Keith Black

Thank you, Glen. Eric, I'm glad you were looking forward to it because I wasn't. Old stubby fingers gotta think outside the box.

Hoping all is well with you and yours.

A huge thank you to everyone for the likes and the support. John, thank you for your support. Thank you, Kurt. These vessels were crudely built, I need to learn to be less sandpaper happy. Thank you, Pat. It's going to be a fun exercise. Thank you, Gary. Keith, thank you. I was much more confident building the pile driver than Lula as sternwheeler information seems harder to come by. Seven years ago when I was trying to find wheels for the Tennessee's signal cannon and gatling gun carriages it became evident that wheels of any type close to 1:120 was almost impossible to find. Since then I'm always keeping an eye out for wheels in the 1:120 scale range. A couple of weeks ago when I was in the process of placing a fittings order from Cornwall Model Boats I came upon these 28mm Amati yacht wheels. I almost jumped out of my chair. I didn't see a yacht's wheel, what I saw was this! I think they're great framework on which to build Lula's paddlewheel and they're the perfect size, 1:102 inches in diameter. I had designed Lula's wheel to be 1.40 inches but i can and a tenth of an inch without ill effects. Unfortunately CMB was out of stock and mild panic set in but I came across ModelNet (I'd not know of them beforehand) who said they had stock. I thought maybe I only needed three but I ordered six of the little buggers just in case! They didn't have stock in the UK but they did have stock in their Australian facility, they arrived yesterday. The current setup is very temporary and it's more an exercise to insure the concept is feasible. I've also added templets on Lula's deck to establish that my layout plan is okay. The coal bunker templet is 16 feet in width, I debate with myself between 14 and 16 feet. Thank you to everyone for following along. Keith

Jcurtis, welcome to MSW. Glad to have you aboard.

john, I'm so sorry to hear about your wife's fall but glad to hear she's doing better. I have indeed missed looking over your shoulder and look forward to your return to work on the Klondike. Happy Holidays!

John, I miss seeing updates on the Klondike plus I could follow your lead with Lula.

The Panay (PR-5) was launched in 1927. Shouldn't this build be in the 1901 to Present Day build log group? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Panay_(PR-5)

She gets more beautiful with each new post.

That's amazing, Glen.

Thank you to everyone for the comments and the likes. Lula's deck is planked. The hull is painted. As I feared the planking doesn't show, oh well. I was in a quandary trying to determine the best approach for building the engine room due to the different elevations. The 1.6 inch piece of wood perpendicular to the deck is the engine room's stern wall's bottom plate. I ran the center decking against the bottom plate forward edge and made the two outside ends flush with the upsweep wheel support decking. There is so much that needs to be replicated in this tiny area, cylinder timbers and pitman arms running from the engine room, pillow blocks, blocks for making the wheel the correct height, rudder post and the wheel., all to be built within a 1.6 inch W x 1.5 inch L x 1.4 inch H space. I deviated from Lula's photo and ran all the decking lengthwise. I get a little more support for the plywood upsweep doing it this way. Thank you to all for following along. Keith

Wasn't that an old TV show?

Too Funny!..........stupid frog.

Roel, I like option #2 but the contour of sand inside the bottle sounds interesting. This is a spiffy little project.

I thought you might be leaning toward leaving Cangrada's hull unpainted. That mahogany is so drop dead gorgeous I for one wouldn't be disappointed to see it go unpainted but in the very beginning of this build you left little doubt that unlike Germania, Cangrada's hull would get painted. Paint on dear sir, the memory of the dinning room table's transformation will be enough.

Hey, Tom. Nice to hear from you. So are you planning on operating a FPD? FPD = Frog Piloted Drone Tissue culturing and you thought making treenails was tedious? That has got to be intense. Yes, I'm underway on Lula. In fact once I finish typing this post I'm headed upstairs to commence deck planking.

Gary, if anyone can capture the essence it's you. Gorgeous work as always.

The narrower the width the less shrinkage so 4.5 inches sounds perfect for deck planking.

Thank you, John.

Thank you. Eric. One thing I failed to mention about creating the upswept is that to get both sides equal I clamped both ends separately to my work table and applied a small amount of pressure at the bow. This set both edges to the same height and it was at this point that I applied CA. Thank you, Tom. Yeah, yours truly normally has to fiddle about trying to come up with a solution. This worked out first crack out of the box, needlessly to say I was pleasantly surprised. I thought the idea would work but then I've thought that on several occasions when it didn't.

Philippe, welcome to MSW. Glad to have you aboard.

Tom, it's been awhile since we heard from you and the frog, I hope all is well.

Thank you to all for the comments and the likes. Made me laugh, Eric. Lula's hull is planked. I've had a nice piece of 3mm plywood in my spares going on seven years. Being lazy I used it in lieu of making deck/guard beams, It all gets covered over so why not? The transom could use a little more sanding. The hull planks are so smooth I don't know if they'll show when painted? Creating the upward sweep was a bit challenging. I glued a two pieces of 0.10 on either side of the wheel opening, split the underside of the plywood forward of the 0.10 added pieces and clamped. The plywood opened but the top layer didn't break, a plan that actually worked first time. Once fully clamped I dabbed CA into the split and when the CA dried the plywood was as strong as it was before being split. Lula's hull next to the pile driver for size comparison. A little more fine tuning and I'll be ready to start planking the deck Thank you to everyone for following along. Keith

It's nice to see correctly scaled planking. Well done, George.

Hal, welcome to MSW. Glad to have you aboard.