Lecrenb
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Continuing with the rudders, I primed and sealed them the same as the white hull... then I used styrene strips and Tichy Train Group rivets to apply reinforced steel straps in the same manner as I did on the stern post of the ship. Styrene rod served as my pintles, and some thin resin rod made the lifting pins... Now the rudder was test fit on the ship... St. Roch's rudder was designed to be lifted to the deck via the rudder well using a tackle rigged to the main sail boom. The lifting pins, that can be seen at the top of the rudder, align with guides set into the sides of the well. I made mine by scaling from the same plan as the rudder... using styrene strips for the guide rails and .010 sheet for the bases. I painted them Tamiya 'Gunmetal'... The rudder head extends above the poop deck. The brass collar is the inner half of the rudder bearing. The outer half is bolted to the deck. The hex section at the top of the rudder stock is where the tiller bolts on, the tiller is part of the quadrant assembly. The top of the guide rails can be seen flush with the deck. This picture shows the spare rudder stowed on the main deck... This last picture is the rudder of the actual ship in the Vancouver Maritime Museum. Now I have to make holes in the hull for various fittings such as portholes, hawse holes and fairleads. These need to be installed before further work can be done... So thanks everyone for looking in and I do appreciate your comments and critiques!
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Happy New Year, and it is -30 here this morning... a good day to hunker down and start making rudders... This is the original plan, drawn in 1":1'. I checked actual dimensions on the plan to verify it is accurately scaled, and it is, therefore it was a simple job to divide by 4 to convert to my 1:48 scale dimensions... The blanks for the two rudders are three basswood sheet laminations, which in turn are laminated using 3M double sided tape. Then I sanded one edge flat as my reference and drew the rudder onto the face of the wood. Off to the bandsaw, then a first sanding to ensure both rudders are the same shape before separating the two blanks and rough sanding the profiles... Next is a test fit on the ship... everything seems to line up! The second rudder is a spare that was carried on deck...
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I am now at the point where I can drill holes into the hull... besides the various pump and engine discharges I need openings for the fairleads, hawse and portholes. Following that and while waiting for my order from Cornwall Model Boats (the postal strike is over, at least for the time being!) I will be installing various fittings around the outside edges of the decks, and building the rudders (two of them, St. Roch carried a spare on deck). The main wale, also referred to as the rub rail, can't be installed until the portholes and chain plates are on since the rail overlaps parts of them. Bottom line is it may be a while before my next update, so I will leave you with some pictures of St. Roch as she is today. Thanks everyone for looking in and for your comments and critiques!
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Good morning, and I hope everyone on the forum and in the Guild had a very Merry Christmas! In my last post I told a bit of a fib... I did need to saw kerfs into the poop deck wale where is made the sharp turn around the stern... The picture below is the wale being installed on the port side, where I used the same jig to set the spacing below the rail. The next picture shows the cuts being made into the stern section of the wale. Even though the Zona saw kerfs are narrow the give me sufficient flexibility to bend the wale around the stern after soaking it in hot water. The last picture is the wale drying in place on the ship, after which it will be gap filled, sanded, painted, and glued onto the ship.
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Good morning all... Moving right along to the fo'c's'le rails, I sawed kerfs about 2/3 the way across the width of my lumber. After a bath in the hot water it then easily conformed to the shape of the bow. I clamped it in place to dry and it held the shape. I then painted the sides and exposed edges of the rail bottom off the ship so I would not need to worry about masking and touching up. After gluing in place I applied a smear of filler to hide the kerfs, then sanded and painted. The upper wales are basswood strips and did not need to be sawn. Once steamed and clamped for shape they were also painted off the ship then glued. I used a spacer to set a constant distance of the wale below the rail. Cutting the kerfs, so the wide lumber will bend along the bow. clamping the rail in place to dry after hot water treating. The kerfs are visible near the bow. Bow rails competed and the fo'c's'le wale being glued in place. The next photo shows the spacer I made to set the distance below the rail.
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Thanks Alan and Druxey... I appreciate your comments and advice. I would have preferred using thin laminated strips but neither I nor the LHS had what I needed and the postal strike was looming when I made the rails. I had a good supply of correctly dimensioned scale lumber on hand, so at the end of the day I used the method that I did, with eventual success after some frustration... The string wrapping is similar to a pipe bending trick to keep a pipe from collapsing when bending, and it did work on my rails. I did use shapes cut from basswood sheet to plank the hull around my stern section, and this method matches the plans of the original ship! I presume the shipwrights also had problems making sharp bends in Douglas Fir and Ironbark! As you will see in my next post, when faced with bending the rails across their width to follow the curves of the upper decks, I used the saw kerf method with success, and more basswood sheet shapes to work around the stern rail. Merry Christmas!
