G.L.

8. Floor timbers
The hull is now liberated from the building board, the inside is free accessible to work in it.  This week I am making the floor timbers.
The floor timbers are not only reinforcements for the hull, but most of them are also the base for the bottom boards. That means that their bottom must have as much as possible the shape of the inside of the hull and that the top of those on which will lay the bottom boards must be at equal and correct height to form stabile base for the boards.
To determine the inside shape of the hull where the floor timbers will be placed, I use a piece of thick solder.

That can be pressed in hollow shape of the hull.

I trace the shape onto stiff paper for both sides and cut them out. I glue them together with another piece of stiff paper just on top of the keelson (red marking, I was a bit lazy in making pictures). A vertical lath, attached to a horizontal lath which can be moved along the hull at a constant height helps to determine the height of the floor timber.

The floor timber can now be sawn ...

... fitted and glued.

 
All floor timbers placed.

 
Thank you very much for reading this log, for your likes and for all your kind reactions.
 
Till next week!
 

The hull can now be removed from the building board. Better to say the building board can now be dismantled from below the hull.

It is feather light.

 

 

The hull, sitting in its new chair:



 


 

Still busy with planking. The hull is slowly revealing its elegant lines. To say it in Wefalck's words: she begins to look like boat, rather than the carcass of a dead animal

 

 

Time to reevaluate and recalculate the strake shapes.
 
Thank you very much for reading this log, for your likes and for your encouraging and inspiring comments.
 
Till next week!

My plank job is a lot easier than yours in your fishermen's launch and your yawl longboat. The hull is straight throughout and the planking does not run over the dead wood. My planks are also less than one and a half mm thick, so they are very easy to press against each other without having to use all kinds of difficult bending techniques.
To cut the planks I use on my table saw a tool copied from Mr Bruno Orsel's construction log on the French forum 'Marine & Modélisme d'Arsenal'.

It consists of a fixed and a sliding part. The fixed part has a metal spring. A (curtain) rail is integrated in the sliding part. Wooden clamps can be slided over this rail and can be secured with a wing nut. The clamps hold a long brass bar (squared shaped 2mm x 2mm).


How does it work now?
I mark the spacings of the frames where I measured the strake subdivision (needs to be redone for each strake as they vary slightly in length) . On these marks I fix the brass bar with the aid of a caliper at a distance equal to the relevant strake width from the edge of the slide (see inset).

I now place the plank to be sawn in the slide against the brass bar ...

...and slide it through the saw.



The spring pushes the plank tight against the brass bar and my plank is cut nicely curved into shape.

 
Not easy to explain this clearly. I hope that the pictures are more or less self explaining.

The planking is continuing. There is not much different comment to give other than I have to be more and more inventive to clamp the planks. Rubber bands come in very handy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Thank you very much for reading this log, for your likes and for your encouraging and inspiring comments.
 
Till next week!

The first plank is cut. It is very straight, narrow at the ends and a little wider in the middle.

Gluing the first strakes at both sides. The thin planks bend easily.

 

The port side of the model will be left open. This plank will be the last on that side for the time being.
And that is it for this week

 

 
Thank you very much for reading this log, for your likes and for your reactions.
 
Till next week!

7. Planking the hull
The inside of the hull is black and the outside natural mahogany color. Mr Bruno Orsel uses planks made of a layer of ebony veneer, glued on a layer of mahogany veneer. I don't have ebony veneer so I make black veneer myself by staining mahogany veneer black. I glue two blades (black and natural) on each other. I let the glue dry between two glass plates to obtain a thin (± 1.2 mm thick) plywood sheet to cut the strakes of.

 

Of this sheet I can cut the planks one side black and one natural mahogany.

I start the planking at the bottom side with the garboards. Gluing the port garboard.

 

The next is the starboard garboard.

Between the garboard and the wale come 18 strakes. To determine their shape, I measure every five frames the frame length and divide that by 18.
 
Thank you very much for reading this log and for your likes.
 
Till next week!

Well Hakan, the hull is not deformed, but I had a different incident😒.
 
When I removed the clamps and supports which had to keep the starboard wale in place, the starboard side of the transom and the after frame cracked. The force of the ebony wale pressing on the transom was probably too great.

So, no progress to report this week.
I carefully remove the remnants of the frame and the transom. Fortunately this succeeds without causing further damage.

