leclaire

Excellent description of your work. The draped flag may be the best I’ve seen on the forum. Thanks for detailing the steps and also for attempting some of the suggested alternatives. I wholly concur with your final choice. It looks great on your model.

I'd say that the tribute this model represents far outweighs any fleeting disrespect. Especially in a country where outright abuse of the flag code (e.g. clothing) is rampant, especially and ironically among the most self-professed patriotic.
 
Brief rant aside, yet another seminar in modeling. I wonder if your methods for making such a lovely draped flag would be a good fit for a short article in the Nautical Research Journal? We so often see waving flags, so rarely draped ones.

@Roger Pellett, @leclaire, @wefalck, @Canute, @KeithAug, @mtaylor, @Keith Black Thank you all for your input and suggestions.
 
So I spent the evening playing around with different methods and here is what I came up with.
 
My second attempt was to try printing the flag on silkspan just to see if the ink would bleed. Turns out that the printer did a fantastic job on the silkspan and the lines came out nice an clean. I taped the silkspan to a piece of cardstock to hold it in place so it wouldn't crinkle up under the printer head.

Then I separated the printout from the cardstock and trimmed the edges after a bit of weathering. I wasn't too keen on the color of the white areas on the silkspan when I pulled it off the cardstock, it looked a little too gray, but when I folded it over the gray toned out a bit and it looked a little more white.

The silkspan that I had on hand was very thin, something left over from a balsa airplane I made years ago. But I figured I'd give it a shot, so I slathered some glue on the back side and folded it over to glue the two sides together. That is where I screwed it up. The glue thinned the silkspan down so much that it was next to impossible to work with and when I went to align the side it just smeared and ruined the whole piece. So on to the next method.

 
The next method I tried was @KeithAug suggestion to print the pattern on both sides of the paper and just make the flag a single layer. I printed out about five versions of it before I finally gave up. My poor cheapo printer just would not line the paper up when I would turn it over to print the other side. This was the closest I could get the sides to line up with each other.

I went ahead and gave it a shot anyway to see if I could distress it and get it lay the way I wanted to without using any glue. The distressing looked great, but the paper was just to flimsy to lay right. So I moved on to the next method. Parchment paper. Well needless to say, that method didn't work either, The parchment paper was too crinkly and when I went to shape it the wrinkles were just too unrealistic.
 
So finally I decided that I would make another attempt at distressing the printer paper like in my beta test. I liked the way this version looked aesthetically, I just wasn't happy with the way it was hanging on the halyard. As Eberhard pointed out, the angle was not natural, so I redid this method to place the header down the middle of the flag and have it hang more centered on the mast.
 
Here are all of the attempts I made, just to show the differences.
 
A. second version of distressed bond paper. I added a little more weathering than the beta version, but I liked the curl and hang a lot better.
B. The  beta test
C. The single layer
D. Parchment paper
E. Silkspan
 
Here is version A placed on the model. I like the way that it hangs and I think the weathered patina looks just right,

 
 

I found some pictures online of flags sitting on stages in flag stands to get the drape right, and used these to mold my shape. On the western rivers, there was always some sort of breeze, so the flag wouldn't be sitting perfectly still or hanging against the mast. So I took this into consideration and left the left the bottom of the ensign hanging slightly out from the mast, just to give it some "life". I think I am completely satisfied with this version, and now that I have beat this subject to death. time to move on to the pennant.
 
Thank you all so much for your valuable input and suggestions. It is greatly appreciated.
 
-Brian

I agree with Roger. Hard to believe you got such a realistic look with regular bond paper. Very nice indeed.
 
Bob

I agree with Roger. Hard to believe you got such a realistic look with regular bond paper. Very nice indeed.
 
Bob

I agree with Roger. Hard to believe you got such a realistic look with regular bond paper. Very nice indeed.
 
Bob

I agree with Roger. Hard to believe you got such a realistic look with regular bond paper. Very nice indeed.
 
Bob

I agree with Roger. Hard to believe you got such a realistic look with regular bond paper. Very nice indeed.
 
Bob

Brian I'm looking forward to seeing and learning from your flag experiments. I think it is time you stopped pretending this is your first scratch model, you are fooling no one😁.

Hello again everyone,
 
I took advantage of the cold rainy weekend and got some work done on the ships boats rigging. A big thank you to @wefalck@Cathead & @Keith Black for keeping me honest and pointed in the right direction. 
 
