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Cathead

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  1. Cathead
    Do you have any specific examples? I'd say many European kits of American riverboats are classic examples, such as AL's King of the Mississippi, which is toylike in its utter disregard for realism; it's the steamboat equivalent of a Playmobile pirate ship. You don't have to be a purist or an expert to see this, five minutes with Google Images should convince anyone that this kit is trash. Can you imagine the howls if an American manufacturer came out with an expensive Victory kit that was equivalently ridiculous? Another is the Corel Ranger, which seems cobbled together from many different actual known examples of topschool schooner revenue cutters but doesn't match any known design. It wouldn't have been much harder for them to just base the model on an actual design rather than inventing their own. You'd still have an attractive model for those who don't care but a much higher-value product for those who do.
  2. Cathead
    Welcome from a fellow Missourian! Hope you enjoy this hobby as much as I do.
  3. Cathead
    Sounds like a good question for Kurt. I stepped in it deep last time I tried to advise you on rudders! Two certainly seems like the standard that I've seen, but take that with a salt mine.
  4. Cathead
    druxey, believe me, I thought about various people and clubs in the area, but we honestly didn't have a lot of time and wanted to do things of highest interest to us both (and family). Some other visit home when it's just me, it'd be very tempting! Jack, that's neat! My mother now lives just off the canal in Pittsford and routinely walks/bikes the canalpath. When I was there we rode the canal to the river and then downstream most of the way to downtown. Such a great trail network. The canalpath through Wayne County was quite a bit rougher when I was growing up, but more than once our family all biked all the way to the city from out there in the boonies. Brian, my workbench management is to clean up between stages. It gets messier and messier as I progress, then every few weeks I reach a good transition point and decide to clean up and organize things again, starting the cycle over. I like a clean workspace but also don't mind rooting around in messy scrap piles for just what I need. And the bench is shoehorned into our small living room between the couch and bookshelf, so there isn't a lot of room for fancy storage.
  5. Cathead
    It's been a month, suppose I should update this log. Following a two-week trip to Western New York to visit family in my land of origin, I slowly got back to the model desk. I've pretty much completed the heads and related structures along with the framing of the wheel housings. First, here's the "open" side of the model, the side of which won't be planked over (the top will). I designed the inner framing supporting the arch based on drawings by Alan Bates. And here's the "closed" side. The entire housing and the area in front of the stacked crates will be planked over. Here's a top view. The upper roof surfaces will be covered by the hurricane deck so aren't painted or otherwise finished; I used scrap sheet wood for these, which is why their appearance varies. Fun note, these were taken with my new cell phone, the first one I've ever owned. I have decidedly mixed feelings about this, but the world moves on and it's becoming ever more difficult to operate without one, even for a rural recluse like me. Finally, two photos of maritime interest from our trip. First, me at the Sodus Point lighthouse along Lake Ontario. Growing up, I learned to sail in the bay this lighthouse guards, my mother's second marriage took place here, and I took my high school senior photos here. Second, a work boat and barge entering a lock on the Erie Canal, taken by Mrs. Cathead. She had fun watching a full lock cycle as this little fella went through. Looks like a fun someday model subject, and the canal lock would make a neat diorama. The Erie Canal played a large role in my upbringing as well, and I love returning to it. We also had a good time visiting the Erie Maritime Museum in Pennsylvania (home of the Niagara), Niagara Falls, and lots of very hikeable waterfalls and gorges in the Finger Lakes region. Fun fact, we missed an historic event at Niagara Falls by one day. There's a wrecked scow that's been stranded just above the falls for over 100 years without moving. It moved downriver during a strong storm the day after we were there; would have loved to see that change! Thanks for reading, we'll see if I get back to more regular updates from now on.
  6. Cathead
    The top four in the quality poll are evenly split between European and American. Of course there's a certain bias in any country toward kits that can be easily acquired or whose instructions are written in the native language, but it's also true that many of us have experience with various "foreign" brands with terrible instructions or other issues (Ahem, Corel). There are also "foreign" brands that have gotten rave reviews on this site, like Master Korabel and Dusek, that nonetheless are smaller brands and naturally won't match the volume of major players in the American market like Model Shipways. By definition a poll is a collection of responses from the sample set. If you want to know more about a specific brand, look for specific build logs or reviews written on this site. Or write your own review if you think a brand is over/under-rated. But it seems to me that none of the high-ranking results (for either quality or lack thereof) are mistaken based on my own experience and that of reading lots of collected opinions on this site. At most, some brands are under-represented, but that's inevitable. It amazes me how many people get worked up about this.
  7. Cathead
    Cool! I'm not familiar with that tubing, is there any chance of it degrading over time like the rubber bands? That was my worry when I used tape for this on the Bertrand, but it's held up great so far.
