Cathead

This is a fun and deceptively challenging kit; I look forward to your continued progress. You've made a nice start so far. I suspect you may want to fair that first bulkhead from the bow a bit more; the tight curve there means you'll want the maximum gluing surface once you start planking, and right now you have a very narrow strip for the planks to attach to. Those first few, especially, you may want to fair until all the laser char is gone and the entire surface will be flush to the planks.

I would be potentially interested in either the Pegasus or the Chebacco (which I keep reading as Chewbacca), although I can't promise I'd be a customer. I really wish there were more kits that focused on the structural and utilitarian design of ships, and the former fits that mold even though it's yet another warship. The latter is unique and (to me) completely unknown. The Dutch ship looks very interesting, but it's so obscure and unusual that I can't see myself investing in building and displaying it.

So the solution to my planking problem was absurdly obvious once I thought about it, with the nudges given me by steamschooner and amateur. I had been assuming that the first few strakes of planking were full-width because they're wider than the ones below, but that's probably not true. They're probably tapered as well. There are multiple drawings in Adam Kane's book showing that hull planks could be 12" wide or larger, whereas the widest planks at the stern in my photos are maybe 5-6". My base material for planking is 1/8" strips, which scale to about 8" in reality. So the obvious solution is to taper all the stern planks. In retrospect it seems pretty dumb to have not thought of this in the first place, but I was stuck on the assumption that the first few planks were full width all the way back, in which form they really didn't want to follow the hull's curve. Once I started tapering planks toward the stern, everything started to work better. Also, steamschooner is right and my stern profile isn't quite the same as the real thing. Or rather, I made a dumb mistake when laying out the frames and guards and didn't allow for the height of the guards when carving the stern frames. So the last few frames are pretty close to the real thing, but the guards should start at their top, not flush with their top, meaning that the more vertical part of stern frame is buried within the guards rather than being part on the run of planking. That's just a basic mistake on my part, but I don't think it's going to be particularly noticeable as the model progresses. If I had gotten that right, the first few strakes wouldn't need to be tapered as much since they'd remain more vertical, and my planking would look even more like the real thing. Oh well. After a week of evenings working on this new approach, here's how she looks. This still may not be "right", but it's closer and at least works properly. The planking looks rough in these, partly because the light picks out every shadow, and partly because it is. I'm not a master craftsman, and I honestly like my riverboat models to look a bit rough. To scale, this planking job far rougher than it should be, but once it's sanded and painted, I think it'll settle down to a slightly rough finish that conveys the idea that this isn't a perfect schooner's hull. That's what I tell myself, anyway. I've only been building ship models a few years and am still learning. I admire people who can build perfect hulls, but for western riverboats at least, a bit rough around the edges conveys the feel (if not the literal reality) of these craft. At least the basic run and taper of the planks looks reasonably similar to the real thing, and makes sense to me from a construction point of view. Here's the bow and the hull overall. In case anyone wonders, here's how I've been shaping and clamping my planks. I preshape each one roughly (tapering/sanding), soak it for a few minutes, then clamp it in place and use a hair dryer to heat and dry the wood. When it's taken the intended shape, I do any final sanding/shaping needed for a reasonable fit, then use wood glue for attachment with the same set of clamps. I've had to remove a few of the braces supporting the outer rim of the guards to allow for clamp access, but those can be easily replaced when I'm done. At this point I think I've gotten a handle on how this hull will work, and will just keep plugging away at it. Once this side is mostly done I'll switch to the other side, bring it to the same point, then finish off the final internal planks along the bottom of the hull. Thanks for reading and offering advice/support. Also, if you're reading this I assume you're interested in steamboats in general, so you really should check out this new thread on Russian riverboats modeled after American ones, it's pretty fascinating stuff.

As Roger says, on regular river steamers ashes etc. were just dumped overboard. Some actually had a brick-lined trough leading from the boilers across the deck to a hole in the guards, so the ashes could just be (swept or washed, not sure which) right down that chute and into the river. Here's an example from my model of Bertrand, which was clearly shown in the archeological drawings: I still can't quite wrap my head around the internal geometry of Cairo, so I don't know if this is at all relevant. This is such an interesting discussion. By the way, John, I will be in St. Louis for a few days in early February for a conference. Is your project open to the public?

Thanks for the clarification, John, I was having a hard time envisioning the three-dimensional nature of the interior. That's interesting that they pivoted the guns for each reloading; seems like that would lead to a really slow rate of fire and lots of wear on the deck. For coaling, is it geometrically or practically possible that they ran some kind of chute or even canvas tube through a port and down to the storage areas? That would allow bulk loading through a potentially twisty path.

