Mirabell61

Nice work Siggi,
the painters are doing a good job
 
Nils

good looking superstructure Javelin,
the windowframes are nice and look like precise cuts
 
Nils

Thank you Nils, I tell him.

Nice work Siggi,
the painters are doing a good job
 
Nils

Hello,
now the coamings for the gratings and the stairway are ready. The carpenters preparing all for building the ladders tomorrow. 

Looks like the planking is going to start real soon Keith, the frame work looks brilliant with the least amount of sanding to be done 👍
 
Regards
Richard

Nice pick up on that shaft, Keith. She's looking 'the ant's pants'!
 
John

Phil, Tom, Pat - you are all too kind ---- and a good balance to my wife who finds plenty to critisise about me.
 
The weather here continues to be mild. Yesterday Scotland had it warmest January day ever recorded - 19c. In the south it was somewhat cooler, never making it above  a pleasant 14c. Apparently a southerly wind is blowing straight up from the Sahara delivering plenty of warmth and tons of red dust. the dust hasn't arrived yet.
 
All this means that I got plenty of time in the workshop over the weekend. This is a good thing because the rest of the week is taken up with Grandparent duties.
 
Anyway here is the update.
 
Having got to the area of the prop shaft I decided to be clever and install the prop shaft tunnel now rather than later. The final section of keel has a knuckle and I very carefully shaped the aft keel piece so that the inner edge provided the alignment
reference for the prop shaft. I know that sounds confusing but all may become clear later.
 
The aft keel piece was installed and glued in place.

I then turned the shaft tunnel and cut a slot along its length. This slot is inserted into the keel to locate the tunnel in its correct position and at the correct angle.

I thought I would avoid cutting away the frames that supported the keel so I cut the shaft tunnel into segments and glued these in place. The next picture should make clear my earlier confusing description.
 

Now that would have been great if only I hadn't messed up the position of the shaft. This was about 1/8" below where it needed to be (i.e too high in the hull). The good thing was that I found this now rather than later.
 
So off it came and on to plan B.
 
The aft keel section was  well stuck by this stage so it was a case of some tricky sawing to get the alignment section back to where it needed to be.

I remade the shaft tunnel and threw away the idea of fitting it in segments. it was a daft idea after all. I then glued it in place having checked and rechecked it was in the right place.

I then proceeded with installing the last of the frames.  I also installed slotted keel pieces, the slot being necessary to take the somewhat elaborate stern post. The bracing "floors" also continued to go in.


The final keel piece then went in. This final piece defines the angle of the transom which I think I got right.

Then I left it overnight and everything dried rock solid.

If I screwed anything up this is now all firewood.😬

Very nice work Eberhard,
and a smart Idea with that repare-tape, thanks for sharing, a few weeks ago I was looking for something alike to strap down a boat on the Ergenstrasse
 
Nils

Very nice work Eberhard,
and a smart Idea with that repare-tape, thanks for sharing, a few weeks ago I was looking for something alike to strap down a boat on the Ergenstrasse
 
Nils

The last two weeks were spent travelling on business, to Stockholm (including a renewed visit to the Maritime Museum there 😉 ) and to Brussels. Friday and Saturday I spent at the information desk of Association des Amis du Musée de la Marine, which has been finally re-opened (see other thread on this). So, not much time in the workshop, but I still managed to complete the
 
Banisters
 
These banisters are flimsy matters so that I left them to the end as far as possible, still following the pattern to work ‘inside-out’ in order to not damage delicate items.
 
The information is somewhat patchy as to what the banisters actually looked like. They are represented in the lithographs and on one or the other photograph, one can see parts of them. Basically, there are two types: bend pipe-work and straight stanchions located in sockets that support a wooden rail.

As the metal parts are laid out in yellow on the lithography, they appear to have been made from brass (or bronze). One picture shows bare metal for the pipe-work. Hence, I decided to make them from bare 0.3 mm brass wire. At the moment this looks rather bright, but I assume that it will tarnish somewhat with time.

 The pipework ones were bent over a scale copy of the lithograph. The ends, where they attach to the stairs appear to have been flattened, which duly was represented on the model.
 
For the ones with wooden rail at the end of the deckhouse, I cheated a bit and instead of having individual stanchions, I flattened the wire in the area of the wooden rail to have a support for it and bent the stanchions down sharply. The sockets were cut from 0.5 mm OD brass tube, which is a sliding fit on the 0.3 mm wire. The ends were milled down to the appropriate angle. The wooden rail was fashioned from two laser-cut strips of paper laminated together with varnish. With hind-sight, fashioning all parts from brass and soldering them together in a jig might have given crispier results.

 All parts were cemented in place with clear varnish.
 
Overall, these quite simple parts took surprisingly long to produce.
 
To be continued ....

Thanks, belatedly, gentlemen ...
 

