leclaire

I made a bit more progress by permanently combining the texas and the pilothouse, then building stairs down from the latter. I also added the clerestory windows that support the middle (raised) part of the hurricane deck; these provide natural light to the central cabin that runs down the middle of the boiler deck. In these photos, the texas/pilothouse assembly isn't permanently attached to the rest of the model.
 


As I started to think through the paddleboxes, I came across a conundrum. Many photos of similar vessels show very wide paddleboxes. For example, see the Mary McDonald:
 

Or the Alice:

Both images are from the University of Wisconsin-Lacrosse steamboat collection. These really wide boxes suggest either very wide guards and wheels, or that the boxes extend well past the width of the wheels/guards into the main hull. I can't determine from any images which is correct. Even the museum's Arabia painting (which I don't take as super-accurate) shows really wide paddleboxes:
 

The problem is, this doesn't fit the Arabia's design. She had really narrow wheels and guards, as can clearly be seen from the wreck photos:
 


So is it correct to give her narrow paddleboxes only as wide as the wheels (which makes logical sense to me even if it doesn't look like other boats) or should the boxes somehow extend inboard, over the boiler deck and onto the main superstructure?
 
Here's what I mean on the actual model:
 

Logically, it seems like the paddleboxes should only cover the wheel itself (dotted line on left). But the super-wide boxes on other vessels imply that these should extend further inboard (such as dotted line on right), covering the passageway. I can't figure out why any builder would do that. The model follows the wreck dimensions pretty closely based on extrapolations from the known wheel dimensions and other information, so I know my wheels and guards are right. Any thoughts on which approach to use and why? Note that I framed this photo to show the painting in the background for comparison. I don't know what to do.
 

I don't think there's a clear answer on why the hurricane deck is called that, any more than the boiler deck. Just one of those terminologies that came into use and stuck. Goodness knows sailing vessels have any number of bizarre or illogical names for things.

Thanks, popeye!
 
This week's accomplishment was finishing the pilot house, which ended up being a fun little mini-model that I documented in a fair amount of detail. It was nice to take a break from the larger model and just focus on this one feature. I put a lot of detail into this since it's a visual focus point of the whole vessel.
 
First, I built the wheel by laying out very thin strips of wood on double-sided tape and carefully fitting in braces around the circumference. When I liked what I had, I painted it. It's not as clean as if I'd bought a similar-sized one from Syren, but I liked doing it myself and its slightly rough style fits the rest of the model. This thing was super-delicate and I almost didn't get it off the tape in one piece.
 

I then mounted the wheel in the pilot house, slotted into the floor the way all steamboat wheels were:
 

Next, I built the windows using the same very fine strips and a lot of careful cutting and patience:
 

After painting, I carefully glued sheets of clear plastic to the inside. My first attempt, I apparently used too much CA and it crazed the plastic, so I very carefully scraped the plastic off with a razor blade and tried again. I actually couldn't believe I got away with that, I was sure the window frame would shatter. The second time stuck with no crazing. I then added various internal details to the pilot house before gluing in the windows and door:
 

Details include a small wood stove, a basic spittoon, a small bench, the hinged "bridle" that pilots used to hold the wheel in place if they needed to step away (next to the wheel at right), and two pull ropes for engine control. I ran these on criss-crossing lines as shown in various sources. The glue dried on the left-hand one a little weird; I'm saying a breeze is catching it through the open front window. The rods the lines are hanging off of are belaying pins from an old kit; the handles are parrell beads from same. There are a few other very small controls that could be added, but this thing is tiny and you'd never be able to see them clearly through the windows, so I decided this was enough to capture the proper feel. For a size comparison, the Chaperon model is in 1:48 scale while Arabia is in 1:64; this pilot house is ~1.5" to a side (~3.5 cm).

