vaddoc

Thanks, gentlemen. These antique small machines are actually a secondary hobby, which justified kind of the expenses  ...
 
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Fitting out the barbette
 
As small update: I have further kitted out the barbette with the ladders that allowed the gun-crew to scramble over its sides into it and with the racks for the ready-ammunition. Also installed were the gratings over the stairs down into the crew-accommodation below the barbette (which also housed the cranking mechanisms for turning the gun) and over the hatch through which the shells would be lifted up. These gratings are somewhat conjectural, as the existing drawings could also be interpreted as showing stairs. However, I assume that hatch down to the turning mechanism must have been covered to prevent crew from tumbling down, but also open to allow voice communication with the guys cranking away. For the access to the shell-room, the grating must have been hinged in some way. There was a small gallows-like crane above it to allow the shells being lifted up.
 
Also, there is a box in one corner with a kind of rack attached to it. Their function cannot be deducted from the drawings and the hand-written explanations are not readable in the scans available to me.
 
 
Barbette with shell-racks, ladders and hatchways installed
 
The next step will be to install the various portholes in the deckhouse and the hull. Their actual look is quite well-known, as one specimen has been recovered some years ago from the wreck of SMS SALAMANDER off a Dutch beach and which is now in private hands and of which I obtained pictures. However, on the model only a narrow brass ring will be visible from the outside. They were actually very small, only about 16 cm in diameter, which translates to 1 mm on the model.
 
My idea was to dip thin-walled pieces of brass tube into Acrifix 192, as was done for the skylights, but this Plexiglas glue is too viscous to penetrate into the 0.8 mm diameter opening of the brass tubes. Have to figure out a different way …
 
To be continued ....

Thanks, Keith !
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Ammunition and ammunition handling
 
Thanks to a book published in 1886 by Carl Galster, we are relatively well informed about the ammunition of the German naval artillery of that time. The WESPE-Class was the only class of ships fitted with the Rk 30,5 cm/l22. According to Galster, three types of projectiles were available for these guns in the late 1870s/early 1880s: a) armour-piercing shells, b) shells with a time-fuse, and b) dummy shells for gun-drill.
All shells had two copper guiding rings that would be squeezed into the rifling. One ring sat shortly above the bottom and the second ring where the cylindrical part would transit into the ogival part of the shell.
The armour-piercing shells were cast in a particular way to harden the steel from which they were cast. They were hollow, but with only a relatively small chamber for powder in the rear part. The nose was cast solid. However, at that time functional impact fuses were not yet available, so the shells were filled with a mixture of sand and sawdust to give the approximate weight distribution as a powder charge would give. The threaded hole for the fuse in the bottom was simply plugged. Armour-piercing shells were painted blue.
The ordinary shell had thinner walls and consequently a larger power-charge. The nose was threaded for time-fuses. It is beyond the scope of this building-log to discuss the fuses in detail, it suffices to say that these were made from brass. Shells were painted red and when actually charged with powder marked with a black ring around the nose.
 

Shells in handling cradles on the Copenhagen demonstration model (note that in real life the shells would be painted and the museum placed them the wrong way around into the cradle)
 
Dummy shells were ‘seconds’ of ordinary shells filled with a sand-sawdust mixture to give the same weight as a real shell. The hole in the nose was closed with a wooden plug. They were painted black all over.
Powder charges were supplied in cylindrical bags. Each bag weighed 46 kg. Up to two bags could be loaded, allowing to adapt the firing range. The bags were stored and handled in cyclindrical boxes lined with zinc sheet or where made from German silver.
 

Powder bag and tampion at the demonstration model in Copenhagen
 
 
A total of five shells were kept ready in the open barbette. I would assume that these would be only the armour-piercing and drill ones, as the fuse of ordinary shells would be rather exposed to the elements. I set out to make six shells in total, three armour-piercing and two drill-shells, that were stored in their respective racks in the barbette. The sixth is an ordinary shell to be placed in the shell-cradle under the crane.
My preferred steel in the workshop are copper-coated welding rods. The copper-coating is very convenient here, as their diameter of 2 mm is exactly the scale diameter over the copper guiding rings. The nose was turned free-hand with my special Lorch, Schmidt & Co. graver holder. The shells are 4.8 mm long. For the live shell, a little brass button was turned and inserted into a pre-drilled hole in the nose.
 

Free-hand turning of the shell nose
 
It not clear, how the heavy shells (weighing around 330 kg) were handled inside the ship and hoisted to the level of the barbette floor. The crane on the gun-carriage does not actually reach over the access-hatch to the shell-store through which the shells presumably were hoisted. The drawings are not clear on the various hatches in the barbette and over the shell-storage, because of various elments being hidden behind others and therefore not drawn. I will have to live with this ignorance.
On the decks, the shells were wheeled around in trolleys. In the Rigsarkivet in Copenhagen a blue-print (in the true sense of the word) for such a trolley has survived. The trolly forms a cradle that can be hoisted by crane to the breech of the gun. At the rear of the gun two hooks are provided (not realised on the model) into which the cradle hooks. The shell then can be pushed into the gun with a rammer.
 

Gun drill, showing the cradle hooked to the gun (LAVERRENZ, 1900)
 
The parts for the trolley where laser-cut and assembled using zapon lacquer. Effectively the trolley was built around the shell for rigidity. A hole was drilled into the shell to secure the hoisting ring.
The racks for the ready shells were laminated together from laser-cut pieces and painted white. The retaining bar was made from flattened pieces of 0.3 mm diameter copper wire that was chemically tinned. In theory, each individual shell should have had its own retaining ring (keeping in mind how important it is to restrain these 300 kg beasts in anything but the slightest sea), but after several attempts to put these into place without damaging the paint-work on the shells too much, I gave up. Flattening the wire reminded me of another pending workshop project, namely a micro-rolling mill to produce metal strips of consistent width and thickness from soft wire.
 

The finished ready-shells (close-up photographs are terribly sobering ...)
 
Reference:
GALSTER, C. (1886): Pulver und Munition der deutschen Marine.- 99 p., Berlin (E.S. Mittler & Sohn).
 
 
To be continued ...

Thanks for the kind words !
 
