wefalck

Thanks to all for their kind comments and 'tumbs-up'. @KeithAug: well, if you look really close up, you would see that it is actually not so crisp. Painting on a threedimensional surface has advantages, but also a lot of traps. In fact, on the prototype there was an angle-iron running around the edge of the deck, to which the bulwark was rivetted. I simulated the upright leg of the angle-iron by impressing rivetts into some self-adhesive aluminium foil that I cut into strips and then ran around the inside of the bulwark. The edge of that was not as crisp as I had wished for, but really saw that only during the painting. I will not do this again. This upright leg was painted black/grey on the prototype, forming a sort of waterway/kicking strip. Due to the thickness of the material it is not so easy to decide where the separation between the colours should be and paint has the tendency to creep into corners. It required touching up in both ways, the grey as well as the white, until I had a reasonably clean line. My hand is also not so steady. But I have the model mounted on a foot on which I can incline it to near vertical, which makes access easier. I used a flat hair brush to approach the kicking-strip - and was holding my breath ...

Thanks (belatedly) for the kind comments above and the thumbs-up ! ******************** Some post-summer progress It is quite amazing, how time passes – more than three months since the last up-date ! OK, I have been in sort of semi-vacation for six weeks in Spain, but then money-earning work seriously got into my way. Normally, I leave painting as much as possible to the very end, just before the assembly stage. This avoids damage to the paintwork by handling the model or the problem of removing dust from it. However, I felt that the project had progressed to a point, where I wanted to see how everything comes together. This also boosts the motivation, rather getting lost in fabricating endlessly little pieces. So, the model was given a good cleaning to remove dust, grease etc. The sequence of colours had to be carefully considered in order to work from the light ones to the dark ones. I also wanted to work inside out, because in this way masking was facilitated. Photograph of 1876 showing quite clearly the livery of SMS WESPE at the time. The whole paint-work is done with acrylics from Vallejo (marketed here in France under the brand ‘Prince August’) and Schmincke (a German manufacturer). Hence, I started with the white of the inside of the casemate, the bulwark and the walls of the deckhouse, which was spray-painted with the airbrush. Unfortunately, I had some trouble with the airbrush that had not been used for a while. Apparently, some paint had accumulated in the nozzle from insufficient cleaning over time. This particularly affected the white, which seems to have comparatively bigger pigment particles and is more difficult to spray anyway. Due to the various bits and pieces added to the bulwark etc., it is virtually impossible to rub down the paint and begin afresh … so the white paintwork is not as good as I had hoped for … The decks were not originally laid in wood (with the exception of the quarter deck and the floor of the casemate) or covered in linoleum at that time. They appear to have been painted with a mixture of tar and black oil-paint, with sand mixed into to provide a non-slip surface. I assumed that this mixture would attain a dark greyish colour with time due to weathering, similar to older tarmac. Prince August 996 (German ‘Panzergrau’ - tank-grey) seemed to be a suitable choice. All the deck areas were sprayed white together with the other parts to give a better key for hand-brushing. I began with painting the kicking-strips and water-ways between the bulwark stanchions and then progressed to several coats on the deck areas. All this painting was done by brush, as it would have been virtually impossible to mask-off the bulwark. The paint-schemes of the Prussian and then Imperial German Navy ships are reasonably well known for the years after 1867, as the ordinances were published in official gazettes that have survived. For the first couple of service years of SMS WESPE, the 1874 ordinance paint-scheme would have been applicable. This specifies that hulls below the waterline were to be red and above black, with a white boot-topping; another white strip was to be painted below the main rails; all ginger-bread work in white as well as all superstructures and deck-houses, ventilators, etc. Funnels and masts were to be painted yellow (buff). Photographic evidence indicates that there were some variations to this scheme for SMS WESPE, but I will discuss these, when I come to describe the painting of respective parts. First, the narrow visible part of the underwater hull was painted in Vallejo 71.269 (red RAL 3000). This area was then masked off with Tamiya masking tape. The inside of the hull was also masked and the hull sprayed black. The bulwark-rail appears to have been varnished wood. It was first given a coat of Prince August 77 (bois-wood), followed by a light wash of 834 (bois transparent), which has a slightly lighter tone, followed by another light wash of Vallejo 71.074 (beige). Finally, a very light wash of Vallejo (transparent orange) was applied, which gives the wood a deep, warm tint. The images above show the ‘raw’ paintwork. It still needs to be touched up and items such as the scrollwork needs to be refined. Eventually, there will be also a light weathering and ‘griming’ with pastels – the idea is to just show the effects of being in use, but with good maintenance. To be continued ....

