shipmodel

CHAPTER 8- A Major Milestone and a Rabbit Hole
 
Since my last progress report almost three months ago, I have been working steadily on the model.  A couple of weeks ago, I reached a major milestone, I fastened the two hull halves together.  Before I could do this, I spent considerable time adding necessary hull openings; hawse pipes, mooring pipes, porthole linings, the propeller shaft tube, and piping inlets and outlets.  Once the halves were fastened, I added the keel plating and the propeller boss reinforcement plates.  The final keel plate aft awaits installation of the lower rudder support shoe, that first requires installation of the rudder and propeller.  The White supports utilize the female threads embedded in the bottom of the hull but the supports themselves are temporary.  The grey color is  primer.  As usual, the digital camera shows areas that need to be cleaned up.
 

Much fun figuring out how to get decent mouldings! But I finally figured it out.
 
First round: I used an old exacto knife blade, shaped with a grinding wheel in the lathe. At this point, I was still trying to cut the blank at the angle of the tumblehome. I mounted it in a holder:

 
I expected the handle riding against a fence to stop at the right depth:
 

 
But this failed miserably. For some reason, the depth was not controlled at all, and the top edge waved up and down. And the cutter did not define the outer edges, just the face; so the moulding top curves did not gracefully flow into the sides of the profile; there was always a little ridge or the curve got cut off.
 
Next idea. I made a new cutter, now abandoning the idea of cutting the moulding at the angle of the tumblehome. It was too complicated, and at this scale did not show at all. So now I tried a simpler profile, straight up and down, and I provided sides to the profile that would run against the blank so the curves would flow evenly down into the edge of the blank. The edges of these sides were softened with a file so they would not cut, only guide.
 
I cut the profile in a Lie-Nielsen A2 steel blank (for his moulding plane; https://www.lie-nielsen.com/products/beading-tool-blade-blanks, 5 for $10). This made a fantastic cutter. I was able to shape it partly with ball end mills in the milling machine, and partly with files. And its greater thickness greatly reduced chatter. Lie-Nielsen claims it does not have to be hardened, and I will see if it starts to dull or not before I am done with this shape.
 
At first, I tried just running the cutter along the edge of the blank, counting on a fence to stop the cut at the right depth:

 
This did not work well at all. The upper edge was amazingly wavy. Perhaps the more powerful cutter grabbed at grain more aggressively.
 
So the final idea, which works perfectly, was to build a holder for the cutter, angling the cutter at 15 degrees, and with a fence riding against the side.
The workbench top now acts as a stop. I put a number of slips of manila folder and typing paper between the cutter and the workbench top to lift the cutter up so it just takes a whisper of a cut. When it cuts no more, I take away a slip of paper from underneath, dropping the cutter down slightly, and cut again. I do this repeatedly until the full profile is cut. You can see below the sweet curl of a cut coming off the cutter. The exacto blade cutter only shaved off sawdust.
 

 
I then cut the blank to the right thickness, keeping a piece of typing paper against the fence. In my earlier efforts, the metal of the fence was discoloring the moulding; the paper keeps it clean.
 

 
And voila, perfect mouldings:
 

 
This turned out to be much more difficult to control than I had originally expected, but a lot of experimentation and I got there.
 
 
 
 
 

Hi Toni - 
 
An excellent idea and project.  From the look of the finished hull, you are incorporating most of the techniques and details that a ship modeler needs to learn.
This epitomizes what I think should be central to the Guild's mission - setting standards for achievement and then teaching and demonstrating how to reach them.
 
I will be following along with great interest.
 
Dan

Agreed Mark!
 
A minor manufacturing jobs done this week together with one complicated and frustrating task.
 
Starting with the job. With the temporary metal masts in place the next job was to make the boots.

 
I had decent photographs from which to produce the drawings. The only difference between the two boots was the difference in the mast diameter.
 

 

 
The boots are canvas but at model scale material does not work well so they were made from painted wood. They were made in 3 parts with an intermediate aluminium disc to simulate the clamping band.
 

 
Then came the frustrating task of sorting out the locations and designs of the various mast bands for both masts.
 
