AnobiumPunctatum

Build log part 10
 
 
bow post and vertical stern planking put on...
 
Nils
 
 

 
the upper portion of the stern rounding will be horizontal planking
The upper propshaft housings still need to be planked, and the whole stern area requires fairing and blending for smooth transitions afterwards
 
 
 

 
the bow post (beech wood) where the plates are riveted to later on, gives the nostalgic touch to the rather sharp bow
 
 
 
 

 
its time to take the hull off the board now....
 
 
 
 

Hi mark
It may be that even making the breeching ropes 3x the length of the bore I should perhaps have added even more than I did to allow for the turn around the cascabel and the loop and seizing around the ring bolt. A couple look slightly shorter than the rest. Problem is I've glued the ring bolts in with epoxy resin and the trucks are spot glued to the deck with the same.I don't want too damage anything taking it apart so I may have to leave things as they are and putvit down to experience.....it can join the growing list of things to do better on the next build.
Constructive criticism and advice is always welcome....I think I will beneeding plenty when I get round to doing a full hull build!
Cheers......mick

Really nice deatils, Patrick

After four previous attempts I can say that I'm now happy with the way these fashion pieces look.
 
The first photo shows were the counter has more curve at the bottom compared to the template. I was trying to shape the fashion pieces to follow the curve of the counter. This resulted in the pieces being too wide and misshaped. It might not look like much but trying to cover this area of the counter with the fashion pieces changes everything.
 

 
The solution was to shape the fashion piece correctly and sand the counter, if necessary, to blend into the shape of the fashion piece. To be honest, very little sanding was necessary which really surprised me. In addition, it wasn't necessary to force the bottom of the fashion piece to a more pronounced curve like I had to before. Once installed they were sanded down to roughly 3/64" in thickness. Now the pieces have a gentle curve and a more delicate shape overall.
 

 

Hi Dennis, Nils and everyone who hit the Like button.  Greatly appreciated.
 
Just a quick update on the main saloon.  On the starboard side, the curved settee has a double shelved book shelf on the bulkhead.  On the port side, I started on the fireplace unit.  
 
Here are the results so far.  Heaps more work to go, still.
 
Cheers and all the best!
 
Patrick

Skeleton ready for sanding

 
Template for boat so that it is of correct size.


 
Frames were too narrow, had to add some wood.


 
Bow template. The black part will be carved/scrapped/sanded away.

 
Marc

Ken,
 
I'd like to use scale length planks for realism; I was only using the long strip to demonstrate the different strake positions lie on the hull. However, I'm also concerned that in option 1, the extra bending necessary would also make it harder to get lots of plank ends butted together properly; a long plank would be easier to control.
 
I've scratch-planked two hulls before, both small (see the links in my sig), but had no trouble with those regarding planks lying where they were supposed to. However, they both had traditional rounded hulls & frames.
 
Christian,
 
Thanks! I believe the Bertrand's passenger complement was around 80, not counting the poor souls in the steamboat equivalent of steerage, so there's plenty of room to come along.
 
Patrick,
 
Thanks, I'm really torn and will keep waiting for additional input in case someone has a new idea. The irony is, the bow is really the only place the hull is visible to normal viewers, and of course that's the place most affected by this.

Jack,
 
I don't know a company in Italiy. But do you know "Saemann" It's a German company and they will do PE parts cor customers.

Really wonderful hull. I logged in and hope that you have another chair for me.

Hello there,
here I show you images where the first planks are attached.
 

 

Really wonderful hull. I logged in and hope that you have another chair for me.

Really wonderful hull. I logged in and hope that you have another chair for me.

Hello,
 
the aft screen is ready and the captain is very pleased. (I hope he will spend some drinks this evening   )
 

 

 
He looks where to place the decks chairs
 

 

 
Have a nice weekend,
Siggi

American western river steamboats represent a unique form of shipbuilding. Designed and built on the American frontier during the core of the 19th century, such boats rapidly evolved to fit the specific needs of the great inland river systems that drained inland North America. In this build I will replicate a typical specimen of this design, the steamboat Bertrand, trying to accurately duplicate the features of these fascinating vessels. I hope you’ll follow along, both to enjoy the construction, and to learn about this obscure but fascinating (to me, at least) part of maritime transportation history. These boats are almost, but not entirely, unlike an ocean-going vessel of the same period, in large part due to the demands of their specific riverine habitat. Below, my updated workbench with Bertrand profile on the wall for inspiration.
 

