mbp521

Daniel, it just amazes me as to how much detail you can put into each and every little segment of the this build. Truly fascinating. It’s a joy to watch you work. -Brian

Keith, I wouldn’t call it impatience, I would call it a photo of you test fitting the spars to make sure they look authentic and fit correctly. 😜 Good thing the model police weren’t watching, I’ve been guilty on numerous occasions of jumping ahead and “dry fitting” parts before they are ready to be installed. It’s part of the fun. The photos show that she is really starting to look complete and how beautiful she’s going to be. Keep them coming. -Brian

Keith, Beautiful job. She’s really starting to come together. Almost to one of my favorite parts of the build, the rigging. It definitely looks like there is a ship emerging from the shadows. -Brian

Sails look great Eric! So for your reinforcement lines did you use paper as well or a different material? I’ve never used pastels before in modeling, only a looong time ago in high school art class, but I do remember thought that it was a pretty messy medium. I’m curious as to how you keep the colors from smearing while handling the sails without a protective coating sprayed on them. I’d have my reds, yellows and browns smeared all over the place. Probably even on models I’m not even working on yet. -Brian

Wefalck, This is just beautiful precision work you have going on here. I have been eyeballing a mini milling machine for several years now to try my hand at metalwork, but I just can’t seem to fit it in the budget. For now my mini wood lathe will have to do. ...but one day. -Brian

Johann, Simply amazing and precise work. A true pleasure to watch your work. -Brian

George, Always glad to help out. I used a pin vise when I drilled these out. It’s a little tedious, time consuming and tends to cramp the hand after a while, but given its close proximity to the gunwales I didn’t want to risk getting the drill misaligned and drill through the planking. I did forget to mention that I did all this after the comings and decking were in place. It was one of those “aww crap” moments I had not long after the top rail was glued down. -Brian

Thank you for the kind words George, this one will be for my own personal viewing. Not quite sure it would be up to museum standards. Not to mention the Cairo museum already has a couple of scale models on display. One is a model of how she sits in her permanent full size display and the other is a cutaway version. Both beautiful models. -Brian

George, Love the green scheme. I went with the traditional black with white trim on my build, but I like the way the green stands out. It adds a nice touch of uniqueness to her. I want throw this out there. It’s been a while since I was at this stage on my build, and I don’t recall what the instructions dictate, but if you are planning to install the hold vent tubes, now is the time to do it. I remember struggling to drill the holes and setting the tubes because I had installed the top rail first. I can’t remember if I got ahead of myself and put the rail on first or if that was the way the instructions call out the assembly, but they are much easier to place while you still have everything open. Just a thought. -Brian

Eric, IMO I’m with Steven on this one. I would think that the shields would tend to get in the way if they were stored in the benches. However, if they were mounted on the gunwales it looks as though they may get in the way of the oar ports. Not sure if this is just the camera angle deceiving my view. On the other hand, you could do a mixture of both, but I did like the idea of placing some of them along the cradle. -Brian

Keith, the warmer weather does tend to put a slowdown on the building. As much fun as it is, we still need to shed that winter coat and enjoy the springtime and work on the other yards. Yards (ship wise) are looking great though. We are a patient bunch, so enjoy the outdoors. -Brian

Thanks MCB. There is usually a lot of trial and error with new techniques, this one just happened to be a happy accident that worked out perfectly. -Brian

Thanks Pat. I was a little nervous at first about tackling a scratch build, but the more I get into it, the more I’m settling into it. -Brian

Thank you Gary. I may have stumbled on a good submission for the “Model Tips and Tricks” discussion. -Brian

Vaddoc, thank you for the kind words. This is the first build that I have used styrene on extensively and it is a great product for those hard to bend pieces that will be painted. I did use is a little bit on my last build, but nothing significant (only made a few downspouts with it). I definitely foresee me using a lot more of it on this build though. -Brian

Thank you Moab. No worries, feel free to repeat away, it never gets old. Definitely makes me feel better knowing that my work is helpful and inspiring to others. -Brian

Thank you Eric. Just dangling that carrot out there for you.😜 -Brian

Thanks Keith. I still have a little more plumbing to go, but I am not able to install it until I get the boilers in place, which require me to finish the wiring, and so on. It's almost a shame that very little of this will be seen, but it sure is fun building it. -Brian

Wefalk, The plastic just naturally formed the domed head when the heat was applied. I was trying to shape my plumbing pieces when I discovered this and figured it would work perfectly for my rivet heads. It was really pretty easy. The best part about this is that none of the rods are glued into place, but with the expansion from the heat they formed into the holes and stuck pretty good. The zero tolerance holes made them pretty snug to begin with. I wish I would have discovered this earlier, I would have used this method on the construction of my paddle wheel frames. -Brian