Unfortunately when it comes to masts photographers don't seem to find them very interesting. The photographs I have are therefore indistinct and confusing. The plans don't really help with anything other than the locations of the intersections of the rigging lines. Trying to interpret the photos did my head in but in the end I think I got it about right. I now have loads of sketches which I hope I can understand when I come to use them. I have included a selection below/
 

 

 

 

 

Thanks (belatedly) for the kind comments above and the thumbs-up !
 
********************
 

Some post-summer progress
 
It is quite amazing, how time passes – more than three months since the last up-date ! OK, I have been in sort of semi-vacation for six weeks in Spain, but then money-earning work seriously got into my way.
 
Normally, I leave painting as much as possible to the very end, just before the assembly stage. This avoids damage to the paintwork by handling the model or the problem of removing dust from it. However, I felt that the project had progressed to a point, where I wanted to see how everything comes together. This also boosts the motivation, rather getting lost in fabricating endlessly little pieces.
 
So, the model was given a good cleaning to remove dust, grease etc. The sequence of colours had to be carefully considered in order to work from the light ones to the dark ones. I also wanted to work inside out, because in this way masking was facilitated.
 

Photograph of 1876 showing quite clearly the livery of SMS WESPE at the time.
 
The whole paint-work is done with acrylics from Vallejo (marketed here in France under the brand ‘Prince August’) and Schmincke (a German manufacturer).
 
Hence, I started with the white of the inside of the casemate, the bulwark and the walls of the deckhouse, which was spray-painted with the airbrush. Unfortunately, I had some trouble with the airbrush that had not been used for a while. Apparently, some paint had accumulated in the nozzle from insufficient cleaning over time. This particularly affected the white, which seems to have comparatively bigger pigment particles and is more difficult to spray anyway. Due to the various bits and pieces added to the bulwark etc., it is virtually impossible to rub down the paint and begin afresh … so the white paintwork is not as good as I had hoped for …
 

 
The decks were not originally laid in wood (with the exception of the quarter deck and the floor of the casemate) or covered in linoleum at that time. They appear to have been painted with a mixture of tar and black oil-paint, with sand mixed into to provide a non-slip surface. I assumed that this mixture would attain a dark greyish colour with time due to weathering, similar to older tarmac. Prince August 996 (German ‘Panzergrau’ - tank-grey) seemed to be a suitable choice. All the deck areas were sprayed white together with the other parts to give a better key for hand-brushing. I began with painting the kicking-strips and water-ways between the bulwark stanchions and then progressed to several coats on the deck areas. All this painting was done by brush, as it would have been virtually impossible to mask-off the bulwark.
 

 
The paint-schemes of the Prussian and then Imperial German Navy ships are reasonably well known for the years after 1867, as the ordinances were published in official gazettes that have survived. For the first couple of service years of SMS WESPE, the 1874 ordinance paint-scheme would have been applicable. This specifies that hulls below the waterline were to be red and above black, with a white boot-topping; another white strip was to be painted below the main rails; all ginger-bread work in white as well as all superstructures and deck-houses, ventilators, etc. Funnels and masts were to be painted yellow (buff). Photographic evidence indicates that there were some variations to this scheme for SMS WESPE, but I will discuss these, when I come to describe the painting of respective parts.
 
First, the narrow visible part of the underwater hull was painted in Vallejo 71.269 (red RAL 3000). This area was then masked off with Tamiya masking tape. The inside of the hull was also masked and the hull sprayed black.
 

 
The bulwark-rail appears to have been varnished wood. It was first given a coat of Prince August 77 (bois-wood), followed by a light wash of 834 (bois transparent), which has a slightly lighter tone, followed by another light wash of Vallejo 71.074 (beige). Finally, a very light wash of Vallejo (transparent orange) was applied, which gives the wood a deep, warm tint. 
 
The images above show the ‘raw’ paintwork. It still needs to be touched up and items such as the scrollwork needs to be refined. Eventually, there will be also a light weathering and ‘griming’ with pastels – the idea is to just show the effects of being in use, but with good maintenance.
 
To be continued ....

Hi Bill,
 
Actually, the show was this past weekend - last Saturday.  The show was a success, overall.  A video team made a review of the models present:
 
 
Somewhat perplexingly to me, personally, they chose to show only the incomplete starboard side of my model, but what can one do?  Any publicity is good publicity.

Christian, you really got me thinking as a result of your kind comment and suggestion in July regarding my drawings. Indeed, your comment caused me to spend the last several months redrawing and expanding the set.
 
