Roger Pellett

Wooden bulwarks on the bridges of a steamship.

well thats sad but exactly what i suspected. i dont understand the need for a machine to rely on internet. if it needs to talk to the company on the net... its not your machine.
 
next!
 
 

Jacques, Great Post! You underestimate the significance of what you are doing. With few exceptions, producing historic models requires research, weighing sometimes conflicting evidence, and ultimately making decisions.  When you buy a kit, or plans marketed to modelmakers, someone has made these decisions for you and you don’t have the benefit of evaluating their evidence.
 
Novices interested in scratch building models of simple craft  should arm themselves with a copy of Howard Chapelle’s History of American Small Sailing Craft.  Plans from this book are available from the Smithsonian.
 
Roger
 
 

There have been literally millions of ships and boats since the cave man first floated across the river on his log.  This means that there is a wide variety of subjects to model.  While I agree that the three subject Model Shipways series of kits will result in attractive models, I cannot help but think that by focusing on POB kits most model builders are unnecessarily limiting their horizons.  There is no reason why an intelligent but inexperienced person cannot  scratch build a unique model.  I suggest that novices concerned about “taking the plunge” check out JacquesCousteau’s models of indigenous Mexican Craft.  ( Scratch Built Models 1900 -Present).  These models are being built by a novice using limited tools and materials on hand.  Before the Mary Rose was salvaged and studied a noted British model maker made a model of her- Two mastheads with circular tops sticking out of the water.
 
Roger

Many years ago, I had a friend who was interested in building a model ship. I suggested the Model Shipways Virginia Pilot Boat model which he purchased. As we worked together we often had lunch together and I would always ask how he was coming and offer help. His answer was always "I got it out but was afraid that I would mess it up." I suspect that upon his too early death, the kit was thrown out.
 
My advice to beginners would therefore be a little different:
 
Get busy and build the model before you lose interest! Your first model will not be a collector's item. You will make mistakes. Hopefully your second model will be better than your first. Today, as I build models, I still make mistakes, and as the model goes forward, I tend to remember them more than the successes, but after the model has been sitting for a while in its case in my study, I look at it and realize, wow! This is a good representation of XXXXX.
 
This is a difficult craft and not moving ahead until you achieve perfection, will prevent you from mastering it.
 
Roger Pellett

Laminate bulwarks




Deck planking ripped ready for cutting to length.

 

A few shots of carefully working the masking-tape "canvas" around the rest of the boiler deck:


Lots of fiddly cutting and fitting here. But another benefit to masking tape is that it holds its shape stiffly and is easier to shape and fit than something floppier like silkspan or tissue. And it's just sticky enough on its own to stay put when you're trying to draw or cut a careful line, while still being easy to move when you want.
 
I finally reached the point where a bunch of these overlapping mini-projects all came together. So here she is with cabins and pilot house attached, deck fully canvassed and painted, hog chain posts installed, and stern planking applied.


Careful eyes will notice that I haven't yet installed the support posts for the rear cabin roof overhang, but it's plenty stable for now. I'm not worried about the messy appearance of the boiler deck's edge because that will get wrapped in a thin plank veneer.
 
On Sunday, I'll be giving a talk on the evolution of steamboat design along the Missouri River, at a regional cultural center that specializes in supporting educational and artistic programming. I initially developed this talk back in 2021 as an online lecture for a regional non-profit that works along the Missouri River (you can view the talk recording here if interested), but this will be the first time I've given it to an in-person audience. As a bonus, I'll be displaying three of my steamboat models, the first time any of them have been presented to the public. Here they are all lined up and ready to go:
 

In the back is Arabia (1:64), in the middle is Bertrand (1:87), and of course in the foreground is Peerless (1:87). All three operated on the Missouri River, from 1853-1856, 1864-1865, and 1893-1903, respectively.
 
Model size is misleading, as Arabia is at a larger scale though she's actually very close in size to Bertrand. On the other hand, Bertrand and Peerless are the same scale, so you can really see how tiny the latter was in comparison to her ancestors.
 
This talk has been scheduled for a long time, and I'd originally hoped to have Peerless done for this talk, but when it became clear that wouldn't happen, I aimed to at least reach a clearly presentable and semi-complete stage, which I just barely did!
 
Thanks as always for following along, and helping me get to this point.

Pumps and windlass.  Scratch built pumps using Chucks instructions.  I was stumped by the windlass. I could not get the hexagonal shape right. I gave up after 3 attempts. I painted the kit supplied castings for the windlass and galley stack.
 
