leclaire

Brian - thanks for showing the screw up with your drill. I was beginning to believe you never made a mistake like us mere mortals who follow your magnificent work.
 
Bob

Brian - thanks for showing the screw up with your drill. I was beginning to believe you never made a mistake like us mere mortals who follow your magnificent work.
 
Bob

Brian - thanks for showing the screw up with your drill. I was beginning to believe you never made a mistake like us mere mortals who follow your magnificent work.
 
Bob

Brian - thanks for showing the screw up with your drill. I was beginning to believe you never made a mistake like us mere mortals who follow your magnificent work.
 
Bob

Hello everyone,
 
Finally back at it after a well needed summer vacation. Took a nice little stroll along the Bourbon Trail in Kentucky viewing some beautiful country and giving my liver a good workout. Picked up several bottles of tasty adult beverages and I am now ready to get back at it.
 
This past week I wasn't able to get too much done, but I did take a lot of pictures. So this go-round I started working on the cannon ports and doors. This was a fairly simple task, and I wanted to get them done so that I could start work on painting the casemates. I wanted to paint the casemates and the doors all at once so the color stayed uniform.
 
First task up was to install the sleeves for the upper door ropes (not sure of the proper terminology of these).
 
For the sleeves I used some small aluminum tubing inserted into a small hole that I drilled above the cannon ports.

 

 
I traced the angle on the tubing then cut and filed it to shape.

 
Then inserted the tube and glued it into place.

 
...One down, twelve more to go.
 
 
Then it was on to the port doors.
First thing I did was to make up a simple jig to make sure the doors stayed square and uniform.

 
Next I cut the strips for for the individual door planks.

 
After the strips were cut I used a piece of paper for the backing to help hold things together.

 

 
Once the planks were glued into place, I then drilled the cannon port out.

 
Oooops. Got a little careless with drill.

 
Front port doors in place.

 
Port doors in place. For the hinge straps I used thin styrene strips that I will cover with aluminum tape with the rivet pattern punched into it.

 
 
Finally, upon my return from our trip I was extremely happy to see that my cannons had finally come in. There is still some work to be done on them, they need to be polished up to remove the milling marks, the bores drilled to the correct diameter and the necks and knobs will need to be filed to shape, but I am definitely please with the way they came out. They are a definite improvement over the wooden ones I attempted to make a few months ago.

 

 
 
One cannon mocked up in its carriage.

 
...and finally one set in the gun port. Looks like there will need to be some adjustments made to get the height right, but I'll get there.
 
Well that is it for now, thanks again for all the likes and kind comments and also for stopping by.
 
-Brian

So after a chaotic few months of school (let’s be realistic, they were all chaotic this year) and graduating and getting a job, along with a bunch of other stuff, I have finally made some progress on the Philadelphia!
 
The first order of business was finally finishing rigging the cannons. I got the tackles rigged, but I haven’t done the final assembly because I’ll be installing them a little bit later, but at least the rigging portion is done. I still haven’t figured out how exactly I’ll mount them, but now I’m leaning towards Kurt’s dowel idea.
 

 
 
After that, I decided I was tired of looking at the broken shot rail, so I added the cannonballs which resolved the issue.
 

 
 
At that point I was in the mood to finish things, so I finished the hawse pipes. I’d been avoiding them for ages because I had been nervous about the glue joint, but it really was nothing to worry about. I painted the photo etch parts before adding them to the model, but I left the underside bare so as not to have a glue-on-paint joint.
 

 
 
I then added the catheads and mooring bits, which really changed the character of the bow. 
 

 
 
Finally, I made the thole pins. These were a bit tricky because I had to maintain them at an even height above the rail, but there are several obstacles inside the hull which forced me to cut some of them shorter than others. I used a small piece of wood as reference for all the heights, and when I needed to shorten a piece I just placed it upside down and marked the amount of wood above the reference height as a way to know exactly how much to cut off. 
 

