Keith Black

Derek, it might be easier giving it to some youngster in your neighborhood/area who has a interest in modeling. You could contact middle schools and see if they know a young boy or girl with interest in ship modeling. Just a thought.

Tom, thank you suggestions and I did note the file name. At some point I need to mess around with India ink. In this case of the roofing, I'm trying to represent tar paper not wood but I do like the wall. The roof is painted with very thin black acrylic paint wash repeated till I was happy with the results. I intentionally left areas without the third and fourth washes. When the roof had dried I thumb rubbed the surface pretty good. I think that did more for me mentally than what it did for the roof. Thank you, Ken. As I said to Tom above, I do need to get myself to the hobby store and pick up some India ink. I think India ink would have highlighted the individual vertical boards much better than black pastel. I'm still an infant when it comes to weathering techniques.

Thank you, Keith and Eric. I'll remember your suggestions for the "next" time when I have a black surface. For this roof I made a very thin black wash and applied till I was happy with the look knowing a dark black would be problematic. Thank you both again.

Thank you, John. Thank you, John. Pretty hard to mess up the planking on this shoebox.

Those ship's boats are absolutely beautiful, Ilhan. Amazing work!

Thank you to everyone for the comments and likes. Well, finally something that resembles a build log. Research is a necessity but there comes a point when ya just gotta make something! I've completed the pilothouse. Who say's you can't start at the top and work your way down? The vertical siding is 1/32" x 1/32" basswood glued together using CA. I believe this was only a two man crew, the pilot would have been responsible for making forward and reverse changes requiring him to race up and down the stairs to the twin cylinder vertical steam engine which leads me to believe there wasn't a PH door. I also think the boiler had an automatic coal feeder, more about that later. The sternwheeler I'm trying to replicate is so rough that I didn't do any sanding and I didn't try to correct the basswood pieces if they didn't line up exactly. This is going to be pretty much the theme of this build though it's hard to not try and make things all nicely aligned and ship shape. There didn't appear to be any glazing in the PH windows, these are open window frames from Itchy Train. I don't know how one weathers the color black so I tried to show wear by not making the roofing a deep black and leaving light patches here and there. The PH is 0.8" W x 0.9" L x 0.8" H. The roof is 0.11" x 0.12". A penny is 0.7" D. Next up is the what I'm call the engine room which isn't exactly what that room is but.. I wanted to get the ER and PH done where I'd have a better idea on how long and wide I need to make the hull. Thank you to everyone for the support and following along and being part of the journey. Keith

Enjoy the summer, Mark. Life is way too short not to do that what makes you smile.

That's some nice work, Keith.

Simply amazing, Roel. Incredible work.

That's way cool, Bryan.

He was looking for SIB bottles or A bottle?

Congratulations on completing your beautiful Hind, Bob. I agree with Mrs Knocklouder as far as what's up next, I think you should finish the Astrolabe as you're doing a bang up job on her.

Those look super nice, John.

Glen, I agree but have you noticed that Bob has gotten better since Pile has been away?

Shipping tubes give you wings! More beautiful work, Paul.

It wasn't the question I was laughing at, it was the "I see NOTHINNNNG!... except an old, blurry photo!" I would never laugh at anyone's question.

I value your option greatly, Mr Glen. I do hope you know that. Geez, Tom, that gave me a good laugh. No, there's no reason that the wheel shaft coulden't have been chain driven. Thank you for checking in, Kurt. I do hope you can shed some light on this pickle.

For a second, forget the wheel shaft center/drive. Do you guys agree with just the seeable elements less conjecture?

Ain't we both. Thank you, Paul. The chain driven Millersburg ferry is kinda heavy duty? I fight the desire to make it a chain driven shaft because it's such an easy alternative but that doesn't account for the components listed in my last post. I don't know, maybe I go with chain drive and turn a blind eye though that doesn't seem right. I did read where they reduced the shock to chain driven wheels by offsetting the two wheel halves so the buckets are a tad bit staggered when hitting the water.

Yes, welcome back, Micha.

It's really coming together well, Eric. At some point I hope we'll get an audio clip.

It's going to be a late night waiting up for breaking news so I figured I'd go ahead and go into the reason I think this sternwheeler is gear driven. All the arrows are in the way of clear viewing so reference the photo in the post above for an unobstructed view. Pitman arm driven shafts end right after going through bearing housing as there's no necessity for a shaft collar. Chain driven shafts are held in the center of the hull because the chain runs over the drive sprocket and then over the idler sprocket mounted on the hull. The chain holds the drive sprocket connected to the wheel shaft in a centered position. On gear driven shafts, the wheel gear must be held steady in absolute alignment with the drive gear. If the wheel shaft has any lateral movement there's either too much distance apart from one another resulting in no power to the wheels or too close and the gears were out quickly or even break. The shaft can not have any lateral movement whatsoever. The below image components started making sense a couple of weeks ago and I thought I knew what I was seeing but the why of it didn't make sense until today. My reasoning for thinking this is a gear driven system below. A. Vertical support timber. B. Steel (?) rod anchored to the vertical support timber that holds D secularly in place. C. Tension adjustment? D. Rube Goldberg shaft collar penetrated by rod. It would appear this slips over the end of the wheel shaft with an internal shaft end bearing keeping the wheel shaft from making any lateral movement. E. Rod exiting D. F. Through Bolt. G. Through Bolt. H. Grease cup? I. Wheel Shaft bearing. J. Grease cup or grease nipple? K. Rod entering D. For lack of a better explanation of the above components, the above makes sense to me. If it doesn't make sense to any of you please explain what you think the purpose of the above components are. Keith

Evidently I was fortunate because I got two bundles of 1/32 x 1/32. Working at small scale it has its place.

John, now that I think about it I think I ordered their woods off Amazon.

I echo Glen's comments.