mbp521

Greetings everyone, Slow going in the shipyard this week, not much accomplished due to work. While I still wait for my planking to arrive (delayed for some reason that Amazon can sort out), I figured that I would do a little work on some of the main deck structure. For now, I focused on the forward staircase and coal locker. Fairly simple build, the most tedious part was placing all of the stair risers and runners. One thing that I noticed was the instructions call for the corner posts of the coal locker walls to be set flush with the front of the walls. Dry fitting these pieces would not allow for the walls to be in a straight line with the top beam, keeping the precut holes in the decking lined up. I had to cheat the corner posts forward a little to get everything to line up right. Not a huge deal, since personally I think the wall set back about a millimeter looks better than being flush. One little thing that I like to do on my models is leave little notes in places that will never be seen, but I know they are there. Usually I put the build start date in the hull, unfortunately I forgot to snap a picture on this one, but here is just one of the others that are on this build. One thing that I am going to have to get in the habit of doing is washing my hands a little better when dealing with flat white paint. It seems to pick up even the most minuscule pieces of dirt and transfers it to the bright white surface. Oh well, nothing a little touch-up paint can’t take care of. A little shameless borrowing of ideas, I loved the look of adding posters to the front walls of the coal lockers. The idea came from Bruce Evans' build, a beautiful addition to dress up the walls. I know that the Mark Twain poster is not late 19th century and Dinsneyland wasn’t around then, but I liked the picture and thought added a nice touch. Besides, they are small enough that unless you are really looking, you can’t tell. That's all for now. Until next time, thanks for looking. -Brian

Hugh, Just found your build log. Very nice work on the KotM. I built this kit a year or so ago and enjoyed it start to finish. Looks like you are at one of the most tedious parts of the build. I can honestly say that all the effort is very much worth it in the end. -Brian

Chris, Very nice start. I had the same thing happen to me, on or about the same area. Funny thing is I thought I made every effort to assure all bulkheads were square. Good thing is at least it will be hidden and doesn’t affect the integrity of the hull planks. Hopefully you will be able to get back to your build soon. -Brian

Good evening All, Making use of my waiting time on my planking. While attempting to hone my painting skills, I decided to work on the Chaperon lettering of the mechanical room sides. Needless to say my hands just aren't as steady as they used to be and I spent more time cleaning up paint on the outside of the lines than I did actually painting the letters. Even with fine tip paint pens, I still failed. Here I am trying to teach my grand-kids how to color inside the lines, and I cant even do it. After several failed attempts at making clean lines, I finally threw in the towel. I had noticed in one of the other build logs of the Chaperon that it was pointed out that not all of the shading (the black portion of the lettering) was complete on the "A", "P" & "R" and the "O" was really out of round so I decided to let technology take a turn at the lettering. I took one of the side pieces and placed it in the scanner and made myself a copy of the lettering. Then with the simple paint program that Microsoft is generous enough to include with Windows, I set out on making my own lettering. After several hours of staring at tiny pixels I had the lettering that was worthy of putting on my model. I added the missing shading and cleaned up the "O", making it more rounder as it should be. After a little resizing to get the letter to the proper scale and printing them out, it was all up to my so-so steady hands to cut out each letter and glue it to the sides. Letter by letter it finally took shape until all the pieces were in place. Now that they are all placed, a little trimming, some touch ups and shot of satin clear coat and I'll have what I'm was looking for. Nice crisp lettering. With this little side project completed, hopefully my planking will arrive tomorrow (according to the tracking it should), I can move on to getting the deck completed and start working my way vertical. Thanks for looking. -Brian

Hello everyone, So as I continue to wait on the planking to arrive, I started working on other features. While was going through assembling the rudders, I thought I would add a little more detail to them like the strapping and rivets. To show some of the timber detail, used some leftover planking from a previous build and just overlayed the plywood pieces. During the planking process a thought occurred to me that I had no idea as to how steamboat rudders were assembled. Were they stacked timbers that were banded with flat iron around the outside perimeter and held together with rivets, or were they assemble more like sailing ships where they were strapped across sides of the timbers? So off to the internet I went. During my search I found very little information or pictures of them steamboat rudders. I did find a few pictures of the Arabia rudder and several more modern rudder types, but nothing from around the late 1880's. The Arabia being a side-wheeler only had one rudder and it looked to be banded around the perimeter, but it looks more like wood than iron. More modern era stern-wheeler rudder. This one looks a little thin compared to the Chaperon rudders. Does anyone know where I would need to look for better info on how the Chaperon's rudders, or other steamboats of her time were assembled? Any and all information is greatly appreciated, Thanks again for looking. -Brian