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Assembly of the gun
 
Slow progress with steps forward and backward ... and a lot of sweat and bad language ...
All parts temporarily assembled had to be taken apart for painting first. After selecting a green for the carriage, all the parts were given several light coats with the airbrush until a uniform colour and sheen was achieved. Not so easy on some of the complex parts. After letting it thoroughly dry, the paint was scraped off from those parts that are meant to be bare metal, but could not be masked off, due to being difficult to access.
 

 
The assembly then proceeded from the inside out on the lower carriage. First the parts for the hydraulic recoil brake were installed. I decided to deviate from the prototype and not to install the protective tunnel over the piston of the brake in order to show the metal-work. I think this small bit of artistic license is permissible. All parts were put together with small blobs of zapon-lacquer, which dries up quite invisible.
Next the spring buffers were installed. Putting in the tiny hexagonal nuts required a very deep breath each time.
 

 
Flipping the carriage over the caster-wheels were put back, but this really taxed my patience. The wheels are held in place by little flat-head pins inserted from both sides. A simple through-pin would have been easier to install, but wouldn’t be quite prototype fashion.
The lower-carriage was very difficult to handle due to the flimsy and delicate grilles and steps. One was broken off in the process, but luckily attached nicely again.
 

 
The rail on which the upper carriage runs would be bare metal. Here the limitations of using cardboard as structural element shows its limitations. If I had used etched brass parts, I would have chemically tinned them before assembly and now could have just scraped off the paint or masked the area before painting to reveal the metal. Now I had to simulate it with paint and a soft lead pencil. I am not entirely satisfied with the result, but can’t do anything about it now anymore.
Overall, I am somewhat ambivalent as to the merit of using cardboard. The surface and cut edges simply are not as smooth as those of metal or plastics, such as bakelite paper or styrene. Unfortunately, styrene could not be cut with my small laser-cutter.
 

 
When proceeding to the upper carriage, I noticed a couple of mistakes I made years ago, when putting it together. Two of the transversal members were installed at a wrong place. The wheels of the carriage would have not touched the rails otherwise. When trying to rectify this, the whole assembly gave, but luckily I managed to put it back together without permanent damage.
 

 
Another issue also arose: one should not work from drawings alone, particularly in a project that streches so long as this one. It turned out that the carriage was a couple of tenths of milimeters to narrow and would not fit over the lower carriage with its guiding plates. I should have properly verified this, when developing the parts for the lower carriage. With a bit of bending and tweaking it could be made to fit, but cobble-jobs like this leave parts behind that are not as crisp as they should be.
 

 
Painting the gun barrel turned out to be a major nightmare. I did not want to prime the steel in order to not loose its metallic appearance. Usually, acrylic paints dry so fast that there are not serious issues with rust formation. When I first applied the first coat it looked ok, but the next morning it had developed a mottled appearance. The same phenomenon reappeared after each coat, but somewhat less. I attributed it to the fact that the bottle of paint was actually almost 25 years old and it had not been sufficiently mixed. In the end I cleaned off the paint and began again, but with the same result. Once more I took the paint off and then sprayed it, but without agitating the bottle, thinking that some of the pigment might have coagulated – same result. Finally, I decided to lightly prime the barrel with zapon-lacquer to isolate the steel. This forms a very thin and virtually invisible layer. This did the trick, but the priming was not done carefully enough and some spots were left bare – with the result that those areas appeared mottled again. I tried dipping, but this leaves a too thick layers in corners etc. Eventually, I managed to obtain a reaonably even layer – one has to work very fast and going over areas already treated is virtually impossible due to the rapid drying. It is also very difficult see, whether one has covered the whole surface. In conclusion, I think the pigment of caput mortuum, which probably is the mineral haematite (Fe3O4) has reacted with the steel (Fe0) leading to the mottled appearance. However, I managed to reproduce the appearance of the barrel of the demonstration model in Copenhagen reasonably well, considering the small scale.
 

 
A few of the flimsy and easy to break off details have not yet been installed and some levers to work the mechanisms still have to be fabricated.
The close-up photographs also show a lot of dust and fluff that need to be cleaned and that the paintwork has to be touched up here and there.
 
 
To be continued ...

A belated thank you !
 
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Completing the upper carriage 1
 
 
 
With the lower carriage basically ready for painting, I turned my attention back to the upper carriage. The structural elements made from photo-etched parts had already been constructed many years ago. Dito some of the details had been fabricated more than ten years ago, or at least partially.
 
 

The previous state of the upper carriage
 
 
I had also turned and cut the gear wheels for the elevating mechanism, but they had not been finished. The back side, after parting off had not been shaped, which was done now and they were also chemically tinned after degreasing and pickling in citric acid.
 
 

The gears as cut
 
 
The elevating mechanism consist of a double reduction gears and is driven by a deeply dished handwheel with six spokes. These reduction gears are duplicated on each side of the carriage. The last wheel in the drive has a pinion on the inside of the carriage, which acts on a gear segment that is attached to the gun barrel. How the gear segment is guided is not clear from the available drawings and the model in Copenhagen. On the Russian Krupp-clones the arrangement is slightly different.
 
 

The elevating gear train in GALSTER (1885)
 
 

The elevating gears on the instruction model in Copenhagen
 
 

The gear segment and its attachment to the barrel on a gun in the Suomenlinna fortress
 
 
 

Krupp factory photograph of the same gun, but in coastal mount (from the collection of the Architekturmuseum TU Berlin)
 
 
 
There is a friction-brake on the axle of the last large wheel of the gear train, which is worked with a cross handle. How this functions is not clear, but it presumably just pull the gear onto the frame via a short thread that is cut onto the end of the axle.
On the starboard side of the gun there is a brass disc and an indicator lever that somehow shows the degree of elevation and presumably the range of the gun with different kinds of projectiles and charges. Again, how this indicator disc is coupled to the elevating gears is not clear, as I do not have any suitable photographs. In any case, the respective gear train will not be really visible on the model.
The dished handwheel started life as parts photoetched from 0.2 mm brass. In order be able to bend each spoke into the dished shape, a former was turned from some round steel and set up on the watchmakers ‘staking tool’. The spokes were pre-bend by hand and then finally pulled to shape using a hollow punch. The parts then were chemically tinned and soldered together with the aid of some flux.
 