Steamschooner, your question triggered a thought process that I think leads to the answer, but I don't have time to explain yet. Stay tuned. Amateur, that's definitely a possibility. Proper compass timber was already becoming scarce in this period (for things like curved frames) but thick trunks were still available. My further answer to steamschooner may help answer your question above. Again, stay tuned.

I've begun planking the hull, and immediately encountered a problem; I would love some advice. As I run the planking toward the stern, the natural lie of the planking really diverges from the line of the decking/guards. You can see what I mean here: If I try to run the upper plank flush to the underside of the guards all the way, it takes some major edge-bending, more than I suspect the builders would have done. Moreover, the effect multiplies as you go down and just doesn't work. Although the stern here superficially resembles that of a sailing ship, it's narrowing in far more, so the curves involved are really tight. My photos of the original stern fragment sure make it look like the planks ran parallel to the guards, but that isn't working for the geometry of my hull: Granted, the real fragment is very short so there may well have been any number of drop planks or something that I don't know about. In order to let the planking run smoothly on my hull, I'm going to have to drop the first two strakes and let the third one reach the actual stern (as shown above). But I have no idea whether this was a practice, or really much else about steamboat planking, as no sources I've read really deal with this question. It's also interesting that, on the real stern, the first few planks were relatively wide, followed by a bunch of tapered planks. This makes sense overall, but again I can't figure out how those wide upper planks are supposed to wrap around such a tight curve without extraordinary edge bending. If I were planking this without the visual references, I'd be tapering things from the start, but I was hoping to match (at least somewhat) what I saw in the real stern, which means a few wider planks first. Does my question make sense? Any thoughts?

That's a fascinating question. Mark's answer makes some sense, but was there enough interior room to allow a gun to be withdrawn far enough to allow anything big to pass through a gunport? I was thinking back to my last visit in summer 2017, and found this comparable photo of the interior. You could certainly pull one of those guns all the way in, but estimating the barrel length, you'd still barely have room to manhandle a barrel or sack or something through one of those ports. Is it possible those metal gratings were removable for bulk loading? Given how much fuel even a regular steamboat burned (much less an ironclad), I'd sure like to believe they had a better coaling system than through the gunports, even accounting for cheap labor.

You're welcome! I'm happy to encourage interest in these fascinating craft; there's so many unique aspects to their design and operation. Thanks for reading.

Kurt's answer is what I do. Brief soak, shape, clamp, hairdryer, adjust and shape, glue. Works very well. Plank should fit its shape before gluing.

Thanks, Jim! I'm afraid I know next to nothing about Australian steamers, but American river boats generally had huge wheels. Arabia's were about 28' (~8.5 m) in diameter. This gave them a lot of driving power, necessary for the high flows and rapid currents on inland rivers, but also allowed them to dip very shallowly into the water to adapt to the same rivers' ability to nearly dry up.

Bob, Here's my answer; I'll be interested to see if others like Kurt or Roger agree. First, guards initially developed on sidewheelers as an essential structural feature to both support and protect the wheels; thus they had to be wide relative to the hull. However, they also contributed to lateral instability because although they increased the cargo capacity, they also acted as levers enhancing the effects of any weight placed on them. So when you're loading a sidewheeler, you need to be especially careful how you do it. There are stories of boats listing badly merely due to a mass rush of passengers to the rail to see some sight, given the lever action of those wide guards over a narrow hull. In comparison, sternwheelers had no structural need for wide guards, so their hulls could be built relatively wider and thus maintain more lateral stability. Narrow guards were sometimes added but in these cases it seems to generally have been considered not worth the tradeoff to go very far out. This was also affected by the era and the intended operational region for a given boat. Guards got progressively wider as the steamboat era went on, but were predominant on the lower (and wider) portions of the rivers where large bulky cargo was carried (like cotton or hemp bales). Further upriver, particularly on the Missouri, guards were seen as an impediment to navigation in the shallower, narrower channels because they could snag on obstructions; cargos in upper river areas also weren't as bulky (gold, tools, bulk foods, clothes) compared to lower-river cargos (raw crops). I've read that sternwheelers built for the Missouri generally didn't have guards at all, whereas boats built for the Ohio had narrow guards. Sidewheelers were generally used for bulky cargo anywhere because their inherent design allowed more space for such bulky but relatively non-dense cargo (compared to tools, metals, barreled goods, etc). That being said, anything was possible anywhere. The Arabia steamed all the way to Montana and even went up the tributary Yellowstone River, an amazing accomplishment for a wide, tipsy sidewheeler in that region.