Thank you for the compliments. Though some of the detail may not be seen. I know it’s there, it always makes a good discussion topic. -Brian

Hello everyone, A little more work in the shipyard over the past few days. I finally made the decision that since I wanted to do a stained deck on my Chaperon and I just couldn't get over the roughness of the "finger joint" between the main deck pieces, that I am going to go with adding a layer of planking. This will serve two purposes, to cover up the joint as well as help hide the deck extension I added. This will also allow me to show individual planks instead of one long one running from bow to stern. While I sat and pondered what I wanted to do about the "finger joint" issue on the main deck and waiting on my order of extra basswood planks, I did a little work on the boiler. Instead of just the plain 'ol square box, I decided to add a few extra details. Not that they will really be seen that much, but I thought it added a nice touch. First I added the individual boiler tops and rivets along the seams of the boiler cover. Next, the boiler doors may be a little hard to open without handles. So I added them along with sides for the ash pan. Now for a little touch up on the boiler paint and install the pop-off valves, gauges, steam lines and drum, then this will be ready to install once i get the planking down. Until next time. Thanks again for looking. -Brian

After a little bit of thought and I came up with a solution. Instead of tearing down the hull, re-planking and installing a new keel, I decided to just extend the deck a little to compensate for the extra length. I used the main deck pieces and made a paper template, then traced the edges on a piece of scrap. I used the pieces the decks came from, that way I only had to make one cut and the inside of the "addition was a perfect match for the deck. Then I cut out the extensions with a little CA placed them on the bow, using the station notches as a guide to get them perfectly in place. A little sanding to shape, and Viola, problem solved. I know this little extension throws the authenticity out of whack by making this fine boat a little longer than it should be, and you hard core Steamboat aficionados please don't think less of me, but to scale it only adds about a foot to the length. And who knows, maybe during the lifetime of the actual Chaperon and over zealous captain ran her into a dock at one time and the ship workers had to make some modifications. Anyway, I am happy with the results and will press on. Thank you for looking, -Brian

Thank you Chris for the helpful info. Matte/Low Sheen paint it is from here on out. I should have known from the first coat that it was not going to come out like I wanted. It was just wishful thinking that it would. Lesson learned. -Brian

Good day everyone, A little work has been done on the build. Unfortunately not a whole lot since this thing called a job tends to get in the way of my fun time. Anyway, I have planking complete on the hull as well as filled, sanded and painted. I made the mistake of using gloss paint in the hopes that it would fill in some of the voids i may have missed during filling and sanding. Nothing that cannot be remedied with a little sandpaper and some flat white. This is my first painted build so I dealing with a learning curve when it comes to painting. On the good side, this will give me the opportunity to apply a little more filler and clean the hull up a bit. One thing I did notice is that when I installed the keel on the bow, I some how managed to make it a little long. Now the deck pieces are about 1/4 too short cover the bow. Not sure how I managed to do that. Must have given the bow a little too much rake when planking. I may be able to extend the bow a little to cover this up since I am still not real happy with finger joint on the deck pieces and will probably lay down my own planking. I'll give this some more thought and hopefully come up with some sort of solution.

Hello everyone. While I am not new to the ship modelling world this will be my first attempt at a build log, so please excuse any errors while i work my way through this. While I love the older period sailing ships, I recently tried my hand at steamers. I picked the Artesania Latina King of the Mississippi and enjoyed the build so much that I wanted to attempt another steamboat build. After reading several build logs on MSW and the reviews of the kits I decided on the Model Shipways Chaperon. I really like the quality and detail of their kits, and after completing the AL KotM, this is a real step up. I actually started the build a couple of weeks ago and while researching some of the builds came across Kurt Van Dahm's post for his article on his build of the Chaperon. Since I want to do this model justice I purchased his article to help me along the way. Since Kurt was so gracious to make this information available, I figure why not return the favor and start a build log. Anyway, like most, I won't bore you with the details of the kit contents since this has been done already, and jump right in with the build. Since i just now decided to start a build log, I have very few pictures of the beginning, however going forward I'll try to take more as I go along. Any and all comments and suggestions are always welcome. Thank you for looking. -Brian Here is what I have so far. Starting the hull. Bulkheads and stringers in place and first row of planking. Small planking completed and starting on the big planking.