 
 

 

The step-wise forming of the dished handwheel
 
The remaining parts, such as the axles, are simple parts turned from steel rod for strength, as they are quite long compared to the diameter.
 

(Almost) all the parts of the elevating gear laid out
 

 

The elevanting gear provisionally assembled
 
To be continued ...

Loading crane
 
Somehow I seem to move two steps forward and then one step back again. For one part completed there are several that jump off the table to be never found again or that are destroyed during subsequent steps of manipulation ...
Mechanically, the loading crane is a relatively simple affair, a rope winding drum driven through a pinion and cog-wheel, powered by a hand-crank, and for turning a worm-wheel drive equally powerd by a hand-crank. The console on which the crane rests is a quite complex part that was bolted together from several cast parts.

The loading crane on the demonstration model in the former Naval Museum in Copenhagen
 

The winding mechanism of the charging crane
 
My first thought was to mill the console from the solid or rather to solder it together from several milled parts. I finally decided to put the laser-cutter to work and fabricate it from several cardboard pieces. On the bottom line, this was the easiest solution and compatible with the rest of the under-carriage
The crane on the demonstration model in Copenhagen mainly consists of bright pieces of steel or cast-iron. Whether this was the case too originally on the prototype cannot be verified anymore, as no detail photographs exist. It is perhaps doubtful due to the continuous maintenance required to keep rust at bay. Although, the navy was not concerned about camouflage at that time, they were aware of the risk of early detection by the enemy due to bright metal part reflecting the sun. However, I allowed myself the artisanal-aesthetic license of bright metal, as I think it will be a nice contrast to the dark green of the gun carriage later.
The actual crane was milled from a 2.5 mm steel rod. To this end the thickness profiles in both dimensions were taken off the original drawings and ‚stretched’ out straight in the CAD software. After milling, the part was softened in the flame, so that it could be bent according to the drawing. The hole and slot for the pulley were machined afterwards, as the part could break there during bending. The final shaping was done with silicone-bound grinding bits.
 

Milling of the crane in the dividing apparatus
 
 
Pulleys and forks form them are tiny parts machined on the lathe and the milling machine.

Fork for the lower guiding pulley
 
The mechanism of the crane consists of a good dozen of lathe-turned parts, that were, apart from their minute size, were not particularly challenging.
The cog-wheel, the pinion, and the worm-wheel were turned together with their axes in one piece. On the photographs I counted 60 teeth on the large wheel, which gives, together with a diameter of 3 mm a module of 0.05. Making a single tooth mill seem to be too much work, so that I took the short-cut of just gashing the wheels with a 0.1 mm thick circular saw. It is only about the look and I did not intend to make these gears functional. Hobbing a worm-wheel of just 1 mm diameter was too big of a challenge, big of a challenge, but at least I tilted the axis 20° when gashing it.
 

 

 

Milling of the pinion and the cog-wheel
 



Partly assembled loading crane
 
The final assembly can only be done, once the crane-console has been attached to the carriage and the whole thing is painted.
 
 
To be continued ...

Thanks, gentlemen ! The work continues:
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The lower carriage of the 30.5 cm gun
 
The lower carriage of the gun was a rather complex construction from rolled L-profiles and thick steel sheet. Unfortunately only the drawings in GALSTER (1885) and the coloured synoptic drawing from the Admiralty have come to us. Many construction details are superimposed onto each other with dashed lines, so that the interpretation of the drawings is rather difficult in places. As aids to interpretation with have one close-up photograph, the large demonstration model in the navy museum in Copenhagen, and the preserved guns of Suomenlinna Fortress off Helsinki. The carriage for the Danish iron-clad HELGOLAND, however, differs from that of SMS WESPE in some details, being actually a turret-carriage. The carriages in Suomenlinna are Russian copies of Krupp fortress carriages, but they allow to verify certain construction details that are not clear from the drawings.
 

Synoptic drawing of the 30.5 cm gun (from http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/)
 
Originally I had planned to construct the lower carriage, like the upper carriage, from surface-etched brass parts. To this end I produced some time ago already the needed detail drawings. Surface etching is a very good process to simulate rivetting. In the meantime, however, I had purchased the laser-cutter, so that laser-cut parts would be an alternative. I had hoped to cut the parts from bakelite paper. Various trials with different cutting parameters unfortunately were not very successfull for the intricate parts. The 5 mW laser ist too weak to burn the material fast enough. Burrs of molten and partially carbonised resin form. Therefore, I fell back onto Canson-paper, which is a bit over scale with its thickness of 0.15 mm.
 

Base-plate and races laser-cut from Canson-paper
 
The drawings for the etching masks had to be reworked for laser cutting. It turned out during assembly that I had made several mistakes or misinterpretations. If I had send them off for etching this would have been costly, as both masks and etching would have to be redone. When cutting paper with a laser such corrections can be made quickly and easily – and the material costs practically nothing.
 

The basic frame of the lower carriage from the rear
 
The laser-cut parts were soaked in nitrocellulose wood-filler and once dry rubbed with very fine steel wool. To double up parts and for assembly zapon lacquer was used. This dries so fast that no special arrangements for fixing the parts are needed.
 

The basic frame of the lower carriage from the front
 
I did not take pictures of the different steps of assembly, as this would have rather impeded the process. First all parts to be doubled up were cemented together using zapon lacquer and weighed down to keep them flat during drying. The longitudinal parts of the carriage had slots cut into them, so that the transveral parts could be positioned exactly. The frame assembly then was cemented to the base plate (which in reality was not a plate, but rather the frame was put together from L-profiles and steel sheets). The racers, again in one piece, where glued on top of this assembly. Underneath the base plate the housing for the training gears (which will be very much simplified as they will be barely visible upon completion of the model).
 

The basic frame of the lower carriage from underneath with the housing for the training gears
 
One can see on the laser-cut parts marks for the rivets. These will be added as tiny spots of white glue. More details will be added in the next steps, but have not all been drawn yet.
 

 

The basis frame of the lower carriage with the upper carriage and the gun put temporarily in place
 
To be continued ...

