Cathead

The first photo made me jump, as the paddle was backward, but I let out a sigh of relief when I saw you were just test-fitting it. Good progress. I can't tell from the photo, are those structures already planked,  or does that happen next?

Great explanation, Glenn. I'm quite happy to be refuted so convincingly! It certainly makes Heroine an even more special "transitional form" in the evolution of river boats.

Following the hint of SpyGlass I will fix the future 'splices ' with PVA instead of CA glue.
 
The sail is hoisted and looks approximately the way I hoped.
Two pairs of brails are secured to two additional cleats on the fore mast. The tack is lashed to the centre ringbolt behind the fore mast with a thimble. The sheet consist of a tackle with a double and a single block, hooked into the clew and a ringbolt in front of the main mast. The vangs are set up as per manual.
 
The gaff is positioned slightly to port, depicting a situation with a light breeze somewhere from the forward starboard quarter. Yards, boom and main gaff will be placed accordingly.
 
 

fore gaff set
 
 

the gaff is pulled to port by the vangs
 
 

the running end of the sheet tackle belays to an additional cleat on the mainmast
 
 

fore mast with tack lashing and provisionally belayed brails

While checking the various lines on the gaff sail and their belaying points I decided to come back on that decision about the vangs.
Marquardt himself isn't that clear about the Fitting of vangs with a slung gaff. In the illustrated example of a slung gaff he has vangs installed. As the manual asks for them as well and I think the whole handling of the gaff would be easier I decided to install them.
 
 

vangs installed
 
To get an attachment point for the tack lashings of the gaff sail I moved the schooner stay's tackle to the port ringbolt and prepared two more ringbolts on outboard of the three positions abaft the fore mast.
 
gaff sail
Following the positive experience I made with Pegasus' sails I will make those of Pickle the same way:
- I use the finest cotton I can find. It is dyed a light brownish grey with a mixture of (very cheap) black and sage tea. Before cutting it, I brush the cutting lines with diluted glue to prevent unravelling of the edges.
- Clothes seams are drawn as double lines with a sharp pencil onto the fabric. They probably will fade a bit but I think the sail maker used manila thread with a colour nearly matching that of the fabric. The seams probably did show much less than usually depicted in those laboriously stitched sails.
- Doublings and reef bands are small stripes of the same fabric, glued on.
- The bolt rope is glued into the seam. To form cringles and earrings I lead the boltrope through small holes out and back into in the seam in a small arc. Again the boltrope is less prominent than in other examples but when using a manila rope the colour should again blend in with the sailcloth.
- The glue I use is a special textile glue which can be additionally fixed with a hot iron.
-The reef lines are put on the usual way. (Hurrah, I found something nearly as tedious as knitting ratlines!)
 
The making of that sail differs completely from the prototype, but I think the overall scaled down impression is as good as that of a stitched sail with its usually too coarse seams - and it's quite quickly and easily made.
 
The gaff sail is now ready to hoist with brails and tack lashing attached.
 
 

drawing of the sail with measurements taken from the model
 
 

seams drawn, sail cut out, and first part of boltrope threaded in
 
 

finished sail with brails attached
 
 

detail with cringle
 
 
 
 splicing and knotting
To secure all those blocks into rope ends and to secure lines around thimbles or ropes I use more and more a 'false splicing' according to a method I saw somewhere here in MSW. I pull the thread around the block or rope, thread it through itself with a needle, thread it back again a small distance farther out, adjust, fix all with a small drop of CA glue and trim the ends.
 
 

 
 
 

Thanks John, Ken, George and druxey,
 
 
Yes druxey, I'm more confident now that we have four boilers. I've seen so many references to Western river steamboats having two or three boilers but then we found sources pointing to early riverboats having four or five boilers. We've recently discovered that on the earlier vessels, single flue boilers were common but not very efficient. By the end of the 1830s, two flue boilers were becoming the norm. The increased efficiency allowed fewer boilers. I think most references to boilers are from the 1840s and later and don't consider the single flue boilers. Adam Kane's thesis on steamboat machinery includes an interesting table in the appendix that gives the engine and boiler specifications for several early steamers. It is interesting because instead of referring to number of boilers, it refers to number of flues. Although there is some difference in the size of the flues, four boilers with one flue each produces about the same volume of steam as two boilers with two flues each. Kevin has put together a list of several early riverboats that he has researched in government documents and it appears that most of the early boats had four boilers or more. Finally, the most convincing piece of evidence is the contract for the Yellowstone. A single centerline engine identical in size to Heroine's, similar sized flywheel and stroke and from the same period. The contract calls for four boilers 36 inches in diameter and 16 feet long. We know heroine's boilers were 34 inches in diameter and the sixteen foot length fits perfectly between two sets of doubled deck beams. I was really at a loss before but I feel pretty sure that we have it right now.
 
