Roger Pellett

The period following the Civil War for the US Navy is referred to as The Doldrums by naval historians.  Many of the vessels that fought in the war were disposed of and many of those remaining were placed in ordinary (mothballed).  By the 1880’s the government began to wake up to the fact that the fleet was obsolete, so reform began, leading to the up to date fleet that fought the Spanish American War in 1898.

In a way the U. S. was lucky as they didn’t have to build and pay for all of the false starts that the major naval powers did during the Naval Revolution of the 1870’s.

Roger

Very nice Brian.  I see that you included my two nemesis’s, pelorus and controllable pitch prop!

Roger

I have all four books and I highly recommend them.

Roger

Yes, they are Scots Guards.  The kilt pattern is my attempt to provide an impression of the Royal Stewart tartan.  The drummers and drum major yet to be painted are dressed in the red coats and bearskin helmets of the Guards.

Roger

Amazing work!

Roger

8+1 pipers piping.  A friend of mine gave me a pipe band to paint- 8 pipers, 7 drummers, and one drum major.  These 30mm figures are smaller than the 54 mm figures that I usually paint, and Scotch Highland garb is hard to paint, so I decided to paint the pipers first. The drummers have the typical British guards uniforms.

Here is the result.  The 9th piper (with the green tunic) Was professionally painted.  I bought it in London years ago.

The Fusilere with the bearskin head gear is 54mm, what I would prefer to paint.  The drummers will have to wait awhile.

Roger

Stephen,

Ship model building is my avocation but military miniatures (54mm) is my hobby.  My activity is limited to painting cast metal kits.

As the trite expression goes, your work “takes this to a whole different level.”  Could you expand somewhat on your techniques?  What do you start with?

Roger

Have any of you read the “Killing Patton” book? In it the authors make the case that his death should be examined as there is circumstantial evidence that it was not accidental.  I am by no means a Patton expert/ scholar so wonder if this has any credibility or is just publisher/author hype.

Roger

Back in the old days before the proliferation of kits with double layers of planking on bulkheads, ship models (scratch as well as kits) were carved from solid or laminated blocks.  Two common choices were basswood or pine.  I still make carved hull Ship models and of the two materials, I prefer pine as it is a bit harder and does not exhibit the “fuzz” that basswood does.

The University of Michigan has a large, 400ft+ long tank used to tow ship models for determining, hydrodynamic resistance.  When I was a student there in the 1960’s many of these models were still made from wood, and the model shop had a  supply of beautiful, clear white pine.  This wood is also called “sugar pine” or “patternmakers pine”.  We built an 8ft long tanker model from this and towed it in the tank.  If you have a source for this material you are fortunate.

Roger

If it’s not too late to chime in on war movies-

Navy:

1. The Sand Pebbles, also a great book

2. Away all Boats, another great book

3. The Enemy Below

Army:

1. Gettysburg,  no second place as it’s in a class by itself!

I do not know what the color scheme was for the Iron Duke specifically, but it seems that Royal Navy steam pinnaces in peace’s were painted with dark blue topsides and white bottoms as is Steam Pinnace 198 owned by the Royal Navy Museum.  Painting specifications published on the web for HMS Hood also confirm this color scheme.  During WW I these boats were painted grey, same as the parent ships.

Master modeler, the late Norman Ough has written that the decks of these boats as well as the aft cabin tops were covered with Corcetine, a red brown linoleum sequered with brass strips. If you look at the model of Sharnhorst currently being built on the scratch built part of the forum you will see Corcetine decking.  The Royal Navy Museum chose to leave the deck on their Pinnace with just the planked deck and I have found no other author that mentions Corcetine or photo that shows it.

I would be interested in hearing what you finally decide to do.

Roger

Kees,

What color did you use to paint the inside of the bulwarks?  It is the best representation that I have seen of the red lead paints that used to be widely used in the marine industry.

Roger

Eric,

If you decide on your river bottom display idea clear acrylic, plexiglass pillars work well.  Being inconspicuous they allow the viewer to focus attention on your beautiful model.

Roger

A beautiful model!  

This is is a great example of the fact that a worthwhile museum quality model does not need to be a famous ship or one with cannons.  To bad we don’t see more off the beaten path subjects.

Roger

Thanks EG,  no problem.

No one will ever accuse me of being up to date or of living in the present!  My lacquer knowledge is obviously outdated.

Now a minor quibble-  The cellulose in nitrocellulose lacquer is celluloid which is considered to be a plastic, although invented 90 years before the “plastic era.” When the acetone vehicle evaporates the celluloid is left, providing a shiny surface.  If the surface is wiped with acetone it dissolves the celluloid on the surface.  My father once refinished a grand piano in our garage by spraying it with this stuff.  Fortunately he didn’t blow up the house.

So, knowing how the various brands fit into these categories should help us to understand what can be applied over something else without causing the problems like OC is encountering.

What kind of “lacquer” is Testor’s Dullcote?

What is Tamyika primer?

Although it is sold as enamel what comes in a Krylon or RustOleum spray can?   I have been able to remove cured spray can paint by simply wiping it with an acetone soaked rag.

An interesting discussion.