I re-laminate the frame ...

... and the transom.

Forgot to make a picture of the replaced pieces. Instead of that another picture of a painting of clippers d'Argenteuil by Gustave Caillebotte.

I hope I can report some progress again next week.
Thank you very much for reading this log, for your likes and for your reactions.
 
Till next week!

6. The wales
Before placing the wales, I glue at regular distances a small support to the frames at the correct height.

The wales are made of ebony to contrast with the mahogany hull. To give the stiff ebony somewhat the round shape of the hull, I pre-bend the wales over the heat of a paint burner.

Gluing the port wale. Starboard wale lays ready in front of the model.

My method to keep the wales into place while the glue is drying

Next day, the supports can be removed. It is now the turn of the starboard wale.

 

Below the wales comes a mahogany ornamental bumper edge.

 
Thank you very much for reading this log, for your likes and for all your encouraging reactions.
 
Till next week!

5. Transom
The transom of the clipper is bent, therefore it will be laminated with three layers of veneer. I make first the mold to laminate.

The three veneer layers. The inner layer is stained in black.

Here they are glued.

The next day I take them out of  their mold.

 

This is the shape of the transom.

The transom is sawn out.
The top and the bottom sides must be sanded diagonally. One on the inside, the other on the outside.

Gluing the transom into position.

 

 
Thank you very much for reading this log, for your likes and for all your encouraging reactions.
 
Till next week!

4. Horn timbers
I now remove the frames behind the rudder post.

The horn timbers are made of ebony and they have to be glued at each side of the helm port.
Fitting them.

The frames will be incorporated into the horn timbers. Sawing the slots for the frames.

 

Gluing the horn timbers into place. I use two spacer blocks to keep them parallel.

The after frames can now also be glued definitively into place.

I am now also gluing the cant frames.
 

3. Keel, stem and rudderpost
 
Before placing the frames definitively, the keelson has to be made.
The keelson is made of ebony. To make the slot for the centre board I lay the keelson on the saw table with the saw blade fully turned down.

Then I turn up the running saw slowly until the desired length of slot is reached.

The ends of the slots still have to be cleaned up. I do it with the fret saw.
The keelson is ready to be placed

The keelson attached on the building board. The frames involved are removed in advance.

The keel is made of mahogany. The slot for the centre board is made as described above.

Cleaning up the ends of the centre board slot.

Gluing the dead wood.

 

fitting the keel on the keelson.

Getting ready to glue the frames on the kelson: the involved frames are removed from their templates. I label them to make the puzzle afterward easier.

 

I reattach now the frames on their templates and glue them on the keelson.

As the some frames now run over the slot of the centre board, the middle pieces have to be cut to give space for the keel.
 

The other frames go through the keel. Marking and sawing the slots for them.

 

 

Fitting the keel

When the rudderpost and the stem are glued on the keel, it can be glued into position.
 
Thank you very much for reading this log, for your likes and for all your interesting reactions.
 
Till next week!

The closer I get to the bow and the stern, the greater becomes the slope of the frames. To my pleasant surprise, I can bend the veneer strips nicely along the template without breaking them. This probably wouldn't have been possible with the stiffer ebony.

 

The frame production continues steadily.

 

This week all frames are made.
 

 
Thank you very much for reading this log, for your likes and for all your interesting reactions.
 
Till next week!

Redshirt,
I want to be a little careful with my answer to this because it is my first time working with Ancre plans and I have a lot of friends who are very satisfied with Ancre.
I find the plans very detailed and suitable to work with, but now that you mention it here, I remember a few things that struck me:
 To make 29 frames, 29 templates have to be made, which is why I expected that all 29 drawn out would be found in the plans. However, only 11 frame drawings are available. The rest must therefore be drawn yourself. When drawing the frames, I arrived at a slightly different shape from the one in the plans. On my first frame I thought the fault was mine, but it occurred with every frame. I also noticed that the deck heights behind the main frame on my drawings were a few mm higher than those on the plan.  I do not rule out that I drew the frames incorrectly, but I still have my doubts about that.
What I don't have doubts about:
There is an inaccuracy in the height of the waterline on the plan. On the frames in front of the main frame, the waterline on the frame plan is 1 mm higher than behind the main frame.
In the lines plan, the waterline is at the same level as for the frames behind the waterline. I have therefore assumed that height as correct.