I spent some time studying the old City-Class pictures and from the limited detail the old photos provided, this is what I came up with for the control and stabilizing lines on the davits. The eyes at the end of each davit is hard to make out in the photographs so it is difficult to tell if the control lines and stabilizing lines are separate or one continuous line. I went with the executive decision to make them separate. My reasoning for this was that it would be easier to replace one shorter rope should it break than a long one, and I thought it looked better having them all separate. First thing I did was to secure the tackle to the davit on the covered boats. I did it this way out of sheer laziness, I didn't want to remove the boats and their covers and redo them with cutouts for the tackle to go down the lift rings on the boats. Not to mention that I have not been able to find a single photograph of a City-Class ship with a covered boat anywhere, to show how it was stowed.
 
Tackle secured to the davit.
.
 
Control lines and stabilizing lines in place on the starboard boats.

 

 

 
Control lines and stabilizing lines on the port boats.


 
Since I still had some time and it was still raining after finishing up the boats, I decided to do some touch ups and a bit more weathering. Here is some of what I got done.
 
Bow weathering.

Closer details.

 
Wheelhouse and deck structure weathering.

 
I still have a bit more weathering to go, I just wanted to get this out there before the Thanksgiving holiday, I am currently working on more weathering, as well as the ensign and the commissioning pennant. I have seen some models and pictures of another pennant flown from the center mast on some of these ships but I am not sure of what it is. It would be a neat addition, just not sure of it's authenticity.
 
 
 
I also need to find out if the commissioning pennant the Cairo flew was the 13 star or the 7 star version. Still looking into that one.
 
Thanks again for all your input and for stopping by,
 
-Brian
 

Hello again Everyone,
 
I just realized that it has been a while since I posted a proper update on the Cairo build. Well, hopefully I don't disappoint too much because not a lot has been done. The nice cooler weather has kept me outside taking care of those much needed projects that were not possible in the summer heat, but I am ever so slowly creeping towards the finish line on this project.
 
Here is what I was able to get done over the past month or so.
 
First up was the completion of mounting the ships boats and getting them rigged up, As usual, information on the City-Class boats was very limited and I resorted to using a few builders liberties on this part. The sloped sides of the casements made for a somewhat unique way of storing the ships boats. The davit bases were mounted about 3/4 of the way down the casements and the middle of them was supported by horizontal bars attached to the casements just below the Hurricane deck. These  middle supports served multiple purposes, center support for the davit, provided a swivel point of the davit to launch the boats and a resting place for the boats themselves when stowed aboard. While I was trying to find out how the boats sat on the davit supports I was playing around with the configuration and got to thinking that if these boats were to just sit on top of the davit supports, there was no stability for the boats to just sit on their keels. So I researched and researched some more, and came up empty. So I decided to take my builders liberties and install a couple of planks lashed to the supports to run parallel to the boats keels and give them more stability. My thoughts on this were that not only would the planks add stability to the boats by keeping them level while stowed, they would also add some protection to the keel keeping it up off the iron supports. It sounded logical to me so this is what I went with.
 
Here are the planks installed and lashed to the horizontal davit supports.

 
Next up was to get the tackle rigged up. I diluted the ropes with 50/50 water and clear Elmer's glue solution to stiffen them since the boats were not heavy enough to keep the lines taught enough to look natural.

 
Another configuration that I was having some difficulty finding information on was how the boats were stored when covered. The lifting rings were not accessible with the tarps over them so it wasn't possible to have them attached to the blocks without cutting holes in the covers. So again I decided that when the boats were stowed and covered the tackle was just left hanging loose above the boats. I don't think there would have been too much concern of the tackle swinging around in rough seas, since the rivers were considerably tamer than the open ocean. When the crew was ready to launch the boats, the would simply remove the tarps, hook the tackle to the lift rings and launch the boats. Problem solved.

Completion of the rigging. The ropes were tied off to cleats mounted to the Hurricane deck and the leftover was coiled up and thrown over the ropes running through the tops of the stanchions. This method is seen in many of the contemporary photos of the City-Class boats.

Closeup of the rig. I also added some ropes to secure the boats in their cradles. These were just wrapped around the boats and the planks just to help keep them in place.

 
The port side boats were a little easier. The aft boat I mounted in the ready for launch position and the forward one was mounted at the waterline, as if ready to head to shore. Having the forward boat in this position also allowed the viewer to peek inside the cutaway in this area.


Same rigging method was used as the starboard boats. The ropes were stiffened with diluted Elmer's to give them a "natural" hang and then secured to cleats, only this time the leftover rope was thrown over the hammock nets.