 
Anyway, that’s where I’m at now. I’m very eager to try to finish this before I leave in the fall, but we’ll see if I can do it. I’ve spent most of this build preparing parts to go on without actually adding them, so for the most part, the rest of this should pretty much be a matter of rigging. I have to be extra sparing with my line now because Chuck is no longer making it, so I may reconsider my plans for having sails, but we shall see. Alright, that’s all for now!
 

All finished. Forgot to post. 

Yes it will be.  I already have the post it note with "START THE RECORDING" ready to stick in the middle of my screen so I can't miss it.

Thank you all for the kind words and condolences. 
 
I realized that today marks the one year anniversary since I started this build. I just wanted to show the overall progress after the first year.
 
Day 1.

 
 
Day 365.

 
Coming along, and more to come. Thanks for sticking with me this past year.
 
-Brian

Very happy for you, Eric. All the thought, research, hard work, and attention to detail you put into the Arabia certainly paid off. In addition, along the way you provided an entertaining education not only on scratch building but the history of steamboats in general. I know I certainly came away the better for following your build log.
 
Bob

Very happy for you, Eric. All the thought, research, hard work, and attention to detail you put into the Arabia certainly paid off. In addition, along the way you provided an entertaining education not only on scratch building but the history of steamboats in general. I know I certainly came away the better for following your build log.
 
Bob

Very happy for you, Eric. All the thought, research, hard work, and attention to detail you put into the Arabia certainly paid off. In addition, along the way you provided an entertaining education not only on scratch building but the history of steamboats in general. I know I certainly came away the better for following your build log.
 
Bob

Very happy for you, Eric. All the thought, research, hard work, and attention to detail you put into the Arabia certainly paid off. In addition, along the way you provided an entertaining education not only on scratch building but the history of steamboats in general. I know I certainly came away the better for following your build log.
 
Bob

Thanks for posting that, Kurt. I was pretty shocked; I had settled in on the couch to watch the program with no expectation whatsoever of needing to have my camera or mic on, and had to scramble when that came up! I couldn't have gotten anywhere on this project without the support and mentorship of so many people here.

I have used Rubber Cement (commonly found at arts and crafts stores). It keeps the template in place and is easy to remove.
 
Bob

I have used Rubber Cement (commonly found at arts and crafts stores). It keeps the template in place and is easy to remove.
 
Bob

I have used Rubber Cement (commonly found at arts and crafts stores). It keeps the template in place and is easy to remove.
 
Bob

Ras,
 
Thank you for the kind words and welcome to my build. Glad to have you aboard!
 
This is a learning experience for me, and over the past year I have definitely learned a lot! Not just about the Cairo itself, but Civil War history as well. There have been several people point me in the direction of fantastic books about the western theater of this war that have just fueled my interest in it. 
 
I am glad to see that some of my techniques will be of some use, that is one of the best things about this forum, is the willingness of everyone to pass along tidbits of information that make this hobby most enjoyable. 
 
I hope you find the rest of the build log as interesting as the first three pages. I should have more updates coming in the next week or so.
 
-Brian

I took a break from the ship itself to build a base, as the lack of one was holding me back from various steps. For example, I don't dare install the rudder until the hull was permanently fixed in place over a base wide enough to protect it (as the rudder sticks out way below the hull), and I can't start rigging the sail properly until the hull is stable (since I can't tip the hull onto its side once the yard is fully rigged). 
 
I pulled out some cherry and walnut that I'd harvested years ago here on my farm and bandsaw-milled. The cherry was more cupped and warped than I would have liked, despite years of drying in a stickered pile, but since I don't have a planer, I made do. I used a hand planer and rotary sander to flatten and smooth the surface somewhat, but couldn't get it fully flat. So I adapted the base design to "hide" this. 
 