Why have I backtracked on the drawings, and not kept up with the planking on the actual model, which is now tantalizingly close to completion?
 
I realized that I have invested decades of research into this particular ship. And yet, I have only a number of incomplete and inconsistent drawings to show for it. They were more like notes to myself done just in time for the next part of the build. They had grown incrementally over time, as I learned more and went back to adjust things in areas where I needed. They had become a real jumble of information, sometimes contradictory from deck plan to sheer to body plan.
 
I also realized that I had drawn them decades before I became aware of Steele’s instructions in the 18th century on drawing a ship’s draughts. I realized that my original drawings were pretty rough and ready. Good enough for building the model, but not entirely accurate in their construction.
 
For the sheer, for example, many years ago I had painstakingly measured height of things like wales from the Xerox prints I had obtained from the National Maritime Museum, then plotted these on each station line. I then linked them together with a long flexible ruler. I had no idea at the time that these lines were actually created as arcs of a circle with 3 defined points at the head, midpoint and stern. Mine were close, but not the real thing.
 
In the spirit of creating an accurate record of my research, and enjoying the challenge of recreating the drawings as Thomas Slade would have done, I started a redraw.
 
And then I came to realize just how distorted the original Admiralty prints had become over 250 years. The height of a toptimber in the body plan was as much as several inches off relative to the same height shown in the sheer, and the scale at one end of the sheer was several inches different from the scale at the other end of the same drawing. The scale itself was so fuzzy that measuring against it could be interpreted as much as an inch or two either way. The inboard works drawing was off by half a foot in some places. This didn’t matter for a 3/16” = 1’-0” model, but it mattered a lot when trying to draw the body plan according to the Steele instructions, when a few inches off meant that the geometries in each frame would not line up.
 
So, I had to measure and fudge, until I could get the geometry to align with the measurements off the original prints. I made tick strips of relevant heights from the body plan, then adjusted a little where the sheer showed something different, then tried the geometrical construction; going back and forth until everything lined up.
 

 
I learned more precisely how the geometries of a frame related to each other:

 
 
and here is the complete body plan now accurately constructed:
 

 
From this, I began redrawing the inboard works and sheer. I also decided to draw the orlop and holds including the magazines. I never drew those, because my dockyard framing system omitted the magazines; and everything below the gun deck was a mystery to me. Now I know much more about what was going on down there.
 

 
These are still works in progress, shown here mainly to let you know that I have not fallen off the face of the earth, or stopped work on the Bellona.
I may post some insights I gained while drawing these, about the design and construction of these ships. For example, I finally found an answer to a question I posted several years ago about the quarterdeck beams seeming to raise their roundup as they approached the stern. Now I know what is going on, and I will share in a subsequent post!
 
Best wishes,
 
Mark
 
 
 
 
 
 

Thank you, John!  I am glad to hear that you will continue with your beautiful model.  I’ll look forward to seeing your updates,
 
Well, last night I completed all of the port side touchups and got the last of the channels installed.  The upper main wale and the lower port enhancements still need re-touching, but I won’t bother with that until I have fit all of the buttressing knees of the channels.
 
For a change, I’ll let the pictures do the talking:
 









 
Interestingly, the walnut ink is not as reversible as I thought, in all cases.  To some degree, it permanently stains the red ocher, in particular.  When I did the QGs, there was some blotchiness in the wash-coat that I thought I’d soften later.  Well, I couldn’t even out the tones as well as I would like, in all places:
 

 
‘Not a terrible concession to a lesson learned, though.
 
So, we are off to the show!  If you are there, please stop by and say hello.  At 10 am, I’ll be giving a presentation on the model, as a representative of the Shipcraft Guild of New York City.
 
After the show, I’m going to take a few weeks away from the project, as I’m a little burnt from the past three months 🥴
 
Be well, and more to follow!

Hi again - 
 
I forgot to add my two cents to the discussion of the big gun tactics for the Maine - 
 
She was the first "ship of the line" the United States designed after the Civil War, almost 30 years earlier.
(The USS Texas was designed later but launched earlier)  However, it is not a line of battle if there is only one ship in it.
The design of the ship changed radically over several years as the ideas for its proposed use evolved.
The final design of the Maine, with its two turrets overhanging the beam of the ship, reflect the final tactical doctrine.
If the Maine ever came up against an enemy line of battle, the plan was for her to turn towards the largest of the enemy ships.
All four turret guns would fire forwards, ignoring any self-inflicted damage, until the Maine could ram the enemy with her reinforced bow.
Fortunately, she was never called on to do so. 
 