  I think it is a pity that the monograph does not give any indication about the method and techniques to be used to build the model.

In order not to present it all negatively here, I would like to emphasize that despite what I wrote above, the plans are very useful and that I enjoy working on this model so far and that it will undoubtedly still have many challenges for me in store.
 

Chapter I. Introduction
 
 
It is already a year ago that I bought this monograph of 'Ancre' publications. Since a couple of months it is laying on my desk waiting for me until I have enough courage to start with it because it seems to me to be a project of high difficulty. A few weeks ago I made my decision and bought the necessary wood.
It is the first time that I have purchased an Ancre monograph, so I was very curious. It is a study, written by Mr Bruno Orsel about the 'Clipper d'Argenteuil', a small open regatta sail boat for use on inland waters. Mr Orsel calls his model 'Louise', but that is a fictional vessel. His model is not the reproduction of a specific clipper d'Argenteuil, but a thorough study of the boat type.

The photo above comes from the website of Ancre publications and suggests that the monograph is a voluminous book. In reality it is only half as thick as it looks in the picture. However the folder contains a booklet with a lot of nice drawings, 3D images and color pictures of the model with a detailed description of all plans and, very important, 10 very detailed plans in 1/15 scale.
Before I discovered this monograph I did not know the type of vessel at all. I was immediately struck by its elegance. It reminded me of the sandbagger of which I read the construction log on this forum months ago. The plans are drawn on a scale of 1/15. This is perfectly within the range of scale I enjoy working with. Mr Orsel built his model as a semi-open model. That is also something that attracts me enormously.
Everything I know about the clipper d'Argenteuil comes from the monograph. Here is a very brief summary:

In the second half of the nineteenth century the rail network began to expand in France. It became easy for the Parisians to leave the city. It was the 'Belle Époque' when townspeople began to appreciate the countryside. Many of the Parisian bourgeoisie took the train with their families at the end of the week and arrived half an hour later in the small villages on the banks of the Seine to spend the weekend. A lot of them practiced water sports: swimming, rowing or sailing in the Seine.
One of those villages was Argenteuil where the river Seine was about 200 meters wide and there were no obstacles like bridges for over a distance of 10 km. The 'Bassin d'Argenteuil' was an ideal place to organize sail regattas.
(Painting: 'Le Bassin d'Argenteuil' by Claude Monet property: Musée d'Orsay, Paris)

Originally they sailed with uncomplicated small sailing boats, but in 1850 a member of 'Le Cercle de Voiles de Paris' participated at the races with an American sandbagger 'Le Margot' and was joined some years later by a catboat (also imported from the United States) the 'New York'.  The ordinary sailing boats were no longer a match for these super-fast competitors. The more affluent club members had new boats designed by local yards. They used the sandbagger and the catboat as a base for their designs. The Clipper d'Argenteuil' was born.
(source drawing: publicity brochure Ancre publications)

One wealthy club member, the impressionist painter Gustave Caillebotte spent fortunes designing and building increasingly high-performance racing yachts. Between 1878 and 1880 he had three consecutively built. When the last one, the Condor, did not win during its first participation in the regatta, he rigged the yacht with silk sails. With this secret weapon, the yacht beat all opposition in the next race.
(Photos: Gustave Caillebotte and yacht Condor with silk sails)
       
Clippers d'Argenteuil, painted by Gustave Caillebotte

The 'Lison' standard example of a clipper d'Argenteuil (source: 'Manual of yacht and boat sailing' by Dixon Kemp).

I don't know if there are still sail regattas on the basin d'Argenteuil. I visited Argenteuil on Google Earth and I have the impression that the village has been absorbed in the last 150 years by the expansion of the Paris metropolis. It doesn't look as idyllic as it did when Claude Monet had his floating painting studio there. But maybe I am mistaken because I have never actually been there.
(Screenshot Google Earth)
Mr Orsel he based his study on the clipper 'Argenteuil on drawings that appeared in the magazine of le Cercle de voile de Paris and on yacht models of the 'Musée de la Marine'.
(Image extract promotion brochure monograph Ancre)

This is the model, built by Mr Orsel. I hope my model can approach this standard somewhat.
(Image extract promotion brochure monograph Ancre)

Now it's time to stop dreaming and get started so that I can show something tangible next week.
 
Till next week!

Thanks (belatedly) for the kind comments above and the thumbs-up !
 