Roger

That’s way to wide.  Tomorrow, I’ll try to make a sketch of the gunwales on my canoe with dimensions.  The inwale appears to scale and the most common design does not cover it.

A frustrating thing about paints today and some glues is understanding enough about their chemistry to understand how they work.  This is ancient history but lacquer used to be a plastic dissolved in acetone.  It dried when the acetone evaporated leaving the plastic on the surface so it didn’t really cure like an enamel paint and could be easily wiped off with acetone on a rag.  I have no idea if modern day lacquers behave the same way.

Ro

Spruce steam bends well and for an RC model is light weight.  The best spruce is  Sitka Spruce, look on the classified ad section Of Wooden Boat Magazine for suppliers although they may not be in a position to sell you a small quantity.

The poor boy approach is to go to your local lumber yard or Big Box home improvement store that sells 2x construction lumber.  This lumber is commonly marked SPF ( Spruce Pine Fir).  If you go through the pile, spruce is the whitest, the lightest, and doesn’t have the nice resinous smell of the others.  In fact in my opinion it smells bad!  Don’t try to find usable lumber in the 2x4 pile.  Look in the 2x8 or 2x10 piles to find usable, straight grained stock.  Since you are going to be ripping this up knots are not a problem as you can map out your cutting to avoid them.

20 years ago I rebuilt an Old Town wood canvas canoe dating from 1915.  I needed two 1-1/4in x 1-1/4in pieces of spruce for the inwales.  I bought a spruce 2x10 from our local Menards store and ripped what I needed from it.  It steam bent without a problem and the scrap left me with a lifetime supply of drafting splines.

PS- When I started composing this post, I didn’t realize that you were from Britain.  Reading clinker built wherry I skipped over the Norfolk and thought “Rowboat.”  My advice, therefore won’t apply to you.  Sorry!

Roger

Since this is going to be used for model making and for drilling and not milling loads on the column should be light.  If you need enough beef that you are worried about bending the column you have the Delta in your garage.

Roger

I’m not suggesting that you change your beautiful model, this is only boat building trivia.

The Chesapeake Bay builders were fond of using “chunks” of wood carved to shape to avoid having to plank difficult areas, particularly at the ends.  Is this what Chapelle is showing on his drawing on the boats ends?

Roger

If you have a hand plane and sandpaper and if you or your father can rip same straight grained stock on his table saw, you can make a mast and boom without using dowels.  If you do decide to use dowels try to find some that are straight grained.

The photo on the post is part of a panaramic view of Cincinnati, Ohio.  The entire photo is published in the privately printed book “Rivers in Time” that commorates the centennial of the American Commercial Barge line.  Although I never worked for them, I am considered a retiree as I retired from a business that was related to one that they acquired.  That’s how I got the book.  The entire photo published in the book shows three steamboats, all with grasshopper spars.

Some of the tributaries were dammed up to control water levels with locks bypassing the dams as early as 1830, less than 20 years after the first steamboat traveled down the Ohio.  With early primitive locks and dams steamboats were able to travel up the Wabash and its tributaries as far as Lafayette, Logansport and even Indianapolis well before the mid 1850’s.

Glue dispenser-  I found that a cheap squeeze bottle likethey used to use for ketchup and mustard at restaurants works great.  Is the tip gets plugged with dried glue it’s easy to unscrew the cap and pull the plug out with needle nosed pliers.

Roger

Eric,

This is just steamboat lore.  No bearing on the wonderful model that you are building.  It does apply to our understanding of steamboat head rigging.

I did some research and learned that the lock and dam system required to control water levels and navigation depths on the Ohio River was not functional until the late 1920’s.  These improvements were the responsibility of the Federal Government, and subject to uncertain Congressional appropriations.

On the other hand, work on the Ohio River tributaries was done much earlier, particularly on the Kentucky side as these were funded by the state or by private river improvement companies that either charged tolls or gained a monopoly on a particular trade route.

Of particular interest is the Green River that flows from Bowling Green Ky and emptied into the Ohio near Evansville Indiana.  This was improved by various investors from the mid 1800’s with some at different times squeezing all other competitors from the River.  In the late 1800’s the state of Kentucky took over and built a series of publicly funded locks and dams.  This work was completed in 1906 and the first boat traveling up the river was the Chaperone.  This route from Evansville up the Green River to Mammoth Cave was popular with tourists.

Now the head rigging-  I have a picture of the Chaperone on the Green River.  She does not have grasshopper spars, or the two masts aside the cabin, and her gangway is suspended from a single mast on the centerline in classic steamboat fashion.  Since most of trip was on an improved river she had no need of shallow water gear.

On May 12, 2019 I posted an old photo of the steamboat Car of Commerce, at the Cincinnati landing in the 1850’s.  There are actually two other sidewheel steamers in this same photo.  All are rigged with shallow water gear- grasshopper spars suspended from masts on either side of the cabin, needed for the unimproved Ohio River.

Roger

In my opinion, making masts, booms, etc from a dowel is doing it the hard way.  If you have access to woodworking tools it is much easier to rip square stock from straight grained wood.  Then taper the square stick that you have ripped, plane it eight sided, then make it round.  Much easier than trying to work with a dowel.

Roger