 
Next up it was time to finally install the rudders. I started out by installing the rollers on the tiller. These were made from small aluminum tubing and 28ga wire. These rollers sat on top of the races mounted to the fantail deck and provided support for the extremely long rudder tillers and followed the tiller arc when the ships wheel was turned. 


Rudders being set into place on the hull.

Port rudder installed.

 
Final paining of the rudder hardware.

 
Our newest crew member Daisy, the Admirals six-month old Yorkie-poo. She paid me a visit to make sure that things were going as they should. Thankfully I passed inspection.

Once I had the rudders installed it was time to get the control lines added. This was another of those details that there was practically no information on so I went with some of the  suggestions of those following along and what I though would the most logical approach to how these control lines would have been done. Salvage photos of the Cairo show a few clear pictures of the recovered rudders as well as some scenes in the recovery video. All of them show nothing attached to the outboard side of the tillers and what either appears to be stiff wire cable or an iron rod mounted to the inboard sides of the tiller. Since there was nothing shown on the outboard sides, I made the executive decision that since this was the side that was attached to the ships wheel, this control line must have been made from hemp rope and would have rotted away over time, leaving no evidence. If it would have been chain or cable, there would have been some sort of remaining evidence of such material or connection. As for the intermediate linkage, I went ahead used the suggestion that this would have been an iron rod with a yoke on each end that attached to the tiller and a turnbuckle in the middle to make steering adjustments as needed.
 
So here is what I came up with. The intermediate linkage and control rod. Again, I used small aluminum tubing for the yokes and turnbuckle.

Then the control lines were made from rope and secured to the outboard sides of the tiller. The pullies were made from spare deadeyes that were covered to conceal the three holes in them. All in all, I am completely satisfied with the way this turned out.

 
The last little detail that I was able to get completed this time around were the latches for the skylights. There is no photographic evidence of these latches, but there were several recovered from the wreck that are on display in the museum. I took a stab at where these would have been used, but logically thinking, something had to hold these skylights in the open position.
 
Starboard  aft skylight with latches installed.

Painted and installed.

 
Port skylight in the open position with the latches installed.

Port midship skylight in the open position showing the latches holding the hatch open.

 
Starboard midship hatch in the closed position.

 
Well that is all I have for this update. December 12th is fast approaching and my checklist of things to finish is getting shorter. Most of them are small details that are really not photograph worthy (paint touch-ups and weathering), but I'll take pictures of anything that would be of interest. I need to research what the forward pennant looked like (many of the contemporary photographs show these boats flying one, but unfortunately they are all blurry). Once I find the correct one, I'll get it printed out and installed as well as the 34-star Ensign. I have read several methods on MSW as to how to make realistic looking flags, I am going to experiment with a few of them and see which one I like best.
 
Until next time, thank you all for the encouragement, kind words and likes and for just stopping by and taking a look at my build. Stay safe and healthy.
 
-Brian

Stairs are complete.   The extra longer risers nicely closes the gap between them and the tread.
 

 
At long last all the compartment components for the main floor are complete and ready for installation.     Below are the walls for the aft compartment.   Horizonal strips (1/8" x 1/8") were added at the top of the wall (per instructions) to provide a better gluing surface for the boiler deck.   In addition I added some vertical strips to provide a little vertical support in the event I am feeling strong and attempt to press down a little too hard when gluing the boiler deck to the main deck walls  :-).
 
One additional feature I added was two partial walls at the front end of the aft compartments.  The are circled in black.   Instructions  say to leave that open, but to me that is really a big opening.   On the finished model, one looking into the model from the side could easily see the gapping wide open compartment and rough inside walls.   The two walls do not completely fill the gap so it looks more like a small opening into the aft compartments.
 

 
Turn the pieces over and we have the finished walls.    Again the two extra partial walls are circled in black.
 

 
Below are the foreword compartment walls.   Still need to attach the 4 cleats to parts 37A.   Other than that, I am ready to mount the walls.
 

 
Speaking of the cleats, I am not sure if the author is a comedian or I just do not have the correct skills, but in regards to mounting the cleats, the instructions say  
 
    "A professional modeler would likely drill and pin the cleats"
 
IF that is the case, then I am defiantly not a professional modeler.    I have some small drill bits (.3mm) but no way would I even think of drilling and pining these cleats.   Below shows the one of the small cleats (on the tip of my finger) to be added to part 37A.    In my case CA glue will have to do.
 

