Roger Pellett

Showed your model to my wife who correctly identified it as Paddle to the Sea.  She used this book in teaching 5th grade in Southeastern Ohio many years ago.
 
Up here on Lake Superior there has been at least one classroom attempt to duplicate Paddle’s voyage with the students each launching their home built model in the Lake.  A couple were found on local beaches.  No messages yet from the St Lawrence River!
 
Roger

Thank you John / Gary.
 
It is time to start what I anticipate to be a long planking job.
 
I am starting at the bulwark. I plan to plank the hull with mahogany planks of .062" thickness by nominally .220" wide. The plank widths will obviously vary to conform with the hull shape as progress is made. The bulwark will be made from a nominally 1" wide by  .032" thick birch ply which will be clad with .032" mahogany planks as per the attached sketch.

The bitch ply cannot follow the line of the bulwark exactly without shaping so it is being put on to sit slightly above the line of the capping rail. It will be cut back to the capping rail shape later in the build.
 
I started by glueing bits of scrap wood to the frames. These position / support the plywood during gluing. Each one cut back to  conform with the shape the plywood strip wants to take.

At this stage I also did the final sanding of the hull.

Then followed the slow process of fitting the plywood strakes. They were glued in position with a ample layer of PVA wood glue.
The strakes were held in place with plenty of notice board pins and elastic bands while the glue dried.

The plywood sheet wasn't long enough to extend the full length of the hull and the stern needed separate strips.


I didn't get one to the frames right and this was revealed "too late" by the application of the bulwark strakes. I will need to correct this before I plank the bulwarks. Stupidly having noticed the mistake I the repeated it on the other side. There is no fool like an old fool.

Applying the bulwark strake to the stern was quite challenging due to the extreme curvature.

Before attaching the ply to the stern I slotted it with a series of horizontal cuts.

With a bit of fiddling this enabled it to wrap around the stern.

A bit of sanding produced an acceptable shape for subsequent planking.

That all for now folks!
 

Great work up to your usual standards, Gary!  
 
My son, his family, and a close friend all live directly in the Eclipse’s path in Indiana.  All had reactions similar to yours..
 
Roger

Just stumbled on to this.  A beautiful example of an interesting subject.
 
Roger

The only thing I wish it had was bearings for the headstock.  Has bronze bushings ??  Not sure if Bronze or not but no bearings.  Seems tight (no slop) so that's good.  Just have to take the time and really clean it up and maybe give it a new paint job (same color).  I have to make sure I still have it but I also have a faceplate, tooling (bits) takes 1/4" I believe maybe 3/8" cutters, dead center for tailstock (wish I had a live center) course they can be bought MT 1 tailstock.  Head is a MT 2 I believe. 
 
I know I messed up one of the pins in the head, didn't know what I was doing at the time, know better now.  It doesn't have a thread knob?? on it that broke long time ago.  I probably won't be cutting threads that way anyway.  Don't know if others vibrant or make allot of noise but my does.  It's probably the way I have to belt to the motor rigged up.  Dad and I built the cabinet many many moons ago and hung the motor on a hinge for belt tension (probably not the right way to do it).
 
I have many "irons in the fire" before I get to really dig into the lathe project, it does run now just needs a good cleaning and lube.  Works great, I've turned hubs (see picture) for a 1/8 scale stagecoach I was building and have turned other wood projects on it.  Never have tried to turn metal on it yet.  Just messed with it with wood.  Yeah, I know some say don't turn wood on a metal lathe some say it's fine.  It's the only lathe I had at the time so......... yup.
 
Thanks to everyone that commented and gave suggestions on the lathe.  Appreciate each and every one of you and look forward to getting back to modeling soon.  First day of work (new job) so that'll be interesting.  Again thank you !!
 

 

 

Steven,
 
1150 borders on prehistory, a long, long, time ago.  Short of digging up a well preserved vessel no one can really say how these vessels were built and sailed.  Likewise, no one can really say if details known to exist on much later lateen rigged vessels were used in 1150.  The best anyone can do is to make use of contemporary information available, which you are doing.  Keep up the good work, while realizing that this is a difficult subject.
 
Roger

I mentioned this project quite a while ago on a page dedicated to the building of a Victorian racing yacht so I thought it might be worth updating it as a separate topic now I am back modelling after quite a while restoring a 1930 Singer Six car, a 1937 Singer Coupe and a 1952 MG TD imported from Texas!  This is a typical smack of about 40' LOD which I'm modelling at 1/2":1'.  The plans are non-scale so I have been using proportional dividers to scale up, plus I am constantly scouting the net for details that the plans do not show.   I am using lime for most of the boat as sheets in various thicknesses are readily available and it works really well with hand tools and my small bandsaw.  It will be apparent that I am not a precise modeler, being very much of the 'good enough' school, and I have used filler to fair the hull as I plan to paint her in traditional colours and hopefully evoke a working boat.  I'm currently making templates for the covering boards and cutting deck planking to scale, but i will paint the hull before planking as I will leave the deck unpainted even though most surviving boats have their decks sheathed and painted.      

