mbp521

I can’t speak for the UK Keith but over here we have a place called Harbor Freight. They sell tools really cheap, but of course they are cheap. Several years ago when I first got into wooden ship building I purchase one of their cheap mini table saws for something like $20. Needless to say, you get what you pay for, and it wouldn’t cut a clean line for anything. Long story short, it came with a diamond blade, but it does say for masonry. Never thought to try it on wood. Good to know that digit reattachment is easier with the Byrnes. Good selling point. I sure hope this information doesn’t come from personal experience though. 😁 -Brian

Beautiful work Greg! Definitely an interesting subject, but it looks great. -Brian

Hi Kurt, unfortunately I do not have a zero clearance insert for my saw. I had never really thought that I would use the saw for small detail work like ship modelling. However, that is something that I will look into if I can't swing the Byrnes for a while. I'll definitely bring the finger saving idea up to the wife though. If no one hears anything from me for a while I may be recovering from a mysterious frying pan upside the head accident. 😁 -Brian

Alex-Ks1, thank you for stopping by. I have been eye-balling a Byrnes precision table saw for some time now, it just hasn't been in the budget as of yet. I cut the bulkheads on my Craftsman 10" Industrial table saw from 1/4" plywood, with a brand new carbide tipped blade. Even with a new blade I just couldn't keep the plywood from shredding. Of course the plywood was not of the best quality either, but this is the reason for all the tear-outs. Fortunately all the bulkheads were hidden and none of the "nastiness" of the plywood can be seen. For the finer stuff, I used an Xacto saw blade and a lot of sandpaper. One of these days I may be able to talk the Admiral into a Byrnes (fingers crossed). -Brian

Glad to see another update. I’m not a huge fan of ME paints. They do have some nice colors that are, for the most part, true to some of the originals, but I find them a bit thick and in need of thinning before applying. I love the Vallejo paints. They have so many more color options available and they apply nicely right out of the bottle. Fantastic job on getting the hull shaped, and I love the plan you have to weather the deck. I’m a big fan of natural wood decks. I wouldn’t sweat the PE too much. I found that it was easier to work with than I first thought as well. Well, at least the bigger parts are. Haven’t had the joy of working with the tiny stuff yet. 😁 -Brian

Thank you John for the kind words. I see that you are new to MSW and I hope you are planning to do a build log on your model. There are so many wonderful resources here at MSW and I would love to follow along and help out where I can. - Brian

Looks like you handled the pressure pretty well. Nice work on the pilot house. -Brian

Nice quarry Eric. Looks like the freezer is beginning to get stocked. -Brian

Looking beautiful Tom. I use the CA on the thread method all the time. It certainly helps when threading the smaller ropes through the blocks. -Brian

Nice work on tying down the dingy Keith and nifty idea to plumb the masts. I'll need to keep that in mind on my next masted ship build. As I view your log, I sometimes have a hard time believing that this is a model. Your details are amazing. -Brian

I actually still have my O-Scale Lionel train from the early 70's. I dug it out last year for my grandson to play with, but I was not about to don a suit and tie to watch him play with it. 😁 -Brian

@Roger Pellett, @leclaire, @wefalck, @Canute, @KeithAug, @mtaylor, @Keith Black Thank you all for your input and suggestions. So I spent the evening playing around with different methods and here is what I came up with. My second attempt was to try printing the flag on silkspan just to see if the ink would bleed. Turns out that the printer did a fantastic job on the silkspan and the lines came out nice an clean. I taped the silkspan to a piece of cardstock to hold it in place so it wouldn't crinkle up under the printer head. Then I separated the printout from the cardstock and trimmed the edges after a bit of weathering. I wasn't too keen on the color of the white areas on the silkspan when I pulled it off the cardstock, it looked a little too gray, but when I folded it over the gray toned out a bit and it looked a little more white. The silkspan that I had on hand was very thin, something left over from a balsa airplane I made years ago. But I figured I'd give it a shot, so I slathered some glue on the back side and folded it over to glue the two sides together. That is where I screwed it up. The glue thinned the silkspan down so much that it was next to impossible to work with and when I went to align the side it just smeared and ruined the whole piece. So on to the next method. The next method I tried was @KeithAug suggestion to print the pattern on both sides of the paper and just make the flag a single layer. I printed out about five versions of it before I finally gave up. My poor cheapo printer just would not line the paper up when I would turn it over to print the other side. This was the closest I could get the sides to line up with each other. I went ahead and gave it a shot anyway to see if I could distress it and get it lay the way I wanted to without using any glue. The distressing looked great, but the paper was just to flimsy to lay right. So I moved on to the next method. Parchment paper. Well needless to say, that method didn't work either, The parchment paper was too crinkly and when I went to shape it the wrinkles were just too unrealistic. So finally I decided that I would make another attempt at distressing the printer paper like in my beta test. I liked the way this version looked aesthetically, I just wasn't happy with the way it was hanging on the halyard. As Eberhard pointed out, the angle was not natural, so I redid this method to place the header down the middle of the flag and have it hang more centered on the mast. Here are all of the attempts I made, just to show the differences. A. second version of distressed bond paper. I added a little more weathering than the beta version, but I liked the curl and hang a lot better. B. The beta test C. The single layer D. Parchment paper E. Silkspan Here is version A placed on the model. I like the way that it hangs and I think the weathered patina looks just right, I found some pictures online of flags sitting on stages in flag stands to get the drape right, and used these to mold my shape. On the western rivers, there was always some sort of breeze, so the flag wouldn't be sitting perfectly still or hanging against the mast. So I took this into consideration and left the left the bottom of the ensign hanging slightly out from the mast, just to give it some "life". I think I am completely satisfied with this version, and now that I have beat this subject to death. time to move on to the pennant. Thank you all so much for your valuable input and suggestions. It is greatly appreciated. -Brian