 
The “western” in western river steamboat refers to the landscape between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains. Over the course of the 19th century, this area went from the mostly unknown wilderness of Lewis & Clark’s 1804 expedition up the Missouri River, to a land mostly settled and integrated into the United States by the dawn of the 20th century. Most of this landscape centers on the Mississippi River basin, including its major tributaries such as the Ohio and Missouri Rivers. This system drains over 1 million square miles (almost 3 million square km), covering parts of 31 American states and 2 Canadian provinces. Almost all the rivers in the system were navigable in the 19th century for most of their lengths, creating a vast trade and transportation network across the continent’s interior long before railroads appeared on the scene, when roads were all but non-existent (map below from National Park Service).
 

 
The Bertand, built in 1864 and sunk in 1865, was a wholly typical and unremarkable western river steamer, except for its rediscovery beneath a US Wildlife Refuge along the Iowa/Nebraska border in 1968. The boat and its cargo were remarkably well-preserved, due to quick burial beneath river sediment by the quickly changing channel of the Missouri River, and the anoxic environment thus produced. The Bertrand’s mint-condition cargo is now on display at a fascinating museum at the DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, which also hosts a detailed large-scale model of the craft (shown below). The archeological excavation of the craft resulted in a plethora of information about period steamboat construction. In pairing with the later, but similar, discovery of the sunken steamboat Arabia along the Kansas/Missouri border and subsequent founding of a similar museum in Kansas City, the two wrecks represent a spectacular repository of historical and maritime knowledge and preservation. Below, the gorgeous large-scale model of Bertrand at DeSoto (FWS photo).
 

 
I live and farm near the Missouri River, and have long been fascinated by the history of its steamboats. My first-ever attempt at wooden ship modeling was a scratchbuilt version of the Far West, perhaps the most famous of its class, a sternwheeler which ascended the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers to extraordinary distances, and carried General Custer’s troops to and from the infamous Battle of Little Big Horn. The Bertrand is a similar craft to the Far West, which was built to ascent the shallow, treacherous river to Montana, while the Arabia was a sidewheeler more typical  of the lower Missouri River below Omaha, Nebraska (and the Ohio and Mississippi). I had initially intended to build the Arabia next, but due to a lack of available plans, and my inability to make it to Kansas City to do research at her eponymous museum, I changed my focus to the Bertrand. Below, my model of the Far West for context:
 

 
I’ve had plans for the Bertrand for several years, having purchased them at the same time as my Far West plans, and consulted them on that project. Now, the goal is a similar boat but at much greater detail: I would like to build the Bertrand frame-by-frame, just as initially constructed in the riverside yards at Wheeling, West Virginia. I have a shelf of texts on western steamboat history and construction, and several more detailed references on the excavation of the Bertrand on order through inter-library loan. I intend to leave one side of the hull unplanked, and possibly the same side of the superstructure, to show full detail throughout. Below, longitudinal internal section of the Bertrand from the plans I'll be using.
 

 
I hope you’ll join me on this (likely) wordy trek through a relatively unknown period of American maritime history and design. Few other steamboats grace this site, so I'd like to fill the gap a little with this project. I’ll try to interweave build details with explanations and demonstrations of why the boat was designed and built the way it was, to give context to this project and help share my love of these steamboats and their (my) home. This project is a significant undertaking for me, a serious step up from my previous Bounty launch kit and various smaller and less-detailed scratchbuilding efforts. I hope to be open to suggestion and advice, and I hope readers will be patient with the slow progress I'll likely make as I juggle this project with the summertime demands on my time, as well as the budget necessary to do this with my uncertain income as a self-employed farmer and writer. Welcome aboard, and unlike most boats of this type, we'll hope this one doesn't sink or blow up on the journey! 
 
UPDATE: Build completed and index available.
I finished this project in January 2016, and compiled an index of the general steps involved, with links to each one. You can review the build index here, in a post at the end of this log.

I decided today to re-do the fashion piece. Too much taper at the bottom and the slightly widening section at the top really bothered me. The piece was easy to remove since I used PVA to adhere it. I made another and more accurate card stock template of the shape. This time I traced the shape onto the hull so I could see what the piece would look like once installed. I glued the piece to the hull with the tracing just showing outside the fashion piece. When the fashion piece was dry I removed the pencil marks with some alcohol on a Q-tip. At the bottom of the fashion piece the curve is quite pronounced and it is important to get a tight fit between the fashion piece and the first layer wales. I was able to finesse the curve a bit more by using a cloths iron. I adhered this area with CA. Although it might be hard to see in the photos (as the fashion piece angles inward at the bottom) the result seems closer to what the plans call for, I think.
 

I wish I could say that I'm done making these fashion pieces but I can't. Gonna give it another try as I think I can do better. Hat's off to those who manage to get it right the first time.

