mbp521

I meant digitally. I sent them in a PM to you, let me know if you are able to open the file. I also have printed plans that I am pretty much done with if you would like them. They are a little marked up, but you are more than welcome to them if you want them. -Brian

Eric, quite the conundrum. The top of the hull should align with the deck with no overlap or underlap. Where the casements meet with the hull on the sides at the knuckle should be a fine point where the armor plating goes and then a rub rail extends along the hull forward and aft of the casements. Just a thought, but it might not hurt to use the Cairo HSR drawings as a reference to get the shape correct. For the most part they are accurate and would definitely help in your build. If you like I can send you a copy of the drawings that I used. Also, if you happen across the Bob Hill plans, take caution. His representation of the hull at the stern chine is not correct. I found this out the hard way. -Brian

What an impressive build Keith! I sit here in amazement, gawking at the details on your boat, and as to how closely you have replicated each one of them to the real thing. -Brian

Beautiful job on the planking John, the variation in the colors of the wood looks great and very natural. I wouldn't sweat the 1/32" differences on the sides too terribly much, once the rub rails, bull rails and the boiler deck are installed it won't be noticeable. Just a word of caution (and speaking from experience) watch those flimsy fantail extensions. Even with parts 51S & 51P in place they can still be a bit fragile and easily broken off during sanding. -Brian

Eberhard, I was thinking that was what you were describing. Makes me feel better about getting it right. Thank you! -Brian

Thank you all for your kind words and likes. The continued support is what helps keep me going. I think I have resolved my anchor buoy conundrum. There just isn't a lot of information on the Brown Water Navy in regards to the ships anchors that I was able to find. I finally resorted to researching the Blue Water Navy and the many models that were built of ships from the mid-19th century. There were many different methods used to secure the anchor buoy to the anchor, and I found many pictures of them (they were not posted here due to copyright rules) so I just picked the one that I though looked best. This is the solution that I came up with. The rig that had the buoy rope secured around the arm and the shank had the most appeal to me so I ran with it. Securing the rope to the shank. Anchor, buoy, and rope coil completed. Assembly installed on the foredeck. Hopefully I got this right. If not, at least it's easy to access and fix. -Brian

@Keith Black @BANYAN @tlee01 @Cathead @Canute Thank you all for the kind words and continued support. -Brian

Thank you Mark. One never knows where it will end up. A museum would be a dream come true. Thank you Keith. This being my first scratch build, has definitely been a learning experience. I usually try to plan things out a little better but sometimes I just get an idea in my head and jump right into it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I must say that I have been pretty fortunate that most of the times that I have dove headlong into a project on this build, it has worked out. However, there have been those times that I have failed miserably. To avoid my embarrassment in those times I have chosen not to post those screwups. Scratch build are definitely a totally different beast than kit builds. -Brian

Eberhard, I appreciate the input very much. I have been researching how the anchor buoys we’re rigged on the blue water navy ships of the time, and from what I have found so far, they show to either be hitched to the cross-point of the stock and the shank at the top or around the shank and the arm at the bottom. I would think that the same methods would apply to the brown water navy, but I also wonder if the water depth of the rivers as compared to the oceans would have something to do with them being rigged differently. I’ll keep digging. -Brian