Here is what the enemy might have seen.
 

Hi there - 
 
Another very interesting build using modern technology.  I will be following with lots of interest.
 
I did a USS Maine in the same scale some time ago and found out two things that might be useful to you.  First, although authorized, the torpedo boats were never carried by the Maine in the two years between her commissioning in 1896 and her end in 1898.  I had to scrap the ones that I started.  You can certainly add them to your model, and they look good, but not historically accurate.
 
Also, there were a series of photographs taken of the entire ship from various angles and others taken on deck in several places.  These are in the Library of Congress and have been scanned at 1200 bpi, so they can be enlarged to an amazing degree, which can show many construction details that do not show up anywhere else.  They are free to download from the Library's website, which I don't have at the moment.  Let me know and I can dig it up for you.  In the meanwhile, below is what can be done with an enlargement of one of the overall shots.   Hope it is useful to you.
 
Dan

Just a quick update...I wanted to get the caprail all finished before the show this Saturday.   It really finishes it off.  Just like along the quarter deck, the cap rail is laser cut for you for the bow.  The outboard edges were rounded off and each section was painted off the model.   Then the forward-most pieces were glued on the model.

 
Then a laser cut spacer (looks like a small pointed arow) the width of the catheads was used to help position the next longer piece on both sides.  This is an important step.  Its easier to widen the slot later and not so easy to make it smaller so be cautious here.  Than the hance caps were made as before.  The two halves glued together so we have a nice wide piece.  The hance caps were shaped and sanded for a snug fit.   Then care was taken to eliminate any seams between it and the cap rail.   
 

I am happy this is completed and I can move to the deck now.  I will add the margin planks next before starting the coamings just to get them over with.
 

 
 

Good morning.

Time to make and attach the sheer strake. There is a thread attached to the frames that indicates the junction between the undersurface of the covering board and the sheer strake. I decided to spile the entire length of the sheer strake, so first I had to put together cardstock long enough to cover the entire length of the sheer.
 

 
The cardstock was cut to the approximate shape of the sheer and then tacked to the frames with double sided tape.
 

 
Marks were transferred to the cardstock, and the shape of the curves was defined with ships curves.
 

 
The cardstock is now applied to a sheet of Castello that is about 0.053” thick. This is thicker than the rest of the planking, which will be 0.047” thick. The picture also shows the starboard side sheer strake, which was previously created using the same process.
 

 
Widths of the sheer plank were obtained from the planking diagram and transferred to the Castello sheet. Then the plank was carefully cut out and sanded to the needed widths.
 

 
Port and starboard sheer strakes. I could have divided the long segment into individual segments as indicated by the planking diagram, but I thought it was a good idea to do the first plank as one continuous plank, to serve as a baseline against which all the other planks would lie. I think that worked out nicely.
 

 
There were some problems along the way in getting to a smooth lie of the sheer strake, but all is well that ends well. The one long strake was divided into its respective parts as indicated by the planking diagram; the challenge there was to make sure that no kinks occurred at the butt joints between plank segments.
 

 
Now that is a very satisfying curve.

The aft bulwark is in!  I’ll do a multi-perspective photoshoot after everything is prettied up, just before the show, but here’s a sneak-peak preview that illustrates the improved tumblehome:
 

 
The three gusset supports make for a very sturdy construction!
 
I’ve also begun patterning the new channels.  The Lemineur monograph for the SP is a great help with these small details:
 



It is hard to photograph, but the new channels are tapered for watershed:

 
I’ll have to layout the shroud and stay locations, in relation to the guns.  There’s a possibility I may have the main channel in place for the show.

A quickie post to show that I finally found a proper use for this palm plane I bought awhile back from Lee Valley (love their stuff). This hand plane has made it very easy to plane the edges of planks down to their needed widths. So far I am doing this while holding the plank in my hand, but I think I will build a jig to hold the plank on its edge so that it will be more secure and so I can get to the full length of the plank in one swipe.
 
Check out the palm plane! It has been sitting in a drawer waiting for its shining moment.
 