Hello again everyone, Time for another update. Things have slowed down a bit since the weather has turned nice. Lot's of projects around the the property that need tending to before the Texas summer heat sets in. With this update I was able to finish work on the aft bulwarks. I fashioned these out of one piece of poplar and carved out the fairleads in pretty much the same way that I did the forward ones. Roughed out shape and pinned to a board to make it easier to work with. Fairleads starting to take shape. Final shaping and sanding. Bulwarks installed on the hull and rollers in place (I did go back and set that right pin flush. I just didn't notice it until after the picture was taken). and the finished install. Next it was on to the preheaters and some of the plumbing. I built the preheaters the same way that I did the boilers. These were made from a 3/4" dowel that I wrapped with aluminum tape with imprinted rivets. These did not survive the salvage so it was pretty much guesswork as to how they actually looked. I used the example from Adam L. Kane's The Western River Steamboat book as my template for these features along with the plumbing diagram in the HSR. The finished preheaters. For the plumbing I used different size styrene rods. To shape them I held the rods over a soldering iron to soften them up. Then I just bent them to shape. I used small rings of heat shrink to simulate the fitting collars to give it a little extra detail. Once these were all built up, they were installed. I temporarily installed a roof beam to line up the pipes where I will eventually place the pipe hangers. Then it was on to the armor casemate plating on the port and starboard sides. According to the HSR, the armor plating was not only on the side casemates, but also extended 55" down the hull to protect it below the waterline. I'm not sure why, but this lower armor did not make to the display in Vicksburg. Marking the 55" line on the hull (this equated to 29mm) below the knuckle. Since the actual plates were shiplap, they did not butt up against each other and there was a slight gap in between each plate. I made up a little jig with a .5mm shim to give it the equal spacing. Next it was on to the upper armor plates. On the actual boat, the armor plates did not line up exactly with the gun ports so they placed a small filler piece on the sides of the gun port frame to give it full protection. Once the plates were installed, I made up another jig to line up all of the bolt/rivet holes that held the plates in place. Then it was time to experiment. I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to simulate the bolts/rivets until I got to playing around with the styrene on the plumbing. Before I used the soldering gun to soften the plastic I tried my heat gun. This spread the heat over too big of an area, but on my attempt I noticed that the heat gun made a nice mushroomed head on the end of the styrene rod. The light then came on and I though, hey what a perfect way to make rivet heads. So I proceeded to experiment with some smaller styrene rod. The bolts/rivets holding the plates in place were approximately 3/4" which translated to .040". So I drilled a piece of scrap wood with a .040" bit, placed a piece of styrene rod in the hole and heated the end of it. I experimented with several lengths extending out of the wood in order to get the right size head on the bolt/rivet and finally settled on the 1mm length. I think this worked perfectly. Once I had found the length that I liked, it was on to filling all the holes. Once the holes were all filled, I went back a trimmed them all to equal lengths. I glued a 1mm strip of scrap to each jaw of my flush cut pliers and trimmed the excess off of each rod. Once they were all trimmed, next came the heat. And viola, 540 bolts/rivets installed. Once the starboard side was complete, it was on to the port side. This side was a little more challenging, since I had to cut out around the viewport. Still no big deal, just a little extra patience and that side was done to. Now all I have left is to mark and drill all the holes and finish this side. Well, that is all for now. I'm going to finish up on the armor plating on the port side and start on the forward plates. Until next time, thank you all for looking, the kind comments and likes. Stay safe and well. -Brian

George, This was one of the more difficult rails to build and after several attempts at trying to bend them I gave up and carved mine out. Here is how it came out. Forgive my crudeness of how it looks. I started this ship about eight years ago and it was only my second full build. That’s mainly the reason I shelved it until I gained more experience. As for the deck, I just left the basswood strips natural with a coat of clear satin varnish. This I figured would give it the look of freshly holy stoned wood (with a little sheen of course). Not quite accurate, but this is the method that I use in almost all of my builds. Hope this helps. -Brian

George, nice job on the stern bulwarks in getting them shaped. This was an area that I struggled with on my build, but you nailed it on the first try. For your question about the stanctions, I am no expert on these but I believe they were an extension of the frames. If you take a look at Ed T’s build log on the extreme clipper Young American, while be it this was a William Webb construction, not a Don McKay ship, their construction was similar, you’ll see that about every other frame was extended above deck to for the stanctions. This is a great build along with an outstanding tutorial that provides a wealth of info on extreme clipper construction. Keep up the good work. -Brian

George, Really looking good so far. I’m right there with you on making adjustments. There hasn’t been a single one of my builds where some form of “tweaking” didn’t have to be done. All part of the build though. You will definitely need to soak and steam those aft boards around the stern. I remember having several snap or split on me even after a good soaking before I got them to lay down right. -Brian

Eric, I’m liking the the later versions with the more muted colors and weathering. Just for curiosity (and conversation sake), and since this is a bit out of my element, were the symbols and colors on the shields used to represent a certain clan much like the tartan plaids of the Scottish kilts, or were they just representative of each individuals personal preference? If they were the latter, then you could use several different designs and colors on them (not to create more work for you) just food for though. The site Steven posted shows that The Vikings were believers in that colors represented certain things, and each shield owner could have put his/her personal touches on theirs to tell their own story. Just random thoughts. -Brian

For those who may be interested, I just ran across this fantastic video online. It was filmed back in 2019 and it is a presentation given by Edwin C. Bearss, author of Hardluck Ironclad, on his involvement of the USS Cairo recovery. He has a slide presentation to go along with his talk that has numerous pictures of the recovery that aren't widely published. The video is a little long, but very interesting. https://www.c-span.org/video/?457702-6/recovering-uss-cairo# -Brian