I had two 6" cherry boards, so ripped one of them in half lengthwise and framed the other with them, using walnut inserts to separate them. I intentionally left the walnut thicker than the cherry. This meant that I didn't have to get any of the boards lined up at the exact same thickness, as the subtle (unwanted) variations between the cherry pieces are obscured by the more obvious (and intentional) difference between the two types of wood. I then added end caps of more walnut strips to further hide the cherry's problems. I did this with the base sitting on my flat concrete garage floor (where, sure enough, it wobbled slightly since the cherry wasn't flat), but simply attached the end caps flush with the floor so the final base would be stable. 
 
Not going to win any awards for woodcraft, but it worked well enough. I didn't take any photos of the assembly process, but here's the completed base with several coats of wood oil. I definitely like how the raised walnut gives it some visual diversity and interest (also looks less like a cutting board than if it was all flush).
 

 
 
 
You may notice some chatter marks on the cherry. That's from the bandsaw mill. Ideally these would be planed off, and I don't have (or really want) a planer. With enough time I could have eventually taken all of them out using a hand plane but I frankly didn't care to. The oil and photograph really brings them out, they're not as noticeable in person, and I never intended this to be art. I may make a nicer base sometime, like post-pandemic when I'm willing to go into a wood shop and have them plane some boards for me, but this is good enough for a working base for a model that itself has various problems and isn't likely to ever be displayed outside of my home. I really want to be done with this model and didn't want to spend tons of time crafting a perfect base.
 
So then I proceeded to attach the model. For this, I carefully measured a centerline, then marked the two points directly under the thickest ends of the stand (where the cross-pieces are). I then drilled holes in these locations, both in the base and the stand. Below, the screwdriver and pencil are pointing to the holes, which you can just barely see.
 

 
I then hand-drove wood screws up through the base, leaving the tips just sticking out the top. I could then fit the holes in the stand onto the screw tips (the model would only sit flush when the tips met the holes), then held it down tightly with one hand while final-tightening the screw with the other. To make this easier, I set the base spanning a gap between my table saw and garage workbench, so all I had to do was kneel underneath.
 

 
And now that she's firmly attached, here's a couple broader views from the pad outside my garage:
 

 

 

 
I think it's good enough. The screw attachment means I can always take it off again if I decide I want to make a nicer stand someday. Now I can move forward again, although I quickly realized I'd need to change the layout of my workspace, as this now takes the entire width of my workbench (which normally has a lot of other resources on it):
 

 
There's a bunch of stuff living on the floor next to the bench now. Another reason to get this done!
 
Thanks for sticking with me.
 

Turns out I moved forward today. I experimented with various cloth methods, after reading some more build logs, and just couldn't come up with something I liked or wanted to do. So I went back to the paper sail and applied another layer of colored pencil followed by a thick rub of brown pastel. This ended up darkening it pretty well with a better match for the model's color profile, and looks more like a weathered, heavily used sail.
 
Before:
 

 
After:
 

 
So I think I'm just going to go with this. I want to keep moving.
 
I also started shaping oars. These are hard to photograph, but I chucked dowels into my poor man's lathe (hand drill) and sanded down the shafts, then used a knife to flatten the oar blades. Here are the first seven test-fit on the vessel:
 

 
I'll certainly stain and weather these, but it's fun to see them in place.
 
And here's a shot of the sail propped up in roughly the right position:
 

 
When it's installed for real, I'll bend it more so it isn't so two-dimensional. But this gets the idea across.
 
 

The Ontario is just $500 if you buy direct from the MFG.  Shipping wont cost you $400.  It all depends on how much the kit is marked up by a distributor and what the wholesale cost it.   Remember too that the Cheerful isnt a kit.   You will need a table saw to rip your own planks which reduces the cost of parts.  All told about $500 rigged for Cheerful also.
 
In addition you need to look at the wood types.   Niagara is all basswood which is very cheap wood.  Better woods like Yellow cedar and boxwood used for Cheerful will add costs. Lots of it....
 
Shop around for prices.....and consider the quality of the contents.  Also check the build logs here for those kits to see if it is well designed and made of good materials.  What are castings like?   Good quality resin castings.....brass turned guns or awful white metal castings.
 
Lots to consider beyond size.
 