Hello again everyone, I'm ready with another Cairo update. Over the past few weeks I have been focusing on some of the detail work. I started off with the anchor buoy. This was one of the artifacts that was recovered during the salvage and sits on display in the Cairo museum. On my first attempt to make this I was going to try and make it from card stock shaped into two cones with a disk in the middle to form the flanges where the two halves met. I tried several times but just couldn't get the shape right. Since I wasn't sure of how this method was going to work, I didn't take any pictures. So, on my next attempt I tried using Milliput, getting the basic cone shape and then finishing it off on the lathe. Here are the two halves on this try. I drilled the center holes for the toothpick to align the halves together, but again I just couldn't get the shape I was looking for. For some reason the centerline wouldn't fall in the right place and I was having difficulties trying to figure out how I was going to make the center flange. So I ended up scrapping this version as well. On my final attempt I decided to go with some copper sheeting and the same method I originally used with the card stock. I scrounged up a few small scrap pieces in my scrap bin that I had left over from the chimney flanges (I throw nothing away) that worked perfectly. I managed to have enough to make the two halves and the center flange. Here are the two halves glued to the center flange. I fit a small piece of styrene rod through the middle to provide a mounting place for the eyebolts, then drilled a tiny hole in each end to receive the eyebolts. The eyebolts were then glued in place. and finally the whole assembly painted up. Before I can place these on the boat, I'll need to research how these were rigged to the anchor. I have a sneaky feeling that this is going to be a task to find info on these, but I'm going to see what I can turn up. Next it was on to installing the bow guard. Nothing too complex here, I had made this a while back and just needed to put it on. I left out a couple of the rivets to use a mounting points to give the guard a little more of a secure grip on the keel, than just gluing on. Then I moved on to the Hurricane Deck canopy. There are numerous contemporary photos of the Cairo's sister ships that show almost the entire Hurricane Deck covered with canopies, but the only photo of the Cairo has just one canopy over the boiler skylight. It is not known if the Cairo had more than this when she went down so I just went with what she had in the photo. Besides, too many canopies would hide a lot of the deck details. Attempt 1: I took a small piece of muslin and cut it to shape and size, but I was having a hard time keeping the edges from fraying. So I took some CA and ran it along the edges of the material to keep the strands in place. Definitely didn't like that look. The muslin had the texture that I was looking for so I stuck with that material. On my second attempt, I cut the canopy shape out, bit this time I soaked the whole thing in diluted clear Elmer's glue and let that dry. For added details, decided to put a ridge vent in the canopy since I figured that these were made up similarly to the field tents used on land by the Army. Then I went in and added the grommets for additional detail and used those as a way to cover the canopy guy ropes. Then the whole thing was installed along the center beam and the guys attached to the stanchions. Making up some of the rope coils for the canopy guys on the stanchions. Next, I wanted to finish up on the aft skylights and get the door installed. So it was back to borrowing the Admirals Cricut again to cut out the window frames. I built these up exactly the way I did the others and mounted the Port side open and the Starboard side closed. Next up, it was on to the forward and aft hand ropes for the casement ladders. Completed forward ropes. Completed aft ropes. Initially the ropes didn't sit right, they had a bit too much sag to them. So I ended up running a bead of CA along each one to stiffen it up and hold its shape. I think the overall look came out quite nicely. Next was the installation of the long hawser. This was probably the one that Commander Selfridge ordered tied to a tree on the Yazoo River bank when he had the ship ran aground shortly after the torpedoes blew the hole in Cairo's Port Bow. This hawser held long enough for everyone to abandon ship, before the tree was pulled from its rooting and the ship slipped beneath the surface. Then it was on to another one of the more tedious parts of the build. The chimney guys. The Cairo display has one set of these installed on the "Ghosted" chimneys with the rest being just steel cable. The original guys were actually iron rods and links (rings) that had a threaded loops on each end to adjust the tension. These guys can be made out in the old Cairo photograph, although some of the photos of her sister ships look more like they have cables or ropes holding the chimneys. I went ahead and built it like the photograph and because there were some of these recovered from the salvage. These are some of the original guys on the Cairo display. I started with some 24ga wire to make the rods. And bent them to shape as well as the rings. Tedious work. I had to make up 80 of the rods and rings along with 20 hooks for the anchor points on the chimney and stanchions. Once they were made to length, I heated them up red hot with my torch to give them that blued steel look. This color works nicely with the casement color. All guys in place and blued. I took a lot of pictures of these, I guess you could say that I was somewhat proud of how they turned out. After making up all of those links, I needed a break. So it was time to do a little cleaning of the work bench before moving on to the next project. So after a good bench cleaning I moved on to another tedious project, installation of the boat davits. Normally this wouldn't be too big of an issue, except the slanted casements of the ships make the task a bit more challenging when it comes to getting the davits all lined up properly. And since one of the davits on each side sits on top of the armor plating, it makes it that much more difficult to get the height and alignment correct. I started with the Port aft davits first. This wasn't too terribly difficult. I used some double sided tape to temp install the mounts then slowly nibbled away at the bottom of each davit until I got the proper height and location. Test fitting the boats to make sure there is enough clearance. Once the aft davits were installed, that was where I ran into an unforeseen issue. When I first started this build I had not planned on doing a whole lot of internal details since it was going to be a static model with all sides enclosed. As I built the details on the gun deck I decided that I wanted to show off some of these details and decided to make the Port side a cutaway. Well poor planning on my part didn't take into consideration that one of the davits was going to fall inside the cutaway. So when I built the cutaway I just mounted a small scrap of wood between the casement frames and figured I would just mount the davit base on that. Well, I didn't like that look, so change of plans. This is the area where the davit base will go. What I decided to do was to build up the armor plating in the area and mount the davit properly. So I pulled off the armor plating to make sure the panels lined up the way they were supposed to. Then I offset every other one to cover the area for the base mount. Gave everything a fresh coat of paint and some rivets. Then it was on to mounting the forward Port davits. Now it was time to rig the boats and temp install them. Started of with stropping the blocks. Then running the ropes through them. One boat in place. I wanted to show this boat as in the process of being launched, due to it's location above the cutaway. Placing it in it's stowed position would have blocked part of the view in the cutaway and I wanted to give the build a bit of action, not just a static model. Both Port boats in place. I need to find a way to stiffen the ropes so that they look like they have a load on them. The boats just aren't heavy enough to keep the line taught. I think a little diluted Elmer's will work. I also think it will also help keep the boats from swinging around too much when I move it. Now it's on to installing the Starboard davits. Pretty much the same as the Port side. Now with the rigging all in place I need to find out how they would have stowed the tackle on the covered boats since my Starboard boats have tarps over them and the lift rings are under the tarp. More research. Finally, she was getting a little dusty so I decided to take her outside to the barn and blow some of the dust off of her. It was such a pretty day out, I figured I'd snap a few pictures of her in natural lighting while I was out there. She's getting pretty close to being done. Perhaps a couple of more months and I will call it complete. Most of that depends on how much more research I need to do to get info on the anchor buoy, boat rig and rudder linkage. There is no rush, I'd like to finish by December 12th to celebrate the 160th anniversary of her sinking, but if I don't make it, so be it. I thank you all for the kind words, comments and likes, as well as taking the time to stop by and view my build. Until the next update, everyone stay safe and healthy. -Brian