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Sorry, my jaw just hit the keyboard. 😁 Beautiful details Keith. Craftsmanship like yours is what I strive to someday achieve. Truly inspiring! -Brian

Thank you Roger, I agree 100% with this statement. Never would I even think of putting a stiff paper flag on any model. It's almost blasphemy to spend that much time on a build only to tarnish it by slapping a unrealistic flag on it.😁 Actually you brought up one of the methods from the NRG that I was going to try. I was going to deviate slightly from the method and attempt to see if the Silkspan would hold the ink from my printer first without bleeding. If it does bleed, I may see if I can locate some rice paper and try that. I've never dealt with rice paper before, but there is always a first time for everything. I am not real confident in my painting skills and getting straight lines, but there is always the need to improve a skill I'm lacking in. However, the star field is what's holding me back from painting. 34 small stars (at 1:48 on a 6' x 10' flag are about 2mm across) and doubling that for both sides would test my patience to the max. I may someday try painting one on a more simpler pattern such as the Union Jack, I just don't think I'm ready with this one. Not to mention with the eyes that are on me now, I want to make sure that I get it done right so I don't disappoint. Mark, Thank you for the suggestion. This is not a method that I have run across yet and will definitely take into consideration if I am not able to achieve a natural look. Keith, no pretending here. This entire build has been a learning experience. 😁 But, pull up a chair while I run through my first attempt at flag making. With this much attention I decided to go ahead and get my beta test posted and get some input (positive or negative) from everyone. So here goes. I started with printing out the ensign on just some plain white printer paper. Not a heavy bond, just lightweight so that the flag wasn't too thick and easy to work with. I took an ochre chalk pastel and lightly brushed on a little color to give it a stained/weathered look and take some of the sharpness out of the white and dull down some of the blue and red. Both sides aged a bit. Then I trimmed away the excess paper get the full shape of the ensign. This next step was really hard for me because it seemed a bit disrespectful to do this to the flag, but I kept telling myself, it's only temporary and part of the process to show it off properly. I wadded the paper to soften the fibers and make it look a lot more like material. After unravelling it, I pulled it across the sharp edge of my desk to help smooth out some of the harsher lines. I repeated this step about three or four times to get the right feel. Once I had the paper feeling like I wanted, I applied a thick layer of clear Elmer's glue to the inside and smeared it out evenly on one side. I used a good bit so that it allowed me to slide the edges together and get them even. Once the two halves were glued together, I pressed them together with a steel block to smooth it out even more. Now to the fun part. Trying to shape the ensign so that it looks like it is hanging naturally. I didn't want to show it like it was flying in a stiff wind, I wanted to have it look like it was hanging on a nice calm day, with hardly a breeze. Just enough to show the colors, but not stick out too much. I used my steel block to hold the header flat and in place since this side would be straight when secured to the rope. I then curled the rest to form a natural hanging look. To hold the curl in position until the glue dried, I placed a wooden block on it. The block was not heavy enough to flatten the flag, but light enough to give it some dimension. While the glue was drying, I pieced together the halyard and hooks. I simulated the grommets with a pencil and pierced the header with a small punch. Next I needed to dress up the edges a bit so that the white paper didn't show, so I used a red and blue chalk pastel to cover it up. I just ran the pastel softly along the edge then dusted the excess off. This seemed to work pretty good and blended the colors nicely. I also darkened the header a bit with a rust pastel to show the differences in material. After I had the edges covered up, it was time to secure the ensign to the halyard. Then the whole thing was placed on the mast. For the most part I think it came out pretty nice looking for my first attempt. I am going to play around with some other methods, but I am looking to get an opinion or thoughts on what the gallery thinks of this version. I am open to any and all suggestions or criticism. This is a learning experience for me and I'd like to make sure that I learn right. Thanks to all for stopping by and look forward to your comments. -Brian