 

No problem using Firefox.

Just caught up with your log Brian, what a fantastic model! But your log is by itself so very interesting. A moment in history that many of us across the pond were not aware of.

In the beginning I swore that I would never start a new project until the current one was finished. I was able to complete my first build (Occre Albatros) alright but then things went off the rails in a hurry. Now in progress are Niagara (MSW), Chaperon (MSW) and the gunboat Philadelphia (also from MSW). I can't even begin to look at the various model manufacturers websites out there in fear that another "just have to have" will appear.
 
Bob

And after a coat of Puritan Pine stain.....  Next up will be a couple coats of Polyurethane
 

 

 
 

Thank you all for your kind words and likes. The continued support is what helps keep me going.
 
I think I have resolved my anchor buoy conundrum. There just isn't a lot of information on the Brown Water Navy in regards to the ships anchors that I was able to find. I finally resorted to researching the Blue Water Navy and the many models that were built of ships from the mid-19th century. There were many different methods used to secure the anchor buoy to the anchor, and I found many pictures of them (they were not posted here due to copyright rules) so I just picked the one that I though looked best. This is the solution that I came up with.
 
The rig that had the buoy rope secured around the arm and the shank had the most appeal to me so I ran with it. Securing the rope to the shank.

 
Anchor, buoy, and rope coil completed.

 
Assembly installed on the foredeck.

 
Hopefully I got this right. If not, at least it's easy to access and fix.
 
-Brian

Build goals
 
Although I have a couple scratchbuilds planned in my head, I chose this kit as my next project for a couple reasons.
 
The outstanding large-scale detailed scratchbuilds of USS Cairo by @mbp521 and her sister ironclad USS St. Louis by @thorn21g and the Gateway Model Shipcrafter's Guild have been really fascinating and inspiring. MSW doesn't have any completed build logs for this kit; the only log of any kind didn't get beyond an opening post before being abandoned. BlueJacket is a good company but seems under-represented on MSW build logs, so I wanted to raise awareness of their kits (and this one in particular). There are so few realistic riverboat kits that this one should get more attention. I hope @MrBlueJacket will be able to pop in from time to time. I don't have a full workshop right now and am not ready to dive into a full scratchbuild. Just before my injury last winter, I packed up my entire workshop in preparation for remodeling a spare room into a permanent improved workshop, but that's been on hold ever since. I'll be building some kind of small portable workstation to bridge the gap until I can complete the home renovations necessary to start on a real scratchbuild again. It'll let me learn/practice some new skills.  I've never built anything at this small a scale. I've never built a solid-hull model. I've never worked with this much metal, and especially not fine-scale brass details. I'm still really backed up on other real-world projects and don't have the mental bandwidth to dive into a complex scratchbuild right now, so hopefully a simpler kit lets me ease back into model-building. So overall my goal is for this project to be a fun and relatively straightforward return to building, though I'm quite certain I'll find various ways to enhance the kit with alterations or details based on the above-mentioned builds. I also hope it'll serve as a review of this kit for other MSW members who might consider it. Thanks in advance for looking in and following along.

My next project will be the USS Cairo kit from BlueJacket. This vessel was an ironclad gunboat designed and built during the American Civil War for service on the Mississippi River and its tributaries, as part of the Union's push to control the West's inland waterways and cut off Confederate supply lines, communications, and commerce. Her actual service was unremarkable, and she sank less than a year after her commissioning upon hitting several mines near Vicksburg, Mississippi. However, she became immortal when her wreck was discovered mostly intact in the mid-1960s and eventually salvaged, restored, and placed on display at Vicksburg National Military Park. I've visited the display and associated museum, where it's absolutely fascinating to be able to actually walk around the vessel and peer into her depths. 

 
When completed, this will join my scratchbuilt Western River steamboats Arabia and Bertrand, two other examples of mid-19th century Western River steamboats salvaged from old river channels in the American interior. This kit is a much smaller scale than those two models (1:64 and 1:87, respectively), so will nestle comfortably alongside the Bertrand. 

For inspiration, I'll have on hand this simple paperweight acquired at the Cairo museum!

Announcing the start of this build feels unusually good, as I've had a forced ~7 month hiatus from modeling building due to a complicated situation involving a serious hatched-derived wrist injury (with subsequent surgery and long recovery) that, for a while, had me unsure if I'd regain the dexterity and strength necessary to keep building scale models (much less the larger-scale timber management and building work I do in real life). The Cairo kit is a 43rd birthday present but also a celebration of a return to reasonable normality.
 