Cog, resin-casting requires a model, a prototype. If I can make one, I can make four without too much effort. So, not much is gained. The difficulty is making the 'model'
 
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Steering-wheels, third edition
 
A colleague challenged me to turn the brass reenforcement rings. I took up the challenge and bored out a piece of round brass stock to 6.8 mm and turned down the outside to 7.2 mm. From this tube with 0.3 mm wall thickness slices of 0.1 mm thickness were parted off. After a few trials to get the settings right this worked fast and repeteable. The rings were deburred on 600 grit wet-and-dry paper, ground finely on an Arkansa-stone and polished on a piece of paper with some polishing compound.
 

The new steering-wheels, above the brass rings
 
As it would have been very difficult to remove the old rings from paper from the wheels, I used the opportunity to produce a third edition of the wheels in which I left out one of the middle layers. The second edition was actually slightly too thick. Using the tried-out cutting parameters and now with some practice in assembling them, the new wheels were ready soon. The brass rings were glued on with lacquer.


The freshly cut wheels (I use a roof slate as cutting support)
 
The axle including drum for the steering rope were turned from brass.
 

A pair of steering-wheels provisionally assembled and the component parts
 
The wheels will be spray-painted painted all over and then the paint rubbed off from the brass rings. This will nicely simulate the rings let into the wood as per prototype.
 
To be continued ... hopefully soon ...

Thanks for the sympathy, gentlemen !. In the end, I persevered
 
Binnacles
 
WESPE-Class was originally equipped with three binnacles, one on the bridge, the mother-compass on a sort of pole in front of the engine-room skylight, and the third one in front of the emergency steering-wheel at the stern. In the 1890s a fourth binnacle was installed on a platform atop the engine-room skylight, but is left off here. As SMS WESPE was built in 1876 the original binnacles lack the conspicuous compensation spheres, that were only invented in the 1880s by Lord Kelvin. Also other type of compensation gear is not visible on the lithographs and the earliest photograph. A photography of the early 1890s shows a much more substantial binnacle in front of the emergency steering-wheel, which preumably now houses the compensation gear and also sports the compensation spheres. Originally, the compasses must have been illumanted by petroleum lamps, but from the lithographs it is not clear, where these lamps would have been attached. At least there are exhaust funnels on top of the binnacles, which have disappeared in later photographs. This seems to indicated that electrical illumination might have been introduced, when a dynamo was installed on board in the early 1890s for a search-light.

The binnacles as they appear on the early 1880s lithograph
 
For the model the individual binnacles were redrawn from the lithograph in order to serve as a basis for working sketch to guide the lathe- and mill-work. One needs to keep in mind that the total height is somewhere between 10 and 15 mm.
 
Redrawn binnacles, broken down into individual components to facilitate machining and painting
 
The columns presumably were made from mahagony and were turned from brass rod before being transferred to dividing head on mill to cut the octogonal shape.
 

Milling the octogonal section of the binnacle columns
 
The actual compass was made, as usual, from brass and so on the model. Body and funnel did not provide a particular challenge, not considering the small size. To the contrary, the glass hood with its narrow frames of perhaps 15 mm width on the original. The body was roughly turned from Plexiglas and then transferred to the mill. Here the octogonal pyramid was milled. Using a 0.3 mm ball-head burr narrow grooves were cut into the edges and these grooves filled in with brass paint.
 

Set-up on the micro-mill to shape the octogonal pyramid of the glass hood
 
 

Milling the faces of the octogonal pyramid
 

Cleaning up the faces after painting the edges
 
Once the paint had thoroughly dried, the faces were very lightly milled over, which resulted in sharp narrow brass strips at the edges. This is a technique that I copied from making engraved scales.

Each binnacle is made up from four parts
 
Originally I had the crazy idea of placing a miniature compass-card underneath the Plexiglas hoods, but even without it, assembling the binnacles was fiddly enough.

The binnacles provisionally assembled, pending the painting of the stands (apologies for the poor quality picture and the missing match for scale)
 
To be continued soon(?) ...
 

Engine-Room Telegraphs

On the ‘official’ lithograph of SMS WESPE from the early 1880s an unsual form of engine-room telegraph was drawn. It has a horizontal dial. In the earliest known photography of the ship during fitting-out, the telegraphs had not yet been installed.

A short while ago I discovered during a visit to Oslo in the Norsk Maritimt Museum a very similar telegraph on display. Unfortunately, the legend is not readable on my image. I seem to remember that the inventor or patentee was named. A search on the Internet and in my library did not produce anything, so I would be grateful, if anyone has an idea, who the inventor or patentee might have been.






Horizontal engine-room telegraph in the Norsk Maritimt Museum, Oslo

The telegraph was redrawn from the lithography in order to serve as a working drawing with measures to guide the lathe operation.




The original lithography and working drawing



The whole telegraph seems to have been made from brass and accordingly the model was turned from brass. The indicator arm and follower were made from flattened brass wire and the ‘wooden’ handle built up from PVA glue.




The two engine-room telegraphs at their place



SMS WESPE had two telegraphs, one for the starbord and port engine each, of this early twin-screw naval vessel.

 
To be continued soon(?) ...

Thanks, gentlemen
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There are two jacob-ladders on each side of the hull, a wider one underneath a door in the bulwark and a narrower one a bit forward. The steps probably were made from wood and had slots towards the hull to prevent the water from collecting there and to prevent the wood from rotting.

Milling of the steps for the jacobs-ladders
 
The steps are made from 0.8 mm thick Plexiglas® and the slots milled in. The sheet then was sanded down to the width of the steps and the ends rounded. Then individual steps of the right thickness were cut off on the lathe set-up with a mini saw-table.

Steps ready for fitting
 
Unfortunately, the steps could only be cemented to the hull using cyanoacrylate glue, there being no positive locking. A bit of cellotape provided a guide for alignment. Nevertheless, the procedure was a bit nerve-racking.

