wefalck

The problem we have in Europe, is that these kinds of shops are slowly dying out. Owners give up, because they can't find successors, when they retire - such shops are a life-style, rather than a 'job' and young people look into life-styles that they consider more glamorous and with shorter working hours. When I was living in Vienna in the early 2000s, there were still many such shops, but they died quickly, when the ceiling on prices for commercial leases were removed by the city council - there wasn't enough margin in these businesses to satisfy the greed of the property owners. Whenever I am in less-developed countries, I am on the look-out for such shops ...

Of course, it was set up after 18.01.1871, the day when the 2nd Empire was offcially proclaimed. Like the railway it retained 'Reich' in its name, even after 1919, when the Empire officially ceased to exist and during the republican years from 1919 to 1933. Nice project, btw. I wasn't aware that busses of the Reichspost had a red livery. It appears that these were town-busses in large cities operated by the Reichspost and the idea was to distinguish them visually from the yellow overland-busses.

Blocks with roller bearings appear in the later 19th century literature. When they have metal sheaves, they are usually meant for wire ropes.

Yep, that was my thought also, to cover the baseboard with some select 'mud' and show the boat resting a bit leaned over. That would not preclude set sails, as they could be just hanging down limp, set to dry. I am not coming across very freqently these stir-sticks (in fact I dislike them and try to avoid places where they don't use proper cutlery and crockery 😉), but most I have seen appear to be of surprisingly good quality. Another such 'secondary' source of thin strips of wood are the sticks/spatulae used by doctors, when they look down your throat. I gather (para)pharmacies or drugstores may have them. Most I have seen seem to be beech or birch. I also know about people going around on days, such as New Year Day, collecting the sticks from firework-rockets ...

Ab, you are a lucky man to receive such gifts! Didn't Van de Velde the Older specialise in larges-size grisailles originally? I am quoting from memory and didn't check against my books on them. And, compared to your speed of building I don't even look like snail, but more like a barnackle ...

@druxey I was talking about seven to ten strakes not 7" to 10" plank width. 10" seems to be rather wide for a boat ...

The best thing would be to develop before an interest in a certain subject area (or a particular ship) and then pick a kit, if it has to be that. That background interest keeps one going even through difficult times and also leads to improvements on the kit.

Seven to ten strakes seem to be numbers commonly seen. The number of strakes needed depends also on the radius of the bilge. A sharp bilge may require narrower planks than a wide rounded one. One tries to get away with as few strakes as the available material and the curvature permits. Wide strakes may require complex bending that is difficult.

Young branches at least are quite flexible and tough. In some parts of Europe willows were kind of trained or trimmed in a particular way to give lots of shoots, which were used also for basket weaving and the like. These willows once were a characteristic sight along rivers and creeks. They looked like mushrooms with a lot of sticks coming out of them. As not so many baskets or house walls are woven anymore, the practice has largely died out. I could imagine that such branches with the bark stripped off (which is easy) would make good tree-nails. These tree-nails are also flexible, adding to the flexibility of the hull.

The engine looks really good. Do you have some close-up pictures? How did you construct it? In a way I am surprised that they used what looks like Corliss-engines with valves, rather than simple sliding valve engines as in locomotives. Talking about bucket-dredgers: the most difficult parts would be the buckets. Their rounded features would need to be reproduced by e.g. vacuum-forming or hammering around a wooden former or perhaps 3D-printing ...

Well, one can use 3D-printing to make masters for lost-wax casting in brass ...

Not surprising that the customer is happy. Job well done 👍🏻

I got a notification of a post from Kevin, but it seems to have disappeared. It was about something dangling from the counter. I haven't seen the picture in question, but I assume that these were the 'man-over-board-buoys', plates with knotted ropes attached to them.

Cones go down to near zero (at least, if one has quality ones). I am holding both, the part and the bit in pin-vises respectively.

A bucket dredger also has been on my 'list' for decades - lots of opportunities for turning, milling, cutting gear-wheels and such. I have also collected quite a bit of drawings on them from the mid to late 19th century. It is interesting to see in first photograph, that they simply attached the bucket arm to the side of a sternwheeler. Given that many rivers in Europe are a lot smaller, they were often not self-propelled in the early years, but put out anchors upstream and then moved along while working, using these mooring points. Otherwise, they needed a tug to move them to different locations. They usually where catamaran-like with the dredging arm between the two separate hulls. Early ones had often wooden structures for the dredging arm. There is a 1829 drawing/etching by E.W. Cooke of one like that:

Well, in Europe as far as I am aware, locomotive smokeboxes were always black. I don't recall having seen anything else. The same for traction engines and the likes. On smokeboxes (and ships' funnels incidentally) you have to use a paint with a heat-resistant pigment, basically soot/carbon-black or graphite. That's why steam-ship funnels are black. If you wanted to have a company logo on it you had to use a sleeve with an airspace in between or a double-walled stack. I remember from my childhood days that there was something called 'stove-paint' with which one painted the smoke pipes between the stove and the wall. It was either black or silvery, so the pigment was either carbon-black, graphite or some metal powder (probably aluminium).