Chuck
 
 
 

Quint’s fighting chair. Fishing rod to do. 😊

ENDURANCE by OcCre
1/70 scale
MSRP €159.95
 

Image courtesy of OcCre
 
All images by author except where noted.
 
Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance scarcely needs an introduction to nautical history enthusiasts. Launched in 1912, two years later she set sail for Antarctica with Shackleton and 27 others aboard for what was intended to be a transcontinental crossing of Antarctica via the South Pole. Instead, Endurance became stuck in pack ice in January of 1915 and eventually sank the following November. In April of 1916, Shackleton and several crew members set off for South Georgia in one of Endurance’s boats. They reached the island two weeks later and crossed a mountain range to reach the island’s whaling station. A rescue party was sent to fetch Shackleton’s remaining crew. Miraculously, everyone survived.
 

Endurance trapped in the ice. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia (public domain).
 
Over the years, this forum has seen numerous folks pine for a kit of Endurance, and now OcCre has responded. The kit is in 1/70 scale and carries an MSRP of €159.95, which in today’s market has to be considered a bargain. I was very interested in doing this review because of the striking look of the prototype model, the fame of the subject, and the fact that the ship is not a man-of-war (hence no tedious cannon to rig) and carries a barkentine rig, which is one of my favorites. Let’s dive in, shall we?
 
First Impressions
 
Endurance was shipped by FedEx Economy and made the trip from Spain to South Carolina in one week. I was a bit alarmed to see that the exterior shipping box had one corner completely stove in – it had obviously been dropped from some height and landed directly on that corner. Opening the box revealed that the kit had been shipped sans packing material, which is not the greatest way to do business, IMO. However, the kit box was not damaged during transit, despite the smashed corner.
 
I’ve never built an OcCre kit before, nor even seen one in person, but I liked the look of the kit box, with a nice shot of the prototype model and a window through which one can see the fittings box. On closer inspection, I discovered that the “box art” is actually a printed sheet that is glued to a generic box cover. I suspect that this is why OcCre kits aren’t built to any standard scale; like the old “yellow box” kits from Model Shipways, OcCre kits are probably built to whatever scale will allow the kit to fit into a standard-sized box – 1/70 scale in this case.
 

 
Opening the box revealed that although some of the contents could slide around a bit, they had been taped, shrink-wrapped, and compartmentalized  in such a way that any potential for damage was really rather slight.
 

 
Paper Stuff: Plans and Instructions
 
Someone unfamiliar with OcCre might initially be alarmed upon reading the instructions – there essentially aren’t any, at least not in written form. Apart from a single paragraph about what to do before starting assembly, the written instructions consist of one sheet (in a choice of languages).
 
(Apologies for the purplish tint -- I'm limited by the capabilities of my photography equipment.)

 

 
But have no fear! What the kit lacks in written instructions, it more than makes up for in photo instructions. And in addition, OcCre provides a series of online video tutorials for the kit, which you can preview here. Let’s look at some examples from the photo instructions. BTW, the instructions, as well as the drawings, are bound with only a couple of staples. It’s not high-quality binding, but it does allow everything to easily be laid flat by simply removing the staples.
 

 
Here you can see that the photo instructions are very detailed; no step is left uncovered. You can also see that the construction method is typical plank-on-bulkhead, but there are some nice touches. The deck is planked in such a way that small slots are left on the underside; these fit over the ears on each bulkhead, so that the entire structure is strengthened and locked in place.
 

 
The directions for planking present a Mastini-like simplified method, which can be forgiven considering that the hull is intended to be painted. Of note on this sheet is the kit’s method for dealing with the ship’s round stern; it is built up bread-and-butter style and sanded to the correct shape.
 

 
Apart from decking and planking, nearly all of the ship’s upper works are built from laser-cut parts, rather like a large jigsaw puzzle. I believe that this, along with the simple rig and lack of armament, makes the kit doable for an intermediate builder.
 

 
A last shot of the hull instructions, mainly to show the construction of the chainplates, which, surprisingly, are made from brown rigging cord.
 