Thanks for looking in! Next post, I'll cover why I chose this model and what I hope to achieve with it.
 
 
 

Hello again everyone, I'm ready with another Cairo update.
 
Over the past few weeks I have been focusing on some of the detail work. I started off with the anchor buoy. This was one of the artifacts that was recovered during the salvage and sits on display in the Cairo museum. 

On my first attempt to make this I was going to try and make it from card stock shaped into two cones with a disk in the middle to form the flanges where the two halves met. I tried several times but just couldn't get the shape right. Since I wasn't sure of how this method was going to work, I didn't take any pictures. So, on my next attempt I tried using Milliput, getting the basic cone shape and then finishing it off on the lathe. Here are the two halves on this try.

I drilled the center holes for the toothpick to align the halves together, but again I just couldn't get the shape I was looking for. For some reason the centerline wouldn't fall in the right place and I was having difficulties trying to figure out how I was going to make the center flange. So I ended up scrapping this version as well.

On my final attempt I decided to go with some copper sheeting and the same method I originally used with the card stock. I scrounged up a few small scrap pieces in my scrap bin that I had left over from the chimney flanges (I throw nothing away) that worked perfectly. I managed to have enough to make the two halves and the center flange. 

Here are the two halves glued to the center flange.


I fit a small piece of styrene rod through the middle to provide a mounting place for the eyebolts, then drilled a tiny hole in each end to receive the eyebolts.

The eyebolts were then glued in place.

and finally the whole assembly painted up.

Before I can place these on the boat, I'll need to research how these were rigged to the anchor. I have a sneaky feeling that this is going to be a task to find info on these, but I'm going to see what I can turn up.
 
Next it was on to installing the bow guard. Nothing too complex here, I had made this a while back and just needed to put it on. I left out a couple of the rivets to use a mounting points to give the guard a little more of a secure grip on the keel, than just gluing on.


Then I moved on to the Hurricane Deck canopy. There are numerous contemporary photos of the Cairo's sister ships that show almost the entire Hurricane Deck covered with canopies, but the only photo of the Cairo has just one canopy over the boiler skylight. It is not known if the Cairo had more than this when she went down so I just went with what she had in the photo. Besides, too many canopies would hide a lot of the deck details.
 
Attempt 1: I took a small piece of muslin and cut it to shape and size, but I was having a hard time keeping the edges from fraying. So I took some CA and ran it along the edges of the material to keep the strands in place. Definitely didn't like that look.

The muslin had the texture that I was looking for so I stuck with that material. On my second attempt, I cut the canopy shape out, bit this time I soaked the whole thing in diluted clear Elmer's glue and let that dry. For added details, decided to put a ridge vent in the canopy since I figured that these were made up similarly to the field tents used on land by the Army.


Then I went in and added the grommets for additional detail and used those as a way to cover the canopy guy ropes.

Then the whole thing was installed along the center beam and the guys attached to the stanchions.

Making up some of the rope coils for the canopy guys on the stanchions.

Next, I wanted to finish up on the aft skylights and get the door installed. So it was back to borrowing the Admirals Cricut again to cut out the window frames. I built these up exactly the way I did the others and mounted the Port side open and the Starboard side closed.


 
 
Next up, it was on to the forward and aft hand ropes for the casement ladders. 

Completed forward ropes.

Completed aft ropes. Initially the ropes didn't sit right, they had a bit too much sag to them. So I ended up running a bead of CA along each one to stiffen it up and hold its shape. I think the overall look came out quite nicely.

 
Next was the installation of the long hawser. This was probably the one that Commander Selfridge ordered tied to a tree on the Yazoo River bank when he had the ship ran aground shortly after the torpedoes blew the hole in Cairo's Port Bow. This hawser held long enough for everyone to abandon ship, before the tree was pulled from its rooting and the ship slipped beneath the surface.

 
Then it was on to another one of the more tedious parts of the build. The chimney guys. The Cairo display has one set of these installed on the "Ghosted" chimneys with the rest being just steel cable. The original guys were actually iron rods and links (rings) that had a threaded loops on each end to adjust the tension. These guys can be made out in the old Cairo photograph, although some of the photos of her sister ships look more like they have cables or ropes holding the chimneys. I went ahead and built it like the photograph and because there were some of these recovered from the salvage. 
 
These are some of the original guys on the Cairo display.

