realworkingsailor

Nice first ship I would leave the parts on the plastic trees for painting. Makes a nice, safe handle to hold onto. You can do any touch-ups later after assembly. Andy

I'm sure it's easy enough to measure off. Andy

We finally get to see your work! As everyone else has said, there's no such thing as a "dumb" model. Another alternative paint is to go with acrylic. Polyscale is a great brand from Testors that they've discontinued, but there's still a fair supply on the market. You can clean up with water, and there's little to no smell. Either which way, I do recommend washing the kit parts in a mild dish soap solution. Let it dry thoroughly and apply a primer. I'm a personal fan of Tamiya spray primer, works with just about any type of paint, acrylic, enamel or lacquer. Looking forward to following your progress. Andy

That's some tidy rigging. Very impressive. Keep up the good work Andy

That might be for an iron ball..... Just picture a 12 pound wad of flaming cotton.....

Dan, most likely the eye in the rope would be stretched a little and the deadeye hammered in with a mallet. The tension in the shrouds is adjusted with the deadeye lanyards, not the shroud seizings. Andy

Very nice. Looks pretty good. Andy

Paging Dr. Per! We have a patient who's not yet come to terms with his addiction.

What's really sobering is that locomotive probably only had a working pressure of somewhere from 60 to 80 pounds of saturated steam. Later modern superheated locomotives, which carry have a working pressure of 150 - 275 pounds, where much more spectacular and incredibly deadly. Andy

I'd never copper plated before I my Pegasus, to be honest, it's not a hard thing to accomplish, just a bit tedious. Andy

Just a thought... If you go with a door, typically ship's doors open outwards so that water pressure would force the door tighter into it's frame (just like the gun ports), making it easier to keep weather tight. A door opening inwards risks getting blown open by the first wave that decides to crash the party. Andy

Maybe it's just me.... But it seems like the hinges were moulded on the outside of the door frame, and not the actual door.... Most modern weather tight doors should stand proud of their frames anyway. If it was up to me, I'd fill in that concave door and redo the porthole and handle at the new surface. Otherwise, the closest is the one on the right in your photos. Andy

Over reacting? You wanna see over reacting?! **twitch**

I see what you mean in your second photo. It is most likely hiding a steam safety valve (pop valve). This is a sprung valve that will lift if the boiler experiences too much pressure. I'm guessing the pipe was added to keep live steam from blasting directly into the engineer's and fireman's faces. Here's the inner workings: In your sketch, live steam is collected in that funnel shaped pipe in the steam dome. At the base of that is the throttle valve. This is a saturated steam engine, so there is no superheater, the steam is then sent directly to the cylinders. The straight pipe coming up from the cylinders is the exhaust pipe. You can see how it narrows as it extends, but flares just before the base of the stack. By forcing the exhaust steam out at high speed (but not high pressure) it creates a vacuum in the smoke box (that's the compartment ahead of the boiler flues, the pipes leading from the firebox forward). The vacuum creates a draft drawing air from gratings under the fire bed, through the fire and forward through the boiler flues. The effect of this is creating a very hot fire. Hot fire equals more steam generated in a given amount of time equals greater speed/power from the cylinders. More modern locomotives used a small steam driven turbine to draw air when the locomotive was not being worked. The other "dome" (with the lever) over the firebox is most likely part of a pump/injector system to get water into the boiler. Later locomotives do not admit cold water directly over the firebox. This is partly the reason so many early locomotives blew up. If the water in the boiler became too low and the crown sheet (top sheet) of the firebox became uncovered, a panicked injection of cold water would cause it to fracture. Steam at pressure would rupture the sheet, drastically causing the pressure in the boiler to drop, which in turn would cause any water remaining in the boiler to immediately flash into steam. Steam increases in volume 1600 times from water (at standard atmospheric pressure), considering a boiler of the size you've got, a volume of, say 1.5 to 2 tonnes, you can just imagine the effect. Another thought, is it possible your engine would have been of the "Planet" type (like your picture)? They where one of the earliest locomotives produced in large numbers, starting around 1830. Even by the late 1830s they were starting to be superseded by more improved designs, which would have made some of them available on the surplus market. Andy

This steam fan in me just has to comment.... An exhaust steam pipe would not have some off that dome behind the chimney. Live steam is collected with an internal dry pipe and sent to the cylinders, whose exhaust is sent via a venturi tube and petticoat up the main chimney. This is how draft is also created in the firebox. I could go on at length...but that might bore some people Andy

Duct tape....?

What's this? Sjors actually posting photos of progress? Has the world gone mad? Andy

Great work. I'll get there one of these days. Andy

You've gotta love photos taken outside in the sun! Very nice Andy

Whoa... you've been quietly busy all this time.... very nice job on the planking... Andy

Using a pencil jig is about the most accurate way to do it. Make sure your hull is level and you work on a flat, smooth surface. A string, no matter how tight you pull it, will always find the most direct route form point A to point B, unfortunately over a curved surface, it's not necessarily a straight line. Andy

I'm just wandering over to your Mirage build hoping for an update......

**Walks in.... has a good look at the goings on.....** ......sigh....... **turns around and leaves**

You sure it's not some deep seated psychological fear of starting another build? Subconsciously sabotaging spars in order to postpone the inevitable...? Andy

Looks like a very interesting build. Don't see too many ships of this era being built. Nice collection of workshop toys too... Andy