That looks really nice, Mark. Those small brass nails were called panel pins in England, I believe. I have a stash of them that used to be my father's. 

I started the outer stem & keel piece, that goes from the deck at the bow around to the keel. I decided to glue laminate it in one piece, partly because - as with the glued planks replicating strip planking - this is more akin to the way the actual yacht was constructed, as a timber / epoxy composite construction.
 
I had some sheets of Sapele from something & even the 1.75mm (maybe 1/16th) thick wasn't happy doing the curve, with heating. I had some 2.5 thick strips of Huon Pine, & they were happy to do it, with a bit of heat from the hot air gun. I'd rather a harder timber, but oil based enamel paint is quite tough.
 
I came across some tiny fine brass nails that I had bought & didn't use on a model, & decided to try using them to ensure the laminating is a close fit to the hull shape. Partly because the timber needs a finished thickness of 5mm, & with 2 @ 2.5mm there wasn't much adjustment possible. Anyway, it looks to have worked well, & hopefully hasn't been glued to the hull... I left about 1mm of nail sticking out, so I can pull them out.
 
It worked nicely:

 
Except for 2 (where a little more oomf was need to hold the timber in), the nail heads are left projecting a little to aid removal:

 
Here's where you can see how well this worked - no gaps! Helped by the general pliability of Huon.

thanks

1 part b the oops revisited.  
 
Thank you all for your interest.  the short answer is Allan once again is right on. I add this reply to the first post.
 
I am  happy that I will be able to answer the query as to what is in the photo of the January 1919 accident.  Fortunately, there are a few more views that I share here.  As the story goes, three years after her launch she was sailing by on her way to Boston and decided to come into the yard of her birth for a pit stop.  The crew at the time were most likely not local Mainers, Boothbay at any rate. When they anchored, they were over a ledge, and unfortunately, they all went ashore for a break.  Town is about two miles or so away and out of view. As the tide went out, over she went.   See these two added photos.
4.    looking East across the Damariscotta River  5    Looking west toward east Boothbay.  That is the Hodgdon Brothers yard in the view.  I took the image I shared before and annotated if for the record.  In this view of interest, one can also see all three of the 1919 active yards of East Boothbay.    One can then see the derrick barge beyond the hull.  Presumably this photo is after they had pumped and rolled her back a bit. If one looks clearly ,as Allan did, the lighter colored bow is there.   
 
6    here we see the annotations. In these early days she sailed as designed with no bow sprit.  That appendage came later when racing.
 
Just for fun I share a more recent photo of other sailors “ from away” coming into Boothbay and anchoring over a ledge….oops.  
7.     sailors “ from Away” fortunately, this event ended well as reportedly the crew had a nice evening in town and then about midnight, at high tide,  Sea Tow got them away.
Cheers 
 

This looks like a really nice little engine and a great value. Eye candy for steam engine junkies like me.  
 
Not a criticism but a question.  Most steam engines are double acting; steam is alternatively admitted and exhausted  from each end of the cylinder.   In other words steam pressure alternatively acts on each end of the piston.  This is a single acting engine. Steam pressure acts only on one end of the piston, the bottom.  It is also non condensing.  The condenser block is just a tray that collects water.  When the piston reaches the top of its stroke pressure across the piston is balanced and the only downward force acting on it is gravity.  Once the engine is running momentum from the flywheel is sufficient to allow gravity to overcome friction and to return the piston to the bottom of its stroke.
 
The question:  If you’ve fired up the engine will it operate from a standing start or is it necessary to first spin the flywheel?
 
Roger

This looks like a really nice little engine and a great value. Eye candy for steam engine junkies like me.  
 
Not a criticism but a question.  Most steam engines are double acting; steam is alternatively admitted and exhausted  from each end of the cylinder.   In other words steam pressure alternatively acts on each end of the piston.  This is a single acting engine. Steam pressure acts only on one end of the piston, the bottom.  It is also non condensing.  The condenser block is just a tray that collects water.  When the piston reaches the top of its stroke pressure across the piston is balanced and the only downward force acting on it is gravity.  Once the engine is running momentum from the flywheel is sufficient to allow gravity to overcome friction and to return the piston to the bottom of its stroke.
 