********************
 

Some post-summer progress
 
It is quite amazing, how time passes – more than three months since the last up-date ! OK, I have been in sort of semi-vacation for six weeks in Spain, but then money-earning work seriously got into my way.
 
Normally, I leave painting as much as possible to the very end, just before the assembly stage. This avoids damage to the paintwork by handling the model or the problem of removing dust from it. However, I felt that the project had progressed to a point, where I wanted to see how everything comes together. This also boosts the motivation, rather getting lost in fabricating endlessly little pieces.
 
So, the model was given a good cleaning to remove dust, grease etc. The sequence of colours had to be carefully considered in order to work from the light ones to the dark ones. I also wanted to work inside out, because in this way masking was facilitated.
 

Photograph of 1876 showing quite clearly the livery of SMS WESPE at the time.
 
The whole paint-work is done with acrylics from Vallejo (marketed here in France under the brand ‘Prince August’) and Schmincke (a German manufacturer).
 
Hence, I started with the white of the inside of the casemate, the bulwark and the walls of the deckhouse, which was spray-painted with the airbrush. Unfortunately, I had some trouble with the airbrush that had not been used for a while. Apparently, some paint had accumulated in the nozzle from insufficient cleaning over time. This particularly affected the white, which seems to have comparatively bigger pigment particles and is more difficult to spray anyway. Due to the various bits and pieces added to the bulwark etc., it is virtually impossible to rub down the paint and begin afresh … so the white paintwork is not as good as I had hoped for …
 

 
The decks were not originally laid in wood (with the exception of the quarter deck and the floor of the casemate) or covered in linoleum at that time. They appear to have been painted with a mixture of tar and black oil-paint, with sand mixed into to provide a non-slip surface. I assumed that this mixture would attain a dark greyish colour with time due to weathering, similar to older tarmac. Prince August 996 (German ‘Panzergrau’ - tank-grey) seemed to be a suitable choice. All the deck areas were sprayed white together with the other parts to give a better key for hand-brushing. I began with painting the kicking-strips and water-ways between the bulwark stanchions and then progressed to several coats on the deck areas. All this painting was done by brush, as it would have been virtually impossible to mask-off the bulwark.
 

 
The paint-schemes of the Prussian and then Imperial German Navy ships are reasonably well known for the years after 1867, as the ordinances were published in official gazettes that have survived. For the first couple of service years of SMS WESPE, the 1874 ordinance paint-scheme would have been applicable. This specifies that hulls below the waterline were to be red and above black, with a white boot-topping; another white strip was to be painted below the main rails; all ginger-bread work in white as well as all superstructures and deck-houses, ventilators, etc. Funnels and masts were to be painted yellow (buff). Photographic evidence indicates that there were some variations to this scheme for SMS WESPE, but I will discuss these, when I come to describe the painting of respective parts.
 
First, the narrow visible part of the underwater hull was painted in Vallejo 71.269 (red RAL 3000). This area was then masked off with Tamiya masking tape. The inside of the hull was also masked and the hull sprayed black.
 

 
The bulwark-rail appears to have been varnished wood. It was first given a coat of Prince August 77 (bois-wood), followed by a light wash of 834 (bois transparent), which has a slightly lighter tone, followed by another light wash of Vallejo 71.074 (beige). Finally, a very light wash of Vallejo (transparent orange) was applied, which gives the wood a deep, warm tint. 
 
The images above show the ‘raw’ paintwork. It still needs to be touched up and items such as the scrollwork needs to be refined. Eventually, there will be also a light weathering and ‘griming’ with pastels – the idea is to just show the effects of being in use, but with good maintenance.
 
To be continued ....

Thank you all for commenting . Haven’t been doin much lately. Did this book cover for a friend. The original was taken to Canada by RCN Minesweeper along with a rare Corvette's skiff , discovered in the boat shed in Portsmouth Dock yard 

Limber boards and main mast step:

 

 

 

 

 

I have roughed-out one side of the hull via old-school chisels and gouges - most Henry Taylor full size: a 5/8" #5 gouge, a 3/8" #7 gouge,  a 3/8" #3 gouge and a 3/4” chisel from Garrett Wade (bought back in the ‘90s when you could examine the castings before purchasing. I also used a couple of scrapers, but they aren’t in perfect shape due to pitting from the flood. 
 