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G'day everyone, and thanks in advance for following along. Since my last update I have been working on the cap rails, starting with the main deck. These rails follow the curve of the bulwarks at each end where they sweep up to the fo'c's'le and poop decks. No matter how much heat and hot water I applied the rails always splintered and buckled when I tried to bend them. I ended up wrapping the ends of each rail with thread as seen in the picture; this prevented the wood from splintering when bent. I also rolled the ends around a Tamiya paint jar which was close to the desired curve, this support prevented the wood from buckling when it came out of the hot water. I made a jig from scrap pine, to hold the rails in the correct shape as they dried. The first picture shows my setup; with a small slow cooker for the hot water, one rail set in place after drying, and the other drying in the jig with the wrapping at each end. The rails were painted Tamiya X-18 semi-gloss black off the ship so I wouldn't have to deal with masking and touching up. The second picture shows the painted rails installed on the ship as the glue dries.
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Hi Bill, and sorry about the delayed reply! NWSL is NorthWest Short Line, a hobby tool company geared towards model railroaders but their tools will of course work on any genre. Their riveter tool is a calibrated table, part number 51-4, that attaches to their small arbor press, part number 50-4. You tape your work to the table allowing it to advance a precise amount, per the pitch of your 'rivets'. With some practice you can draw pencil lines on your work and manually advance it to each 'rivet' location... this goes a lot faster than using the calibrated screw. I used this method for my Flower class corvette where I had over 10,000 rivets to emboss! The dies come in assorted sizes and you operate the press every time you want to emboss a rivet. My understanding is that NWSL has had patent issues and so this and other products in their tool line have been knocked off, so if to can no longer find it at NWSL try Micro Mark or others, and I have seen it come up on ebay.
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Got the rest of the hull painted, finished it up yesterday... First the waterways, on which I used Tamiya light sea gray. I brushed them on because the masking around the stanchions was going to be way more frustrating and fiddly than using my fine tip artist's brush! Once they were dry I painted the decks, one at a time. Using the red oxide mixture gave me a good colour match with the lower hull, but the Vallejo Air paints are pre-thinned for airbrushing so I put three brush coats onto each deck for coverage. The companion roof is painted canvas over wood... I mixed a couple of drops of green zinc chromate (what Tamiya calls 'cockpit green') into some of the light sea gray to get an off-gray colour that looks close to the real ship's roof. Thanks everyone for looking in, comments and critiques are always welcome!
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The main casting on my airbrush compressor cracked yesterday, so I took off the regulator and pitched the rest... couldn't save the motor because the frame was part of the casting... Good news I was able to bring my utility compressor from the garage into the basement where I have my spray booth and connect up the airbrush hose... now fingers crossed I don't need to inflate a tire any time soon! St. Roch's lower hull and decks are painted red oxide. Can't get the Tamiya rattle cans any more; the LHS says they can't be imported into Canada because of high VOC content... and there is no other hobby paint called Rex Oxide. I thought about automotive paint but didn't want to mix enamel with acrylics... so I cruised the LHS paint racks and found 71.084 Fire Red and 71.105 Brown in the Vallejo Model Air lineup. The sales guy very kindly let me take a drop from each to mix together in the store, resulting in a passable imitation of Red Oxide! Outstanding service from Hobby Wholesale and a great reason to shop local if you can! After all that and 25cm of snow last night and today I finally shot the lower hull!
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Today I got the waterline marked and ready for paint... St. Roch draws more water aft, so I took the rise of the keel off my lines drawing and then blocked the model onto my building board. I am using the actual painted waterline from the ship today and period photos, which appear to be a good match; I am not using the waterline as marked on the plans. After marking the waterline points at stem and stern, I rigged up my marking jig as seen in the pictures and set it to my bow mark. Happy day, it matches my stern mark! Then I made marks midships port and starboard with the jig, and blocked the ship until each side was the same distance measured from the top of the bulwarks. Now I dragged my jig around the hull, leaving an accurately marked pencil waterline. Next I carefully applied 2mm Tamiya masking tape, and burnished it down with my pencil eraser. This set the tape and also removed the penciled waterline. Last I sealed the lower hull edge of the tape with flat white paint. This will stop the red oxide lower hull colour from bleeding under the tape.