The question:  If you’ve fired up the engine will it operate from a standing start or is it necessary to first spin the flywheel?
 
Roger

There is actually an example of a British built warship from this same era, carefully restored:  HMS Warrior.  She is on display at the Portsmouth Royal Navy Museum.  Pictures of her should be easy to find on the internet.  Look her up.  What color are her blocks.
 
Roger

So, time to continue. 
I do have plans now, but still I need to think about the sequence of construction. I also had some hesitation regarding 2 small pipes coming from the compressor room towards the manifold. I had made provisions for those pipes in way of making large supports on the big pipe to accommodate them, but I was never sure if I'd place them after all. 
Eventually I decided to place the pipes. I had put part of a pipe below that manifold. It didn't look right, so I removed it and built those pipes in different sections. The joints next to tank dome 2 will mostly be covered by the platform shown in previous posts. In below picture you can see the brass pipes running parallel to the big pipe. The joints are hidden in the shadows.

 
The reason I had to put them now was of course that they were also a bottleneck for construction of the manifold. I wouldn't be able to place them if I continued further on the manifold. 

 
And I've started the structure of the manifold on portside. All beams in place here. 

 

Great Lakes vessels in bulk cargo trades  are long, narrow, and shallow draft. Designers, therefore, are hard pressed to provide adequate structure to stiffen the hulls.  Even so some ships flex uncomfortably in rough water.
 
The model that John wants to build will exhibit the same problems without internal structure.  A light plastic shell without such reinforcement will behave like a wet noodle.
 
The simplest approach is a wooden hull.  Since these Seaway sized vessels are 90% parallel mid body this can be a hollow open topped box with deck beams and deck added to the carved hull later.  The bow and stern can be laminated and designed to fit the ends of the box.  The bilge radius is easily shaped with a router and the bow and stern shaped by conventional carving techniques.
 
These ships are built with all butt welded seams.  Plating is flush with perhaps 1/8” external reinforcement of welded seams (about .01” at 1:96 scale).  Lapped plates or heavy weld lines are therefore incorrect on a model.  Proper finishing to eliminate wood grain will produce a true to scale model.
 
Roger
 
 

Cost:  Ordinary lumberyard pine is an overlooked but perfectly suitable wood for “carved hull models.  Sort through the 1” stock and pick out what you need.  You don’t need top grade quality as you will not be using the whole board as one piece.  You can discard areas with knots.  
 
Weight:  For my current project, the lake freighter Benjamin Noble, the long middle body is an open topped box with a U cross section.  Deck is brass plated craft plywood, but you could plate with paper. Bow and stern sections are solid “plugs”that fit into the ends of the box.  All carved to shape.  Material: 1in lumberyard pine.
 
Roger

Hello All,
It is time for another small update.
I turned a mast on the drill press.  I think it is the only wood on the model.  
Added hooks and cleat for the anchor light halyards.  The cleat is about as small as I can work.
 
Also added interior details for the pilot house and winch control house.  Probably overdid it.  Very little, if any of it, will be visible in the end.
Thank for looking,
mcb

A wonderful model!  Eric, I believe that you have a set of drawings for a similar railroad ferry in your stash.  Perhaps a future project?
 
Railroad car ferries also sailed on the Great Lakes, particularly on lakes Erie and Michigan.  On Eastern Lake Erie they transferred cars filled with Ohio mined coal across to Canada.
 
 Lake Michigan was a different problem as its axis is North South.  This means that it blocked railroads moving freight from Michigan to Wisconsin, Minnesota and points west.  Going around the south end of the lake meant that trains had to negotiate the crowded Chicago rail yards, an unacceptable solution.  Two railroads, therefore, operated very large purpose built car ferries across the lake.  These ferries operated year round, breaking winter ice.  As least two were lost in winter storms.  The last two, SS Badger and SS Spartan were built in the early 1950’s.  Both still exist although only Badger sails.  Today, she hauls passengers and their vehicles across the lake; no railroad cars.  Badger is the last coal fired reciprocating engine steamship sailing on the lakes.
 
There were also a number of paddle driven railroad car ferries that shuttled cars across the Detroit River.  The paddle wheels were driven by massive horizontal steam engines.  I remember seeing them in the 1960’s.
 
Roger

There is an old expression about a boat being a hole in the water into which you throw money.  Unfortunately, United States is just a bigger hole to fill.
 
IMHO there are engineering, business, and legal reasons preventing her from sailing again:
 
Business:  The passenger ship business seems to be aimed at two different demographics; at one end those that want to join 4999 others aboard a floating theme park/ 24-7 floating casino and at the other end those wanting a quiet experience aboard a small ship.  United States would seem to appeal to neither of these groups.  The United States, while a big ship carried 1000-2000 passengers. Fares would, therefore, be high, so she would have to tap into the small cruise ship market.  Would ongoing demand be high enough to allow her to book profitable passenger loads?
 