 
I started with some 24ga wire to make the rods.

And bent them to shape as well as the rings.

Tedious work. I had to make up 80 of the rods and rings along with 20 hooks for the anchor points on the chimney and stanchions.

Once they were made to length, I heated them up red hot with my torch to give them that blued steel look. This color works nicely with the casement color.

All guys in place and blued. I took a lot of pictures of these, I guess you could say that I was somewhat proud of how they turned out.






 
After making up all of those links, I needed a break. So it was time to do a little cleaning of the work bench before moving on to the next project.

 
So after a good bench cleaning I moved on to another tedious project, installation of the boat davits. Normally this wouldn't be too big of an issue, except the slanted casements of the ships make the task a  bit more challenging when it comes to getting the davits all lined up properly. And since one of the davits on each side sits on top of the armor plating, it makes it that much more difficult to get the height and alignment correct.
 
I started with the Port aft davits first. This wasn't too terribly difficult. I used some double sided tape to temp install the mounts then slowly nibbled away at the bottom of each davit until I got the proper height and location. 

Test fitting the boats to make sure there is enough clearance.

 
Once the aft davits were installed, that was where I ran into an unforeseen issue. When I first started this build I had not planned on doing a whole lot of internal details since it was going to be a static model with all sides enclosed. As I built the details on the gun deck I decided that I wanted to show off some of these details and decided to make the Port side a cutaway. Well poor planning on my part didn't take into consideration that one of the davits was going to fall inside the cutaway. So when I built the cutaway I just mounted a small scrap of wood between the casement frames and figured I would just mount the davit base on that. Well, I didn't like that look, so change of plans.
 
This is the area where the davit base will go. What I decided to do was to build up the armor plating in the area and mount the davit properly.
 
So I pulled off the armor plating to make sure the panels lined up the way they were supposed to.

Then I offset every other one to cover the area for the base mount.


Gave everything a fresh coat of paint and some rivets.

Then it was on to mounting the forward Port davits.

 
Now it was time to rig the boats and temp install them. Started of with stropping the blocks.

Then running the ropes through them.

One boat in place. I wanted to show this boat as in the process of being launched, due to it's location above the cutaway. Placing it in it's stowed position would have blocked part of the view in the cutaway and I wanted to give the build a bit of action, not just a static model.

Both Port boats in place. I need to find a way to stiffen the ropes so that they look like they have a load on them. The boats just aren't heavy enough to keep the line taught. I think a little diluted Elmer's will work. I also think it will also help keep the boats from swinging around too much when I move it.

Now it's on to installing the Starboard davits. Pretty much the same as the Port side.

Now with the rigging all in place I need to find out how they would have stowed the tackle on the covered boats since my Starboard boats have tarps over them and the lift rings are under the tarp. More research.
 
Finally, she was getting a little dusty so I decided to take her outside to the barn and blow some of the dust off of her. It was such a pretty day out, I figured I'd snap a few pictures of her in natural lighting while I was out there.





She's getting pretty close to being done. Perhaps a couple of more months and I will call it complete. Most of that depends on how much more research I need to do to get info on the anchor buoy, boat rig and rudder linkage. There is no rush, I'd like to finish by December 12th to celebrate the 160th anniversary of her sinking, but if I don't make it, so be it.
 
I thank you all for the kind words, comments and likes, as well as taking the time to stop by and view my build. Until the next update, everyone stay safe and healthy.
 
-Brian
 
 
 

Hard to say what the plank length was on the actual Chaperon, if I’m not mistaken I went with 20’ planks myself. I think the Chaperon, like many others had her decks painted to protect against weathering, so if you were to look at the pictures of her there would be no way to tell what length they were. I chose not to paint my deck, just leaving the natural wood color. This is something that I have done on all of my ship models so far. Although not authentic, I like the way the natural deck looks. 
 
-Brian

Hello again everyone,
 
I'm back with another update. This is truly a brief one. Lot's of pictures, but not a lot of work over the past month. We have been caught in the midst of a major drought here, no rain locally for over 50 days, and coupled with triple degree temps for over 30+ days has made our area a veritable tinder box outside, I am on our towns volunteer fire department and we have been up to our ears with grass fires. So, needless to say, between the grass fires and work life, not a lot of time has been spent in the shipyard.
 
So, picking up where I left off last time. I managed to finish up work on the mess kits. I found a simple solution to making the padlocks for them. I had a bunch of #8 lead bird shot that I used for cannon balls on a previous build. I took these and flattened them out and used a nail punch to form the shackle. I drilled out a hole in the shackle and looped it through a small eyebolt and I think the results look pretty convincing.