At the front, I added the hinged/swinging shades that could be used to close off the normally open pilot house front during bad weather. Once I was happy with the internal detail, I added the rafters and the roof, which I made using the same masking-tape technique described in a previous post. This roof needed to be held down securely; three rubber bands took care of the edges but the top was bulging up too much, so I balanced a rock on it. Looks like she's bringing home a major geological sample from the Montana gold fields!
 

And here's the finished pilot house with roof and stove chimney. I guess it's not 100% finished as I still need to add whistles, but it's close enough to move on from for now.
 

This was really fun. Hope you like it.

Straight, strong and FREE. Doesn't get much better than that. Nice job, Eric.
 
Bob

That's a great idea Eric. I would get behind that venue 100%
 
Bob

Hey Eric, you better hurry up and finish your Arabia. Looks like you might just have a new boat to model. I wonder if the Malta was a stern or side wheeler.
 
Bob

I started working out how best to build the hurricane deck (also known as the roof of the main cabins) and quickly realized I would need to work out exactly where, and what size, the hurricane deck cabins would be. That, in turn, meant I needed to do the same for the pilot house on top. So I changed plans and started building the rest of the superstructure first, since once that's in place it'll be easier to build the remaining decks around it.
 

Above are the hurricane deck cabins. I made them exactly the same way as the boiler deck cabins, so didn't take any new photos of the process. The blocky beams are a special support structure for the pilot house, which I built as a separate unit that can be slotted into place, like this:
 

Doing this made it a lot easier to work on each piece separately and will be especially helpful for adding lots of interior detail to the pilot house. Below is a shot of the pilot house removed, showing the interior bracing that slots into the beams atop the hurricane deck cabin.
 

Next up, I worked on the hurricane cabin roof. Because this deck has some curvature to it, I used scrap pieces of scribed wood (scribing side down) as this takes a curve easily. This roof/deck would have been covered in strips of tar paper. Kurt Van Dahm's digital book on building Chaperon has a nice tip on how to simulate this, using strips of silkspan attached to a surface with matte medium and painted; it looks quite realistic. Having neither on hand, I made up my own adaption. I cut strips of masking tape to appropriate widths, smeared wood glue thinly on the roof surface, then carefully laid the masking tape strips with just a tiny bit of overlap at the seams. As a bonus, the moisture of the glue made the wood warp just about perfectly for the required curve! Below you see an upper and lower view of two such pieces; the lighting makes it hard to see the detail but hopefully it's clear enough.
 

I used masking tape on my Bertrand to simulate the metal cladding on the chimneys, and it looked really good when painted and has yet to budge (I didn't even use glue that time). So I was confident it'd work here. After painting, the tape has a really nice rough texture and just a little bit of crinkling that looks pretty realistic. I trimmed the tape on all sides, then cut the pilot house gap out of the forward piece and test-fit them.

Look closely and you'll see that I screwed up. I measured the width of the cut against the outer walls of the cabin, not the slightly narrower pilot house itself. After some roustabout phraseology, I quickly decided I could apply the old modeller's trick of "add useless but benign detail to cover up a mistake" and glued two thin strips of wood to either side of the pilot house, filling the gap nicely.

I like how this looks (note that this is only a test fit). The masking tape has a good texture and you can just see the seams. I'll use the same technique for the much larger hurricane deck once it's laid down. In the meantime, there's a lot of pilot house detail to make, including some very small-paned windows (not sure how I'm going to scratchbuild these, especially if I want "glass" in them) and a proper wheel (I want to try the method used by Brian for his Chaperon, if I don't like the results I'll order one from Syren). I think I'll try and finish the pilot house next, so that this whole assembly can be attached permanently before I start building out the rest of the hurricane deck. Not my original plan, but it's working out fine.
 
Finally, on a separate note, as a treat for my 40th birthday (actually tomorrow) we spent last weekend in Kansas City attending the big Irish music festival there and doing some other fun things. I thought some folks would be interested in seeing the ASB Bridge over the Missouri River. This is a pretty unique design (I think there's only a few others in the world) using a double-deck setup in which the lower level (carrying rail lines) raises by telescoping into the upper level (carrying cars and streetcars), allowing river traffic to pass without disrupting the upper deck. It was completed in 1911 and still carries rail traffic, though a newer road bridge was built just to the east in 1987 to carry road traffic.
 

