Ras Ambrioso

A very Merry Christmas to you and yours. And another hurrah to your work

Beautiful work Nils.

Being quite busy with the upcoming holidays but managed to add a little progress to the build. I have been trying to fabricate all the superstructure prior to starting the metal work on the boiler, piping and engines. Following is some of the progress to date. Boiler deck planking dry fit. Thanks for following.

I agree with Keith. I had a lot of rough spots on my first planked hull (Emma Berry) but it made boat look like it was built on a short budget. It added to the looks of the finished boat.

Keith, I just found your post and I am hooked. These yachts represent the best looking boats of the transition between sail and steam. I will be following you and wish the best on your surgery. Ras

Happy to see you starting another masterpiece. I used the half hull method on Amapá. Will follow your progress.

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.

Made a jig to determine the height of the cabins in the main deck. Presented the boiler deck and located the holes for the deck's posts. Mechanical room is also dry fitted. Discovered another booboo. The opening cut on the deck for the hold does not allow sufficient space from the boiler's front to the galley cabin. Since I intend to have the the the hatch covered, I closed the open space and moved the hatch location aft. The photo also shows the mechanical room. There is very little data about this type of vessel but, based on the year it was built, I have assumed the they had electricity aboard. This cabin houses the electric generator and the mechanical shop. The steering gear is located above on the boiler. Following is is view with the boiler deck and the roof. The ribs on top of the roof will create the camber once installed on the bottom. Following is the main deck with the fabricated cabins. Next will be the detailing of the cabin windows and doors and the covering of the hold hatch. Then the priming of the hull and the installation of the deck planking. After the main deck is completed I will start metal fabrication of boiler, engines, tanks and piping so that the equipment gets installed on deck before proceeding to the upper levels. The fun continues and thanks for following.

Chris I still have the Spitfire kit and your instructional V-108 but haven't have the resolve to get started in this new phase of our hobby. Following you will help me build enough confidence to carry on. Your card models are exceptional.

Beautiful application of modern technology. I feel sorry that now I am past this kind of tooling to pursue our hobby. Congrats.

Thanks Valeriy you have been a great inspiration to me.

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.

Amazing, at 1/160 scale is also incredible the amount of realistic detail you have included in this model.

Wefalck and Ives, thanks for your comments. This paddleboat design has been in my mind for years. Finally, I got it started. However, things didn't go well at the start. The Sarik prints were huge and the calculated scale was 1/18 rather than the advertised 1/24. Since I wanted the model not to exceed 30 inches in length, I had to have them reduced in a print shop. Thanks God for the new technology. With the new plans at the right scale (1/48), I started the build by cutting down the bottom of the hull shape in a piece of 1/4" ply. Then, fabricated the frames taking the dimensions from the plans. Installed the frames using a centering dowel and, using the drawings as a template, cut the hull sides and glued them to the frames. Used 1/2" square balsa to fill the bilge line between frames. After both sides were installed, I started the bilge rounding using our bench belt sander. The round bilge was 1/2" quarter round and I had to sand down both the hard ply flat bottom and the soft balsa inserts. The sander is only 18"long and the hull is 22"so, I could not line up the whole hull on the sander. And that is when disaster hit. You can see below where the bilge line started waving. And this was at the beginning of the sanding. I could not maintain the equal pressure required to sand ply and balsa since I had to straddle the hull across the sander. But, since I have all the time in the world to play and I am building this ship for myself, I started a new hull and this time decided that the bottom would be flat, 1/8" thick and with just a little rounding (not the scale 1/2"). And following is the progress as of today. And the deck is dry fit. Thanks for following and I appreciate your comments PS: I am saving the twisted hull. I may do a deferent project with it. The gunboats in the Nile comes to mind 🤔

Just found your build Nils. Great job on John Wayne's steamer. I loved that movie and look forward to your build. BTW, in your photos the ship looks much larger than what I would suspect HO gage was. Seems you are emulating Wefalk with the miniatures. Good work.

After completion of my B-17 and 1927 motorcycle models I am back to shipbuilding. Since I got more projects in my head than the lifetime left I have decided in building two projects at the same time. I expect to work in alternate weeks. The first one is this version of the paddle steamer Zulu and then I plan to do another bass profile on a 1/48 scale Spitfire. Going back to my times in The Netherlans I did a lot of work with live steam. Built a couple of R/C controlled live steam boats and always wanted to build a steam powered paddle boat. The problem was that these boats were quite large and required building at a very small scale that made it difficult for me because of my own limitation to produce parts at a very small scale. Using the forums. inspiration I have been able to go from a tolerance of 0.5 mm to tolerance of 0.25 mm which allows me to do acceptable detailing down to 1/64 scale. In doing the research I found this boat that at 90 feet OL will fit nicesely with my capabilities. The research on our site brought to my attention Kishmusl's 3D CAD model of Zulu. I already had previous information from an old issue of Model Boats (April 1982) that was written by Ray Vine and had a miniature copy of the drawing. I contacted Sarik and purchased a copy of the plans. When I received the package, I found 5 sheets of details at a scale of 1/18 making the model over 50 inches in length. I went to my local blueprint shop and got it reduced to 1/48 scale. A little background on the ship. Using the internet I did not found much regarding this particular ship. The closest one was this one built in 1916 by Alley & MacLellan in the Sentinel Works, Glasgow. The first owner was the War Office-Inland Transport Department with the name S-3 and it was in operation in the Nile and in Mesopotamia until 1932 Following is a partial description, by Ray Vine, of the plans: Quote History of the Prototype This type of boat was predominately used in America, Burma and India. Used in the latter two countries operated by the Irriwaddi Flotilla Company. Built in Glasgow most of these steamers were sent in parts and assembled in Rangoon. The steamer boilers were built in UK and dispatched as a complete unit ready for installation in the finished boat. The engines were shipped separately. As can be seen from the plan, the boat had a very shallow draft which, of course, is essential where steamers have to operate in the shallows and creeks of the Irriwaddi. Due to the shallow draft, which could be as little a 1'-8", it was necessary to position the boiler right forward to preserve trim, counterbalancing the weight of the engines and the paddle wheels aft. The tall funnel too is necessary to induce draught to the boiler. A forced draught installation being omitted to keep the weight of the machinery down to the minimum. These boats also operated in the Mandalay-Thabeitkyin route. End of Quote. More information is shown on the Steam Boats Museum website (steamboats.com) with pictures of another Zulu model in 1/24 scale. I would appreciate any additional information you may have on the history of these useful vessels.