Well, some traveling and struggles with tiny and flimsy parts caused again a long delay until this update …
 
Installing the ship’s boats
 
This detail was the most dreaded of all, due to the flimsy character of the parts. The davits had been produced a long time ago, as were the blocks for the hoisting tackle, and, of course the four boats.
 
There are no pictures, except the very first photograph of SMS WESPE that indicate the arrangements for the boats hanging outboard on the davits. While it seems to have been a quite common arrangement on smaller warships of the time, it was already noted in reports by captains of Prussian gunboats ten years earlier, boats in such a position are prone to be carried away by seas of even moderate height. So, quite early on barrings and boat skids had been installed on the WESPE-class boat and the davits lengthened to lift up the boats. For this final arrangement, various images are available.
 
Somehow, the boats must have been prevented from swinging in their hoisting gear. A typical arrangement would have been a spar lashed across the davits and the boats pulled against them with cross-wise boat ties. In the absence of other pictorial evidence, this is what I opted for. There were, however, still some detail questions open: were those ties strips of heavy canvas or braided rope-work and did the spars have bolsters around them to prevent damage to the boats? For the latter questions there are examples of both option on photographs and (contemporary) models. 
 
I recently visited again the Maritime Museum in Stockholm, which reminded me of a possible solution on a model of the same period. The boat-ties seem to have been heavy canvas and had triangular rings at their ends. They are attached to an eye at the top of the davit, run around the boat, then around the opposite davit, and are hauled taught with a tackle of blocks hooked in between them. No bolsters on the spars.
 
I decided to leave out the tackle and just use a lashing between the rings to tighten the ties. The lashing will be difficult enough to access behind the boats.
 
Boat ties arranged on a package of book-repair tape
 
The triangular rings were fashioned from 0.15 mm tinned copper-wire wound around the tang of a triangular file with 1 mm sides. The windings were cut open with a scalpel. The ties themselves are narrow strips of a special kind of material: a kind of very fine silk-paper tape with a backing of a thermos-setting acrylic glue. This material is used in book repair for instance. Brand and other details can be seen on the photograph. The 1 mm strips were cut with a new no. 11 scalpel blade and folded in two. The material is slightly tacky which is helpful when aligning the halves and inserting the rings. The glue was set with the help of my hot-air soldering gun set to 110°C as per instructions. The halves were pushed together using a tool as used in the old days to rub down transfer lettering. The ties were painted in Vallejo ‘hemp’. 
 
Boat ties in detail
 
It took some tries to work out a workable sequence for installing the davits, spar, boat-ties and boat-tackles, considering also the difficulty of access. Eventually the ties were fastened to the davits and the tackles hooked into the latter with the loose end already belayed to the clamp on the back of the davits.
 
Davits fitted out and ready for installation on board
 
The davits then were inserted into their sockets and fixed with a drop of white glue. Next the spar is lashed to the davits. Then the ties were arranged in preparation of the boats and the lashing is reeved. 

Davits ready to receive the boat.
 
The davits are now ready to receive the boat, which is slipped in and the tackles hooked into the respective rings on the boat. The ties are now pulled tight, so that boat rests against the spar.
 
Boat stowed in the davits.
 
Overall, the installation of the first boat went reasonably well. However, it is hanging a few millimetres too low. The boat’s keel should have been level with the bulwark handrail. Somehow, I didn’t manage to make the close-hauled tackled as short as it should have been. Also, the hooks on the blocks are a tad too long. Not 100% satisfactory, but I am not going back two steps to remake the blocks and tackles and all. Let’s assume the crew hasn’t done such a good job in stowing the boats and the officers haven’t noticed it yet …
 
To be continued ....

Hello,
today the carpenters build the gratings and the painter painted them.
What I'm wondering about when building the gratings is, how did they get out the capstan? In small pieces  I think at least they have to open the deck and cut out a beam 

Just had another look at your build log 👍 impressive soldering, never new it was possible to do such fine soldering especially on those torpedo net booms, hat’s of to you that’s brilliant 🤛 something else l will have to learn how to do. 🙄 don’t think you can solder the walkways for torpedo nets cause they are stainless steel. Your soldering is definitely a great talent to have in your armoury.👍

Thanks very much Nils, been a long slow journey for me but light at the end of tunnel now, looking forward to completing it soon 🤞🤛

Jeff,
a beautiful build of an exellent kit-model,
very well done
 
Nils

Thank you very much John,
I am pleased with the result, but had some trouble with the nameplates attached to the ships own stand plate on both sides. These are of printed paper ( black lettering on yellowish colored background ) glued small plates and fixed to the nameplate`s brackets. After glueing  the paper on, all was OK, but then after varnishing them with polyurethane "protection" they looked all wet and soaked through, and even with a hot air dryer I could´nt get them to look as before. Will have replace the printed paper nameplates in the next days, and leave away the varnish. I should have used photo paper for printing.
 