Drawings
 
The kit includes a complete set of 1:1 masting and spar drawings, as well as a 1:1 set of sail drawings.
 

 

 
The instructions for rigging consist of a separate set of drawings. Fine points of mast and spar construction are covered, with different drawings depicting standing rigging, running rigging, and belaying plan.
 

 

 
Finally, the paper bits include a parts list, a key to the parts billets, and a color code for use with Vallejo paints and OcCre stains.
 

 

 

 
Parts
 
The various parts billets come in a shrink-wrapped bundle and consist of parts cut from walnut, plywood, or MDF. All of the billets arrived perfectly flat, the wood is of good quality, and the laser-cutting is very well done, with fine, sharp lines and minimal reverse-side charring.
 

 

 

The walnut sheet includes parts for a display cradle.
 

 
The shrink-wrapped bundle includes an etched brass sheet that includes ladders, recessed door panels, trailboards, and ship’s name.
 

 
Two bundles of good-quality strip wood and one of strip wood and dowels are included; the strips are nicely dimensioned and free of fuzzy edges, and the dowels are straight.
 

 

 
Fittings
 
A single, compartmented plastic box contains the fittings. The box was taped to prevent its contents from spilling during shipment.
 

 
The largest compartment contains a fret of PE brass parts, three spools of 0.50 mm brown cord, various diameters of brass wire, a flag, a sheet of acetate for glazing windows, and cast metal davits, anchors, and stocks. The castings are free of flash.
 

 
Other wood or metal fittings include cast metal bollards, fairleads, cowl vents, rudder hardware, binnacles, ship’s wheel, propeller, wood and metal capstan and windlass parts, and brass chain. Again, the castings are of good quality.
 

 
The rest of the fittings box is filled with garden-variety wood and metal parts: blocks, deadeyes, mast hoops, belaying pins, eyebolts, nails, etc.
 

 
Finally, a sealed envelope contains the remaining seven spools of rigging cord (one brown, six tan), which I was surprised to discover were all of the same diameter (0.15 mm), and a full suit of pre-sewn sails. The sails have the usual sort of heavy seam stitching typically found on such items. I don’t particularly like them and would probably opt to replace them, but for someone not inclined to put in that sort of effort, they will certainly suffice.
 

 
Overall Impressions
 
The new OcCre Endurance is not what one would call a great kit, but it is by no means a bad kit either. OcCre have economized here and there, as evidenced by such things as off-the-shelf fittings, providing only two diameters of rigging cord, and supplying less-than-convincing pre-sewn sails. Cost-cutting measures such as these succeed in making the kit affordable -- after all, top-end kits usually fetch top dollar – or Euro – don’t they? In other respects the kit is quite good, e.g. the thorough photo instructions, good quality wood, and excellent laser cutting. As I said earlier, I believe this kit can be built by an intermediate builder, and it will undoubtedly produce a nice-looking model right out of the box. However, with a bit of extra research and some kit-bashing, I have no doubt that the kit could form the basis for quite an excellent model. For the price and for the generally good quality (not to mention the unique subject), if not for the level of detail, the OcCre Endurance can be recommended to any interested builder.
 

Image courtesy of OcCre
 

Image courtesy of OcCre
 
Thanks go to OcCre for sending out this review example. Endurance may be purchased directly from OcCre or from one of their regional distributors.

I've been using a tablesaw for hobbies on and off for 50 years and I never felt comfortable using one. I was looking at the saw today and it dawned on me. If I lower The blade and slide the fence over to the other side the saw becomes left handed. What  a treat! Now every thing feels right. Something you righties might not think about is how lefties go through their lives making right handed stuff work. Because of that I never even gave a tablesaw a second thought. Now I just have to make sure I don't get too comfortable. After 73 years I've still got all ten fingers and I'd like to keep it that way.

Brian, don't sell yourself short. If the end result is as good as the now, I think they'ed be happy to have your model provided they have the space to display it.