Glenn

Hello everybody,
 
I usually post my progress on Saturday morning but tomorrow we have a big family get-together for my mother's birthday tomorrow which will probably keep me away from the computer for most of the day so I decided post these photos today instead.
The flywheels are going together.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to complete the port wheel before the weekend.  I've also made a little more progress with the boiler front.
 
Firebox doors.  Except for two pieces of the firebox opening that suggest an arched door, we have little to go on for the design of the doors so I have kept them fairly simple.

 
 
 

 
Too many pieces to solder at once.  I decided to leave the panel inserts off until after blackening and will epoxy them from behind.

 
 
Test fit of the starboard flywheel spokes.

 
Completed starboard flywheel.

 
Starting on the port flywheel.

 
Starboard view of starboard flywheel.

 
View from port side.

I cleaned up the stern frames and glued the outermost frames onto the ship.  The inner 4 are just temporarily taped on so I could get a sense of how this will look.  The next step involves breaking out the Dremel with a sanding drum to remove the bulk of the material on the outer stern frames, before I do the rest of the fairing by hand.
 

 

 

 
Erik

Best wishes to both of you.

Best wishes to both of you.

Best wishes to both of you.

Running rigging
 
As starting point of the running rigging I took the fore gaff and sail. I consider this the most enclosed part and difficult to get at after other parts are finished.
 
Basically it is easier to bend the sails onto yards or gaffs and install as many lines as possible before putting them up, but I put the gaff up without sail, because I wanted to adjust the angle of the gaff by eye and take it from there for the cut of the sail.
 
While preparing the gaff and checking Marquardt's book I decided for several changes.
According to Marquardt you have to differentiate between slung gaffs and hoisted gaffs. The rigging for those is different. Pickle's plans show a mix-up between both.  A slung gaff (as basically foreseen in the plan) seemed more convenient but those never have vangs. It seems plausible to fix a slung gaff above the fore yard.
 
The sling was installed as descript in the manual, only the lanyard was made from natural thread.
 
The descript topping lift however is one for a hoisted gaff. I changed it to a version out of Marquardt's book and as it is permanently installed I used black thread.
 
Finally two pairs of 2,5mm blocks for the brails were put onto the gaff.
 
The standing peak tye (which replaces the topping lift) needed a thimble (or a ring). I took again one of the 2,5 mm single hole deadeyes from Amati's fittings which I used also for backstays and other parts, where the manual requires a 'thimble' made by hardening a becket with super glue.
 

 

Gaff with standing peak tye. It's great to have that much skilled help...
 
 

detail with sling and lanyard

From now on it was rather plain sailing to finish the standing rigging. 
One difference to the kits manual are the topmast backstays. They should have about the same strength as the shrouds and I took 0.5 mm black thread to set them up. The jib boom got a footrope for the safety of the sailors working there.
And of course the outer jib stay was set up via the traveller. Trials showed than the traveller definitely needed an in-hauler. To keep it simple,  I put a 0.1 line in position and belayed it below the belfry. I'm still unsure , if I should replace it by a stronger thread or even add a tackle. Any ideas?
 
Generally I'm very happy with the changes I made. With the standing rigging finished Pickle now shows quite some nice proportions and elegant lines.
 
 

jib boom with outer jib stay via traveller and its in-hauler
the footrope hangs perhaps a bit too loose
 
 

outer jib stay tackle and in-hauler provisionally belayed
 
 
 
The standing rigging is finished - now comes the hard part.

Hello,
 
now it is done, the ship is in his case.
The only thing that is left, is to connect the LED's in front of the ship with the switch and the battery. 
 
Regards,
Siggi

Best wishes to both of you.

I carefully faired the gun ports.  Some of the gun port framing wood pieces are too short, so I'll correct that by adding additional wood pieces to get them to the correct height.  Since the frames will be painted, it should be an easy fix.
 

 

 
Erik

It seems forever since I last updated the log.  Things have been pretty hectic around here plus both Pam and I have had a few health issues which have slowed things down considerably.  Thankfully I'm now able to get back into the workshop.
 
All the spars have now been made but, as can be seen in the photos below, not yet detailed.  The jaws of the mizzen boom and gaff have now been finished off, so the next job on the spars will be to get some bands made, which means I'm really going to have to haul out the soldering gear soon or I'll run out of things to do on the model for lack of metal fittings.  I still have the dunny to make plus the windlass is only half done, so maybe I can put off the soldering just a little longer.
 
PS:  I actually enjoy soldering once I get started, but it seems to take me a heck of a long time just to get the equipment organised.
 
John
 

 

 

Unfortunately we have very few examples to go on. We know Heroine's flywheels were at least symmetrical with the only possibility of being out of balance might have been from inconsistent casting of the individual segments. I think they were intended to be fairly balanced. It doesn't appear that the flywheel was used for long on western river boats and there is only the mention of them with no design descriptions. I have a feeling there is much to learn from stationary engines of the early 19th century but I haven't had a chance to do the research.