The block of wood has a beautiful fiddle-back figure which changes grain direction often. Pity I’m going to cover it up.
 
I started working the other side with my rotary tool. A few observations: the hand piece only has a chuck, no collets and cannot take 1/4” shafts. I mention this because I find I want to use larger bits with longer sweeps and the Dremel sets (and similar) are very small. If you will pardon the pun, the smaller bits don’t cut it.   The sand drum can be used at an angle to make scalloping cuts but it is a little tricky (for me) to do cleanly. I started looking about, most notably at larger-scale bird carvers to see what they use and not surprisingly, it isn’t what I’m using.

Thanks! All I can say is step one of my next project arrived today 😬:

I've started to whacking away at the hull - working on the contours of the bottom of the hull. I used a couple of gouges on one side. I may try the rotary tool on the other side. 
 
Unrelated, I did notice that the plans (General Arrangement - sheet PY1-5) don't match the beautiful laser-cut wooden deck. I didn't check the deck profile against the templates (Templates - sheet PY5-5) before cutting the hull, but luckily those match each other. The location of the masts is also different as well on the plans (General Arrangement - sheet PY1-5) than on the aforementioned beautiful laser-cut wooden deck. 
 

I've already finished the port liner, I'm already on the starboard side. Please do not take into account the color of the wood, everything will be painted and the living work lined in copper.
Jorge.

After much thought, I have reached the conclusion that scratch building is hard. God bless those guys like Chuck  Passaro, that make the kits for us and foresee all the problems ahead. There is nothing like laser cut frames snapping into perfectly located slots into their proper place in the keel.  In this model, my first scratch build, I have made several mistakes that have made the fairing and planking of the hull more difficult.
I fabricated the frames using 1/8" basswood (first mistake: too thick) , cut them with a band saw and trimmed each in-pair (port and starboard) with a sander. So far so good. I had glued a paper copy of the ships profile to the keel piece and had both sides attached to the building board facing each other. Great! 
Then I used the wrong glue to stick the paper to the wood (second mistake)and then glued the frames to the paper that was glued to the keel piece  (third mistake). The next day, after the glue dried, the whole thing came apart. Darn!
Thanks to this forum comments, I finally arrived at the proper glue to use and did the fairing. After all these fiascos, started planking with mixed pluses and minuses.
This ship has a split deck with a lower deck in between and I decided to use a full sheet to plank this section as can be seen in the photo below. Good!
 

 
Started planking towards the keel using various techniques to bend the strakes. The most successful was the use  of water soaked wood and hot air blower. But I could not bend all the way at the rounded stern without a snap. Then, I remember something out of these forums and made a mold of the curve.
 

 
Success!
 

 

 
 
 

 
 
 
More strakes on the stern
 

 
And then fourth mistake shows up. When I cut the frames I didn't subtracted the plank thickness and the results will be a ship with wider beam. Oh well ! This, also interfered with the propeller shaft extending  further back towards the propeller. I worked around the tunnel using smaller strakes working around the concave curves of propeller tunnel. Good!
 
This quarter of the planking effort has been a  real education and hope that most of these flaws will be corrected with miliput and wood filler. 
 
Did some experimentation with the idea of simulating the steel plated hull with shellacked paper and it seems like a possible alternative that may cover some of my indiscretions.
 
So, again, thanks for the inspiration and advise given in this forum.
 
 
 

Hello again everyone,
 
Time again for another update. With the summer winding down and the weather cooling off, I have been busy with my "Honey Do" list but managed to find some time to put together a few more items on my build.
 
I finally finished getting all of the remaining cannons installed and rigged. The three forward cannons are complete with the exception of the rope coils. I managed to run out of rope with only a couple of feet needed to finish, but more is on the way.
 
Picture of one of the forward 42 pounders rigged and ready for install.

 
One of the starboard side 8" Smoothbores in place.

 
Here are a few pictures of the gundeck at eye-level showing powder barrels, munitions crates and the crews mess lockers.

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
Next I worked on the hog chains. For these I used brass wire for the chains themselves, styrene for the turnbuckles and copper sheeting for the cast caps. 
 
Up close picture of the actual hog chains. These took a little bit to figure out exactly how they were built. I had a few personal pictures from my last visit in 2014, but none with any real detail. I did try looking up some others on the internet, but the hog chains don't really seem to be an area of focus for visitors so the pictures are limited to long distance shots that I had to zoom way in on. Nevertheless, I think my interpretation of them is fairly close.