You are right @druxey, that last one does not have a number, neither in the longitudinal section nor in the body-plan. I wasn't aware that this could be an indication of a cant-frame. What also tricked me, was that in the longitudinal section there is a station without number equidistant from the other stations that appears in the body-plan as well.

Yep, I wasn't interested in the rig in museum configuration. I was more interested in the deck arrangements etc.

As I said, I am not a railway specialist, but was curious and checked a couple of German fora re. livery of German steam locomotives during WW2. It appear that locomotives on civil duty retained their livery, i.e. everything black except frames, buffer-beams, wheels and works red (the second box-art above). Locomotives requisited by the military would be painted grey and carry the official insignia, the eagle and swastika, rather than the wording 'Deutsche Reichsbahn' (first box-art above). The same would apply to locomotives built under the war programme (minus the insignia, when in civil service). Locomotives with white trim on the wheel, second image from the bottom, almost certainly came from the former GDR or other Eastern European railways. The last image is one in 'Photoanstrich'. The smoke-box is black, because the light grey paint wouldn't stand the heat. The apparent variability of the black has less to do with the colour, but rather with the different levels of gloss due to soot, repairs etc. Most steam-engines in service look like that.

Thanks ! Even better would be the ability to avoid such mistakes in the first place 😁

Hope you don't mind asking me, why you first put a layer of 'Panzergrau' on and then a layer of lighter grey? What was the purpose? Since the 1920s the colour scheme for German steam locomotives has been black all over with the exception of the frames, buffer-beams, wheels and certain parts of the drive mechanism. During WW2 it may have been different, but I don't know about that. Looking at old works photographs can be misleading, as the locomotives were given a light grey coat to increase the contrast between parts.

I would check first, whether the plans show her as in preservation. As far as I remember the rig was cut down to fit into the exhibition hall.

I use a rotary cone bit for deburring pipes. They came with different included angles and different numbers of teeth.

Interesting project! Something that has been on my wishlist for decades. I actually looked at the original drawings nearly 30 years ago in the Rigsarkivet in Copenhagen, long before they became available as digital copies. As @Chapman said, she has actually quite a history, starting off as a Danish customs cutter and border surveillance ship on the Elbe river. At that time the king of Denmark was also the Duke of Schleswig and of Holstein, so that ships from these Duchies that encompassed all the territories north of the Elbe river, with the exception of Hamburg, flew the Danish flag (until 1864). There have been several disputes over the status of these Duchies within the state and Danish nationalists had lobbied for their de facto annexion, although legally they were part of the German Association (Deutscher Bund). This culminated in several wars, most notably the Three-Year-War of 1848 to 1850 and then finally the war of 1864. But this is a complex story, with ethnic Danes and Germans on both respective sides, which was finally resolved by a plebiscit in 1919 that led to the modern borders. Anyway in the course of the conflicts ELBEN/ELBE changed hands a couple of times, being integrated into the shortlived Schleswig-Holstein Navy. In the course of these conflicts also the armament changed. I haven't read about it recently, but I seem to remember that she was only lightly armed for peace-time duties on the Elbe river. When she became part of the SH Navy, they were scrambling to find guns for her. I wonder, whether there are not drawings for the guns in question in the Danish archive. There are drawings for barrels and for carriages. Three publications may be also of interest in this context: STOLZ, G. (1986): Die Uniformierung der Schleswig-Holsteinischen Marine 1848-1852.- Z. für Heereskunde, 326/327: 100-103. STOLZ, G. (1987): Die Schleswig-Holsteinische Marine 1848-1852.- 141 p., Heide/Holstein (Westholtein. Verlagsanst. Boyens & Co.). STOLZ, G. (1990): Historische Stätten der Marine in Schleswig-Holstein.- 133 p., Heide (Westholsteinische Verlagsanstalt Boyens & Co.). I am looking forward to more progress on this project!

Yes, I noticed this as well and was contemplating in my previous project to use this effect, perhaps by staining the paper a bit to mimic mahagony. However, it is difficult to clean-up sufficiently the scorched edges on small complex parts, so I opted for painting with acrylics in the end. No chance in this project, as on these working boats everything, except the spars, was painted. No fancy varnished woodwork.