Cathead

Welcome to MSW from a fellow Missourian. There aren't that many of us here. I got my start in model shipbuilding with the smaller Revell Constitution (1:196?), which still sits on a shelf in my office even though my skills have developed well beyond it. I hope you enjoy diving back into this hobby.

Thanks, Roger, that means a lot coming from you. I know what you mean about building a half-wheel, but I think I've figured out a proper solution. Stay tuned.

Lovely work, Daria. It's so satisfying to reach a goal one has worked toward for so long. Thanks to you and your dad for sharing your work!

Working on the paddle wheel has been a refreshing change of pace. As a reminder, here's one shot of a restored wheel at the museum (with me for scale); there are many more in this post from my design thread. I couldn't measure the wheel directly, but sources say it's 28' (~8.5 m) in diameter. I know the width exactly because one of the axles is on display within the museum and I could photograph and measure it up close (see photo later in this post). I estimated the overall layout of the wheel by visual inspection of my photos, then drew up a plan on my computer that I could print out and use as a template. Luckily, the Arabia has 18 spokes, making a nice easy 20° angle between each. For contrast, Bertrand had something like 13 spokes, meaning none of them lined up properly and were harder to lay out cleanly. To actually build the first ring, I drew on techniques I used to use when building Guillows balsa-frame aircraft. I laid the plan on a piece of cardboard and used sewing pins to mark the end of each spoke along the outside circumference: I "sharpened" the end of each spoke at roughly the correct angle for all to fit together. On the real thing, each spoke's end would fit into a precisely cast iron hub, like this: But I felt that my skill set wasn't up to trying to manufacture such a detailed piece, especially having to make three identical ones (so all the rings lined up). So I decided to fudge it by assembling the wheel spokes as a solid mass and placing a flat hub along the outside. Notice how all the spoke flanges face inward on the axle; this means they'll be barely visible on the finished model anyway, so my approach should simulate the right effect. I may even draw in some faint black lines or shading to suggest the presence of the flanges separating the spokes. Given that choice, I laid out all 18 spokes on the plan and used more pins to hold them in place. I filed a slight notch at the outer end of each spoke so they'd sit against the end pins more securely. Once I was happy with the layout, I smeared wood glue within the central "sharpened" zone so it would sink into the slight gaps between spokes and bind them together. When that dried, I flipped the assemblage and repeated the process. I was careful not to use too much so that it wouldn't drip down and bind the spokes to the paper plan. I kept the glue within the rough area that would be covered by the wheel hub, to minimize any change in appearance of the finished wheel. This worked great; the wood absorbed the glue and held fast as a tight structure with no reinforcement necessary: Next, I started filling in the rings. I started with the outermost one, figuring that it would hold the spokes in the proper alignment while the rest were filled in. Starting from the inside out had too much potential to deform the spokes and end up with an uneven and unsightly pattern. This was the correct decision. I cut each piece using a combination of sharp hobby knife, sharp blade on a "chopper" type platform cutter, and a small razor saw. I used files, sandpaper, and the hobby knife to adjust the end angles until I was satisfied, then glued the piece in place. Some weren't perfect and there are subtle differences in spacing between spokes, but they're all but invisible in the collective view. Here's the wheel with the first two rings completed: And here's the finished wheel, sanded to a smoother finish: I'm quite happy with how this turned out. Of course, now I have to make at least two more. It was a fun project the first time, we'll see how I feel after repeating it. I say "at least two more" because each wheel consists of three such assemblages, so in theory I need six of these. However, I'm only planning to leave one side of the Arabia open to view, as I did on Bertrand, so I need one fully developed wheel. As the other side will be enclosed, it seems unnecessary to build a full wheel that will be 90% hidden within the paddlebox. So right now I'm considering only building the lowest part of a "dummy" wheel for that side and hiding it in fully planked paddlebox. I think by the time I build three of these, that will feel like the right decision. It took a week to build this first one, but perhaps the next two will go a bit faster now that I've worked out my methods. In any case, it was nice to celebrate my birthday today with a finished mini-project. It's raining here, so we're having a quiet indoor day with good food, which is just fine with me at 39. We're making fried rice with garden produce and homemade sweet-and-sour-sauce for lunch, then German potato pancakes, homemade breadstick-pretzels, and pear sauce (fruit from our orchard) for dinner with a coconut-lemon rum cake. Will probably open a bottle of homemade mead to celebrate. Thanks for reading

I had been missing you and wondering. I'm sorry to hear that, but it takes courage and good sense sometimes to know when something isn't working. I look forward to hearing about your next project.

