Cathead

Yeah, it's hard to imagine these things snaking around winding river bends with a barge lashed to the front and just a sternwheel and a few little rudders. But it happened! Z-drives were not yet even a twinkle in a dreamer's eye.
 
And since we have no idea what Peerless' rudders or lower stern actually looked like, it's all conjecture. I just don't have any evidence for any setup other than the typical one for the era leading up to her construction. One of the great benefits of a waterline model, I can mostly ignore the issue!

Keith, to the best of my knowledge, that's a pretty common layout for a sternwheeler stern & rudders. Best I can say is it seemed to work well enough!

Yeah, it's hard to imagine these things snaking around winding river bends with a barge lashed to the front and just a sternwheel and a few little rudders. But it happened! Z-drives were not yet even a twinkle in a dreamer's eye.
 
And since we have no idea what Peerless' rudders or lower stern actually looked like, it's all conjecture. I just don't have any evidence for any setup other than the typical one for the era leading up to her construction. One of the great benefits of a waterline model, I can mostly ignore the issue!

Yes I think it would be reasonable to show a sliding metal stock such as this. Please note that the round ship would have anchors at each quarter of the ship and probably a number of spare anchors stored maybe on deck.
 
Dick

Oh, yes. I was assuming that. As you correctly surmised the diagram was just to work out proportions.
 
Steven

Thanks everybody for the likes.
 
Druxey, thanks for that. I'm still heart-in-mouth about dampening and shaping the sail. I'll try it with the mizzen (the most disposable and easily replaced) before I try it with the other two.
 
Certainly the 14th century representations seem more reliable
  
I'm inclined to go with the longer shank - and the flukes. Interestingly, neither of the examples above show the stock (perhaps it was only put in place when they were planning to drop anchor, as otherwise it would get in the way?), and both have a ring at the lower end (presumably for fishing the anchor). But the stock on the San Marco example is definitely there, so I'll be following that.
 
My thought exactly.
 
Steven

I apologise for the tardy response ( to post #409), Steven, but I've been under the weather for most of the past month and am only just now catching up with you. You figured out what I used, I see; acrylic matt medium. If you need to dampen the sail to shape it, the bolt rope won't come undone like it woudld if you had used PVA.
 
Great progress since I last looked in, and it was nice to see a civilised discussion and gentlemanly disagreement, unlike some other threads I've seen elsewhere!
 
As for anchor design; would there have been much if any change between the 12th and 14th centuries? My instinct is to use the slightly later design as your starting point.

Adding the bolt ropes to the edges of the sails. Glued to the edge of the sail with matt acrylic varnish. Much more fiddly than I'd expected. I had to do a short section, let it dry and then do another until I'd gone all around the outside. I discovered the assembly would then stick to the cutting board, so I needed to peel the section of sail and bolt-rope off each time I did this, otherwise it would stick fast and tear as I removed it. And I had to go back over it to repair the places where the rope hadn't adhered properly to the sail.

Now that's complete, I've started adding the mizzen sail to the yard with robands made of cotton sewing thread, using a needle to pierce holes in the sail and then tying a reef knot in each individual roband.


It turned out that I needed to glue the first thumb knot together and to the yard, then come back later and do the other half of the knot and glue it in place. Otherwise it would all come loose and untie itself. And by that time I'd forgotten which way I'd done the first part, so I think I ended up with a decent number of granny knots. Not to worry, though. At this scale you can't tell anyway.

I used a cunning mechanism (a clothes peg) to keep the top of the yard facing upwards so all the knots ran along the top.

Still in progress. Once they're all done I'll go back and trim the free ends back close to the knots.

And I'm just getting into designing the anchors. Though there are plenty of contemporary representations of anchors from the 14th century, I've been able to find only a single one from the 12th - in another mosaic in San Marco which appears to have been done about the same time. It shows three anchors at the bow - the arrow is pointing to the foremost one. I've worked out how big they would be and their proportions, but the shank looks terribly short to me.
   
What do the rest of you think? Should I lengthen the shank? And also add flukes - it is, after all, pretty difficult to portray these on a mosaic - and for the same reason perhaps taper the stock as well?
 
Steven
 
 
 
 

Thanks, Gary!
 
I rebuilt a new version of the tow knees. These are just set in place right now. I decided to focus on the style seen in this photo:
 




Thoughts?
 
I also started laying out a draft of the paddlewheel. Here's the loose size I'm thinking of using; compare with the photo below that is my best view of the stern area.
 
 


Thoughts on all of this? 

Yeah, it's hard to imagine these things snaking around winding river bends with a barge lashed to the front and just a sternwheel and a few little rudders. But it happened! Z-drives were not yet even a twinkle in a dreamer's eye.
 
And since we have no idea what Peerless' rudders or lower stern actually looked like, it's all conjecture. I just don't have any evidence for any setup other than the typical one for the era leading up to her construction. One of the great benefits of a waterline model, I can mostly ignore the issue!

Yeah, it's hard to imagine these things snaking around winding river bends with a barge lashed to the front and just a sternwheel and a few little rudders. But it happened! Z-drives were not yet even a twinkle in a dreamer's eye.
 