Well that was a long summer shipyard shut down. I sort of got distracted into reconnecting with family and friends and that together with a backlog of outdoor tasks kept me out of the workshop. While summer continues to hang on the days are starting to feel a bit autumnal and the winter building season has therefore opened.
 
I recommenced by sorting out the jib stay outriggers. I cut a card triangle to the plan shape of the outrigger and marked up the hull position using a laser level.
 

 

 
I transferred the outrigger shape to paper and used this to size the struts and get the angle correct.
 

 
The soldering job was a bit better than the last effort.
 

 
I glued the outrigger mounting brackets to the hull in the previously marked positions.
 

 
To get the outriggers mounted horizontally I made an end support from a piece of dowel.
I then sized the top arm of the tripod to maintain the correct angle of the outrigger.
 

 

 
The bracket which holds the aft end of the jib stay to the hull was then mounted.
 

 
Small pins were then turned to fasten the outriggers to the hull. To test the run of the stays I fixed a temporary line.
 

 
The net job was the dolphin striker. The stem was taper turned from .093" brass rod and this in turn was soldered to a short length of tube to take the lower jib stay. The upper end loop was bent from wire and inserted into an dial hole drilled in the stem.
 

 

 
The hoop was then attached to the hull mounted bracket (installed 2 years ago). How time flies.
 

 
I now need to catch up on all your progress during my absence.

The post op appointment went well stitches removed, looks a bit ugly at the moment will be able to get it wet again in a couple more days. Doc was pleased with the progress and my feedback regarding the lack of pain. There is a little bruising that will subside over time.
 
I told him that i was using my fingers and he was pleased told me to keep doing it, I confided that I would lay of the WWF boxing for a while yet though, Made him laugh during these stressful days for the medical profession.
 
Cheers Michael

The particular challenge of erecting the aft bulwark pieces is that I don’t have the stock stern plate, in place, to guide their placement.  It is helpful that the forward bulwarks are in place, as they provide an anchor point, but they do nothing to help establish the slope of tumblehome that should be present.
 
The first step was to spend as much time as necessary fettling the lap joint to ensure that the part seated snuggly, along the upper main wale.  With that much established, I could secure additional glue tabs to the inside face of the bulwark, just as I had done with the forward bulwarks.  It was also necessary to fir-out, behind the upper main wale, so that these glue tabs had a firm landing spot.
 
Whereas with the forward bulwarks, I glued the bulwarks in-place, and then secured the gusset pieces, afterwards - the process reverses for the aft bulwarks because it is the gussets that establish the slope of tumblehome by providing a positive stop to clamp against.
 
At the very beginning of this project, I drew the transom by simply tracing the outer profile of the bulwark ends to the increased breadth of the transom; the additional 1/2” would enable me to add the missing 6th window at all three levels.  This was my initial drawing:
 

 
As a side note, it is funny to look back at my first attempt to draw the quarter galleries; the results were poorly scaled and relatively crude, as I was attempting to include all five false windows along the lower tier if the QG.
 
Anyway, at the time that I made this drawing, it was pointed out to me that the top of the bulwarks appear to flare outboard, again, at the very top.  Back then, I was not too concerned about this.
 
At this stage, though, I can see that the finished bulwark piece does not look right at all, if I allow it to flare out at the top; the whole upper structure of the ship changes in a way that is neither pleasing, nor reflective of actual practice.  The only thing to do, here, was to shape my gussets in a way that would pull these bulwarks in more, thus providing a nicely sloping tumblehome.
 
Frankly, this is more art than science.  I simply manipulated the bulwark, inboard towards the centerline, until I had a pleasing profile.  I then took a measurement from the bulwark rabbet to the centerline, along the bottom edge of this window tier: 1 1/2” to center, and 3” overall.  This seemed like it would be adequate.
 
So, I clamped and taped the bulwark in this attitude, so that I could make card gusset templates.  I then made the gussets with all necessary beveling, and added a prop leg to make them a little stiffer for the eventual glue-up of the bulwark piece:
 


 
I went to bed feeing really good about this.  The part would have some minor tension, but I had increased glue surface area significantly enough to cancel out those forces.  In fact, there will be a third, aft-most gusset fitted after the glue-up.
 
