wefalck

Allow me to strongly disagree - I think it looks very credible 😁

And that’s the base coat down

Ok, normal service has resumed 

Thank you for the comments and likes.
 
 
 This ugly Hard Coal Navy towboat is done with the exception of a couple of spots I noticed in the photos that need to touch up but that's  only a matter of a couple of minutes effort. 
 
 The deckhand has taken his rightful place. 

 
 I like this view because the skipper can be seen in the pilothouse.

 

 

 

 
 When the boiler's firebox in cleaned out the clinkers and ash are flat nose shoveled over the side. 

 
 I have extra chain in the winches but won't know how much until the barge is lashed.

 

 
 Thank you so much for your support and for taking the time to follow this journey.
 
   Keith

Actually I've built full size buckboards and they are very comfortable to ride in.  The ones I've built have no springs between the body (floor) and the axles, only under the seat.
 
This is my personal buckboard.  I made my own brackets (see pic) that attached the seat spring to the seat and to the floor.  Made a very comfortable ride, both for the horse and driver.  I used 1/2" square stock for the curved braces for the dash which was heated in my forge and then twisted and then ends hammered flat and punched holes for bolts.
 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 

Another thing to look for are toolmaker or watchmaker drill-bits with a thicker shaft, below 1 mm they have a 1 mm shaft and the spiral part is much shorter and therefore stiffer than drill-bits with full-length spirals and uniform diameter. They are HSS and not to be confused with those brittle carbide drills that seem to be ubiquitous now and have either 3 mm or 1/8" shafts.

I think such cross-braces were also used sometimes in full-scale practice ...
 
Looking at the above photograph, I have the feeling that the cant-frames are too much in and also may not be full enough. Could be a question of perspective though. Did you check against the rail- and deck-profile? It would also be useful to run a batten along the frames to the stem-post, horizontally and diagonal - it would indicate kinks and forced runs.
 
 

Without shock-absorbers/dampeners they must have been swaying a lot ...

I just finished the buckboard by model trailways.  It's an easy kit and something different from scratch building a wagon.  The kit went together good, some areas could be better and I wish they would of included "real nuts, bolts, washers" instead of just cast bolts and fake square nuts, both out of scale.  I used brass nuts, bolts, washers, as I would if scratch building a wagon.
 
Other than that, the kit is a good kit.  Enjoy the pictures.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

Another thing to look for are toolmaker or watchmaker drill-bits with a thicker shaft, below 1 mm they have a 1 mm shaft and the spiral part is much shorter and therefore stiffer than drill-bits with full-length spirals and uniform diameter. They are HSS and not to be confused with those brittle carbide drills that seem to be ubiquitous now and have either 3 mm or 1/8" shafts.

This structure will soon be added to my micro layout. 

Any decent HSS, high speed steel, bit should hold up, hand drill or otherwise.
Avoid carbide drills unless in a powered milling machine type environment. They are too brittle and prone to break easily when used in/for the purpose you describe.

I think such cross-braces were also used sometimes in full-scale practice ...
 
Looking at the above photograph, I have the feeling that the cant-frames are too much in and also may not be full enough. Could be a question of perspective though. Did you check against the rail- and deck-profile? It would also be useful to run a batten along the frames to the stem-post, horizontally and diagonal - it would indicate kinks and forced runs.
 
 

I think such cross-braces were also used sometimes in full-scale practice ...
 
Looking at the above photograph, I have the feeling that the cant-frames are too much in and also may not be full enough. Could be a question of perspective though. Did you check against the rail- and deck-profile? It would also be useful to run a batten along the frames to the stem-post, horizontally and diagonal - it would indicate kinks and forced runs.
 
 

Thanks, all! @tkay11, I knew one of those dimensions had to be molded and one sided, but I wasn't sure which, so thank you very much for clarifying!
 
I decided to go ahead with fairing. If the frame needs to be redone in the end, there's no harm in trying to fair it into shape first. I tend to fair pretty slowly over the course of days if not weeks, both because it's tedious work, and because taking my time makes me less likely to take too much off and more likely to really get things right instead of deciding that it's close enough. I noticed that the hull was quite flexible, so I added a bunch of supports across the top. They're as haphazard and ugly as the supports between frames, but thanks to the power of triangles, the hull is now pretty resistant to flexing and twisting.

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

Reporting for watching along-duty ...

Well, barely a month into project and I already almost missed it completely ...
 
You didn't describe, how you went about the sculpting of the decorations, didn't you?

Well, I’m happy to report that the BONDO experiment was a success!  I made a few fleur and shell casts to see how the material might release from the moulds.