 
Here is the horizontal chain with the ends formed into the eyes.

 
 
Then it was time to test my metal working skills to see if I could solder the eyes to close them up without making a mess of things. Well, almost. Nothing a little drilling and filing can't fix.

 
There we go. They look a little better cleaned up.

 
Now to get them bent into shape. The forward chains are significantly shorter than the aft ones, due to their placement, so the angle on them was a bit more. Also, where the hog chains rest on the posts the iron was pounded flat to give it a better mounting surface. The green area drawn on the wire is where I flattened the brass to rest on the caps.

 
Both horizontal chains shaped and flattened.

 
Next came the cast caps. These were made from thin copper sheeting that I cut to size and scored along the folding edges to get the correct shape.

 

 
Then they were placed on the hog chain posts and glued to the horizontal chains.

 

 
From the pictures that I was able to find and zoom in on, it is difficult to tell if there were bolts that were inserted through the chains and cast caps into the tops of the posts. It would make sense for them to put something there to avoid the chains from slipping off, but since I was not able to find any pictures of the tops of the posts, I took my builders liberties and drilled them out and will place bolts in them.
 
Next work was done on the turnbuckles. Or at least that is what I think these are called. They are not built like regular turnbuckles but they look to function as a way to tighten the tension on the hog chains. These were built with the same brass wire and styrene plastic.

 
Partially assembled.

 
and temporarily installed.

 
Port side.

 
Starboard side.

 
 
Before I got too far ahead of myself, I remembered that I had not built the axle pillow block caps. So I figured that I had better get to these before they were buried and impossible to install. These I just carved out of a piece of square stock and sanded to shape.

 
Cut out and just needing a little finish sanding.

 
Sanded and painted. I use the gold beads to simulate the grease cups. With the small nail in the top, I think they look pretty convincing.

 
And all mounted in place.

 
Next came work on the pilot house. I was not actually ready for this part, but I was running some additional lights before I closed up the boiler for good (I ran all of my wiring to terminate under the boiler) and had the thought that it would be neat to put some LED's in the pilot house to give it a little additional detail. So, I decided to go ahead and get it built.
 
So to give a brief history on the pilot house. The original plans for these was a wooden octagonal substructure, 12" thick with 1.5" thick iron plates fastened to the frames for protection. After several men on the Louisville and St. Louis were injured or killed by flying shards of iron from direct hits on the pilot house during Battle of Fort Donelson, including Flag Officer Foote, Lieutenant Bryant (then commander of the Cairo) had some modifications done to the pilot house in order protect the crew from further injury. 
 
While Cairo was awaiting her next assignment, Lt. Bryant put her crew to work extending the front three panels of the pilot house. They added an additional 7.5" of timber to each panel and then reinforced the inside of the house with pine paneling. Additionally, 1/2" thick iron flaps were added to the ports as well to protect the pilots form enemy sniper fire. When these ports were closed, the pilots would have to navigate by squinting through a peephole drilled into the flaps that was about the diameter of a silver dollar. All in all, these modifications gave the pilot house its new unique shape.
 
So I started out by tracing the footprint of the pilot house from the HSR plans. I drew the footprint up on some card stock to use as a mounting and construction base. I over extended the lines to give me a cutting line for the toe boards, then glued the strips down for the toe boards.

 
Once the boards were all in place I removed the excess card stock to start going vertical. Once I had this part cut out I realized that my octagon shape was not uniform and that the sides of the pilot house extension weren't even.

 
So I went to the computer and dug out my trusty Visio program to get a perfect Octagon shape. Then with careful measurement, I added the extension to the octagon then sized everything to scale. This is the new result. Much more uniform.

 
First course of toe boards in place.

 
Then it was on to building the sides.

 
Five sides up and rivets installed. I simulated the rivets the same way that I did for the casemate armor.

 
Extension sided in place. These were added when the front three panels were beefed up to compensate for the new thickness.

 
All eight (actually ten) panels in place and the structure temp installed in it's home.

 
Next it was time to install the view ports. To give them some depth, I built up some wooden tunnels to simulate the 19.5" walls.