 

 
 

Hello All,
Thanks for your comments, Jim Lad, Canute, KeithAug and Keith Black.  And thanks everyone for the likes.
Another short update here.
Hoping to use more scratch fittings on this boat than the last one. Tried to make some cowl ventilators in brass, somewhat ratty looking.
Made a ships boat in solid styrene with .010x .040" styrene strip, 'faux clinker'? Luckily its going to be covered.  
Still have to make engine house doors.  The time is flying by on this one.
Thanks for looking,
mcb

Nice progress indeed !
 
Just wondering: where the pilot-houses open to the rear?

So the paint has settled further and it actually looks pretty good! Especially the red and Turquoise are really nice. Some photos bellow in natural light. The hull of course is rough despite so many cycles of filling and sanding. Never use Beech!




But look what the postman dropped, all the way from the colonies across the pond!

Till next time
Vaddoc

I have been an amateur woodworker for over 60 years.  I have built farm building, gunstocks, several boats and about a dozen scratch built models with their glass cases. I love buying and cutting into a fresh piece of lumber.  On the other hand it is sad to see novice model builders attempting to assemble kits from inappropriate wood species promoted as "deluxe materials; the above "Boxwood Deal" being a prime example.  Model Expo should be embarrassed enough to just refund the buyer's money.  Pay to send it back?  Nuts!
 
Some thoughts about buying wood:
Basswood- Provided in kits, often considered substandard.  I wonder if basswood is actually what"s supplied as there are basswood look alikes that are softer and perhaps cheaper.  Cottonwood, and "popular."  There are two types of poplar. That found in the Southern Midwest is a great model building wood.  It is cut from the "Tulip Poplar" tree.  These get to be very large producing a wood great for carving hulls.  The other poplar is cut fom the Aspen tree, a fast growing tree that often takes over clear cut areas.  Trees usually do not become large.  Wood is quite soft, almost white, and when cut from small trees grain structure can be poor.  Here in Minnesota this type of poplar, locally called "popple" grows like aq weed. A plank of real basswood in my lumber pile actually looks like a nice modeling wood.
 
Lumberyard Pine- IMHO, real Pine, not Spruce or Fir is an excellent modeling wood.  As Jaager posts above it can commonly be found in American lumberyards.  I do not buy 2"x4"S or for that matter any  of the 2" construction sizes as these can be cut from small immature trees yielding undesirable core grain structure.  I prefer 1" lumber as wide as possible.  This yields nice straight outer grain pieces.
 
Bargin Bin-  Lumberyards will sumetimes receive damaged high grade pieces of lumber.  Lumber is sold in lengths of 2" increments.  So, they can sometimes salvage a damaged board by sawing off a 2ft damaged end end and selling the shortened piece as prime grade.  The 2ft damaged end is sold in the bargin bin.  A 1"x10" piece of pine 2ft long can provide a lot of ship modeling wood at a very reasonable cost.  The wider sizes, 1x10 and 1x12 will often crack at the ends.  The crack is easily removed by the table saw providing a pair of clear, straight grained pieces of pine, ideal for our needs.  
 
Roger

I don't know how far back bosun's pipes go, but the Byzantines (and IIRC the Ancient Greeks) used flutes to give the time to the oarsmen of their galleys - probably because the high pitched sound could be heard over the deep sounds of the ship, oars etc. And I expect that's the same with bosun's pipes - they're VERY shrill.

 
Steven

The cabin was fitted with two doors on the deck side. Doors and planks (veneer thick approx. 0.8 mm.) are glued to a piece of plywood of one mm. thick. The wall of the cabin is also a truss mould for the further construction at the rear of the ship.
At the location of the future gun ports, I made the necessary openings in plywood. The front gun gate has not yet been made here. It is positioned in the curve of the bow and appears in a closed state when the hull is finished. Also, the top wale has already been installed here.

 

To protect the underlying construction of the superstructure during the planking of the hull, I made roughly both sides above the upper timber from cardboard. The hull is already partly equipped with planks. The part between the upper two wales, in which the gun ports are placed, are made of paranapine. The wood is fine-grained, not too hard and easy to bend and work with. The planks are a maximum of 3.5/4 mm. wide. Which equates to about 33 cm in reality.
The curve above the transom is now also provided with planks. The opening for the rudder pin, the tiller, has been cut out.
 
The joints of the planks are provided with lip weldings. It is important that the entire connection is fitted together for two planks outside the ship. If that is exactly right, they are all different, then one of the planks is attached and the other is provided with a lip seal, at the other end, with a third plank on the other side. This second plank is then attached and the entire length of the ship is finished. Planks on wooden ships were never lomger than 7 m.


The stern was made before the  planks were attached. The planks go over it.
 
The very dark planking between the two wales were too dark. I removed them and replaced them with pear planks.
The part between the upper wales was finally closed. You can clearly see how the lip welds are placed between the planks.
 