Just wanted to post a small update that took a lot of trial and error to get halfway right. The result, seen here, is the first of the two fashion pieces.
 

 

The Swan Class Sloop and I have as some of you know a longer history. Two years ago I started my build log for the build in 1/48. A few month later I had to stop the build because I got some problems with my eyes. At the beginning of this year I started again. I decided to change the scale of my build to 1/32.
I hope that some of you are intersted in my build and like to follow my log.

So let's start again
 

Young America 1853 – POB 1:96
Part 6 – Upper Stern
 
After erecting all the “square frame” bulkheads, a foundation for the circular stern was fashioned from blocks of ¾” pine – one for the area above the wale and one for the lower section.  First the upper piece.  The first picture shows a piece of ¾” pine stock with a pattern for the top pasted on.
 

 
The pattern for the underside of this piece as well as the pattern for bulkhead 48 showing the positioning of the blocks is shown.  The circular (really elliptical) pattern line on the top of the block is the line of the fancy rail at the top of the framing.  It is also the line of the main rail.  The hull is vertical between these two lines at the stern.  The curve of the lower side of this block – shown on the cut out bottom pattern – is roughly at the line of the wale.
 
In the next picture both patterns have been aligned and attached and the line at the top is being cut on the scroll saw.
 

 
Note that a hole for the helm port was bored through this piece.  The key hole shape of this was cut out once the curve was cut.  In the next picture the piece is held at its proper position on the aft side of bulkhead 48 and the curve of the deck at that point is being marked.
 

 
Do to the shear of the decks, the top of the piece will be higher at the very stern.  The top of the piece is next pared off to yield the correct shear and round up to provide the surface for deck planking.  In the next picture this has been done and the line of the main rail is being marked out.
 

 
The underside of the main rail is about 18” below the fancy rail line to allow two strakes of 6” plank and the 6” main rail to fill the space above the line.  The area below this line is then cut back at an angle to the line on the underside pattern as shown in the next picture.
 

 
Most of the wood removal was done on the disk sander, then refined using the rasp shown.  In the next picture the piece has been glued to bulkhead 48 – after removal of part of the bulkhead pattern.
 

 
Note that the stern piece is slightly smaller than the bulkhead.  This is due to the curvature of the hull.  The forward face of the bulkhead is on station 48.  The aft edge will be faired back to its smaller line.  The other block in this picture – marked with a center line - will be the lower stern piece.  Next time.
 
Ed

Thanks Johann, druxey, Mike and Nils for your nice comments and all others for the Likes
 
Next I've installed all bulkheads until frame 20 and the filling pieces.
 

 
Then my favourite pastime - sanding
 

 

Then I've started sanding the hull. I've used 60 grid until 120 grid sandpaper for the process. After around one week - I can only work on my model in the evening or at the weekends- I've finished the front half of my control model.
I am very happy with the result
 

 

 

 
To check the curves I use 1mm thick stripes of maple. The found differences are very small. So I think that my reconstruction will work for the checked range.
 

 

 

 

 

With the build of my control model I started at the end of March.

The edges of all frames I've colored black. This will be later a great help by sandig the hull.
The glued surface of the cant frames is very small, so I've glued first plywood stripes on the center board.
To get the correct alignment the colored 5' marks on the frames and the center board are a great help.
 

First half of frame 0
 
Six frames have been installed.
 

 
At this time I've started to glue the filling pieces of polar plywood between the frames. I've used a chess board pattern to avoid the distortion of the frames.


 
Until the mid of April I've installed all frames and filling pieces from the center to the stem on the stem.
The next two pictures show the result of the work. It's looking very horrible
 

 

To check the lines I started to build a half model. For the frames I use 3mm birch plywood, it's for a model in 1/32 perhaps a little small, but I've had a bigger batch at home. All space between the frames I fill with poplar plywood. It's easy to shape but stable enough for the purpose.
I glue the drawngs with rubber cement on the ply woord


 
With a sharp knife I mark every 5' line. The picture shows frame 0:
 

 
All bulkheades and the center are cutted out. The hull has a length of around 1m, which is not as big compared with the new 1/200 model kits of the WWII battle ships.
 

 

Part 1 Reconstruction of the hull lines
 
David Antscherl wrote in his wonderful series about th Swan Class Sloop, that there are a lot of smaller differences between the ships of the class, for example the knee of the head of Fly.
As first decision for my new start I decided not to use the general lines, which David has published. I want to do my own reconstruction. The naval cutter was a first exercise for this project. In January I started with the reconstruction. At the end of February I had a first version of my body plan, which matchs the lines of the historical drawing very well.
 

 

... and they are every Cent worth.