Well, the distance between steps on stairs and ladder is pretty much uniform all over the world and all times: go to your staircase and measure the distance in Millimeters and divide that number by 64. My textbook on ship's joinery tells me that steps are around 200 mm high and about 220 mm deep, which roughly translates in 3 mm height at 1/64 scale and 3.5 mm deep.

Many coastal fortresses were armed with mortars in order to fire plunging shots/shells at approaching ships. While originally the idea was that the shot would penetrate to the ship's bottom and create a leak that would virtually impossible to stop, when armoured ships appeared the idea to be able to penetrate the unarmoured or only lightly armoured decks with shells to cause damage within the ship became more important. To this end in peace-time the waters around the forts would be carefully surveyed and maps drawn. With the aid of two or three observation posts the position of the ship relative to the mortar implacement would be determined by cross-sighting and the gun layed appropriately. The necessary settings would have been determined experimentally in advance.

Looks like a forged iron poop-deck rail, rather than a 'rope'.

... and the really lucky ones find a princess to turn them into a prince 😉

The steam-pumpers would normally short sections of suction-hose, which are quite stiff, on racks alongside the chassis or another convenient place. There would be also one length of pressure hose per nozzle. Most of the pressure-hoses would be carried on a reel on a two-wheeled trailer towed behind the pumper and/or on separate carriage that would also carry some short lean-/hook-on ladders. In addition, there would be a coal- and perhaps a water-cart to provide clean boiler feed-water. The whole train may be completed by a big extendable ladder on a turn-table on a separate carriage.

It is really coming together nicely. There would be two types of hoses: suction hoses and pressure hoses. Suction hoses were made from rubberised canvas and were kept open (round) internally by a spiral of bronze (I guess so, as stainless steel was not available yet at that time). The suction hose is used to take water from surface water courses - at that time in most places there was no water-mains to supply hydrants. In 1:72 scale I imitated the look by winding thin copper wire around a soldering wire of suitable diameter and painting the whole thing. In your scale you might try to find a suitable spring or make one and slip it into a heat-shrink tube. The tube than can be shrunk cautiously onto the spiral, coiled and then painted. Pressure hoses also would be made from rubberised canvas, but would be flat, when not in use. In this way more length can be store on a reel. Fire-station usually have a tower in which these hoses are hanged freely to dry. They are then powdered inside with talcum to prevent the rubber from sticking together. The woven shoelace might be indeed a good representation of such pressure hose, when not in use,

Just checked on the Internet. This kit seems to have been modelled after one of Chapman's drawings. So it would be indeed mid- to late-1700s. During this period and even more so in the Baltic virtually all substantial parts on a ship('s deck) would have been made from wood and preserved with wood tar ('Stockholm tar'), giving it a light brownish colour. Iron work (no steel !) would be only some forged iron bands, rings, etc. Although iron has been mined in Sweden for centuries, it was still comparatively expensive due to not very efficient mining methods and high cost of fuel (charcoal) for turning the iron-ore into metal. Cast iron was still quite rare at the time and mainly restricted to high-value parts, such as guns. In the case of the kit, these metal parts, bitts for instance, then should be painted in a light wood colour and then given washes with say burnt umber in order to simulate the Stockholm tar preservation.

I am using razor-blades, the ones with a reenforced back. And I am using them as they come. Seems to leave smooth, flat surfaces.

We had this discussion at a different place already not too long ago: different, very light-weight silk papers are available from art-supply houses. Very fine silk-cloth is also available as printing screen, again through suppliers for the art-trades, printers, or through ebay in fact.

For fine finishes, particularly after having applied sanding filler, I also use steel-wool of various grades. It gives an nice satin finish - but make sure to remove also the little steel splinters !