Then, I woke up the next day and remembered my original layout drawing.  I took some measurements and found that I had effectively reduced the available space for this top tier of six windows by 1/4”.  In fact, my new stern, at this top-most level, won’t be much broader than the stock kit stern-plate, which only has five windows.  I began to feel a bit of panic creeping in.
 
Before glueing-in the bulwark piece, I thought it might be prudent to take some really good measurements, and do a little drafting to see what a revised window layout might look like.  One quarter inch doesn’t sound like much, but it is quite significant across this short span.  If I found that the reduced breadth resulted in a cramped window layout, I would be forced to buy back at least an 1/8”, in breadth, thus compromising my ideal tumblehome.  This would require very fiddly firring of the gusset pieces I had just glued-in, so my fingers were crossed tight.
 
Here is the new layout that I arrived at this morning:
 

 
And here, I’ve detailed one pane to get a better sense of the proportions.:
 

The original by Berain:

 
Mine isn’t the best drawing, but it’s good enough to get a sense of proportion.  I’ll do a much better vellum drawing, when the time comes for it.  I found that I only had to reduce each window pane by 1/32”, and each pilaster by a heavy 1/64” to get back the heavy 1/4” I had lost.
 
And so, I will go ahead and glue-in the upper bulwark, in the next few days.  I’ve been busily filling the skid joins, touching up the bulwarks, and establishing the location of the mizzen chanels.  A whole lot still has to happen in the next two weeks, but I am confident that I will be on-track for the show.
 
Thank you for stopping by!

Truly excellent results.  Congratulations.
I am a little old to work my way up the learning curve, but I am blown away by what can be accomplished.
I wonder what may be around the next technological curve.
I just hope that we will never get to the point of duplicating a fine old wooden model of the Constitution with the push of a button,
 
If you continue as you are going, this will be an amazing model of the Maine.
Looking forward to following your progress,.
 
Dan

Hi HG - 
 
Those small guns moved around a lot.  You can put them in several places.  It's your choice as Captain.
As just an idea, I chose to mount gatling guns near the base of the boat cranes.
Here are some images that I relied on, although you probably already have them, and the final result.
I hope that helps a little
 
Dan
 
The design of the gun

 
 
The gatling mounted on a ship's rail

 
The gun on the finished model

 

Truly excellent results.  Congratulations.
I am a little old to work my way up the learning curve, but I am blown away by what can be accomplished.
I wonder what may be around the next technological curve.
I just hope that we will never get to the point of duplicating a fine old wooden model of the Constitution with the push of a button,
 
If you continue as you are going, this will be an amazing model of the Maine.
Looking forward to following your progress,.
 
Dan

Truly excellent results.  Congratulations.
I am a little old to work my way up the learning curve, but I am blown away by what can be accomplished.
I wonder what may be around the next technological curve.
I just hope that we will never get to the point of duplicating a fine old wooden model of the Constitution with the push of a button,
 
If you continue as you are going, this will be an amazing model of the Maine.
Looking forward to following your progress,.
 
Dan

Truly excellent results.  Congratulations.
I am a little old to work my way up the learning curve, but I am blown away by what can be accomplished.
I wonder what may be around the next technological curve.
I just hope that we will never get to the point of duplicating a fine old wooden model of the Constitution with the push of a button,
 
If you continue as you are going, this will be an amazing model of the Maine.
Looking forward to following your progress,.
 
Dan

It was a bit of a challenge but not any more than learning how to use a regular filament printer. Similar to a typical filament deposition 3D printer, resin printers use .STL files that are sliced through a specific program  - for resin printers they are converted to a format for 'stereo lithography' printing.  I got the resin printer because I knew I would need it for some parts on the USS Maine that my regular filament printer would be challenged to successfully print.  With a smaller nozzle (0.3mm) you can print  small parts with decent detail but the resin printer takes it to the next level.  
 
you do have to learn a bit about how to position the parts for the resin printer and then there's the whole issue of having resin and a wash station and curing box (or use the sun). I go through 2 pairs of rubber gloves every time I use the resin printer for something.  One big advantage with the resin printer is is that you can print multiples of the same part in the same time it takes to print just one.  So when I printed that last Hotchkiss revolving cannon I didn't do just one, I did 12 since I knew I have other ships in work that will need them.   

Hotchkiss cannon turned out well, sure are small, had to use a loupe to be able to paint!