Greg Davis

OC Thank you - I appreciate your complement! A good deal of credit needs to go to the kit designers, so far it has been impressive how well the assembly has gone. Greg

I have nearly finished the cab exterior. There still are 4 hook (?) castings that go on the roof - I do not know what their function is; anyway I seem to have been supplied with just 3 of them. I'm not sure it is worth the time to contact OcCre about this as they look fairly easy to fabricate from scrap material. Something to do another day! So here is the cab sitting up against the boiler. They don't get attached together until much later in the build - but it is fun to see them together. Only other note is that the grab bars on the side of the cab and the corresponding wires forming the aft side of the rear cab windows have been made with piano wire instead of the very soft brass wire supplied in the kit.

My pleasure - I am so glad you (and others) are getting some entertainment from this build! Greg

Taking a little break from my 'main project' - the Santos-Dumont No18 Hydroplane. It is not cooperating currently, so best to leave it alone for a few days. This is one of the reasons that I like to have several modeling projects going on simultaneously - always something else to do and a chance to step aside if needed. Anyway, over the past couple of days, I've been cleaning up and getting the brass cladding onto the cab. Here is the photo-etch / brass sheets provided for the cab: I've had little experience with photo-etched parts, but these seem to be nice. The front and side pieces fit and went on well: The semi-circular pieces need to be bent to provide front window visors. The main reason that I've included this picture is to note the 3 small protrusions on the flat side of the visor pieces. After detaching the two parts from there sprues, I needed to remind myself not to file them off when smoothing the sprue attachment locations even though they don't look a lot different from where the pieces were cut out. The three protrusions register and fit into the main front brass sheet. In the first picture of this post you can see the corresponding three small slots near the top of the window cutout. The curvature was massaged into the roof brass sheet and then the underside was planked with strip wood before being attached to the cab assembly. The instructions basically tell you to apply glue and hold the roof in place until the glue sticks. I don't think I could pull that off! Instead, I clamped the roof in place without glue - even though the roof is cut to the correct dimensions, this took me several trials to get it exactly where it needed to be. I then put on the rubber bands to pull the brass to the formers and the edges of the cab. Thinned white glue was brushed at the joints between the three curved formers and the roof. I'm going to let that dry through the night and tomorrow I'll run a bead of CA along the brass-to-brass junctions. I might not need the one along the front, but the ones where the roof meet the sides seem to be important.

thanks! I have not seen any pictures that show the pipes with burns. In fact I have never seen a picture with the engine fired up! I have long wondered how they got the engine started. There is a picture of the SD 14bis being started with a large cranking mechanism, but that was on the ground and not in the water. I don't know about turning the propeller blades by hand either. I can only assume that the engine was started only a few times and wasn't run for long. There may have been so much torque from the propulsion system that once started it was turned off immediately. Related, there is a picture on the SD No17 airplane with apparently the same engine / propeller and the exhaust pipe are clean there as well. There is little documentation of the No17 and it is entirely possible that it was never tested for flight. It is possible it was abandoned and the engine then went to the hydroplane. Going on to his successful Demoiselle airplanes (No19 and No20), Santos-Dumont used smaller (20hp and 30hp) two cylinder engines. However, various Antoinette V16 engines were used to power airplanes in or about 1910. Here is a link to a great article on Antoinette aircraft engines: https://oldmachinepress.com/2016/05/28/antoinette-levavasseur-aircraft-engines/ . The author, William Pearce has been very helpful in answering many questions on how the V16 may have been set up in the No18 hydroplane. Greg

I can give that a try - it does sound like it would be easier to do! Thanks Greg

Today I began to work on / solve the exhaust pipe installation process. The pipes have quite a few bends and need to connect to a short stub on the cylinder castings. Several very failed attempts before getting to this version of which I've placed on two different cylinders to see how it looks: The shape is getting close (should be flat a bit longer across the top and there's a small blip in the tubing that I didn't shrink out well enough), but this is what the pipes are suppose to look like: This one has a 1/16" brass wire rod as a core. A short bit of brass tubing soldered to the start to form a coupler with the cylinder casting stub. Finally, black rubber shrink tubing was slipped over the wire and shrunk. I made enough attempts trying to bend brass and aluminum tubing to the exhaust pipe shape to believe that will not be an effective method of fabrication. Given that the exhaust pipes will be buried amongst other engine accessories I'm currently thinking that this may be a reasonable way to make the 16 needed pipes. Thoughts / comments?

Today's accomplishment was coating all of the wood with linseed oil - there is more surface area than you would expect! This will need to dry / cure for quite awhile. While that is happening, I plan to turn my attention to engine work.

Again thank you so much to everyone that is watching this build come together! The nacelles and hydrofoils are now permanently connected:

Decades of amateur bicycle racing and countless hours of watching pro-cycling finally became useful on this build!

Today's little project - a saddle to sit on: It was shaped out of C Boxwood and is approximately 1 x 1.5 cm. Right now the saddle is shiny because it was just coated with linseed oil.