Thanks a lot Dan and all the other followers that inspire me. Love this forum🙂 Ras

Thank to y’all for your likes and comments. And, to Shipman, I will not run this bike past 10 mph.

Thank guys for you support. Next I am going to try to preset the model in four views: top, bottom, right and left. This will mean getting two identical kits. But, I also want to start on my next ship model. Decisions, decisions, decisions….?

I am back. After the disaster I went into a hiatus to cool off and assembled a B17 model kit that I had in my shelves. That project is finished and I went back the Freccia. I fabricated new links for the front fork suspension but didn't like the results. I then looked into my little boxes of leftover materials and found a set of stay rigging chains that were the right size. With these I reassembled the front fork. It just happens that the damage to kit was a little more serious as part of the front and rear fenders here broken up. I fixed these items, maybe not very neatly, and preceded to complete the motorcycle by attaching the exhaust pipes, the handlebars and the corresponding control cables. The project is now FINISHED Moderator, please label this post FINISHED

Same here😏

The final results: Project is now completed and the results of my "proof of concept" are satisfactory. Sorry that the glass in the shadowbox gets into the picture. To Moderator, please label this topic FINISHED.

Moderator: Please correct the Kits manufacturer name to Hasegawa. Thanks

Alan, thanks for your comments. Ives, the ship's half hull presentations is what inspired me. Then, searching the internet I found out I was not the only one: Here is another example of what can be done: Amazing, isn't it? Now the deadline, as much as I hate deadlines, is approaching. This is my project as of today. Glued the pieces in the canvas sky but accidentally dropped the roof window on the radio cabin. So everything is waiting for glue to dry before going into the shadowbox. BTW, I want to share an idea I used today. I questioned drawing pencil lines in the canvas for the positioning of the pieces. What I did was to take the measures from my display board and using ship's rigging lines laid them in the canvas and then anchored the lines and tensed then behind the board using Tamiya tape. I tried to keep the glue out of the part edges where the line passed and I expect to pull the strings out once the parts are solid on the canvas. So, as of this morning this is my B17F:

A few years back a friend gave me this kit of a B17F bomber. He was building a B36 in 1/72 scale and wanted a B17 to compare sizes. At the time I was busy scratch building ship models and just put the kit away in the shop shelves Then, after the disastrous accident I had with my “Freccia Celeste” motorcycle project, I needed to cool off. I decided to build this model as a "proof of concept" of a way to display airplane models in the walls rather than in shelves or hanging from the ceiling. My idea came of my collection of small booklets called “Aircraft Profiles” that presented the aircraft with profiles indicating painting and markings.The plastic models are offered in “flat” trees that resemble a Bas-Relief so I figured that I could lay the different parts of the aircraft in a “Shadow Box” display. During my online searches I found that I was not the only one with these ideas as several guys have done a similar job. So, I went to Michael’s and purchased a nice shadow box. The back was painted to resemble a cloudy sky and I tested the arrangement using the kit’s parts. I intended to super detail the inside of the Fortress and to purchase etched parts to complement the kits details. Following are photos of the build in progress I ordered the Edwards PE rear cabin details but, when I saw the size of the parts in the PE frets, I figured that 1/72 scale was way beyond my tolerance and decided to use the parts in the kit and some of the PEs to detail only the cockpit and the bombardier/navigator station in the nose of the aircraft. The fire extinguisher was scratch built. And this is the project as it stands today. I need to go back and retouch some of the outlines but, other than that, I am pleased with the results. Be gentle with the magnifiers as I am not a very good painter. But, from the middle of room looking at the wall it will be fine. Tomorrow, I expect to mount it on the canvas and set it in the shadow box. It is going to go on exhibit at the Art Show our building is having next week. This is where we, old "f**ts, show our playthings. Now a note for modelers: While building this kit I used Vallejo paints and found they are difficult to shake by hand. So, I came in with a new tool: “The Ras’ Shaker” using a large prescription container. I originally made this for rounding up wood ship's blocks when sandpaper is placed on the inside circumference .Works like a charm. Thanks for following.