Thank you all for the kind words and likes! Oh the irony of that one. 😁 Please, by all means send the link. I'm always on the look out for places to shop for modeling supplies. For this build I am attempting to make my own ensigns, but if I fail I may need a fallback. There are several methods that are posted in the "Tip and Tricks" section of MSW and I want to try a few as well as experiment on my own. Most of them require the ensign to be printed out, which helps when you can't find the correct scale online, and it allows you to go with any size you like. In this case I am going with a 6'x10' 34-Star ensign in 1:48 scale. Should be just about right for the ones flown on these boats. As for the pennant, from what I have found so far, they call for them to be 32' in length. Scaled to 1:48 that is about 8" long. I think that would be a little too much and wouldn't look right on the model. I'm still investigating that one and may have to shorten it up a bit to get it to look right. I did discover that the 13-star version was used during the Civil War, so I am one step closer. I am going to play around with these for a bit and see how they turn out. -Brian

Totally impressive! I’ve just now started weathering models and see that I have a long way to go. -Brian

Hello again everyone, I took advantage of the cold rainy weekend and got some work done on the ships boats rigging. A big thank you to @wefalck@Cathead & @Keith Black for keeping me honest and pointed in the right direction. I spent some time studying the old City-Class pictures and from the limited detail the old photos provided, this is what I came up with for the control and stabilizing lines on the davits. The eyes at the end of each davit is hard to make out in the photographs so it is difficult to tell if the control lines and stabilizing lines are separate or one continuous line. I went with the executive decision to make them separate. My reasoning for this was that it would be easier to replace one shorter rope should it break than a long one, and I thought it looked better having them all separate. First thing I did was to secure the tackle to the davit on the covered boats. I did it this way out of sheer laziness, I didn't want to remove the boats and their covers and redo them with cutouts for the tackle to go down the lift rings on the boats. Not to mention that I have not been able to find a single photograph of a City-Class ship with a covered boat anywhere, to show how it was stowed. Tackle secured to the davit. . Control lines and stabilizing lines in place on the starboard boats. Control lines and stabilizing lines on the port boats. Since I still had some time and it was still raining after finishing up the boats, I decided to do some touch ups and a bit more weathering. Here is some of what I got done. Bow weathering. Closer details. Wheelhouse and deck structure weathering. I still have a bit more weathering to go, I just wanted to get this out there before the Thanksgiving holiday, I am currently working on more weathering, as well as the ensign and the commissioning pennant. I have seen some models and pictures of another pennant flown from the center mast on some of these ships but I am not sure of what it is. It would be a neat addition, just not sure of it's authenticity. I also need to find out if the commissioning pennant the Cairo flew was the 13 star or the 7 star version. Still looking into that one. Thanks again for all your input and for stopping by, -Brian

Beautiful work on the railings John. Quite the accomplishment getting those done and maintaining your sanity. The Steamboat Cyclopedium is a must have for the steamboat builder. So much useful information in there. -Brian

Wow Eric! I know I am late to the party on this one. For some reason I was not getting any updates on people that I follow and I had no idea you had this log going on. I need to go in and check my settings to figure out what’s going on. I must say that you, Mrs. Cathead and your stepfather have done a beautiful job on the outdoor kitchen, and I am extremely envious. I have the plans for one of my own (not near as fancy) it’s just getting the time to do it with all the other projects that I have lined up. So glad that our davit discussion provided some inspiration for your game hanger. I love the Ozark’s, one of the places I miss most about living in in Arkansas. Way back when, we used to do a lot of camping and canoeing up there, but haven’t done it since moving to Texas 24 years ago. So many beautiful places to go and see. Now that I know this is here I’ll be following along. -Brian

The launching of the boats from these ironclads seems to be a bit cumbersome. Since the boats were longer than the area between the davits, the crew would have to first swing the davits forward (or aft) to clear the bow (or stern) of the respective davit. They would then pivot the cleared davit outboard and swing the boat the opposite direction to clear the second davit. Both davits would have to be rotated 180 degrees to launch the boats. I guess that's why later on some of the modifications, like this one on the Louisville, changed the davit configuration to a more efficient way of launching them. I now understand what you were referring to with this. Took me a bit, but I think I got it. I went back and looked at some of the photos and found this on the St. Louis. It looks like there were ropes that ran between the rings at the tops of the davits that kept them at a uniform distance, They also could have been used to control the swing of the davit when rotating them inboard and outboard. I'll need to go back and revisit this and see what I can dig up. It might be a worthy addition that I missed. -Brian