Thanks everybody,
 
I really appreciate your comments and likes.
 
 
Druxey, when we reassembled the original, we didn't have much trouble with distortion but we did realize the the Huge differences in thicknesses between the rim segments. Some of the segments definitely stood proud of adjacent segments. I wonder if there was a lot of difference in the shrinkage of different casts.
 
Cathead, that is a good question! Heroine had 12 spokes per flange but I recall seeing paddle wheels with more. I would love to know the motivation as well. I've seen some smaller flywheels on stationary engines with six or five. I'm sure. In those situations it was just dependent on size. If you find any good reasoning, I'd love to hear it.
 
Mark, yes, they are bolt holes and your idea would work well. The through holes are only 1/32 of an inch (the original bolts were 3/4inch). I looked into purchasing a smaller size from microfasteners.com but after seeing the price for 400 of them I decided to try to rivet the holes instead. I actually made one attempt to rivet inside the pockets and gave up opting for lots of alligator clamps instead. I think this is a good time to point out they unusual but ingenious way the rims were actually bolted together. There were actually two different castings for the rims. They were exactly the same but the inner rims had square pockets and the outer had round pockets. The bolts had long hexagonal heads that went in from the outside round pockets and were fastened on the inside with square nuts that fit fairly snugly into the square pockets. It is interesting because the tool used to tighten the bolts was an early socket wrench. I hope this description makes sense.
 
Glenn

Question:
 
I notice on the flywheel plans that the spokes are mirror-image; there are eight spokes that line up perfectly as if there were just four that magically went all the way through. 
 
Whereas on numerous actual paddle wheels I've seen, there are odd numbers of spokes (13 on Bertrand if I recall correctly). Any idea, from an engineering perspective, how or why designers settled on the number and orientation of spokes for flywheels or paddlewheels?
 
Also, at the level of accuracy you're achieving, I'm now expecting those boilers to work by the time you're done!

Question:
 
I notice on the flywheel plans that the spokes are mirror-image; there are eight spokes that line up perfectly as if there were just four that magically went all the way through. 
 
Whereas on numerous actual paddle wheels I've seen, there are odd numbers of spokes (13 on Bertrand if I recall correctly). Any idea, from an engineering perspective, how or why designers settled on the number and orientation of spokes for flywheels or paddlewheels?
 
Also, at the level of accuracy you're achieving, I'm now expecting those boilers to work by the time you're done!

Question:
 
I notice on the flywheel plans that the spokes are mirror-image; there are eight spokes that line up perfectly as if there were just four that magically went all the way through. 
 
Whereas on numerous actual paddle wheels I've seen, there are odd numbers of spokes (13 on Bertrand if I recall correctly). Any idea, from an engineering perspective, how or why designers settled on the number and orientation of spokes for flywheels or paddlewheels?
 
Also, at the level of accuracy you're achieving, I'm now expecting those boilers to work by the time you're done!

Question:
 
I notice on the flywheel plans that the spokes are mirror-image; there are eight spokes that line up perfectly as if there were just four that magically went all the way through. 
 
Whereas on numerous actual paddle wheels I've seen, there are odd numbers of spokes (13 on Bertrand if I recall correctly). Any idea, from an engineering perspective, how or why designers settled on the number and orientation of spokes for flywheels or paddlewheels?
 
Also, at the level of accuracy you're achieving, I'm now expecting those boilers to work by the time you're done!

Question:
 
I notice on the flywheel plans that the spokes are mirror-image; there are eight spokes that line up perfectly as if there were just four that magically went all the way through. 
 
Whereas on numerous actual paddle wheels I've seen, there are odd numbers of spokes (13 on Bertrand if I recall correctly). Any idea, from an engineering perspective, how or why designers settled on the number and orientation of spokes for flywheels or paddlewheels?
 
Also, at the level of accuracy you're achieving, I'm now expecting those boilers to work by the time you're done!

Question:
 
I notice on the flywheel plans that the spokes are mirror-image; there are eight spokes that line up perfectly as if there were just four that magically went all the way through. 
 
Whereas on numerous actual paddle wheels I've seen, there are odd numbers of spokes (13 on Bertrand if I recall correctly). Any idea, from an engineering perspective, how or why designers settled on the number and orientation of spokes for flywheels or paddlewheels?
 
Also, at the level of accuracy you're achieving, I'm now expecting those boilers to work by the time you're done!

Question:
 
I notice on the flywheel plans that the spokes are mirror-image; there are eight spokes that line up perfectly as if there were just four that magically went all the way through. 
 
Whereas on numerous actual paddle wheels I've seen, there are odd numbers of spokes (13 on Bertrand if I recall correctly). Any idea, from an engineering perspective, how or why designers settled on the number and orientation of spokes for flywheels or paddlewheels?
 
Also, at the level of accuracy you're achieving, I'm now expecting those boilers to work by the time you're done!