Jacob-ladder on port
Jacob-ladder on starbord
 
Further, fairleads for the aft mooring hawser were installed. These were made from oval rings of copper-wire. The rings were formed over two 1 mm-drills taped together, cut off and closed by silver-soldering. The rings were sanded down to half their thickness and one each of these rings cemented to the inside and outside of the hull. The hole was drilled out and filed to shape.
Fairlead for aft mooring hawsers
 
To be continued soon ...
 

And the show goes on ...
 
The nascent ventilator was then transfered to the micro-mill for further machining. The mill had been set-up with the dividing head carefully aligned with the milling spindle using a round piece of cemented carbide.


 


Aligning the milling spindles


 
It was also fitted with the geared dividing attachment. The first machining step was to mill out the cowl, starting from the pre-drilled hole.


 


Milling out the cowl


 
In the next step the sides were milled flat. Finally, the vertical back of the cowl was milled round using the geared dividing attachment.


 





Round milling the cowl back


 
The top curve was ground on free-hand using a diamond wheel on the micro-sanding machine. The top cover was fashioned from a piece of thin copper foil soldered on. The excess was milled off in the same set-up as previously.


 


Shaping the back of the cowl on the grinder


 


Soldering on the top of the cowl


 
The boiler-room ventilators are sitting on a base that is square and then tapers into the round of the shaft. This part was milled and turned from Plexiglas, so that it can be cemented to the boiler-room skylight.


 




Finished ventilator and base


 
This base will be painted white together with the boiler-room skylight, while the ventilator itself will be painted buff. This separation into two parts will give a clean separation between the colours. By then I will also have to try to find out, whether the inside of the ventilators was red or buff.


 



Boiler-room ventlators on the boiler-room skylight


 
The handles for turning the ventilators are still missing, but I will drill the respective holes on all ventilators in one go, so that I only need to set up the milling machine once for this.

There is a dozen more ventilators to come, all of them significantly smaller than these two.

 

To be continued soon ...

It has been almost a year since the last post. I have been too busy business-wise and been side-tracked by various tool-making projects, which seem to be easier to do with the frequent interruptions by business-travels. There has been some small progress, however. Though this was not easy, as I have been struggling with the possibilities of the available materials and with my own skills. The 1/160 is pretty small, if you have set yourself the target to put as much detail into as one would do in say 1/96 or even 1/48 scale ... One of my struggles has been to produce acceptable ladders, on which I will report in the next post.
 
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The officers’ mess skylight produced previously did not turn out quite to my satisfaction. It was not as crisp as I had wished. It was build up from layers of bakelite sheet around a milled core of acrylic glass. The mouldings present on the original were simulated by 0.4 mm copper wire milled to half-rounds. This all entailed messing around with cyano-acrylate cement, which is not my favourite and at which I am not very skilled.
 

Officers’ mess skylight milled from a small block of acrylic glass
 
It then occurred to me that much of all this could be milled from a solid piece of acrylic glass. One has to start from a block that envelopes the maximum width and depth, including the mouldings, and then has has to plan strategically which layers to mill off until the desired shape appears (reminds me of the joke, where an old lady asked a sculptor during an exhibition whether it was difficult to sculpt a lion – the artist replied: not really, madam, one takes a big block of marble and knock off everything that doesn’t look like a lion ...). The mouldings were left standing as square protrusions. They were rounded off using a draw-plate fasioned from a piece of razor-blade and held in a pin-vise. The half-round notch was cut using a thin cut-off wheel mounted on an arbor in the milling machine.
 

Micro-drawplate for half-round moldings
 
It is, of course, not possible to simulate panelling by this method. However, some parts can be left standing and the other completed with thin styrene-strips. For reasons of material stability, I am not such a big fan of polystyrene, it becomes brittle with age, but it has the advantage that it can be ‘welded’ onto acrylic glass or onto itself using dichlormethane. This results in invisible bonds and you cannot smear any glue around.
 

Trial of milling out skylight window-frame
 
The next challenge were the protective grilles that were laid into the wooden frames above the actual skylight glass-panes. The bar of brass or bronze had a diameter of less than a centimetre, which translates to something like 0.05 mm on the model. However, the thinnest brass-coloured wire I could find had a diametre of 0.1 mm, so is slightly oversize. Recently I came across molybdenum wires that are readily available down to diametres of 0.02 mm ! It seems that they are used in the repair of mobile phones, to separate the front-glass from the LCD-display. I obtained a selection of sizes, but have not worked with the wires yet. The wires are supposed to be tough, so I do not know how easy it is to cut them to length.
 

 
Spool of gold-coloured molybdenum wire
 
I tried various methods to construct the window-frames with exactly spaced out bar. In the first instance I tried to mill-out the frame from a thin piece of acrylic glass. Evenly spaced notches for the ‘bars’ were milled with a pointed engraving bit. However, I did not manage to get the edges and corners as crisp and clean as desired.
 

Milling notches for window bars
 
 

Placing wires as window bars
 
I then wanted to construct the frame near-prototype fashion. To this end I drilled holes for the 0.01 mm wires into the edges of 0.5 mm by 1.0 mm strips of styrene. It proved difficult, however, to align the four parts of the frame well enough.
 

Drilling frame for protective bars
 
In the final version I welded 0.25 mm thick strips of styrene onto the milled acrylic glass body of the skylight. The block then was presented at the correct angle to an engraving cutter in the milling machine and the notches for the wires cut. In the next step the wires were glued into these notches, which was a major challenge – for the steadiness of my hand and my patience ...
 

Built-up frames
 
 

 In situ milling of notches for wire bars
 
The frame was completed by another layer of 0.25 mm styrene strips. As the total thickness should have been only 0.4 mm, the excess was sanded off on the milling machine. Finally, the edges were trimmed to size and rounded with the draw-plate described above.
 

Sanding frames to scale thickness
 
The officers' mess skylight will receive an outside protective grille on the basis of an etched part.
 

Completed skylights for the pantry (left) and the officers’ mess (right)
 
To be continued ....
 

Mad-man had another go ...
 
... and turned his attention back to the hull and its superstructures. All surfaces that would have been iron plating, will be covered in thin sheets of Pertinax. The necessary holes for portholes and other opening will be drilled or cut out before the sheets are fixed. In this way the barbette was lined with sheets of Pertinax as was the deck-house.
 