Eberhard, apologies for the redundancy. I didn't refresh my screen before I submitted my last post and didn't see this reply. I think that the eye-splice around the davit itself would be the perfect method to store the loose tackle and one that I am considering going back in and installing. This will allow the tackle to be stowed neatly and keep me from having to redo my boat tarps. More to come on this shortly. Lieste, thank you for the insight into anchor operations. I had no idea that there was so much involved with setting them. I thought the anchor was dropped overboard and once it hit the bottom, the wind or the current would set the fluke into the bottom and hold the ship in place. This is just going off my limited knowledge of small craft when I go fishing. Toss the anchor overboard and hope it hooks on something to hold me in place, then pray it doesn't get snagged on a submerged stump or something. Thank you Keith for the kind words and the examples. When I started this build I had just intended to show all the boats covered like many of the models of the Cairo I had seen. As I progressed through the build and really got into the details of the boat, l decided that I wanted to show the boats in different stages of launch and storage. One of the things that I had not thought of as I was building them was how would they be stowed if they were covered and none of the models out there have that much detail in them. I was studying the pictures that you posted and realized that there is really a lot more to it. While the davit operation on the Tennessee was a bit different than the Cairo, I would think that the stowed methods would be similar. This would probably explain why almost all photographs of the City-Class ironclads show the boats uncovered, because the weather was good when the picture was taken. It was either that, or they never did cover any of the boats to begin with (but I doubt that).😁 -Brian

Eberhard, I had considered that method of of just running the tackle through the tarp and securing it to the rings, but the more I thought of it it seemed like a not very efficient way of launching the boats. The crew would have to unhook the tackle, to remove the tarp, then reinstall the tackle to maneuver the boats into launch position. Of course, I didn't take into consideration that the tarp could have been split and tied around the tackle at the penetration point and this could have quickly been unlaced and the tarp removed. Looks like there are several possibilities that I hadn't considered. Thank you so much for the input. Eric, that is a great analogy, and something I had not considered was the wind swinging the tackle around. I forget that the winds along the rivers could get a bit gusty and when storms hit, it only makes it worse. Several of the contemporary photos show the empty davits with the tackle hooked together at the bottom block and others show it secured to the bottom of the davit mounts like the two examples below. My dilemma is that I am not able to find any good photographs of the City-Class boats with their boats covered and stowed. I do agree that the tackle should be secured to prevent this from happening. It definitely helps to talk things out and get input on other possibilities. I tend to get tunnel vision at times when I am focused on a project and forget that there are other avenues to consider. I think I am going back to revisit the tackle and see if I can come up with a better method of stowing the loose tackle. Tackle on the Cincinnati secured to the davit base. Tackle on the St. Louis hooked together and hanging. -Brian

Thank you Keith. Now that you mention it, the wheelhouse does sort of resemble a Hobbit House, minus the grass covering of course.😁 The ships dog was quite the task, getting all that fur in place was extremely tedious. -Brian

