank all the way, but will let me get a series of strakes on that will help stabilize the hull. Once I get that far I'll decide how to modify things to proceed further. Hopefully I get to work on this over the weekend, life continues to be a real bear lately.

Seems reasonable? One of those things you may notice but no one else will, and that will vanish into the overall coolness of the finished model. Would it work to sand down the outer edge a bit to minimize the thicker shadow, or would that mess up the staining?