Deck-house covered in a thin sheet of Pertinax
 
The decks on the prototype were iron plate and this plating was covered in oil-paint that was mixed with sand and cement in order to provide a certain corrosion resistance and above all a better grip in wet conditions. A modelling plan drawn by Wolfgang Bohlayer shows wood on some decks, but evidence that since has become available shows that this was not the case. Also, linoleum decking apparently was never used on these boats.
 

 

Engraving plate-lines and planking seams
 
As the model will show the boat in its original appearence, the plating was reproduced by engraving fine lines into thin sheets of Pertinax. All decks, including that of the barbette will covered in this way. The exception is the deck above the foc'sle that has a cover of planks, presumably to reduce wear, where the anchors were worked. This planking was laid-out in a radiant pattern, which seems to have been more resistant to the gun-blast than the more common parallel layout. The planks were also reproduced by lightly engraving the plank seams. In reality these seams would have been more or less flush with the deck, depending on the temperature and humidity, but a light engraving adds some life to the appearance.
 

Engraved rear-deck plating and planking for the foc’sl
 
to be continued ...

Thanks, Gentlemen, for the encouraging words .
 
***********************************************************************
 
I am now catching up from the point, where the log had been interrupted, namely from post #51.
 
The gears were cut from brass stock in the milling machine with the help of direct dividing head and different division plates. The shape of the teeth is not exactly correct, because I used a disc-shaped burr as cutting tool. However, at this module (0.06), where the teeths are merely pitched 0.1 mm apart, this is hardly noticeable. The gear wheels are parted off from the stock on the lathe. The gear segment that will be attached to the barrel was produced in the same manner.
 

 

 

 

Cutting the gears for the gun elevating mechanism using different division plates
   
Cut-off wheels before further machining
 
to be continued ...

Lock for the 30,5 cm gun
 
The next thing to be tackled was the lock piece or ‘wedge’. This 'wedge' has a rather complex shape with a flat front, but a round back and various recesses and cut-outs. I decided it would be best to undertake most of the machining operations while it is still attached to some (round) material that can be easily held in a collet. The round back was milled in an upright collet holder on my mill's rotary table after the various coaxial holes had been drilled and the flat sides milled, all in the same set-up. For machining the other recesses the piece had to transferred to the diving head on the mill.
 

Round-milling  the lock piece in an upright collet-holder on the rotary table
 

Cutting off the finished lock piece
 
The most time consuming part turned out to be the cover piece for the lock, which in the prototype was fastened by five hexagonal head bolts. It holds the moving and locking screws in their place. It took me four tries before I produced a half-way satisfactory piece. Soldering the microscopic bolts (0.4 mm head diameter) in place got me quite a few grey hairs. Finally a fake locking screw was turned up and the moving screw, which moves the lock in and out, was faked from a couple of drilled-together 0.1 mm copper wires, covered in a thin layer of solder to make them look like steel.
 

Milling square and hexagonal bolts
 

Facing the locking screw in special protective brass collet
 
The large re-enforcement ring for the barrel was also turned up and two holes drilled into it for seating the rack quadrant that forms part of the elevating gear. In fact, I had cheated a bit, when drilling/milling the lock seat: the front of the hole should have been flat, which is difficult to machine; so I continued the elongated hole under the re-enforcement ring, which was made as a separate part and slipped over the barrel.
The various parts of the lock were assembled using lacquer and cyanoacrylate glue.
 

 

 

The (almost) finished gun barrel with its lock (toothpick for scale)
 
To be continued ...

Engine-room skylight
 
The frame of the engine room skylight consists of a an etched brass part, folded up and soldered together. On the inside, grooves have been etched that will serve to locate the protective bars to made from thin copper wire. The lower frame was constructed from Pertinax. The ‘wooden’ gratings on both sides of the lower frame are again etched parts.
 

Unglazed framework for the engine-room skylight
 
Once this structure was complete, a square block of the size of the footprint of the skylight was milled from a piece of Plexiglas.
 

Squaring up a Plexiglas block for the skylight
 
In the next step the roof-shaped faces were milled on. To this end, a small insert vice was set to the appropriate angle of 40° in a larger vice bolted to the mill table. The fixed jaw of the insert vice pointed upward and the side of the block to be milled rested against it. This ensured that all four inclined faces would have the same angle and would start from the same height with respect to the reference (bottom) face of the block.
 

Milling the sloping faces
 

Polishing the sloping faces  
 
A very smooth surface with little tool marks can be achieved on Plexiglas. The final polishing of the surfaces was done using CRATEX-type drum polishers followed by a felt drum loaded with polishing paste. All in the same vice setting to ensure a flat surface. I was lucky the Plexiglas 'house' fitted like a plug into the skylight frame.
 

Finished Plexiglas 'glazing' block
 

Glazed engine room skylight
 
To be continued ...

Chain-stoppers
 
One pair of chain stoppers is located immediately behind the hawse pipes as usual. A second pair is placed above the chain locker, which is located immediately in from of the armoured barbette. The bodies of the stoppers are rather complex castings, calling for some complex machining operations in model reproduction. The same basic technique as for the bollards was used. Given the complex shape, however, machining is not possible in one set-up. For certain operations the axis of the spigot has to be perpendicular to the milling machine, while for others, such as drilling it has to be parallel. For the latter and for milling the various slots, I choose to transfer the dividing head to the lathe. This has the advantage that its centre line is at the centre of the lathe spindle.
 

Milling the profile of the fore chain stoppers
 

Milling operations using a dividing head in the lathe
 
The slots were milled using a micro-tool made from a broken carbide drill, the end of which was ground flat. This results in a non-ideal clearance of 0º, while the cutting angle and side rake are that of the original drill bit. However, not much metal is removed so that this doesn't really matter here.
 

Home-made milling bits made from broken carbide drills ground flat
 
One set of stoppers was milled from brass, while for the other one I used PMMA (PLEXIGLAS®, PERSPEX), the main reason being that I ran out of brass stock. However, genuine PLEXIGLAS®, is pleasant material to machine and easy on the tools. It holds sharp edges and it easier to see what you are doing than on the shiny brass. Acrylic paints seem to key-in well - basically it is the same molecule, of course. On the downside one may note that small and thin parts are rather brittle. Using diamond-cut carbide tools gives a nice smooth finish, but normal CV- or HSS-tools can also be used.
 