Hello again Everyone, I just realized that it has been a while since I posted a proper update on the Cairo build. Well, hopefully I don't disappoint too much because not a lot has been done. The nice cooler weather has kept me outside taking care of those much needed projects that were not possible in the summer heat, but I am ever so slowly creeping towards the finish line on this project. Here is what I was able to get done over the past month or so. First up was the completion of mounting the ships boats and getting them rigged up, As usual, information on the City-Class boats was very limited and I resorted to using a few builders liberties on this part. The sloped sides of the casements made for a somewhat unique way of storing the ships boats. The davit bases were mounted about 3/4 of the way down the casements and the middle of them was supported by horizontal bars attached to the casements just below the Hurricane deck. These middle supports served multiple purposes, center support for the davit, provided a swivel point of the davit to launch the boats and a resting place for the boats themselves when stowed aboard. While I was trying to find out how the boats sat on the davit supports I was playing around with the configuration and got to thinking that if these boats were to just sit on top of the davit supports, there was no stability for the boats to just sit on their keels. So I researched and researched some more, and came up empty. So I decided to take my builders liberties and install a couple of planks lashed to the supports to run parallel to the boats keels and give them more stability. My thoughts on this were that not only would the planks add stability to the boats by keeping them level while stowed, they would also add some protection to the keel keeping it up off the iron supports. It sounded logical to me so this is what I went with. Here are the planks installed and lashed to the horizontal davit supports. Next up was to get the tackle rigged up. I diluted the ropes with 50/50 water and clear Elmer's glue solution to stiffen them since the boats were not heavy enough to keep the lines taught enough to look natural. Another configuration that I was having some difficulty finding information on was how the boats were stored when covered. The lifting rings were not accessible with the tarps over them so it wasn't possible to have them attached to the blocks without cutting holes in the covers. So again I decided that when the boats were stowed and covered the tackle was just left hanging loose above the boats. I don't think there would have been too much concern of the tackle swinging around in rough seas, since the rivers were considerably tamer than the open ocean. When the crew was ready to launch the boats, the would simply remove the tarps, hook the tackle to the lift rings and launch the boats. Problem solved. Completion of the rigging. The ropes were tied off to cleats mounted to the Hurricane deck and the leftover was coiled up and thrown over the ropes running through the tops of the stanchions. This method is seen in many of the contemporary photos of the City-Class boats. Closeup of the rig. I also added some ropes to secure the boats in their cradles. These were just wrapped around the boats and the planks just to help keep them in place. The port side boats were a little easier. The aft boat I mounted in the ready for launch position and the forward one was mounted at the waterline, as if ready to head to shore. Having the forward boat in this position also allowed the viewer to peek inside the cutaway in this area. Same rigging method was used as the starboard boats. The ropes were stiffened with diluted Elmer's to give them a "natural" hang and then secured to cleats, only this time the leftover rope was thrown over the hammock nets. Next up it was time to finally install the rudders. I started out by installing the rollers on the tiller. These were made from small aluminum tubing and 28ga wire. These rollers sat on top of the races mounted to the fantail deck and provided support for the extremely long rudder tillers and followed the tiller arc when the ships wheel was turned. Rudders being set into place on the hull. Port rudder installed. Final paining of the rudder hardware. Our newest crew member Daisy, the Admirals six-month old Yorkie-poo. She paid me a visit to make sure that things were going as they should. Thankfully I passed inspection. Once I had the rudders installed it was time to get the control lines added. This was another of those details that there was practically no information on so I went with some of the suggestions of those following along and what I though would the most logical approach to how these control lines would have been done. Salvage photos of the Cairo show a few clear pictures of the recovered rudders as well as some scenes in the recovery video. All of them show nothing attached to the outboard side of the tillers and what either appears to be stiff wire cable or an iron rod mounted to the inboard sides of the tiller. Since there was nothing shown on the outboard sides, I made the executive decision that since this was the side that was attached to the ships wheel, this control line must have been made from hemp rope and would have rotted away over time, leaving no evidence. If it would have been chain or cable, there would have been some sort of remaining evidence of such material or connection. As for the intermediate linkage, I went ahead used the suggestion that this would have been an iron rod with a yoke on each end that attached to the tiller and a turnbuckle in the middle to make steering adjustments as needed. So here is what I came up with. The intermediate linkage and control rod. Again, I used small aluminum tubing for the yokes and turnbuckle. Then the control lines were made from rope and secured to the outboard sides of the tiller. The pullies were made from spare deadeyes that were covered to conceal the three holes in them. All in all, I am completely satisfied with the way this turned out. The last little detail that I was able to get completed this time around were the latches for the skylights. There is no photographic evidence of these latches, but there were several recovered from the wreck that are on display in the museum. I took a stab at where these would have been used, but logically thinking, something had to hold these skylights in the open position. Starboard aft skylight with latches installed. Painted and installed. Port skylight in the open position with the latches installed. Port midship skylight in the open position showing the latches holding the hatch open. Starboard midship hatch in the closed position. Well that is all I have for this update. December 12th is fast approaching and my checklist of things to finish is getting shorter. Most of them are small details that are really not photograph worthy (paint touch-ups and weathering), but I'll take pictures of anything that would be of interest. I need to research what the forward pennant looked like (many of the contemporary photographs show these boats flying one, but unfortunately they are all blurry). Once I find the correct one, I'll get it printed out and installed as well as the 34-star Ensign. I have read several methods on MSW as to how to make realistic looking flags, I am going to experiment with a few of them and see which one I like best. Until next time, thank you all for the encouragement, kind words and likes and for just stopping by and taking a look at my build. Stay safe and healthy. -Brian

Keith, I can’t think of anything else that hasn’t been said already. So at the sake of sounding repetitive, WOW! Beautiful work on the rope coils. I’ll definitely be sad to see this build end. -Brian