Once these were all completed, I staged them up for placement on the deck.

 
All glued together.

 
Glued into place on the deck.

 
 
Next up, I finally gave up on trying to find information on how the ships bell was mounted and went with my intuition. I know that salvage divers place the bell in front of the wheelhouse structure, but there is no documentation on what it was mounted on. It was too big to just hang on the wall, so I went with the flag locker theory. 
 
Simple construction of the locker. I used some leftover grating for the dividers and made up a small box to form the locker. 

 

 
I then painted the locker up, printed out a set of signal flags to stuff in the cubbies and mounted the bell to the top of the locker.

 
All flags in place 

Flag locker in place.

 
After the flag locker was completed, I wanted to add some more details to the deck, so I made up a stack of crates that are covered by a tarp. I built up a bunch of scrap blocks and added some trim to them to give the tarp some shape and detail.

Next, I used the same method of soaking a tissue with some 50/50 water and clear Elmer's glue that I used on the hammocks.

Once it was all dry, it was time to add some weathering.

Here we have a nice dingy tarp. 

 

This looks like a good location to store these crates.

 
More deck details. I installed a couple of the forward mooring ropes. First, I soaked the ropes in a 50/50 water/glue solution to help hold the ropes shape.

Soaked ropes were then installed on the deck and laid out and left to dry. I used some Press-n-Seal to keep the glue from getting all over the deck.

Starboard side was then installed.

The Press-n-Seal was then removed and the ropes were then glued into place. Finally, a little weathering was added to the ropes to give them that '"muddy, used" look. The contemporary photo of the Cairo has what looks to be a longer mooring rope attached to one of the bitts and thrown up over the forward casemate where it would have been stored along the hammock nets. My guess is that there wasn't much room on the foredeck to store a lot of rope, so they made use of the space on the hurricane deck and stored the longer, bulkier rope there. I am going to add this feature as well, just because.

I also, finally trimmed up the anchor chains and attached the anchors to them. Still haven't decided exactly how I am going to display these. I may have one in place on the deck and the other just hanging overboard. I'll figure it out eventually.

 
Next was the installation of the center, forward and aft masts. 
Aft mast being secured to the stanchion.

 
Center mast. I didn't have any black scale rope on hand, so I used tan and dyed it black.

Center mast complete. Now the challenge is to see if I can finish up working around these masts without breaking them off.

 
Next up was the smokestack for the cookstove. Just some brass tubing for the pipe, the hood was made from copper sheeting and brass strips for the hood supports.

 
Smokestack installed.

Finally. I finished up the port side hammock and tarps and added some more deck details. I built up the hammock net walls that would have been installed between the last set of stanchions, but were removed to provide easier access to the ships boats. On one of the contemporary photos of the St Louis (Baron DeKalb) you can see these walls stored on top of the aft roof of the wheelhouse structure, so that is where I placed mine. I also threw on some additional crates and tarps scattered about and weathered them up. I think I need a few more details on the deck, so I'll give it some more thought and see what else I can come up with.

 
Lastly, as she sits right now. Please pardon the messy workbench, I forgot to tidy things up before taking the as-is picture.

 
Well that is all for this update, I hope to have more next time around. Thank you so much for stopping by. As always, I do appreciate all of the nice comments and likes.
 
-Brian

From the Manx Museum. The modeler is making a local type of boat for exhibition. Seeing this makes me feel like all my tools are under-used.
Note the use of an upended bench to support the end of the model.
 

Did I mention before that this will be a painfully slow log....   Summer is here and it seems the boat building business has ground to a snails pace.   
 
With the side of the hull planking complete, time to start planking the bottom of the hull with 1/2" x 1/16" planks.   Starting with the middle and work you way outwards.   Again very little bending and trimming of these planks to complete the bottom.   They more or less just fall into place.
 


 

 
just keep working your way outward...
 

 

 

Note the two holes in the bottom for the previously mentioned screws to connect model to the base stand.

 

Only regret here, as you have noticed, I did not stagger the bottom planks.    At the time I thought about it, but figured it was the bottom of the hull and it would be painted (no one would see it) so I thought I would just line up the planks.    Again, not a big deal, but the straight line just seem wrong.   I should have staggered the planks.   
 