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Thank you very much Gary, yes it feels good to be working on the ship again! Thanks also to everyone who checked in to my posts! Regards, Bruce
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This update takes us to where my St. Roch model is today... I had to replicate the steel plates that were fitted around her bows. While not intended for icebreaking they were a valuable aid in moving through the Arctic pack ice. Unfortunately the plans do not show this feature, and the plating at the stem was modified in 1940. The only reference to them is a comment by captain Henry Larsen in his book "The Big Ship". He also refers to her original blunt cutwater that was almost a foot across! The original strakes are still on the ship so I scaled dimensions from photos, leaving off the heavier plates that were installed in 1940 and extending my model strakes to the bow. I am using .010 styrene sheet to replicate the strakes. I embossed the nail patterns with my NWSL Riveter tool. I used styrene cement to apply all the plastic fittings to the hull, not because it sticks well to wood, but because it softens the styrene and makes it conform easily to the hull shape. It also sticks very well to the applied primer/sealer! If it eventually lets go I will bring out the Gorilla Glue! The corbels that supported the rub rail were removed in 1930 and patches welded to the steel at their former locations. I used my scriber tool to etch them onto the plates. Finally I completed the steel work on the hull by fitting the cap and eyebolts to the top of the stem. She's finally ready to paint!
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St. Roch had steel reinforcing straps and forgings around her stern members to strengthen and support the rudder post and keel extension. I took scale measurements from my copies of the original plans and made my parts from styrene strips of appropriate sizes. I also made the gudgeons from styrene, shaping them to match the plans as well as my photos of the stern. I used my NWSL Riveter tool to emboss fastener heads onto the styrene, for larger fasteners I used Tichy Train Group rivets that match well to the photos. The hole in the rudder post aligns with the propeller shaft, and was used to remove the propeller nut. The last photo is the stern area of the actual ship. There are holes in my model straps where zinc plates will be fitted after the lower hull is painted.
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Congratulations, I think your model turned out very well, and your enhancements and details have corrected many kit faults and elevated it to a high standard! Regards, Bruce
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Again, kudos to you for adding a representation of the steel plating at the bow, as well as the other details that you have picked up on! st. Roch's wooden fastenings were galvanized nails clenched over galvanized washers, so simulating nail heads on your steel would be a realistic way to model this. Regards, Bruce
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I am also back at my workbench after a long hiatus, and am updating my St. Roch build log. Kudos to you for adding the rudder well, as it is a defining feature of St. Roch, and obviously one that BB did not include. In case you are unaware, the well allowed the rudder to be raised up onto the deck so it would be clear of damaging ice... also the reason a spare rudder was carried! Enjoy and regards, Bruce
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Once I had completed the poop deck planking I finished the poop bulwarks, including the interior planking around the stern and at the fairlead locations. There were also two large wooden chocks fastened to the inside of the bulwarks on the main deck that I carved from basswood, taking the shapes by eye from photos. I pinned them to the stanchion with styrene rod for strength. After a final gap filling where necessary, and sanding overall with 180 grit, it was off to the spray booth for 2 coats of primer sealer, sanded in between each coat and after. I made sure to mask the hatch and main mast openings so I would not get overspray into the hold. This work took me well into October. Next I have to make and install the steel reinforcements at bow and stern, then the ship will be ready for paint!
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I was now able to begin the poop deck planking, using divides to ensure I started on center, and maintained equal spacing port and starboard. The lower picture shows the work up to the end of September '24.
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With the deck house size and location sorted out (I will deal with the wireless office shortly), I moved on to the waterway , stanchions, and stern planking... I drilled holes through the subdeck and used round toothpicks to block the waterway plank to the correct shape, and to hold it while the glue cured. I could not get the waterway to steam bend around the stern, so I cut and sanded four sections and fit them into place. Then came the stanchions and wale, the same method I used on the other decks. You can see the outline of the wireless office drawn on the deck at the back of the deckhouse. There were multiple sketches drawn onto the plan. I discarded smaller ones because the radio equipment of the day would not fit. I discarded larger ones because they interfered with the ship's boats, and these were not moved. Like Baby Bear's porridge, this outline was just right! Besides being the same size as the original space on the lower deck, scaling from photos matches the length of this extension at the back of the deckhouse.
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