Engineering:  She is a steam ship!  Nobody, operates steamships any more.  She has a 900psi US Navy plant.  The only steam plants operated today in US Navy vessels are in nuclear powered vessels; different animals.  Her boilers, if they can even be brought back to life are equipped to burn bunker c oil, a nasty pollutant that the rest of the world is trying to eliminate from their merchant marine fleets. The state of the art today in marine engineering for passenger carrying vessels seems to be an integrated system where electricity from one source is distributed to both the propulsion system and the system supplying on board hotel services. This also allows use of electric driven trainable pods to improve maneuvering.  Even if it could be brought back to life, United States’ machinery is 70 years out of date.
 
Legal:  She is an American Flagged ship.  The Jones act would require her to be manned with an expensive American crew.  She could be reflagged under a flag of convenience; Liberia, Panama, Bahamas, etc. but would she then be the United States?
 
Better for whoever owns her to admit defeat and as Bob Cleek says turn her into razor blades.
 
Roger
 
 
 
 

This looks like a really nice little engine and a great value. Eye candy for steam engine junkies like me.  
 
Not a criticism but a question.  Most steam engines are double acting; steam is alternatively admitted and exhausted  from each end of the cylinder.   In other words steam pressure alternatively acts on each end of the piston.  This is a single acting engine. Steam pressure acts only on one end of the piston, the bottom.  It is also non condensing.  The condenser block is just a tray that collects water.  When the piston reaches the top of its stroke pressure across the piston is balanced and the only downward force acting on it is gravity.  Once the engine is running momentum from the flywheel is sufficient to allow gravity to overcome friction and to return the piston to the bottom of its stroke.
 
The question:  If you’ve fired up the engine will it operate from a standing start or is it necessary to first spin the flywheel?
 
Roger

This looks like a really nice little engine and a great value. Eye candy for steam engine junkies like me.  
 
Not a criticism but a question.  Most steam engines are double acting; steam is alternatively admitted and exhausted  from each end of the cylinder.   In other words steam pressure alternatively acts on each end of the piston.  This is a single acting engine. Steam pressure acts only on one end of the piston, the bottom.  It is also non condensing.  The condenser block is just a tray that collects water.  When the piston reaches the top of its stroke pressure across the piston is balanced and the only downward force acting on it is gravity.  Once the engine is running momentum from the flywheel is sufficient to allow gravity to overcome friction and to return the piston to the bottom of its stroke.
 
The question:  If you’ve fired up the engine will it operate from a standing start or is it necessary to first spin the flywheel?
 
Roger

Very nice looking sails, Steven.
 
As for the historical accuracy of the model - "based of the best available information at the time of building." 
 
John

Thanks Roger. That's my opinion entirely. A lot of this is educated guesswork based on (extremely!) inadequate source material. Of course we can't be sure it's all correct, but a lot of the fun is in the investigation of source material and speculation as to how it could be done, given the pictorial evidence (often affected by artistic licence), the archaeological evidence (often frustratingly incomplete) and the practicalities of sailing a wooden vessel.
 
And if later evidence proves one of the guesses wrong, one still has the satisfaction of having done the best one could with the information that was available at the time.
 
So, on to current progress. Shrouds and halyards in place, but only the foremast shrouds have been finalised.

I really do need to clear my workdesk before I take photos!
 
I made new silkspan sails - I wasn't happy with the first iteration. This time I made them oversize and folded the edges over instead of gluing strips of silkspan to the edges. The cross was painted on with Tamiya acrylic paint. I needed two coats for the "face" side and one for the other side. Considerably happier with the second version.
And I've added the blocks to the yards - for the tacks at the lower ends and the vangs at the upper.

Druxey, if I might pick your brains - how did you attach the bolt ropes to your silkspan sails (they look particularly good)? And the robands?
 
Steven
 
 
 

Steven,
 
1150 borders on prehistory, a long, long, time ago.  Short of digging up a well preserved vessel no one can really say how these vessels were built and sailed.  Likewise, no one can really say if details known to exist on much later lateen rigged vessels were used in 1150.  The best anyone can do is to make use of contemporary information available, which you are doing.  Keep up the good work, while realizing that this is a difficult subject.
 
Roger

Great work up to your usual standards, Gary!  
 
My son, his family, and a close friend all live directly in the Eclipse’s path in Indiana.  All had reactions similar to yours..
 
Roger