And since we have no idea what Peerless' rudders or lower stern actually looked like, it's all conjecture. I just don't have any evidence for any setup other than the typical one for the era leading up to her construction. One of the great benefits of a waterline model, I can mostly ignore the issue!

Yeah, it's hard to imagine these things snaking around winding river bends with a barge lashed to the front and just a sternwheel and a few little rudders. But it happened! Z-drives were not yet even a twinkle in a dreamer's eye.
 
And since we have no idea what Peerless' rudders or lower stern actually looked like, it's all conjecture. I just don't have any evidence for any setup other than the typical one for the era leading up to her construction. One of the great benefits of a waterline model, I can mostly ignore the issue!

Keith, to the best of my knowledge, that's a pretty common layout for a sternwheeler stern & rudders. Best I can say is it seemed to work well enough!

Interesting discussion on the sternwheel and the steering difficulties with their minimal rudder power. The paddle-wheeler I am building, Zulu, has two narrower wheels in the same shaft driven by two steam engines. My thoughts are that the wheel cranks rotated freely over the common shaft. The drawing below shows the wheel arrangement but some of the notes are for the worm gear that then ran the model. There is also an hefty rudder on the centerline of each wheel. I thinks this would have made it easier for the skipper to maneuver through the winding Indian rivers.

I think that Eric is doing a wonderful job on this model.
 
 

Yeah, it's hard to imagine these things snaking around winding river bends with a barge lashed to the front and just a sternwheel and a few little rudders. But it happened! Z-drives were not yet even a twinkle in a dreamer's eye.
 
And since we have no idea what Peerless' rudders or lower stern actually looked like, it's all conjecture. I just don't have any evidence for any setup other than the typical one for the era leading up to her construction. One of the great benefits of a waterline model, I can mostly ignore the issue!

Keith, to the best of my knowledge, that's a pretty common layout for a sternwheeler stern & rudders. Best I can say is it seemed to work well enough!

In the absence of any plans or other evidence, I based her hull design on Bertrand, for which I did have very detailed plans:


 
These show a flat stern with just a bit of overhang; you can also see the full rudder setup. Remember that I'm building Peerless as a waterline model, so the rudders really can't be seen, except for a hint of the (skegs? is that the right word?). I toned down the rise of the stern and wheel supports a bit, but it's the same basic setup. So all you see on the model is just a hint of the stern curving inward and down, and the otherwise flat plane from port to starboard. One of the last details I'll add it a hint of rudder tops poking out; I haven't done it yet for fear of knocking them off because they'll be very small without the extra support from the part "underwater" and not modeled.
 
So to forestall the next obvious question, I plan to cut off (or not build in the first place) the bottom part of the wheel so that it sits on the display surface as if it's entering the water.

Thanks, Gary!
 
I rebuilt a new version of the tow knees. These are just set in place right now. I decided to focus on the style seen in this photo:
 




Thoughts?
 
I also started laying out a draft of the paddlewheel. Here's the loose size I'm thinking of using; compare with the photo below that is my best view of the stern area.
 
 


Thoughts on all of this? 

Yeah, it's hard to imagine these things snaking around winding river bends with a barge lashed to the front and just a sternwheel and a few little rudders. But it happened! Z-drives were not yet even a twinkle in a dreamer's eye.
 
And since we have no idea what Peerless' rudders or lower stern actually looked like, it's all conjecture. I just don't have any evidence for any setup other than the typical one for the era leading up to her construction. One of the great benefits of a waterline model, I can mostly ignore the issue!

Yeah, it's hard to imagine these things snaking around winding river bends with a barge lashed to the front and just a sternwheel and a few little rudders. But it happened! Z-drives were not yet even a twinkle in a dreamer's eye.
 
And since we have no idea what Peerless' rudders or lower stern actually looked like, it's all conjecture. I just don't have any evidence for any setup other than the typical one for the era leading up to her construction. One of the great benefits of a waterline model, I can mostly ignore the issue!

Yeah, it's hard to imagine these things snaking around winding river bends with a barge lashed to the front and just a sternwheel and a few little rudders. But it happened! Z-drives were not yet even a twinkle in a dreamer's eye.
 
And since we have no idea what Peerless' rudders or lower stern actually looked like, it's all conjecture. I just don't have any evidence for any setup other than the typical one for the era leading up to her construction. One of the great benefits of a waterline model, I can mostly ignore the issue!

Yep - but its fun to speculate

John - That seems to be a much improved arrangement - the sweep upward of the stern seems to present the rudder with a much improved flow path and the "Monkey rudder" has the advantage of the the increased water velocity being pushed on to it by the paddle. My original comment was to some extent prompted by the earlier piece on the pushing knees. I was imagining the difficulties of manoeuvring while also pushing a barge. 
Eric -Yes that's the best recommendation.

Keith, to the best of my knowledge, that's a pretty common layout for a sternwheeler stern & rudders. Best I can say is it seemed to work well enough!

Keith, to the best of my knowledge, that's a pretty common layout for a sternwheeler stern & rudders. Best I can say is it seemed to work well enough!