Such sails need to be shaped (mostly) during the process, not afterwards. Glueing on the bolt-ropes with either white glue or acrylic gel gives (initially) a somewhat flexible joint, so that the sails can even be furled. If the bold-rope comes loose in places, it can be easily attached again. I have been making sails like this for 30+ years.

I don't think the ship were actually sailing while butchering a whale. The drag from the carcasse would have been a lot of strain on the tackles with which it was worked. Apart from the fact that in the course of the 19th century labour became increasingly expensive and, therefore, crews had to be reduced and the sail plan of vessels adapated to this, one has to keep in mind that a whaler would have to be managed by a very much reduced crew while the whaleboats were out hunting. Not sure, whether there are any statistics, but I would assume that loosing a whaleboat and its crew was not uncommon - in the fight with a whale or when bad weather developed, while the boats were out. Therefore, the whaler would need to be able to be sailed with a reduced crew. As a matter of fact, a full rig does not seem to have had much advantage over a barque rig and only on certain points to the wind. On most points the square sails would blanket each other and be ineffective. This is why the last big square-riggers were almost always barques.

Thanks for the link. I am slowly scrolling through that log, very interesting to see the master being built.

Can one see the original somewhere on the Internet ? A Google-search only turned up model pictures of other builds from this kit. I am curious as to what kind of boiler was used. There must have been some way of checking, whether enough water was in it. Once could also use test-taps at different levels - perhaps the vertical row of the four taps? These fire engines had boilers, where most of the water was in water-tubes, which ensured quick heating up, but still there is a minimum level of water that has to be kept to prevent the tubes from burning through.

Are there no water gauges at the stoking platform ?

Things are coming together nicely ! It shows how fragile and spidery the engineering designs were at that time. I gather today one would make this much more compact. The suspension system (the 'shock absorbers') is actually quite interesting and I wonder how it really worked. Somehow it looks as if it were just a stack of leather discs. Most steam-fire engines I have seen in preservation have the boiler suspended from a ring, which in turn is supended on leaf-springs above the axles. However, looking at my pictures of the one preserved in the Stockholm technical museum, it seems to have a similar arrangement of 'shock absorbers', but in wood:

I gather various museum have models that were submitted together with patent applications ...

Thinking about it, and as the lowest hook is actually at the level of the hearth, the hooks may also serve to install/store a 'couvre feu' (curfew), to prevent embers from falling out. These would have been probably just sheets of iron. Amalio will know probably more ...

Presumably for a roasting spit. In the Danish Rigsarkivet they have numerous drawings of galleys, not only Danish ones, and some show mechanisms for a mechanical turning of the spits. The galley is a major fire-hazard on a (wooden) ship and seems to have preoccupied significantly the navy responsibles, judging by the numbers of drawings and contemporary models that have survived.

OK, as I am not going into commercial production, I am staying with my shop-made manual mill - but laser-shaping of the sheave would be nice.

I gather you’ve used some kind of jig that allows you to zero-in each, the mill and the laser, for the consecutive operations. I understood that you index the billets manually in order to mill the four sides, correct? The milling wouldn’t be difficult with a ball-nose mill. Laser-cutting the sheave certainly lets you go down one almost order of magnitude in size.

Well, I missed this thread since last summer. Don’t have a suitable laser-cutter, but thought by adding a 4th axis, i.e. an indexer, and modulating the laser power, one could do exactly that … You don’t have to worry about breaking milling cutters and could down to dimensions, where it would difficult to find suitable cutters. I am thinking of 1 to 2 mm blocks …

This is going to be a brilliant model and the 'fake' metal looks really good. OK, with hindsight, but I wonder, whether it would have been possible to 'joggle' the vertical joint in the boiler-lagging. In this way, the outside diameter would have not increased due to the extra thickness of the overlapping material. I had to check the imperial thread sizes, but to me they are not actually that small at 1.2 mm and 1.8 mm diameter. Anyway, it may have been a good idea to re-thread the cast parts with an appropriate die to remove any flash or distortions. In theory, one can also use a very fine triangular file to remove flash and burrs, but it is not so easy to find a fine-enough file for these fine pitches. The problem is that you do some sort of pressure-forming, when screwing the nut on and that requires a lot of force to move the material.