Nils

Today I finished the glass case, and my wife was so kind to clean the glass in- and outside, as well as to help  carry and  swap some of the other cases to a new display place in my hobby office.
This closes the project
 
Here some final pics of the casing and its build..... This was my 11th  case I built this way and I`m pleased that to date there was no broken glass. I`m not so happy of the steadily increasing prices for glass, so I`m surprised of the glasser`s offers every time.
I would like to thank all that were interested in the build log, with many likes, wows, appreciations, comments and suggestions allong the ride.
 
 
Nils

the glass-panes are held with helping aids, such as the "third hand" clamped to the cupboard above, short fixing- and distance pieces, and preliminary self adhesive tape

the angles are well keep the panes in place
 

after the top panel is complete stained and framed, the 4 vertical profiles are stained an cut to length
 
 

now comes the final assembly.....

here again the clamped on "third hand"

the right angle corner

mounting the top panel ( lid) to the rest

metal corners fixed with stainless steel blackend philips flat cross-head screws (M1,7 x 6mm )

the glass bonnet set down on the base with the 6 interacting positioning pins, also the are 6 self adhesive felt patches  under the baseplate to enable a smooth contact.
 

Completed the rest of the superstructure. A few little details were left out since I am anxious to start building the propulsion  system. Dry fitting all the parts, I assembled the ship.



Then, started work on the boiler. First, the smoke box.

Then the stack.

Followed by the boiler.


And this is the dry fitted boiler.

I have also been following Cathead's build of the Peerless. Very interesting and informative.  As a mechanical engineer, whose work was mainly in the energy systems, I enjoy the debates about insulation, expansion loops, superheaters and steam traps on the piping. But at the scale I am working it is hard to include all the minuscule parts that would make the piping correct. 
 
Thanks for watching and I enjoy your comments.
 
 
 
 

Being a little busy these last weeks with not much time to work on Zulu. But, a little progress has been done. This is the crew cabin

 

Started the roof structure.


If you notice the dirty surface in the roof blame it on one of my buddies in the shop. While I was out he came in an used the sander but forgot to turn on the vacuum system. When I came back there was a layers of microscopic black walnut dust  all over the benches. Took us a whole day to clean the mess. I tried cussing at him but he is a preacher.
The roof skylight gave me headaches. The sky light has seven ports 3/16" diameter on the 3/8" wide on each side. Started using basswood only to break the strip while drilling. Then I used some cherry leftover but the grain was perpendicular to the strip so during the drilling several holes broke. So I made another strip using poplar with the grain properly align and success.

Thanks for following.
 
 

Back to the workbench. Fabricated the sponsons for the paddlewheel out of mahogany, since they will be the support of the paddlewheel axel, and trimmed the sub-deck around them.


Sections of the deck will be planked but, the bases for the engines, pumps, boiler and the coamings for the hold hatch, will have to be placed prior to planking. I feel that equipment doesn't look good directly over the wood planks. Thus, I am going to install these items prior to planking.
 
It is amazing to me the amount of ahead planning we must do in these scratch built. So my plan is to basically get all the deck equipment in place before proceeding with superstructures. 
Started by making a wood mockup the engine. 

NOTE: the large 1/12 scale drawings was reduced to 1/48 scale. Dimensions shown of the drawings correspond to the larger drawing.


I also fabricated the sump for the condensate tank between the engines. After installation of all the coamings and raised bases, I will start the fabrication of the mechanicals in metal, except for the boiler's main body which will be a made from plastic pipe. 

Thank you very much John,
I am pleased with the result, but had some trouble with the nameplates attached to the ships own stand plate on both sides. These are of printed paper ( black lettering on yellowish colored background ) glued small plates and fixed to the nameplate`s brackets. After glueing  the paper on, all was OK, but then after varnishing them with polyurethane "protection" they looked all wet and soaked through, and even with a hot air dryer I could´nt get them to look as before. Will have replace the printed paper nameplates in the next days, and leave away the varnish. I should have used photo paper for printing.
 
Nils

Thank you very much John,
I am pleased with the result, but had some trouble with the nameplates attached to the ships own stand plate on both sides. These are of printed paper ( black lettering on yellowish colored background ) glued small plates and fixed to the nameplate`s brackets. After glueing  the paper on, all was OK, but then after varnishing them with polyurethane "protection" they looked all wet and soaked through, and even with a hot air dryer I could´nt get them to look as before. Will have replace the printed paper nameplates in the next days, and leave away the varnish. I should have used photo paper for printing.
 
Nils

Jeff,
a beautiful build of an exellent kit-model,
very well done
 
Nils

Your model is becoming a museum piece. It is incredible and I can see the Love and Patience being poured into that model.
 
Yves