Just upstream, another active rail bridge:
 

Shipping on the Missouri River is very minor these days, but rail traffic in KC is alive and well; the city's riverfront trail is a great place to set up for train-watching while the river rolls by. In these photos it's still pretty swollen from the heavy spring and summer rains; you can see a big jam of woody debris against one of the bridge piers. The Arabia sank less than 10 miles upstream from here.

In Memorium Mitch Michelson July 12, 1953 to August 28, 2019     This week, we lost a passionate member of the ship modeling community. Mitch Michelson died on Wednesday, August 28 from a massive heart attack. He was 66 years old. His funeral was held on August 30 in his hometown of San Antonio, Texas.    Mitch joined the Nautical Research Guild in 1989. He had been a Director since 2009 and served as Chairman of the Board in 2017. Those members who have attended the annual Conference recently will remember Mitch as our humorous emcee.   In addition to his contributions to the Guild, he was actively involved in Boy Scouts and mentored many young men to achieve Eagle Scout status. He was an avid pipe collector and served on the boards of several business organizations and his synagogue.    He is survived by three children and three grandchildren.    Most of all, he was my friend.   Kurt Van Dahm Chairman of the Board Nautical Research Guild  

Scale matters to anyone who cares about how much room the finished model takes up in their home or the cost of the resulting case.

Straight, strong and FREE. Doesn't get much better than that. Nice job, Eric.
 
Bob

Straight, strong and FREE. Doesn't get much better than that. Nice job, Eric.
 
Bob

Straight, strong and FREE. Doesn't get much better than that. Nice job, Eric.
 
Bob

Straight, strong and FREE. Doesn't get much better than that. Nice job, Eric.
 
Bob

Straight, strong and FREE. Doesn't get much better than that. Nice job, Eric.
 
Bob

I worked on the main cabin walls this week. Here's a small bit I made to test out my intended method:
 

It's pretty straightforward, just panels of scribed wood spaced below the upper window assembly, which keeps the whole thing straight. I made the doors the same way as before, by drilling holes and then finishing with knife and file. I have to make lots of these and they're pretty fiddly, but I listen to an audiobook and it goes pretty smoothly. Close-up, you can see some rough edges that I've been having a hard time fully smoothing down, but they seem to blend into the background when viewed beyond a camera lens.
 
Here's the rest of the starboard outer wall:

All the doors are made and painted but I haven't installed them yet. The backing strips holding this together and straight are scrap from past wooden kits (the stuff around laser-cut parts); I have a whole box of this stuff because I hate throwing things away, and it comes in really handy here as it's straight and strong but doesn't cost me anything.
 
Here's the wall loosely placed on the model for visual inspection:
 

Certainly gives the right idea. I think this came out well and the next one will go faster now that I have the method down. Thanks for reading.
 
 

I took a break from planking to work on the boiler deck structures (i.e, the main cabin). This is complicated as it contains multiple curved deck levels above and a raised central skylight running along most of its length. I started by drawing out the shapes of the fore- and aft-most walls, since they define the curve of the hurricane deck (the third one up, after main and boiler). 
 
I decided to use pre-scribed wood for the cabin walls at this level for three reasons. First, they need to be especially structurally solid given their complexity and I can get their shapes more similar using solid pieces. Second, they won't be as visible as the main superstructure walls because they'll be more hidden under overhanging decks. Third, I've been underestimating my strip wood use and this gets expensive to keep reordering, whereas I have plenty of scribed stock sitting around. So that's how it is.

Fore (left) and aft (right) main cabin walls with handmade doors. The ribs along the top provide extra support for the next deck up. I put the worse of the two doors on the fore cabin wall as this will be especially well-hidden under a deep and long overhang, where as the aft one will be a lot more visible.