They released with even less effort than the Allumalite resin castings.  As with the resin, small air pockets were an issue, but the crispness of detail was very satisfying, overall.
 
For the squiggly scrolls, I decided to press a small amount of BONDO into the moulds with the pad of my finger, hoping to press out any air pockets.  I then applied a thin backing layer so that I’d have something to hold onto, as I wasted away the ground.  This time, perfect castings:

Wasting was easy with the Dremel drum sanding attachment, followed by lap sanding across a sanding stick with finger pressure.  Checking against a back-light, you can see where the ground is thicker or thinner, and you can adjust your finger pressure accordingly.  You sand until you can just begin to see the castings releasing from the ground.
 
I cleaned up a set to see what they looked like on a panel.  I’m on the fence about this, at the moment:

I also took some time to trim the panels so that they fit precisely within the parameters of the drawing.  Because all 6 panels are produced from only two master drawings, they don’t all perfectly mirror to the other side of the drawing.  A little fine-tuning was necessary:


I made the yoke for the bell.  The iron bands are simply black construction paper:

I’ve also made the six breast-rail stanchions.  I realized that the knees I patterned (left stanchion) were a little too heavy and out of scale, so I trimmed them back a bit (right):

I guess I didn’t save the bell (90’s reference), so I’ll have to turn one from Screetch!
 
RIP, Dustin Diamond

I’ve spent the better part of the week fretting out these panels.  They are pretty small, at 3/8” x 7/16”+:

As such, I was having a lot of trouble NOT breaking off the ears of my fleurs.  I set them aside, to glue them back-on once the fretting was done.  Despite that precaution, I still managed to break one off again.
 
I realized I would never be able to model the shells and fleurs unless they were secured to a backing, so I glued the .032 fretted panel to a .020 backer.
 
In order to preserve some sense of lightness, I filed out the scalloped recesses around the perimeter.  When I get to painting these, I will use flat black for the ground behind the fleurs and shells - a nod to theater carpentry.  The fret-work will be red ocher, and the ornaments will be yellow ocher.
 
I’m going to experiment with Bondo to see whether I can cast extras of the small squiggles that ornament all the corners of the frieze.  These might be nice accents for the corners of each panel:

I ran out of viable resin and don’t feel like buying more because it has a shelf-life, and I won’t use it enough to justify the cost.
 
As long as the vinyl Bondo releases from the rubber moulds I made, we’re in business.  We shall see.

I have finished fabricating the davits... I added keepers to each pulley so the falls won't slip off. I extended the shafts to the correct length for St. Roch, based on photos. I also opened the eyelet at the tip that will receive the upper block for the falls, this should make it easier to do the final assembly...

The davits mount outboard, and period photos show they rest on the rub rail and fasten there as well as to the cap rail. The latter, from plans and photos, appears to be a strap that is wrapped around the davit and then bolted flat to the cap. I have replicated this using scrap brass from old photo-etch frets. The davits are also placed relative to the lower deck portholes based on photos.  

In the picture I am trial fitting the motorboat davits to the cap rail. I still have to make the base mounts and then it is off to the paint booth. I have also decided, in the absence of definitive evidence, to hang the falls' coils on pins that I will install onto the cradles. This keeps these lines handy, and more importantly, inboard!
As always, comments and suggestions are welcome!
 
 

Ok, back to normal programming soon 

Thank you @Ronald-V, @amateur, @scrubbyj427 and @wefalck for your kind words.
@wefalck: No, I did not describe the carvings. As you know it is all fake. I just press some two component putty into place and make blobs and dents with pointed and round sticks until it looks like carvings from a distance in my myopic eyes.
For the bell I heated some blister plastic and pressed the massive side of a 1.5 mm drill into it. The material gave way in a nice bell-shaped way, I just had to cut it from the sheet.
Amazing how much more time is needed to build at this scale compared with larger ones. Time and scale seem inversely proportional. There must be some law for it.

It's all about finding the right configurations and writing the right specifications. Such experiments even date back to the Boer Wars in South Africa, where they began to armour traction engines, if I am not mistaken.
 
It's also about understanding the tactical possibilities and thinking beyond the then current engineering capabilities. It is clear that initially tanks were mainly conceived as infantry support vehicles, rather than a replacement of heavy cavalry (light cavalary in its reconnaisance role began to be replaced by armourd road vehicles). It wasn't until the late 1920s/early 1930s that IC engine and track engineering made fast tanks really possible. Until then tanks were seen as war-elephants, rather than chariots, hence the idea of converting crawler tractors.
 

Well, barely a month into project and I already almost missed it completely ...
 
You didn't describe, how you went about the sculpting of the decorations, didn't you?