One of the mysteries of such ships concerns the large number of gun ports, sixteen of them. If you count that there were 17 men on the ship, it is hard to imagine that there was a cannon behind every port. In those days, no seabattle was fought by firing all the guns at the same time from the broadside of the ship. Rather, we should see that as skirmishes with a few very light artillery pieces, at most 3 pounders, and  muskets. The large number that appears in many prints from that time (not only in the account of Barents' voyage) with the mouth of a cannon from each gate should rather be seen as an interesting depiction of a ship.
 
It is not possible to find out how many cannons this early Pinas had, perhaps at most about four. They were small cannons on mostly three-wheeled carriages. Small fire mouths, rear loaders, which stood with a gaff in a hole on the side wall were also used.
My assumption is that those many gun ports could also have served well to row the ship in case of an emergency. The ship is very small and can certainly be moved with oars. Somewhere in De Veer's report it is also said that the ship is being rowed. Whether it means that it is pulled by a rowing boat or that it was rowed independently will never be clear.

Hello Dave, I had to take a few breaks in building this model. I neglected to post the next steps a bit, but I'll catch up. But I will answer your questions first. The book I use is based on H.I. Chapple drawn half model by Lawlor and a revision of a plan by G.F. Campell by the authors. There were also 3 plan drawings of the hull, deck and details as well as a side view of the entire ship. The author of the book presents the construction as a team project step by step in our forum, so we get a lot of individual information about the components and construction steps. I myself have not conducted any research into PHANTOM and its sister ship PET. So I don't have any other sources. Thank you for liking the posts. I will now continue the report regularly.

A seldom seen subject here. As I have a soft spot for those boats from the Venice lagoon and I will follow the progress. That book has been sitting on my shelf also for some time now - I think I bought in the bookshop 'Carta di Mare' in Venice or from Gilberto Penzo.
 
The 'Padiglione delle Barche' of the Museo Storico Navale in Venice preserve a couple of Bragozzi from the late 19th/early 20th century: https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/venezia/museonavalevenezia-3.html. I took a few pictures in case one day I also want to build one.
 
 
 
 
 

Another update: rigging is almost done. All that can be attached to the masts off model is finished. Remains „only“ to do the lower attachment points on deck. How to attach the signal lines on the foremast to the bridge without tearing everything apart is still a mystery to me though…🤪. Looks a bit wild now but once straigthened out it should be ok,..i hope.
cheers sascha

Thanks so much for the responses and for sharing your connections to the Paddle to the Sea story!!
 
Tonight I continued some carving.
 
I laid out and then carved the recess for the ballast.

I have alot of lead left from past projects wherein I would melt lead and use it in projects.  Considering the known health/brain damage risks we now know from lead exposure, I will make a variation from the originally described Paddle to the Sea.  I will use low temp model casting metal from Micromark, type 208.  I will melt this metal and fill this cavity.

These Flexcut carving chisels are awesome!!!
I am also using my Helle knife:

Hull after rough carving:

Another amazing tool for wordworking, is the SHINTO RASP" pictured below.  Amazing, efficient, tool with two different aggressiveness faces.

 
 
 
 
 
 

What a great project!
 I too grew up reading Paddle to the Sea.  I loved the book.  35 years ago I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to move from the Ohio Valley to accept a new job in the Great Lakes region and I accepted it in a heartbeat.  I can just barely see a tiny sliver of Lake Superior from a window on the second story of my house.  I also made sure that my children grew up with the book too.
Did you know that there is a Paddle to the Sea movie too?  Here in Duluth the Army Corps of Engineers runs a nice museum dealing with Lake Superior.  During the summer tourist season they show movies about the lakes in a conference room.  Visiting with my two kids and my granddaughters the announcement came over the speaker that there had been a special request from a family visiting to show Paddle to the Sea.  My daughter had made the request.  The movie while beautifully filmed cannot reproduce the 1940's picture of the industrial lakes that Holling does with his book.
 
Roger 

What a great project!
 I too grew up reading Paddle to the Sea.  I loved the book.  35 years ago I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to move from the Ohio Valley to accept a new job in the Great Lakes region and I accepted it in a heartbeat.  I can just barely see a tiny sliver of Lake Superior from a window on the second story of my house.  I also made sure that my children grew up with the book too.
Did you know that there is a Paddle to the Sea movie too?  Here in Duluth the Army Corps of Engineers runs a nice museum dealing with Lake Superior.  During the summer tourist season they show movies about the lakes in a conference room.  Visiting with my two kids and my granddaughters the announcement came over the speaker that there had been a special request from a family visiting to show Paddle to the Sea.  My daughter had made the request.  The movie while beautifully filmed cannot reproduce the 1940's picture of the industrial lakes that Holling does with his book.
 