Congratulations on finishing! Your workmanship is very crisp.

My carronade (sister kit to this one) had a white metal barrel, I just checked my photos and the box. I'm almost certain my long gun did too, but I can't prove it. It somehow didn't register with me that your kit came with a brass barrel, I don't know how I didn't make the connection. I bought and built both last year. Moreover, the photo on the M-E kit page shows a white metal barrel and the kit description says "Britannia metal components". So how did you end up with a brass barrel?

Adding the guards: Part II I built a foot-long jig to hold all the guard timbers at exactly the same length and angle from the hull, and got to work installing these (making sure to leave a gap for the wheels). My guard timbers are a bit thicker than scale, but they’re wood I already had on hand (scrap from my stepfather's workshop) and are the correct height. As budget is always a concern for me, and as these will be planked over, I didn’t worry about getting the thickness scale perfect. Plus, this adds strength to the assembly. In the images below, the paper cutouts are my scale drawings of the wheels and engines, with a blank rectangle for the boilers. Once the easy part was done (the guards along the straight sides amidships), it was time to lay out the curves around the bow and stern. I wet some properly scaled strips and bent them around each location, adjusting them to the natural curve I wanted using clamps and braces. I used a fairly even curve at the stern and a more elongated curve at the bow, following common designs for steamboats of this period. There are no images of Arabia’s bow, and only the overhead photo of the stern (shown in the last post and below). Once I had these curves clamped in place and parallel on both sides, I let them dry before fitting the rest of the guard timbers inside the curve. Whether or not to angle these toward the bow and stern is an interesting question. My understanding is that some boats’ hull framing (and thus the guard timbers attached to them) stayed square all the way along, and others followed the curve of the hull. In the overhead photo (and in person), Arabia’s guard timbers look fairly straight until the very end. Since neither the hull bulkheads nor the guard timbers will show on the finished model, I took the easy route and kept them all straight. Here's the hull with the finished guard framing, with a pencil for scale: Here are the bow and stern from below, giving a better sense of the interaction between hull shape and guard shape: And here is the stern from above, laid out for comparison with the wreck photo at approximately the same scale and angle: The next step will be planking the hull. This had to wait until the guards were installed, so I could be sure to nestle the top strake right up against the lower guard timbers. I felt it would be easier to build the guards properly with a jig and align the planking to them, than to plank first and try to create the perfect curve along the hull that would support a smooth run for the guards. With bitter cold already here and lasting through the coming weekend, I should be able to make a start on the planking. Thanks for reading.

Adding the guards: Part I A quiet holiday weekend finally allowed me to make significant progress. With the hull reasonably faired for planking, the next step involved installing the guards. These are lateral extensions of the main deck that can nearly double the deck's width relative to the hull (see this cross-section for an example). On a sternwheeler, these were often either non-existent or relatively narrow. On a sidewheeler, they were far wider in order to accommodate the wheels themselves. Below is an overhead view of Arabia's hull during excavation, in which you can see the guards curving out from the stern to envelop the port paddle wheel. These guards were supported by timber extensions attached to the main deck timbers (i.e. the main deck was supported by different beams than the guards). Arabia's hull was roughly 30' wide and her paddle wheels were roughly 6.5' wide. Thus the guards need to be at least 8' wide to accommodate the full wheel and support both the outer end of the axle and the wheel housing, adding approximately 50% to the boat’s total width. To check this assumption, I scaled the photo to my 1:64 ruler and confirmed that the guards fit that ratio (allowing for the angle of the photo and distortion of the hull). Another question relates to the vertical angle of the guards. The cross-section linked above shows the guards essentially horizontal, but other references (such as Alan Bates) show guards with a noticeable inward angle (opposite to the natural camber of the deck). This latter style makes sense to me, as it (a) drains any water toward whatever scuppers were used to drain the main deck just outside the hull, and (b) allows an inward cantilever effect that would help support the significant weight carried by the guards (such as the wheels themselves and bulky cargo like cotton or hemp bales). There are no profiles of the Arabia available and the overhead view above doesn’t clarify this, so I invoked artistic license and chose to angle my guards because it’s logical and I think it adds visual interest. Here are a few photos from the preserved stern-most section of the hull that show a bit of the aft-most guards. First, a closeup of how the guard timbers interact with the deck timbers and the hull. The former are attached in parallel with the deck timbers, extending out over the side of the hull as described above. They're notched to fit over the upper strake of hull planking (the gaps between timbers would be filled with short pieces of wood): Below, you can clearly see how the guards extend the deck in a sweeping curve around and beyond the sternpost. The guard timbers only begin to angle away from the deck timbers in the very few aftmost feet. I love how the outer "bumper" of the guards (and thus the deck), a steamboat's equivalent of the wale, is just a series of split logs with bark still attached. How typically frontier! That's going to be an interesting detail to replicate. Looking inside the stern, you can see the slight camber of the deck beams as they curve outward to meet the guard timbers (at right). It's too bad I won't be able to include this log tiller (it'l be buried beneath the deck and the aft superstructure). These photos aren't great, but they show the only part of the hull that was preserved and the only clear show of the stern during excavation (there are no photos or drawings of the bow). So they're all I have to work with. In Part II, I'll build my version of the guards and the Arabia will start looking like a steamboat and not a cut-down battleship.