Chris, for a scribed deck, you might still be able to use pastels to subtly vary the individual planks after painting and vinegar staining. In the deck shown above, I went back over the surface using pastel on a fingertip and rubbed a bit of darker color on a few planks where the overall color seemed too uniform. You could probably also use a cotton swab if your fingertips are stubbier than mine. I'm not sure whether vinegar staining would warp a solid deck; weighting it down might introduce discoloration to the surface as it dries unevenly. You might experience with some cheap scribed wood sheets first. Maybe if you laid the stained deck facedown on a towel so that the stained surface pressed evenly into that, and placed weights on the back? Ken, yeah, I tried the brush method first and found it tedious; quick experimentation showed that dipping was a lot faster and had no problematic effects (like warping or uneven color). Actually, looking back at the photos above, you CAN see the difference between pure pastel weathering and the vinegar weathering (plus subtle pastel in places). There's a clear strip down the middle where the color isn't quite as yellow-brown; that's the non-stained area. It's more obvious in the photo than it is in person.

Chris, The individual planks are first painted with diluted Model Expo Bulwarks Gun Red (MS4802). M-E paint tends to be rather thick, but diluting it works well in this case to let some color soak into the wood. This is partly why I had to be careful not to let it soak in too much and come out the other side, at least for the guard planks that are exposed at the bottom. I'd think any reasonable shade of red would be fine, especially if you're going to weather it down some. Then each plank was dipped briefly into a staining solution I made by dissolving a chunk of steel wool in white vinegar. I didn't let the planks marinate; each got literally a one-second, in-out dip into the solution, then was laid out to dry on a cloth. I wiped excess liquid off the surface, or else it gets little droplet stains. If you leave it in longer, you get progressively darker color, but one second is enough to dull the bright red paint and give the exposed underside a suitably weathered look. You have to be careful with this solution as it stains everything; I "ruined" a pair of pants by absent-mindedly wiping my hands, creating a permanent rust stain (they're still perfectly wearable, but not for going out to dinner). As you may recall, I started by using pastels to darken the paint instead of the solution, but switched over after a few lines of planking. I still used some pastel to individually darken stained planks further, giving the deck a bit more local contrast. For this, I just rubbed a finger along a dark grey pastel stick and then along the stained and dried plank surface. I have to say, I'm very pleased with the final appearance of wood treated in this way.

Thanks, Kurt. I wasn't clear on the weathering: I absolutely don't intended to leave the hull shining pristine white by the end when the rest of the model will be more weathered. I haven't done the hull weathering yet because I figured the hull's finish would get beaten up sooner or later during the rest of construction so wanted to be able to sand out or paint over any faults, which will be a lot easier before final weathering is applied. I just meant that I was still trying not to have to do that by keeping the hull clean in the first place until I was ready to weather it, and hadn't decided whether to just dull it down overall or specifically add a muddy waterline. I started laying out the paddlewheels today. They may not be as bad as I thought; the larger scale than Bertrand is already clear in terms of having bigger pieces to work with. Plus, on a sidewheeler, it's easier to turn the "bad" side of a wheel or competent inward to hide it!

The main deck is planked! Apologies for no updates in a while. Planking is slow and tedious and there really isn't much to show as it progresses. Plus, August was my busiest-ever work month so I was particularly disinclined to get on the computer for any other purposes. Sharp eyes may have noticed that my deck planks are a bit wider than they appear to be in the original wreck photos. That's intentional; I knew I wanted to paint and stain each plank individually, and thought I would go absolutely crazy if I used really narrow scale planks. As it is, this deck took me over two months to complete. I think it captures a realistic feel and honestly that's more important to me than exact replication. I remain really happy with the steel wool & vinegar stain I've been using on all these planks. It darkens the paint just the right amount and gives any exposed raw wood a nice weathered tone. The underside of the deck, though it will be difficult to see on the completed model, has a nice appearance to my eye: Look closely and you'll see that a couple of red paint blobs seeped through here and here (particularly just forward of the port wheel). I tried to check each plank before installation, but obviously got sloppy in a couple places. I can't fix it, and again this is an angle that won't be seen on the finished model, so I'll live with it. Trying to keep a pure white hull clean during the building process is also proving to be a challenge; just too easy to grab her with pastel-grubby hands or accidentally smear stain. I'm considering whether to stain/pastel the lower hull brownish to simulate a river-mud waterline. Next up, I return to machinery work. I need the wheels and boilers built and installed, along with the engines, before I do any superstructure work so I can be sure they all work together properly. Gotta say I'm not looking forward to building the wheels! Thanks for reading and for putting up with the long delay.

There are two ways to get planks to lie "horizontally" as if they were parallel to the deck. Either you edge-bend them, so that they curve both sideways and up-and-down, or you spile them, meaning you cut the complex shape needed out of a wider piece of wood. It's not otherwise possible to make a straight strip of wood follow the flow of a hull, especially on bluff bows. Kit instructions (especially European ones) tend to be awful at explaining how to do this; I suggest you consult some of the excellent planking guides on this site to learn more about how to do this before you start laying your final layer.