A couple days of work on the steering wheel has gotten me to here: First I cut and milled a piece of brass to serve as the spokes of the wheel together with a rim. Two pieces of C Boxwood with a circle cut out were used to sandwich the brass piece - all attached with epoxy. Then the exterior was sanded to about the correct diameter. Sanding the wheel to a round cross-section then followed. A few more details to add, but this is what I'm trying to mimic: I feel that I am getting close - probably as close as my skills will allow!

Here's my start on the cockpit. I've made the platform, the steering column structure and the footrest. I'll trim down the parts that go thru the cockpit after they have been attached. Still to come the saddle / seat and the steering wheel (doesn't look easy at all, ugh!).

I have not lost interest in this model, but I have a few other projects going on and like to go back and forth at times! One of the projects, the Santos-Dumont No 18 Hydroplane has elevated to the top as I would like to take it to a modeling contest in mid-May. I will be spending most of my time on that; however, every model has its downtime for one reason or another and that will be the time that Phantom and my OcCre BR 18 Locomotive projects get for the time being. After that who knows - there must be 30+ models in the que! Finally 'fixed' the paint issue, and today I applied the first coat of varnish to the hull. It will get another tomorrow and then it will be set for marking the waterline and some copper.

Yes, they don't seem to have a large chord. I've done my best to interpret a number of photographs and then made them with a 2cm chord - that would make them roughly a foot in reality.

I made a small jig to bend the hydrofoil shape into the brass. I added a brass rod to the jig so that the tubes in the attachments would be in the same fore-aft location after being bent. The four attachments are getting close to their final shapes now - just a bit more adjustment mostly to correct 'spring back' from the initial bending. Here I'm taking a look at how they fit to the hydrofoils when mounted on the boat. I've added all the subcomponents I have finished for this picture as I was curious on how the whole piece of work was coming together.

Just a bit more progress for today - this is the start of the attachments that will hold the hydrofoils to the pontoon harness and the rear metal work. The brass sheet was drilled to the diameter of the brass tubes and then the pieces were soldered together. The brass sheet will be bent/fitted to the hydrofoil shape on this spare piece of shaped wood. Then I can trim them up for a good fit to the actual hydrofoil pieces. The thin ones are going in the back and the wider ones in the front. I'll paint these to match the other metal structures.

Craig - No I am not covering the model - it will be done as a framed model. With that said, I have considered using the turned pontoon and nacelles (that I made to 'test' my plans) to make a second model at some point. That model would be completely painted and would show no internal components. However, this is pretty low on my to do list! Greg

True - and we're not trying to redesign this iconic hydroplane!

In correspondence with Professor Catalano, a professor of aerodynamics at the University of Sao Paulo and Santos Dumont researcher, he wrote: 'He was unsuccessful after the powered model lateral instability in water.' After reading this, I thought of the problems WWI fighter pilots had with torque from their plane's engines. From a physics perspective, mounting the engine on a pylon would only serve to make that type of problem worse. I then wondered why he didn't try to correct this using an asymmetric design. I didn't think of moving the engine, but rather moving one of the outriggers / nacelles further away from the main pontoon. I'm also guessing that the reason we have discussed the cockpit location was partially due to the instability problem - leveraging his weight further to the rear would have helped with the bow getting pushed down. I have no idea why he ultimately gave up on the project - perhaps it just wasn't as interesting as flight to him!

Got a bit excited and needed to post a picture! The harness is now permanently attached to the pontoon. The wooden engine mounting strips were drilled to match the mounts on the engine block. The strips currently are spaced by blocks and are overly long - they will be reduced to the correct size when it is time to secure the engine in place. Here I have test fitted / set the engine in place and was quite satisfied to see that the harness is plenty strong and everything seems to line up as needed. I'll be able to continue some of the work with the model set on the original building jig. I had not glued the supports so that they could be removed for special purposes. Here the second support is removed and there is actually space to mount the hydrofoil below without interference from the jig. The second support from the rear has also been removed so that there is space for the rear hydrofoil mounting structure. Onward we go - it is nice to see the subassemblies fitting!

Thank you Craig for all the help you are providing! I looked more at pictures of the boat and decided that the pontoon harness should be lighter in color than the blue/grey pontoon and nacelles. So I've gone more toward the grey tone with a touch of blue. I looked though all the blue and grey offerings in the Vallejo Model Air lineup and went to the local Hobby Town and picked up a variety of possible colors. Did some tests on brass tubes to see what they looked like as well as how they matched up with the other materials used in the model. Finally decided on using Vallejo Model Air Grey Blue: Here's what it looks like now: I think this looks much better than when it was blackened.

Craig - Amazingly clear images - how do you do that???? There are some references to the hydroplane in terms of coloration - light blue / bluish-grey had been reported. I'm waffling on the color I'm going to use. Greg

Here is the wood framing for the cab. The six pieces slot together nicely. Note how the bottom of piece 40 goes across the cab floor. Once the glue is dry, that strip will be removed - while not noted in the instructions I was careful to not apply glue down there! Later the exterior of this structure will be covered with bass sheeting.

Yes, that is a good idea. If all goes well, I would like to have the model finished by mid-May so that I can bring it to a model boat and ship contest that is held about a hours drive from my home. It would be unfortunate to have it damaged in transit and/or by touchy fingers!