 

 

 
Next I started constructing the top. This was pretty much the only part of Cairo that was left exposed from the Yazoo River mud, so it had long rotted away by the time the pilot house was recovered in 1960. Without knowing exactly how this part was constructed, I used what information was available on the HSR and what Bob Hill had drafted up, and made my own version.
 
My thoughts were that for the most part, since the top of the pilot house was flat one can assume that the roof was as well. The drawings show the center of the octagon to be open with a wire mesh covering the opening. I can somewhat see where this could be the case in that since there was a entry hatch from the gun deck with a ladder to access the pilot house just forward of the boilers and the cook stove. Given the hatch placement, you would think that some of the heat from below would filter up to the pilot house. That as well as the entire structure being painted black would make for an almost unbearably hot place to be on sunny days, so they would have to have some sort of ventilation besides the portals. However, with an open top, that exposes the pilot and controls to rain and other elements, so there could have possibly been a cover that could be placed over the opening. This cover could have just fit down inside of the opening with a small lip around the edge to hold it in place. Handles could have been mounted to the cover to facilitate removal and installation. Somewhat like a manhole cover. So this is what I came up with.
 
The basic shape of the top.

 
Cutting out the center opening. I'll use this part as the cover.

 
Installing the wire mesh. I don't think that this served much of a purpose in the way of protection from arms, but it could prevent tree branches and the occasional bird from coming into the pilot house.

 
Installation of the port flap hinges and flaps. These I just made with styrene rods and sheets. I used foil tape again for the rivets.

 
I wanted to show some of the ports closed, for the details and to give somewhat of a peak at the small aperture the pilots had to peer through when they were closed. This is also the area where I placed the lanterns to light things up inside.

 
For the pine paneling on the interior, I printed some lines on cardstock and glued this to the inside of the pilot house. 

 
Lanterns installed. The extra cardstock under the lanterns is to cover the wiring. Very little of this will be seen, but I wanted to cover it up just in case the keen eye is able to spot it from the outside.

 
The completed structure temp installed.

 
Lastly was the construction of the access ladder.

 
This was another feature that was never recovered from the wreck and there is no mention of it in the HSR so I just went with a simple build of a round rung ladder that would allow the pilot access to his house.

 
Placed near it's location in relation to the hatch that will be built when the hurricane deck goes in.

 
Finally, I started work on the lifeboats. The City Class Ironclads each carried four of these. Unfortunately none of the ones from the Cairo are around anymore and it is hard to say if any were deployed during her sinking since she went down in 12 minutes. From my reading on the sinking, Commander Selfridge ran her ashore as soon as she was hit, where most of the men jumped from the boat and swam or simply jumped to the ground before she slipped off the bank and went under. It is most likely that the lifeboats broke loose over time and drifted downriver in the swift Yazoo River current or they simply rotted away in the their davits.
 
So since there were no surviving lifeboats to model them after, I relied on pictures of the Cairo as well as the other boats for the details. From the available pictures they look to be pretty standard in shape with a flat transom and from the measurements on the plans they are about 6.25" which scaled out at 1:48 would be about 25' long. Rather than scratch build four of these and run the risk of them all not coming out shaped the same, I cheated a bit and bought some Model Shipways kits instead. There was only one problem with this, the biggest MS kit is only 5.25" long. So I kit bashed the lifeboats and extended them the extra inch. For the most part I got the desired shape and length I was looking for.
 
Stretching the keel.

 
Keel stretched.

 
Planking going on.

 
And the finished result. 

 
I then gave it a shot of black paint and started to other three. I'll get them all built and painted before I build the interiors of them. I still haven't decided if I am going to cover them with tarps or not. I am still researching the techniques on how to simulate them and need to practice up since I've never done that before. I'll at least leave one uncovered to see the benches, oars and other details, just don't know about the rest. Once I have all four completed, I'll post more pictures.

 
Well, that is all for this update. Hope you all enjoyed it. Thank you all again for the likes, comments and just stopping by.
 
Until next time, take care and be safe.
 
-Brian

Cutting these parts out certainly makes me nervous.

I tried to get fancy and add 1/32" basswood to the bulkheads to give some additional gluing surface for the deck. It didn't go as planned so I deep sixed that thought for this build. I'm certain that I will encounter issues as I go, but it should be a nice enjoyable learning experience. I have finished placing the bulkheads now. I stumbled into using my quad hands base as a building play form at the moment so that I can use magnets to try and keep everything flat (another we'll see how this goes experiment).