Only part that requires any effort at all are the remaining pieces (below) to fill in the bottom of the hull.  But will a little patience and sanding, these pieces also fall easily into place

 

 
Below shows hull bottom complete and after an initial light sanding.   I still need to add the keel so I held off on a full sanding until the keel has been mounted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
One item I noticed as the very end of the hull where the planking meets the end part of the hull (part 29A) looks kind of rough...  Even later on after a full sanding that area will probably still look unfinished.   I am not sure yet, but probably the solution would be to overlay this area with at 5/16" plank,, just to make it look like one piece.
 
I will see what it looks like later on after filling and sanding.

 
 

Hello again everyone,
 
I have returned with another update. This time around it is not so much the progress made, but reworking areas that I found I built in error after more research and discussion.
 
The first redo, were the port and starboard #3 & #4 gun ports. I had built all 13 gun ports the same, with the piercing in between the top and bottom doors. After my trip to Vicksburg and seeing the actual doors (not the ones on the display, these are wrong as well), I discovered that these four doors were designed slightly different in that they have a solid top door and the bottom door is pierced. This was also evident on the contemporary photograph of the Cairo, I had just not noticed it before. I guess I was too busy looking at other areas and overlooked this little detail. 
 
New doors. I cheated a bit on these, with the addition of the tabs on the top doors. There isn't a lot of contact points on the small hinges to glue the doors to the boat, so I placed the tabs underneath and filed out slot in the door frame to receive the tabs. This makes them a lot more stable against accidentally knocking them off while working around them, not to mention it helps hold the doors in the proper position.

 

 

 
I did do a bit of new work just playing around with some deck furniture. I made up a few crates, to see how they would look. My plan is to populate the hurricane deck with several items. From many of the old photos you can tell that these decks were not clutter free, they were very busy.
 
The beginnings of one of the crates.

My first attempts all weathered up.

 

 
Another redo were the hog chain posts. On the plans the posts are shown to be fairly narrow and sort and I built them according to the plans. After researching these more I found that they were more "beefier" and actually extended above the long beam that runs the length of the hurricane deck and provides a center ridge for the canopies. Not sure of what this beam is called. I didn't take any pictures of the construction of the new hog chain posts, but I constructed a square tube to slide over the existing posts and placed small shims on the smaller ones to fill in the gaps. In the next few pictures you can sort of see what they look like and how I built them. I haven't installed the caps on them yet or the hog chains themselves, I wanted to leave them off until I was finished working on the other rebuilt details of the deck.
 
The last bit of rework that I did was the skylight/hatchways and aft funnels. There has been a lot of discussion on my build about this topic lately and I finally think that I have figured out how these were situated on the deck and used. 
 
First off, I believe that I was mistaken in the placement of the aft funnels. I have to agree with Johnhoward that in the old photo of the Cairo, the port aft funnel has been moved from it's normal place on the deck and set aside and that their actual placement is outboard of the hog chain posts and just aft of the forward ones as they are drawn on Ashley's HSR plans. Where I made the mistake was that I placed the skylight outboard of the posts instead of inboard of them. My initial thoughts on this placement was that the inboard wall of the skylight lined up perfectly with the exterior wall of the boiler room. This provided the perfect place for a ladder to go, enabling access in and out of the gun deck. However, moving the skylight inboard actually works better in two ways. One, it moves the ladder to the walkway area between the boiler room and the engine room getting out from directly behind the port and starboard #4 cannons. And two, it places the skylight halfway over the boiler room which allows for a standing platform to place supplies on while hauling it up and down the ladder to the holds.
 
So I set out removing and replacing the port side deck boards in this area. (note the shims on the hog chain posts).

 
New placement of the skylight. The area on the left side of the skylight is the overlap of the boiler room and where the platform will go.

New planking going in.

New planks sanded.

Varnished.

Platform and ladder installed.

Funnel temporarily installed, deck nails added. All it needs is a bit of weathering and I should be good to go.

 

 
Starboard side being reworked.

Starboard side planks replaced.

 
And both sides completed. I know that it is ugly right now, but the two areas where the deck board seams all line up will be covered with deck furniture so it will not be seen.

 
Now I am 100% confident that I have this right. The funnels are where they are supposed to be according to the plans and the skylight/hatchways are installed per the photographs. The interior of the skylight/hatches may not be exact, but there is no photographic or documented proof that I have been able to find of how they were built, so this interpretation seems to make the most sense.
 
Now on to finishing up the starboard side hammock racks and other deck features.
 
Thanks to all for the likes and stopping by.
 
-Brian