wefalck

My next project has been on my “to do list “since I saw the movie The San Pebbles in 1966. The San Pablo represents one of the many gunboats that were used by the western nations to patrol the waters of the Yangtze River in China during the period of the Chinese wars between war lords, nationalists and communist’s factions. The movie involves a sailor in charge of the steam engine that powers the ship. 
 
The USS San Pablo was a 150-foot steel-hulled gunboat, built by Vaughn & Yung Engineering Ltd. of Hong Kong.


There is a lot of information on the web about this ship and about the real US Navy ships that were used in this service such as the USS Panay that was bombed by the Japanese in 1939. Following are some links to sites on this subject.
 
https://industrialhistoryhk.org/sand-pebbles/
 
https://www.thesandpebbles.com/naval_history/real_sandpebbles1.htm
 
ttps://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2000/february/real-sand-pebbles
 
As I said before, I had this project in mind for a long time but could not obtain proper plans. Finally ,last year, I found a link to a French magazine that included the plans for this gunboat. The plans were at 1/45 scale that made the boat 40” long so I had the plans reduced to 1/64 scale with a length of a little more than 28 inches.




I decided to build as plank on frame method used MDF boards for the spine and frames but the material I found was 1/4” thick and the resulting ship skeleton looks very heavy, but it will provide plenty of surface for the planking. Following is the progress to date.

 Developing the frames pieces



Starting the framework.


The first long plank.



 Then, the development of the conical shape and using a wood mold to bend the wood pieces that will form the aft bulkwark will come next
 
 

Perhaps you could use cardboard-templates to work out the geometry?

I had discovered decades ago that making half-hitches eases the seizing of blocks etc. a lot and keeps the rounds in place. The only issue is that one can see this on one side, so strategic placing of the 'hitch' to become mostly not visible is a good idea.
 
If you are averse to using an organic solvent-based varnish (e.g. diluted clear nail varnish) for securing rigging, you may want to try the cement they use in nail-studios to stick artificial nails to ladies' real nails. I recently discovered that this is a mixture of CA and metacrylic monomers: it sticks quite fast, but you have several minutes to adjust things before it fully cures. It is not as 'nasty' as pure CA and forms strong bonds. It should be readily available in your part of the world.

When there are eye-bolts, blocks would be shackled or hooked to them. The blocks would be either internally stropped in metal, or there would be an external strop in rope with an eye for the shackle/hook. The splice or the whole strop could be served and there would be a seizing between the block and the eyelet.
I suspect that on a boat like this there may be a few windings of wire replacing the shackle …

Thanks for the 'likes' !
 
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Fitting the rails
 
The rails are 0.75 mm x 1.50 mm styrene strips on top of the bulwark and a 0.75 mm x 2.00 mm strip over the stern. The edges of the strips are rounded.
 
To this end I cut a scraper from a piece of razor-blade which is held in a short pin-vice. The strip is held in a simple jig made from cardboard. Strips of cardboard were cut with clean and vertical edges and glued to a cardboard-base so that styrene strips of 0.25 mm, 0.50, and 0.75 mm thickness can be wedged into the resulting notch, holding it straight and vertical.
 
In this way a clean and uniform profile of the styrene strip can be achieved quickly.
 
The styrene strips then were pre-bend, holding them lightly in round-nosed pliers and by ‘massaging’ them around my thumb to make them conform to the sheer-line as closely as possible. They then were glued onto the stanchions and the top bulwark strake using styrene-cement.
 
As can be seen from the cross-section shown in the previous post, the profile of the rail may be even more sophisticated with some cornice planed in. I simulated this my lacquering a 0.1 mm copper wire into the outboard corner under the rail.
 
The next step will be puttying up any small gaps that have developed during the planking process.
 
As one can see on the pictures, I also started to work on the deck by making a paper template for it.
 
To be continued …  

Thanks to all for your continued encouragement ! Slow progress due to business travel-related absence from the workshop ...
 
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Planking the bulwarks
 
The planking of the bulwarks follows the same procedure as that for the hull, but had to be handled much more careful, as the inside will be visible and there will by no adjustments possible by sanding or scraping. The main reason for the latter is, that the planks are of scale thickness (0.25 mm) and profiled.

Section through a bulwark drawn by Friis-Pedersen (1980).
 
As can be seen from the two images above and below, it was not uncommon to give the edges of the planks a decorative profile by using an appropriate profile plane.

Bulwark of a Swedish jagt, photographed in November 2023 in Stockholm
 
I had been exploring various ideas for creating these profiles on tiny 1 mm x 0.25 mm styrene ‘planks’ uniformly and consistently close to the edges. In the end I decided on a simple and rather makeshift solution: a steel ruler was taped to a small cutting-mat to serve as guide for the very flexible strips. The chosen tool is an old-style ruling pen, of which I have several knocking about in my drawer of draughting utensils. This was set so that it creates a groove close to the opposite edge, when run along the edge of the strip. This works only for strips of uniform width.
  