Excellent work Keith. Call me weird or insane, but I love rigging. It’s one of my favorite parts of the build. Something about all the ropes going every which way just adds something to the lure of ships. -Brian

John, I found it easier to blacken the entire 24" strip first then cut it into 3" (in my case 5") sections. Once cut, all I had to do was to blacken the one end to mate up with the next board in line. It's just my opinion, but since you are going to stain/varnish the deck, it looks much more realistic to have the variations in color than to have them all look the same. These variations would occur naturally with the timbers used for planking from the different trees anyway. To help with hiding the area that was not planked, I painted the deck black inside. Most of it is hidden by the boiler but I also built up some simulated crates to screen the emptiness of the machinery room. I also printed out a couple of steam engine pictures and glued them to black foam board and mounted them in the engine room. This is barely visible though the wall grate, but I thought it was a neat touch. Just throwing some ideas out there. It all depend on how far you want to take your details. That's the good thing about this kit, it leaves you open to throw as much or as little detail into it as you want. All in all, your planking is progressing nicely, and looking great! It is a pain to do, but definitely worth it. -Brian

Wooohooo! Another Cairo build and another Cathead log. Really looking forward to following along on this journey. Glad to see you back at the bench again Eric. -Brian

I had to ask. With all the other small detailed metal bits that you made, I wasn't sure. -Brian

Tom, I'm a little late to the party, I just happened to stumbled across this beautiful build the other day and have been reading through. I purchased this kit a few months ago, and hopefully will have it on the bench soon. Thanks for putting together this log and pointing out all the gotchas and pain points. I'm definitely following along the rest of the way. -Brian

Hard to say what the plank length was on the actual Chaperon, if I’m not mistaken I went with 20’ planks myself. I think the Chaperon, like many others had her decks painted to protect against weathering, so if you were to look at the pictures of her there would be no way to tell what length they were. I chose not to paint my deck, just leaving the natural wood color. This is something that I have done on all of my ship models so far. Although not authentic, I like the way the natural deck looks. -Brian

Fantastic work as always Keith! Did you fabricate the eyelets as well? -Brian

Guilty. John, it is a very long and drawn out process to plank the decks and carve out all the notches, but it will be worth it. Once you are done, I think you’ll be very happy with the results and glad you did the extra work. That finger joint was my biggest gripe about the kit. I understand that it was done due to packaging and cost limitations, but I’m sure there could be a better way to go about it. Your Chaperon is coming along very nicely! -Brian