  8. Cathead
    Cottages don't have rigging...or rather their sort you remove with a broom or vacuum.
  9. Cathead
    Roger, The links for different projects (top bar of any given page) give some information on model destination. For example, the intro page for the Heroine project states: We're thinking about an Oklahoma/Texas road trip next year, and this would definitely be on the agenda. As for the wheel, I definitely see what you mean, but I think that can't be entirely representative of later practice based on photos and drawings from the 1850s onward. Heroine, as an 1832 boat, definitely represents an earlier experimental stage in steamboat design. I don't think a later boat could handle that ratio of wheelhouse to wheel diameter given the known size of wheels. But point well taken, the model certainly shows a precedent for lots of space below the curved wheel housing.
  10. Cathead
    Looks real nice. It's been a pleasure to follow along on this.
  11. Cathead
    Thanks for sharing that, Kurt. What gorgeous work.
  12. Cathead
    Niagara yes, unfortunately Toronto is a bit too far off our route though I've quite enjoyed past visits.
  13. Cathead
    Only a little progress. I spent a bunch of time playing around with different mockups of the heads and their associated strucures, working out what seemed right to me in the physical model. Here's what I ended up building in wood: These need some finishing work, but I think I'm happy with how they capture the essence of the structures seen on contemporary images. There won't be any more updates for a while, as we're about to leave on vacation, taking a road trip to the lower Great Lakes to visit family and do lots of hiking and exploration. Among other things, we plan to visit the Erie Maritime Museum (home of the Niagara) and a variety of early star forts along Lake Ontario. Once we get back, work and life will be super-busy. Hopefully I can get back to this model by mid-November. Take care and thanks for reading.
  14. Cathead
    Nice work! Looks really crisp.
  15. Cathead
    Here's a drawing of what I'm trying to figure out: Side Side view and top view. On the left is what photographs of actual boats seem to show; heads arranged in parallel along the deck, such that their discharge wouldn't go into the paddlebox unless there were some kind of sloping chute. How would these reach the water without hitting the solid deck below (which is only open within the paddlebox)? But this matches the arrangement of doors seen in photos of several similar vessels. On the right is what I would do logically, arrange the heads along the edge of the paddlebox with a bit of internal overhang, so they discharge directly into the water. But that would have a series of doors running along the edge of the paddlebox, which doesn't look like any of the photos. For example, here are a couple zooms: Am I missing something? How do these interact with the paddle box in a practical and sanitary way?
  16. Cathead
    Michael, indeed, that's particularly true for the Missouri; there's a reason it's known as the Big Muddy. One broader question here relates to the layout of the heads, which I'm realizing I don't understand as well as I thought I did. Most photos of other steams show a set of doors running parallel to the longitudinal axis of the hull. I would have thought that they'd line up with their backs to the paddlebox to facilitate depositing their contents straight down, but the way they look in the photos they'd be depositing onto the deck below, well forward or aft of the paddle area. So were there slanting shafts or something (which sounds unecessarily complex and dirty)? Am I missing something?
  17. Cathead
    druxey, I'm planning to add those, but on their own they don't answer the question because they also seem to end before the boiler deck walkway. Assuming Arabia had narrower wheels than the other boats shown above, there would still be room for small heads there but the question is whether the boxes extend past that, out over the walkway.
  18. Cathead
    Kurt, if the boxes do extend to the edge of the boiler deck cabin, that means there's a tunnel of sorts under the rounded part of the box. Why would that be? Why wouldn't the box just end at the edge of the wheel, rather than extending the rounded part further inboard as useless space? That's what I can't figure out, why there would even be an implication that box was wider than the wheel. Bob, access is a good idea that I considered too, but there are easier places to access the wheel so I can't see why they would need to do that in this location.
  19. Cathead
    I made a bit more progress by permanently combining the texas and the pilothouse, then building stairs down from the latter. I also added the clerestory windows that support the middle (raised) part of the hurricane deck; these provide natural light to the central cabin that runs down the middle of the boiler deck. In these photos, the texas/pilothouse assembly isn't permanently attached to the rest of the model. As I started to think through the paddleboxes, I came across a conundrum. Many photos of similar vessels show very wide paddleboxes. For example, see the Mary McDonald: Or the Alice: Both images are from the University of Wisconsin-Lacrosse steamboat collection. These really wide boxes suggest either very wide guards and wheels, or that the boxes extend well past the width of the wheels/guards into the main hull. I can't determine from any images which is correct. Even the museum's Arabia painting (which I don't take as super-accurate) shows really wide paddleboxes: The problem is, this doesn't fit the Arabia's design. She had really narrow wheels and guards, as can clearly be seen from the wreck photos: So is it correct to give her narrow paddleboxes only as wide as the wheels (which makes logical sense to me even if it doesn't look like other boats) or should the boxes somehow extend inboard, over the boiler deck and onto the main superstructure? Here's what I mean on the actual model: Logically, it seems like the paddleboxes should only cover the wheel itself (dotted line on left). But the super-wide boxes on other vessels imply that these should extend further inboard (such as dotted line on right), covering the passageway. I can't figure out why any builder would do that. The model follows the wreck dimensions pretty closely based on extrapolations from the known wheel dimensions and other information, so I know my wheels and guards are right. Any thoughts on which approach to use and why? Note that I framed this photo to show the painting in the background for comparison. I don't know what to do.