Cool project; nice work so far. In figuring out your balance, have you considered/tested how top-heavy she's going to be when fully finished? Getting the fore-aft balance right is certainly important, but there's a real danger of any wake or ripple tipping her laterally, just like the real thing. To answer an earlier question you asked, by Chaperon's era most steamboats had converted to coal. Wood was the fuel of choice when it was abundant along the riverbanks, but after the Civil War wood became increasingly hard to come by, improving transportation meant coal was more widely available, and it was a more efficient fuel. Same reasons railroads switched over. As for stateroom size, that depends on your point of view. Steamboat staterooms were tiny, but not any smaller (and in some cases bigger) than those offered on modern overnight trains both in Europe and the US. Of course, in those cases it's one or two nights, not one or two weeks (or more) for riverboats depending on the length of journey. Plus, people back then were quite a bit shorter and generally thinner.

Par for the course for these kits. Of course, no in one Australia will know the difference, just as no one here in the American Midwest will ever recognize all the various faults in my Corel revenue cutter!

In fairness, new sails existed too, or they couldn't have become old sails. And there's nothing wrong with displaying a model as if it were just outfitted with a new set if you're trying to show the ship in an ideal state, as most models tend to do anyway. I mean, even in your photo, that jib looks a lot newer than the rest.

Oh, geez, I hate to be a party pooper, but is the signage the original from the kit? It should read "Natchez", not "Netchez", at least if it's meant to refer to the real Mississippi River port. There's no "Netchez" that I know of, and a branch of my family's lived in that area for over a century.

Ironically, I didn't fully appreciate the experience because I was 18 and knew almost nothing about steamboats despite being a history buff. I though the wrecks were cool, took a few pictures, poked around, and moved on. Of course, 38 year old me wishes I'd spent a day documenting every aspect of their construction. Teenagers are dumb, what can you do?

Oops, Carl, I completely misunderstood you! Sorry to ruin your joke. It was a reasonable enough question under the other interpretation...

Cog, not that I know of. Smaller, unpowered riverboats used oars, but I haven't heard of steamboats doing so. The current was generally too swift for sweeps to be of any use driving that bulk upstream, and downstream they'd still be unlikely to provide enough thrust for steering or navigation. Really, to make any difference in a riverboat, you'd need a giant crew to man them, way more than these boats carried even with passengers. The machinery and cargo were way too heavy. Chris, most American riverboats operating within the Mississippi River system were built along the upper Ohio River, near the ironworks needed for the machinery and the dense forests of the Appalachian Mountains. Some were built further downstream in places like St. Louis. There were established yards that built most boats, but individual craft tended to be artisanal in the sense that there weren't necessarily blueprints or standard designs, they were just built in place according to whatever design and plan the builders wanted. This may have become more standardized toward the end of the era (Chaperon is relatively late), I'm referring to the 1840s-1860s primarily. The yards could be highly established and skilled, but they weren't traditional shipyards in the coastal sense. They tended to be built fast and loose, using rough wood and as light framing as they thought they could get away with, given that the average life of these boats was so short and their operating conditions so rugged. As for paint, my guess would be a basic whitewash and a basic red, probably locally produced and not too high-value. Kurt or Roger are the best ones to answer that detail, though. The tradeoff here is that the owners wanted the boats to look flashy even if they weren't, so there was some impetus to have enough solid color on there not to look trashy. Chaperon came along late enough that maybe more high-end paint was available or used, I'm not sure. Personally, I think perfect, bright paint jobs tend to look a bit fake on a model even if they're accurate, so I'd go with a more faded look anyway, but that's obviously modeler's choice. Again, Kurt or Roger may well correct some or all of the above and are welcome to do so. Definitely looking forward to your Chaperon.

LJP, I have some of the nearly exact same photos somewhere in my print collection, taken in 1998. Fun to see yours.

Rain, what a novel concept. Here we're classified as Extreme Drought and on the edge of Exceptional Drought (the scale doesn't go higher). I agree that cameras and harsh lighting are the modeler's enemies. I really like the curtain effect behind the other details. For what it's worth, the stacks were normally called chimneys on these riverboats.

I'm sorry to hear that, best wishes with getting through treatment. We'll all look forward to your work when you get back.

Agreed, nicely done. Glad to see you're keeping at it.

As a geologist, I love the idea of building the Beagle someday, so I'll happily follow along with this. I like your lumberyard; I did something similar by gluing a series of short PVC pipe sections into an upright cluster; the wood flop around more but it takes up less space on my workbench.

Cool, you're using the Doctor from Arabia as a guide. Your result will certainly look nicer than mine will!

The fact that you felt the transom did not have problematic movement during fairing while braced that way supports the view that a few top braces are all that is required for the rest of the hull. Glad it worked fine for you.

If this is your first ship build, what have you been doing with that fine workshop up until now? Whatever it was, I hope you enjoy this fun hobby.