Milling in an upright collet-holder on the milling machine
 
While for the bollards and the front pair of stoppers the spigot could be on the geometric centre of the part, making it easy to measure while machining, for the after stoppers I had to place the spigot to the centre of the pipe down to the locker, so that the concentric rounded edges could be milled. The pictures show this operation.
 

Round-milling the body of the after chain-stopper using the rotary table of the milling machine
 
The stoppers have now completed with etched brass releasing levers, etc. The fore stoppers were also soldered to surface etched base plates.
 

The completed chain-stoppers (right column, the grid of the cutting mat is 10 mm x 10 mm)
 
To be continued ...

Working close to the collet improves precision due to less run-out and side-play, which are minimal on a watchmaker's lathe already ...
 
*******
 
Completing the capstan
Again the guiding rollers are a simple turning job. The shapes were produced with a free-turning graver and by rotary milling in the dividing head.
 

Using a worm-driven dividing head to round-mill the head of the chain-rollers
 

Using a worm-driven dividing head to round-mill the head of the chain-rollers
 
In the meantime various etched parts had been produced, including the base plate made up of two different superimposed parts and minuscule pawls. Also a chain separator from 0.3 mm copper wire rolled flat was produced. The various parts were soldered together.
 

The etched parts for the spills
 

The completed capstan (lower left corner, the grid of the cutting mat is 10 mm x 10 mm)
 
To be continued ...

Ok, so I have been playing a bit with the lines on CAD and first impression is that this is not going to be straight forward.
 
First we need to define the sheer. This is the first line according to the table of offsets:

It looks fair but it is not. With a bit of attention, we get a fair line

Same for the second view


And combining the two we get a sheer (not THE sheer - this will come later)

We can create a bit of surface, just for fun

Now, this is incomplete as the stern is missing, it does not reach the stem and is not clear how wide the keel is but it is a start.
 
Then, we get the waterlines and buttocks - All needed a bit of work to become fair


Combining everything we get an idea of the hull. This is not the actual hull - A lot more work will be needed to get there. I also added the keel which is not given in the offsets.

Next I actually used the plans to draw the frames and all other lines by putting the image sized appropriately as background and drawing lines on top. I combined all and this is what came out


It actually seems pretty close, it even gave a smooth hull. But it is not ready yet.

After a lot of work, the hull and lines were getting tighter but far from true. A lot of eyeballing was used, moving lines were it seemed they wanted to be.

Now that I had an idea of the shape, it was time to start again. I first faired the diagonals which I had not used at all so far. Then I rearranged the buttocks to reach the keel where they were supposed to. Finally, I tweaked all these lines to make sure they were fair and interacted at all intersections. This took a lot of work.

But when I added a couple of waterlines, these diagonals and buttocks had to be adjusted again to interact with the waterlines and with each other.

Only the upper waterline is completed. There are 7 more and incorporating these into the hull will certainly need revisiting every other line. There are also a few areas in the hull that are of concern, the first frame near the bow where so far the hull is taking a bit of an acute turn, the cut out for the propeller, the curve at the bow but these bridges will be crossed at a later time.
 
This is all I ve managed to do but so far it looks promising.
 
Till next time
 
Vaddoc
 

Ok, so I have been playing a bit with the lines on CAD and first impression is that this is not going to be straight forward.
 
First we need to define the sheer. This is the first line according to the table of offsets:

It looks fair but it is not. With a bit of attention, we get a fair line

Same for the second view


And combining the two we get a sheer (not THE sheer - this will come later)

We can create a bit of surface, just for fun

Now, this is incomplete as the stern is missing, it does not reach the stem and is not clear how wide the keel is but it is a start.
 
Then, we get the waterlines and buttocks - All needed a bit of work to become fair


Combining everything we get an idea of the hull. This is not the actual hull - A lot more work will be needed to get there. I also added the keel which is not given in the offsets.

Next I actually used the plans to draw the frames and all other lines by putting the image sized appropriately as background and drawing lines on top. I combined all and this is what came out


It actually seems pretty close, it even gave a smooth hull. But it is not ready yet.

After a lot of work, the hull and lines were getting tighter but far from true. A lot of eyeballing was used, moving lines were it seemed they wanted to be.

Now that I had an idea of the shape, it was time to start again. I first faired the diagonals which I had not used at all so far. Then I rearranged the buttocks to reach the keel where they were supposed to. Finally, I tweaked all these lines to make sure they were fair and interacted at all intersections. This took a lot of work.

But when I added a couple of waterlines, these diagonals and buttocks had to be adjusted again to interact with the waterlines and with each other.

Only the upper waterline is completed. There are 7 more and incorporating these into the hull will certainly need revisiting every other line. There are also a few areas in the hull that are of concern, the first frame near the bow where so far the hull is taking a bit of an acute turn, the cut out for the propeller, the curve at the bow but these bridges will be crossed at a later time.
 
This is all I ve managed to do but so far it looks promising.
 
Till next time
 
Vaddoc
 

Dear all
 
The Launch is not far off completion so I have been thinking what might be the next project. I really wanted to embark on a long journey, 10 years or more, and built something with many masts and frames etc. Certain funding issues though came about so this journey will have to wait.
 
That same day though I came across a lovely boat in the gallery by @Kevin. I 've always liked Tug boats and looking at this wonderful model I was immediately sold. I would build Hercules!
 
Now, there of course the kit by Occre but I should be able to scratch build it, shamelessly guided by the images on their website. This would be my first POB boat.
 
But of course, some lines would be necessary so off to the internet to get any boat lines that would be close enough. To my surprise, google returned a wealth of information - a specific site https://www.themodelshipwright.com/high-resolution-ship-plans/cargo-ships/steam-tug-hercules/ was of great help.
 
This site had everything - offsets, info, photos and lines. Apparently the boat was in dry dock for repairs and they took the opportunity to lift some lines. 

Indeed a wealth of info but of course serious lofting would be needed. First thing to do was to get everything onto CAD (I am hopeless in drawing with a pencil) and see whether I could get a hull out of this ocean of numbers.
 