  20. Cathead
    You know how to annoy a Texan? Tell him they're going to split Alaska in two and make Texas the third biggest state.
  21. Cathead
    Brian, steamboats certainly worked the Red River between Texas and Oklahoma. For example, consider the Heroine, which sank in 1838, for which there is an amazing (though incomplete) build log here on MSW based on the archeological excavations of the wreck. It's true that Texas rivers were less well-suited to steamboats than others in the Mississippi/Missouri basin, but there are a lot of early examples of their use in the decades leading up to the Civil War, on the Red and other Texas rivers.
  22. Cathead
    I don't think there's a clear answer on why the hurricane deck is called that, any more than the boiler deck. Just one of those terminologies that came into use and stuck. Goodness knows sailing vessels have any number of bizarre or illogical names for things.
  23. Cathead
    I love the lace curtain idea, that's a neat way to obscure the view while being more visually interesting. If you can get all that done with one hand, feels like I ought to be getting more done with two!
  24. Cathead
    John, The large wheels provided the necessary leverage for controlling the rudder(s), run manually by lines from the pilot house (if you look closely, you can see the ropes wrapped around the wheel's axle). As I understand it, American vessels eventually converted over to steam-powered steering, meaning the wheels got a lot smaller when mechanical leverage was no longer relevant, but Arabia was built well before that development. I wish I knew more about Australian steamboats, but is it possible they developed later and thus started out with non-mechanical steering and thus small wheels? For reference, here's a photo of the Arabia's original tiller and the block that held the ropes from the wheel way up in the pilot house: The other end pokes out of the stern to hold the rudder: Mark, I owe a clear debt to Kurt and Alan Bates for the clear diagrams and information they provided on pilot houses, as well as Brian's Chaperon which I consulted closely given the awesome job he did on a detailed pilot house.
  25. Cathead
    Thanks, popeye! This week's accomplishment was finishing the pilot house, which ended up being a fun little mini-model that I documented in a fair amount of detail. It was nice to take a break from the larger model and just focus on this one feature. I put a lot of detail into this since it's a visual focus point of the whole vessel. First, I built the wheel by laying out very thin strips of wood on double-sided tape and carefully fitting in braces around the circumference. When I liked what I had, I painted it. It's not as clean as if I'd bought a similar-sized one from Syren, but I liked doing it myself and its slightly rough style fits the rest of the model. This thing was super-delicate and I almost didn't get it off the tape in one piece. I then mounted the wheel in the pilot house, slotted into the floor the way all steamboat wheels were: Next, I built the windows using the same very fine strips and a lot of careful cutting and patience: After painting, I carefully glued sheets of clear plastic to the inside. My first attempt, I apparently used too much CA and it crazed the plastic, so I very carefully scraped the plastic off with a razor blade and tried again. I actually couldn't believe I got away with that, I was sure the window frame would shatter. The second time stuck with no crazing. I then added various internal details to the pilot house before gluing in the windows and door: Details include a small wood stove, a basic spittoon, a small bench, the hinged "bridle" that pilots used to hold the wheel in place if they needed to step away (next to the wheel at right), and two pull ropes for engine control. I ran these on criss-crossing lines as shown in various sources. The glue dried on the left-hand one a little weird; I'm saying a breeze is catching it through the open front window. The rods the lines are hanging off of are belaying pins from an old kit; the handles are parrell beads from same. There are a few other very small controls that could be added, but this thing is tiny and you'd never be able to see them clearly through the windows, so I decided this was enough to capture the proper feel. For a size comparison, the Chaperon model is in 1:48 scale while Arabia is in 1:64; this pilot house is ~1.5" to a side (~3.5 cm). At the front, I added the hinged/swinging shades that could be used to close off the normally open pilot house front during bad weather. Once I was happy with the internal detail, I added the rafters and the roof, which I made using the same masking-tape technique described in a previous post. This roof needed to be held down securely; three rubber bands took care of the edges but the top was bulging up too much, so I balanced a rock on it. Looks like she's bringing home a major geological sample from the Montana gold fields! And here's the finished pilot house with roof and stove chimney. I guess it's not 100% finished as I still need to add whistles, but it's close enough to move on from for now. This was really fun. Hope you like it.

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