It was important to prevent the styrene strips from softening too much during gluing, therefore only tiny drops of liquid styrene cement were applied to each stanchion. 
 
Somehow the alignment of the bulkheads was not as perfect as I was hoping for, resulting in some bulges. I hope I will be able to correct/hide this somehow.
 
Another problem is that the styrene strips of scale thickness are rather floppy, so that edge-alignment is rather difficult. I hope that I can also sort this out.
 
Once the planks were on, I installed the hawse-timbers between the stem and the cant-frames in the bow.

Next on will be the rails.
 
To be continued …  

Very intricate and detailed structure. Love these kinds of details 👍🏻

I thought that she already was part of the museum's collection and that's why you are restoring her in the museum ...
 
Excellent work anyway 👍🏻

I love making such mechanical things. Here my take in 1:60 scale, done some 30 years ago:
 

Perhaps you could use cardboard-templates to work out the geometry?

Perhaps you could use cardboard-templates to work out the geometry?

Perhaps you could use cardboard-templates to work out the geometry?

Perhaps you could use cardboard-templates to work out the geometry?

The snow-rig seems to have fallen out of fashion around the middle of the 19th century and its prevalence seems to have been unevenly distributed across the European regions and North America.
 
One reason, why one does not see many old models of snows is perhaps, that this is a rig largely associated with smaller merchantmen and not too many models of them were built at the time or have survived. On ship portraits, however, it is quite frequent.
 
Here is an interesting arrangement on the snow ELISABETH (1839) of Altona (Hamburg). The model was built in around 1900 from old plans by shipwrights and rigged by real riggers etc. The snow-mast is actually stepped on the gaff and not on the deck !
 

More pictures from this model in the Altona-Museum here: https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/hamburg/altona.html
 

Thanks for the 'likes' !
 
***********************

Fitting the rails
 
The rails are 0.75 mm x 1.50 mm styrene strips on top of the bulwark and a 0.75 mm x 2.00 mm strip over the stern. The edges of the strips are rounded.
 
To this end I cut a scraper from a piece of razor-blade which is held in a short pin-vice. The strip is held in a simple jig made from cardboard. Strips of cardboard were cut with clean and vertical edges and glued to a cardboard-base so that styrene strips of 0.25 mm, 0.50, and 0.75 mm thickness can be wedged into the resulting notch, holding it straight and vertical.
 
In this way a clean and uniform profile of the styrene strip can be achieved quickly.
 
The styrene strips then were pre-bend, holding them lightly in round-nosed pliers and by ‘massaging’ them around my thumb to make them conform to the sheer-line as closely as possible. They then were glued onto the stanchions and the top bulwark strake using styrene-cement.
 
As can be seen from the cross-section shown in the previous post, the profile of the rail may be even more sophisticated with some cornice planed in. I simulated this my lacquering a 0.1 mm copper wire into the outboard corner under the rail.
 
The next step will be puttying up any small gaps that have developed during the planking process.
 
As one can see on the pictures, I also started to work on the deck by making a paper template for it.
 
To be continued …  

Regarding the jogging.  If anybody sees me out jogging, PLEASE kill whatever is chasing me!

Keeping fingers crossed ...

Keeping fingers crossed ...

Keeping fingers crossed ...

New York may be the same latitude as Naples, but they don't have there the Alps to keep the winds from the North Pole away 🥶 ... reminds me of a Christmas there many decades ago, when we had -30°C due to the chill-factor.

... you could use black decal strips, either home-made from decal sheet or commercial ones. I am also using increasingly soft artists' felt-tip pens with pigmented acrylic paint in them for such things. 

So it kind of operates like the knee-levers on electrical sewing machines? Interesting mechanism.
 
She now really looks like a hard-working vessel 👍🏻  I like these unsual workboats.

Leaving a part too long in a blackening solution results in a buildup of several layers, which then can detach, i.e. flake. Using a ‚tampon‘ process means that the surface is exposed to a limited amount of blackening solution, reducing the risk of flaking.

Keeping fingers crossed ...

Starting to add components to the engine. Added aluminum funnels to the tanks and then permanently connected the tank structure to the engine. Made a small structure to represent the front coolant pump and connected it to the coolant funnel with copper wire that represents tubing. Made and added a pulley to the pump - currently the pulley has the same depth as the big pulley on the propeller shaft.
 
'If' I can learn what the off-to-the-right front pulley did, then I will add it in and replace the coolant pulley with one half as deep (already made if this happens) and run a pair of belts off the big pulley. If not, then the coolant pump will get a single wider belt.