And what a beautiful greeting it is! -Brian

Interesting article George. There was a lot of litigation and controversy surrounding the bridge in the beginning. Seems like there still is a bit of controversy as well, with people not knowing how to read road signs. Especially the instances where several busses have tried crossing it with clearly marked signage and height barriers. I haven't looked into it, but I wonder if the bridges construction led to the steamboats having to redesign their smokestacks with hinges to clear the bridge. -Brian

I see what you are referring to now. I actually didn't notice that until now, thank you for pointing that out. I didn't use this model as a reference too much for my research, since there are several inaccuracies with it, but It would make sense to have the doors in that configuration with the smaller guns back there. There were several "executive decisions" that I made throughout this build due to lack of information. Many of the decisions I based on the photographs or additional documented information of the sister ships, especially the Cincinnati and Mound City since they were all built in the same shipyard in Mound City. These boats were designed for frontal assaults, this was the reason for all the big guns to be located in the forward position and the reinforced forward casement. I read somewhere (I forget the reference, it might have been in the "Hardluck Ironclad") where someone had stated that Cdr. Selfridge had the Cairo's guns arranged in an unusual configuration. I do not recall the reasoning behind it, but strategically it made sense, and she was setup quite differently than her sisters were. -Brian

Leiste, I'm not real sure of which model you are referring to, The Cairo museum only has two models on display, one which is a representation of the current display outdoors showing the cradle and the existing original fabric. This model, like the actual boat does not have the forward gun port doors on it. The other model is complete boat with the side cutaway, and it does have the forward gun port doors pierced on the upper and lower sections. In the contemporary photo of the Cairo, you can see that the forward gun port door were pierced on the tops and bottoms. Only the Port and Starboard #3 & #4 gun port doors were pierced on the lower section only. This was the location of four of the smaller 32lb guns. As for the aft gun ports, it is hard to tell if they were pierced on the top and bottom or just the bottom, since there are no photographs of this are on the original boat, bit they were also smaller guns (32 pounder and 30lb Parrot) and could have been pierced on the bottom only. I just went with the photos of her sister ships that have the aft gun port doors pierced top and bottom. -Brian

Lieste, Thank you for the specification on the munitions. I totally agree that the Parrot would have most likely not used round shot. At the time I made up the ammo crates I wasn't thinking that much of this would have been seen and didn't put too much focus into the interior details in this area. As the build progressed, I started focusing more on the details but eventually this area got covered up and it was too late to go back and change. Unfortunately this area still cannot be seen. This past May I had the opportunity to see first hand the actual ammunition that Cairo carried and you are correct, they did indeed use ogive shot in the 30lb Parrot. These are some of the 30lb Parrot rounds recovered from the wreck. -Brian

Johnny, Thank you for the very useful info. I've got a feeling that this will most likely be the route that I take on the construction of the intermediate link. Still researching, but it seems to be the most reasonable solution. Roger, I totally agree with the turnbuckle. I would think that over time the hemp rope would stretch causing the rudders to get out of alignment, or bending of the tillers for that matter, making adjustments necessary. Turnbuckles on the intermediate link and internally on the control lines would help with the adjustments. Mark, I was thinking the same thing. Wire rope could also cause some wear and tear on the hawse pipe as well. Similar to what I mentioned previously with the chain theory. Thank you all for the valuable input. -Brian

Thank you Roger for the additional input. It truly helps give me some direction. An executive decision is most likely what I will be doing here, it definitely wouldn’t be the first time. I’m still doing a little digging to see if I can turn something up that can confirm my suspicions. At the moment I am seriously leaning towards the solid rod for the intermediate link and hemp rope for the control lines, I just want to make sure that I do my due diligence first. I wasn’t aware that Eades had built a suspension bridge in WVA, most of the research I’ve done on him focused on his bridge in St. Louis, I guess since it is the one still standing. The man definitely had his hands in a lot of projects. You definitely bring up a good point on the hog “chain” theory. I hadn’t even thought about that. I’ll also need to keep that in mind while researching to make sure that I am clear on the specifics of the reference. As for her being a riverboat, Cairo’s (and her sisters) hull design was not new, they were based on Sam Pook’s existing hulls for some of his earlier boats, and that is what I am researching right now to see if any of these boats have a similar steering system. So far I haven’t found much, but I’m still looking. -Brian