Roger 

The mast construction went fairly smooth, for added strength, I decided to solder the photo etch lantern frames and baskets together. Humbrol enamel matt 81 (pale yellow) was the color I used for airbrushing the masts, stack, vent funnels and davits. At this point everything is glued down and I got a good start on the rigging, completing the stays and shrouds.  I should have this completed in the next few days. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Thanks Mike!
 
Continuing on with the hammocks, I made a line of clay, which fit between the hammock cranes--

 
I wrapped this in the black painted Silkspan and tested the fit.  It looks just okay.  I may work a bit on the "wrinkles"--

 
I removed the clay/paper, realizing it would be much easier to run the line through all the hammock cranes without having it in the way.  And it was FAR more difficult than I anticipated.   I spent hours trying to come up with a way of stiffening the end of the line with superglue, and cutting a point on it, but the holes in the cranes were just too small, and some had become partially blocked with blackening deposits (I think).  I spent a lot of time with a pin trying to open the holes--very awkward with them glued in place.  Some cranes came loose from the rail, or bent (though easily re-straightened).   I even tried supergluing a strand of fly tying thread to the end of the line to lead it through the holes, but that failed like all the other attempts.  I finally searched for a thinner line in my stock, and found one.  It was just enough thinner to work--
 
 
Hopefully I can get through the rest of the holes, and finally see what this looks like with the hammock paper inside.
 
Also, trying to finish everything on the deck before rigging begins, I glued some eyebolts and rings to the deck binding strakes, and some to the channels, which can be seen in the photos.
 
All for now,
Ron
 
 
 

Valeriy,
 
By the time that you use up your brass stash, hopefully Ukraine will again be peaceful and one of us can visit you with a “heavy suitcase.”😀😀
Roger

Time for a big dump of progress photos!
 
I completely failed to take photos of building the roof for the pilot house and cabin, but it wasn't complicated. I just cut a thin sheet of wood to the shape I wanted, spread glue on the "rafters", and secured everything with rubber bands.
 
The photo story picks up again as I applied the simulated canvas. I used the same method as I did on Arabia: strips of masking tape held down with a thin layer of wood glue. When that's dried overnight, I trim the edges and paint it. It's held up perfectly on that last model, I really like the texture, and it's more forgiving to work with than tissue paper or silkspan or other options. Plus it's dirt cheap. Here's a sequence showing the progression of slightly overlapping layers on the gently arching cabin roof:



And the same for the pilot house:
 


I'll use some pastels to weather this a little, dull it down, and give it some subtle variation in tone.
 
In the meantime I worked on laying out the support posts for the hog chains, which needed to be carefully situated to run just along the outside edge of the cabin roof. So I marked the final location of the cabin and carefully laid out where I wanted the posts to go through the boiler deck. Then I drilled a series of small holes and used a sharp knife tip and then small files to make the final shape:
 

I then made a simple jig for the angle I wanted the posts to sit at, and used this to set them up. Here they've already been cut and painted. The black tips are meant to represent the iron caps that actually held the hog chains onto the wooden posts.

And here are a few shots of the fore and aft hog chain posts resting in place (not yet glued); you'll notice I temporarily removed the chimneys to avoid any possible damage as I worked on all this:
 



I also built the assembly that goes over the stern, which I'd left off until now since it rises above the boiler deck and I didn't want to bump or snap it while doing earlier work on the deck.
 


Finally it was time to start attaching things for good. Here I've glued down the cabin and pilot house (big step!):
 

And while that was drying I got started laying down the "canvas" on the boiler deck, working up to the aft part of the cabin. I'll let this all dry completely before proceeding up either side of the cabin.
 

A close look will also show that I built and attached the little L-shaped guard wall around the staircase up to the boiler deck.
 
Once all the boiler deck canvas is laid, I'll (re)cut the hog chain post holes, paint it carefully (trying to avoid the cabin walls), then attach the stern piece. At that point the model will really be coming together though a lot of detail work remains to be done (not to mention the paddle wheel, which I'm dreading).
 
Thanks for reading (or at least skimming) through that big dump of updates!

Thanks Scott and Keith - I'm very fortunate to be able to visit occasionally, with the Vigilance Trust's permission, to record the shipyard's progress - it makes the build come to life, and I'm pleased you are enjoying it.
An example of why they are master shipwrights, and I am a very lowly journeyman is demonstrated in the following example of a costly mistake.
A frame pair #27 was built using the templates lofted in CAD, and it was only when the frame was offered up that I could immediately see a problem...

The aft frame (in blue) looked too far away from the Fore frame (red) to fit in this section of the boat - turns out it was in fact frame 29, incorrectly transposed by me (probably late in the evening). The frame looks OK, but it's trash, and in the waste pot. I'm also remaking #26 and #28 for similar reasons all caught in the same dozy moment.
So another lesson learned. Copying and pasting in CAD may be quicker than the old school methods, but it's not without it's 'gotchas'!