So a brief hibernation period for the Launch to get this project under way. I am not sure how it will work, what scale or the level of detail but we ll figure it out along the way, at my usual snail pace.
 
I hope you ll join me on this new journey and thank you for visiting.
 
Best wishes
Vaddoc

Dear all
 
The Launch is not far off completion so I have been thinking what might be the next project. I really wanted to embark on a long journey, 10 years or more, and built something with many masts and frames etc. Certain funding issues though came about so this journey will have to wait.
 
That same day though I came across a lovely boat in the gallery by @Kevin. I 've always liked Tug boats and looking at this wonderful model I was immediately sold. I would build Hercules!
 
Now, there of course the kit by Occre but I should be able to scratch build it, shamelessly guided by the images on their website. This would be my first POB boat.
 
But of course, some lines would be necessary so off to the internet to get any boat lines that would be close enough. To my surprise, google returned a wealth of information - a specific site https://www.themodelshipwright.com/high-resolution-ship-plans/cargo-ships/steam-tug-hercules/ was of great help.
 
This site had everything - offsets, info, photos and lines. Apparently the boat was in dry dock for repairs and they took the opportunity to lift some lines. 

Indeed a wealth of info but of course serious lofting would be needed. First thing to do was to get everything onto CAD (I am hopeless in drawing with a pencil) and see whether I could get a hull out of this ocean of numbers.
 
So a brief hibernation period for the Launch to get this project under way. I am not sure how it will work, what scale or the level of detail but we ll figure it out along the way, at my usual snail pace.
 
I hope you ll join me on this new journey and thank you for visiting.
 
Best wishes
Vaddoc

Ok, so I have been playing a bit with the lines on CAD and first impression is that this is not going to be straight forward.
 
First we need to define the sheer. This is the first line according to the table of offsets:

It looks fair but it is not. With a bit of attention, we get a fair line

Same for the second view


And combining the two we get a sheer (not THE sheer - this will come later)

We can create a bit of surface, just for fun

Now, this is incomplete as the stern is missing, it does not reach the stem and is not clear how wide the keel is but it is a start.
 
Then, we get the waterlines and buttocks - All needed a bit of work to become fair


Combining everything we get an idea of the hull. This is not the actual hull - A lot more work will be needed to get there. I also added the keel which is not given in the offsets.

Next I actually used the plans to draw the frames and all other lines by putting the image sized appropriately as background and drawing lines on top. I combined all and this is what came out


It actually seems pretty close, it even gave a smooth hull. But it is not ready yet.

After a lot of work, the hull and lines were getting tighter but far from true. A lot of eyeballing was used, moving lines were it seemed they wanted to be.

Now that I had an idea of the shape, it was time to start again. I first faired the diagonals which I had not used at all so far. Then I rearranged the buttocks to reach the keel where they were supposed to. Finally, I tweaked all these lines to make sure they were fair and interacted at all intersections. This took a lot of work.

But when I added a couple of waterlines, these diagonals and buttocks had to be adjusted again to interact with the waterlines and with each other.

Only the upper waterline is completed. There are 7 more and incorporating these into the hull will certainly need revisiting every other line. There are also a few areas in the hull that are of concern, the first frame near the bow where so far the hull is taking a bit of an acute turn, the cut out for the propeller, the curve at the bow but these bridges will be crossed at a later time.
 
This is all I ve managed to do but so far it looks promising.
 
Till next time
 
Vaddoc
 

Dear all
 
The Launch is not far off completion so I have been thinking what might be the next project. I really wanted to embark on a long journey, 10 years or more, and built something with many masts and frames etc. Certain funding issues though came about so this journey will have to wait.
 
That same day though I came across a lovely boat in the gallery by @Kevin. I 've always liked Tug boats and looking at this wonderful model I was immediately sold. I would build Hercules!
 
Now, there of course the kit by Occre but I should be able to scratch build it, shamelessly guided by the images on their website. This would be my first POB boat.
 
But of course, some lines would be necessary so off to the internet to get any boat lines that would be close enough. To my surprise, google returned a wealth of information - a specific site https://www.themodelshipwright.com/high-resolution-ship-plans/cargo-ships/steam-tug-hercules/ was of great help.
 
This site had everything - offsets, info, photos and lines. Apparently the boat was in dry dock for repairs and they took the opportunity to lift some lines. 

Indeed a wealth of info but of course serious lofting would be needed. First thing to do was to get everything onto CAD (I am hopeless in drawing with a pencil) and see whether I could get a hull out of this ocean of numbers.
 
So a brief hibernation period for the Launch to get this project under way. I am not sure how it will work, what scale or the level of detail but we ll figure it out along the way, at my usual snail pace.
 
I hope you ll join me on this new journey and thank you for visiting.
 
Best wishes
Vaddoc

Dear all
 
The Launch is not far off completion so I have been thinking what might be the next project. I really wanted to embark on a long journey, 10 years or more, and built something with many masts and frames etc. Certain funding issues though came about so this journey will have to wait.
 
That same day though I came across a lovely boat in the gallery by @Kevin. I 've always liked Tug boats and looking at this wonderful model I was immediately sold. I would build Hercules!
 
Now, there of course the kit by Occre but I should be able to scratch build it, shamelessly guided by the images on their website. This would be my first POB boat.
 
But of course, some lines would be necessary so off to the internet to get any boat lines that would be close enough. To my surprise, google returned a wealth of information - a specific site https://www.themodelshipwright.com/high-resolution-ship-plans/cargo-ships/steam-tug-hercules/ was of great help.
 
This site had everything - offsets, info, photos and lines. Apparently the boat was in dry dock for repairs and they took the opportunity to lift some lines. 

Indeed a wealth of info but of course serious lofting would be needed. First thing to do was to get everything onto CAD (I am hopeless in drawing with a pencil) and see whether I could get a hull out of this ocean of numbers.
 
So a brief hibernation period for the Launch to get this project under way. I am not sure how it will work, what scale or the level of detail but we ll figure it out along the way, at my usual snail pace.
 
I hope you ll join me on this new journey and thank you for visiting.
 
Best wishes
Vaddoc