Hah, Ken, you must be salivating. You're the biggest ACW brownwater navy fan I know!

I've completed the other half of the hull framing and done a preliminary fairing. As one might expect from a hand-cut set of bulkheads, there are places I need to shim or fix, but it's no worse than I've experienced in certain kit models. Below is the hull as it stands; there's an optical illusion making it appear to warp inward toward the center, but that's just because I didn't bother about lining up all the braces between bulkheads. It's actually quite straight along the sides. And views from fore and aft: I need to keep working on the fairing to be sure I've got it right. I'm amused that, as a whole, the hull right now looks quite like I'm building a waterline battleship in a different scale. It's going to change dramatically once the deck framing begins. Apologies for slow progress and updates, other commitments just keep getting in the way. Thanks as always for reading.

Best wishes for your father, yourself, and your family. The model will be there for you when you need it.

John, While I can't speak to whether or not lead-based paints were used, it wouldn't have been to protect from rot or decay. First, only the wheels, and sometimes decks and other parts of the superstructure, were painted red. Hulls were generally white. Rot and decay also wouldn't have been the major concern, both as freshwater is more forgiving and because the lifespan and dangers faced by these boats generally meant that rot and decay weren't likely to be the cause of death (so to speak).

I did some research on American paint history, and came up with this narrative. Commercial paints really didn't come onto the market in a widespread fashion until the late 19th century. Before that, paints were hand-mixed (such as on a farm) or at least made in smaller batches locally using grinders. Red was commonly made from a base of linseed oil (produced from flax, a common farm crop), which had an orange tinge. To this was added milk for texture and iron oxide to deepen the color. As a geologist, I agree with Wefalck that iron tends to produce an orange-red rather than a deep brown-red. Several American paint companies offer "historic" collections that were developed with the help of various preservation trusts and other organizations. For example, this collection from Benjamin Moore is supposedly based on 17th-early 20th century colors (i.e. before modern paint chemistry). I was immediately struck by the fact that all of the red shades in this collection do, indeed, have an orange tinge to my eye that fits the narrative about linseed oil and iron oxide. My guess is that their "Audubon Russet" or "Mayflower Red" might be good matches for steamboat red. Given that the vast majority of riverboats in middle America were built on the upper Ohio River, close to extensive sources of iron in the mountains to the east and south as well as extensive sources of milk and flax in the farmlands to the north and west, it makes sense that steamboat red would have followed this palette. But I'm just theorizing based on internet research here, I'm no expert in this regard. EDIT: Mrs. Cathead just asked what I was researching, and pointed out that we have linseed oil, milk (from our dairy goats), and iron oxide (from our bedrock and soils as well as, you know, farm rust) on hand. I may just have to play with mixing up a small batch of "historic" paint to see what I can produce. It'd be pretty neat to color my Arabia with a historically accurate stain.

Everything looks good. Glad to see you back at work on this.

Thanks for sharing. I agree that such times can make it hard to focus on a model, even if in theory it seems like a great escape from reality. I hope you'll be able to give thanks for good memories of your brother.

Cool! I hope you'll post that in the Riverboats general thread, too. Also, welcome, Scott! Nice to see another local on here. If you want to try a Missouri River boat, Kurt's link above contains plans for two very good ones, Far West and Bertrand.

That's a great question, don't know the answer off the top of my head. Will do some digging (unless someone else knows for sure).