I made the doors by tracing the oval windows (using a dowel for the curve), drilling out their outlines, then cutting and sanding the hole. I then attached thin strips of wood to make the framing, as seen in the first photo.
 

Here they are painted and installed in the walls. The third piece (upper right) sits a bit forward of the aft wall because the skylight doesn't run all the way back. This will be clearer when I get further along in the build. Next step on these is glassing the windows and adding some curtains to block the view, as I don't want to show any interior. These are the doors that access the main dining/social cabin that runs the length of this structure; the lower portions to either side house the individual cabins, kitchen, and other areas that are accessed from doors on the outer and inner walls. Here's a cross-section of a typical sidewheeler from Wikimedia Commons in case it helps clarify what I'm working on here (the area above the boilers):
 


As a preview, here's the aft-most wall propped up in its intended location. I like how these came out; they were a good test for the even more complicated task of building the long side walls full of cabin doors and other details, which is next. Thanks for reading!

Boiler deck planking is mostly done:

The blank spot in the center is where the cabins will go, I'm not showing the interior of these so there's no need to plank this carefully. As the underside of the deck is vaguely visible if you look from just the right angle, I used sheets of pre-scribed wood for this to mimic just enough planking in the shadows.
 
For the visible planking, I stained the individual strips using the same vinegar/rust mixture I've used before on this model, then rubbed each plank with subtly different shades of pastels. This produced a nice variation effect and was a lot faster than painting. I'll sand the whole surface down when it's done, blending them together a bit more.
 
If you were wondering why this deck isn't red, too, there are three reasons. First, this is the only other deck that will be visibly planked (everything above this will be covered with tar paper), and I thought it would look interesting in a more raw wood state, a bit of visual variability. Second, as this deck is mostly covered by the decks above and doesn't get as much use as the main deck (for things like cargo handling), I decided it didn't need the extra coat of red paint. Third, I'm out of red paint and don't want to buy another whole bottle when I might not use the rest for a year or more.

Here's a closer look at the foremost part of the boiler deck, showing where the chimneys and main stairwell come through. You may notice that the former look a bit off-kilter. That's because they are. I didn't get the boilers lined up perfectly and these were not quite aligned the way I wanted them, so I built up the area around them to make them parallel again. This will be entirely invisible once the chimneys are sitting on top.
 
You can also see some places where glue leaked through the planking. I was trying to be careful, but using unpainted thin wood makes it super-sensitive to glue spills. I don't think it'll be very noticeable once the next deck is covering this and all the railings are one. I was still annoyed by this, though, no matter how hard I tried the occasional bead came seeping up through and trying to wipe it off just made the area bigger.
 
Along with this, I'm starting to lay out the main cabin superstructure. It's quite complicated and will take me a while to get right, along with probably some annoying mistakes and do-overs. I'll try to take more photos; I didn't take many of the planking process because it's so straightforward.
 
Thanks for reading. We're heading for the first real heat wave of summer here, so maybe some extra focus on modelling for a bit.

That's a great idea Eric. I would get behind that venue 100%
 
Bob

That's a great idea Eric. I would get behind that venue 100%
 
Bob

That's a great idea Eric. I would get behind that venue 100%
 
Bob

That's a great idea Eric. I would get behind that venue 100%
 
Bob

Hey Eric, you better hurry up and finish your Arabia. Looks like you might just have a new boat to model. I wonder if the Malta was a stern or side wheeler.
 
Bob

Hey Eric, you better hurry up and finish your Arabia. Looks like you might just have a new boat to model. I wonder if the Malta was a stern or side wheeler.
 
Bob

Hey Eric, you better hurry up and finish your Arabia. Looks like you might just have a new boat to model. I wonder if the Malta was a stern or side wheeler.
 
Bob

Hey Eric, you better hurry up and finish your Arabia. Looks like you might just have a new boat to model. I wonder if the Malta was a stern or side wheeler.
 
Bob