catopower

Thanks John, Bill. John, Hopefully this is one of those shows where there's actually a final episode Bill, You know... I think... it's just one long piece. At 1/8" scale, that's about 18" or 19". I didn't worry about the number of sections because it's going to get covered by copper sheathing anyway. Clare

Interior Details Since the model is only at 1/8” scale, a viewer would see very little of the interior when peeking through the hatches. After all the hatches are only 1/2” wide openings and they’re going to be partially blocked with ladders. So, I decided to keep actual interior details very simple. I would include no furniture, just some deck details, partition walls and a couple doors where appropriate. The crew compartment was the simplest. I just basically built a box. On the floor, I added the hatch for the forward hold and chain locker and also the chain pipes. The aft wall was a little unusual. It separates the crew compartment from the coal bunkers and it has a recessed section in the center that leans away from the compartment at just the right angle to allow for a ladder. I built the aft partition, planked it with vertical strips and painted it and the other walls white. All except for the forward wall, which I painted black since is doesn’t represent an actual wall. I don’t have any good pictures of them, but I made four beam support stanchions. In trying to figure out how to mount these, I found that it worked best to build them into the cover, cutting holes for the stanchions, which I made a little overly long, and then mounted in the holes. With the cover in place, the stanchions stuck out just a little, allowing me to glue them in place, filing off the excess that stuck up. Here’s the most anyone will be able to see of the interior of this compartment. The officer’s wardroom and the captain’s cabin were next. I don’t have much in the way of photos of that – even less than the crew compartment. But, this section was just a little more elaborate. I had to make two walls to divide this section up into the Captain’s cabin aft, the wardroom forward, and the ladder way that separates the two. This section required the creation of a few doors. I made a pair of paneled doors that would be open to the weather and then made two slotted doors for the inside of the wardroom, though by the time the skylights are in place, no one will ever be able to see them. Still, I know they’re there. Also, half of the doors I left slightly ajar so that you could see or think you could that there was something beyond the door. For the Captain’s cabin, I didn’t have very much space and this area is quite small. So, I tried to use a little forced perspective on the aft wall of the cabin to try to make it look a little like it extended back farther than it actually does. I don’t know how well this will work or if it will actually matter since the only way to see in here will be through a small round skylight. Probably, you’ll see nothing more than the color of the walls and floor. In any case, with these interiors done, I went ahead and glued down the covers and was ready to begin planking the deck. But first, I added the keel, stern and stem posts. Not too much to say about these. I’ve gotten into the habit of using beech wood since it’s very hard. I’ve dented too many keels, but haven’t had the problem since – or perhaps I’ve just learned to be more carful. Clare

Hi Bob, Also, if you simply ran out of coal, you were up a creek without a paddle(wheel)! I find that there is a certain beauty in fallibility. A paddle steamer had to face possibility of running out of coal. When the winds were favorable, they could unship the paddles and save fuel and probably travel a lot faster. But, one thing I read a couple months ago that I'd never considered was that as a ship burned it's 100 tons of coal, it would sit higher in the water and the paddles too, making it less efficient over time. I'm researching also the Japanese screw steamer Kanrin Maru and found that she only had enough coal aboard for 6 days of steaming, which effectively made her a sailing ship, but with a small auxiliary engine for steaming in and out of port. But, her lifting mechanism wouldn't pull the screw up out of the water far enough, causing drag and vibration when under sail. Clare

Thanks for the kind words Brian! Clare

Interior Diversion One of the features I’ve always enjoyed adding is having an open hatch or companionway, or being able to see down through a skylight. I often try to just cut open a little area under a hatch to allow a ladder and then I just blacken the interior so you can’t easily see that it’s just a hole. But, if I sit and stare at the model long enough, I start to think about doing more. And, since I have the interior deck details of the Saginaw, I figured I’d add just enough detail to make your mind’s eye imagine there is a whole world of details hidden away. Unfortunately, I don’t usually get these ideas until AFTER the lifts are all glued together. It could be so much easier if I had thought of the idea sooner. But, it is what it is. So, using a chisel and gouges, I cut open two large areas. One of them is the crew space aft of the foremast, and the other is the officers wardroom and captain’s cabin aft of the mainmast. I wasn’t planning on doing anything extremely elaborate – just add enough detail to make the observer curious. Cutting out the areas on a lift model is actually not so bad. The wood tends to cut away more easily along the layers of the lift boundaries, so it’s easy enough to get a flat floor, which helps if the lifts happen to be at the right depths. In this case they were, so that wasn’t so bad. I cut pieces of 1/64” plywood that fit each of these spaces and planked them over with the same planks I was planning to use for the deck, which is 1/16” wide boxwood strips, 1/32” thick. At this scale, I decided to simply edge the planks with pencil. I didn’t worry about plank butts or treenails since this will be mostly hidden. However I did cut hatch outlines as needed and pencil marks were drawn in where interior partition were to be added. After the openings were cut, I made covers of sheet basswood and fit them. Having chiseled out large sections of the old deck, I was actually able to use some of the removed pieces to fashion simple support beams that were already shaped to the deck camber. So, the sheet basswood covers took on the proper camber without much extra effort. It was only necessary to make sure that the covers seated properly and were perfectly flush with the deck. And, finally, I cut all the openings in the covers for the hatches and skylights. I didn’t glue these down at this stage since there was still interior work to do. Clare

Thanks Bill. Now that my rigging work on the San Felipe is basically done, I have time to get back my own projects. It's taken me a while to get rolling again, but now that I'm working on them, it feels really good. Clare

Shaping the Hull With the lifts cut, getting the final shape was pretty easy, and a relatively small amount of wood had to be removed. It’s important to note that the lines on these plans are drawn to the inside of the planking. If I was going to make this a straight solid hull model, I would have had to redraw all the lines of the plans. Fortunately for me, I like the looks of planks and I plank my solid hull models. So, this worked out really well. Using the profile templates I made earlier, I regularly checked my work and started on the hull by carving away most of the extra wood. Carving saved myself a lot of extra sanding, but required a bit of care so as not to cut away too much, which is very easy to do. Of course, that’s what wood filler is for, so a mistake here isn’t the end of the world. The hardest areas to carve are the concave areas of the hull up under the stern. Since the hull lifts were held together with screws, it was possible to separate them, and this made it easier to access those hollows. Also, if you look at my photos, you might note that the upper most lift has been omitted. I didn’t add this piece in until the rest of the hull was pretty much cut to shape. The main reason was to allow easier shaping of the hollow under the stern. You may also notice from the photos that the ends of the hull look squared off. I’ve found that it’s much easier to keep lifts properly aligned, getting a good straight line for the keel and stern and stem posts, if I made all the lifts the same length. So, the shape of each lift was extended. Once all the other shaping was done, I used another profile template to shape the stern and stem posts. The last thing I did was to measure the shear of the deck and mark the upper most lift to the height of the centerline of the deck, minus the planking – Since I planned to use 1/32” thick deck planks, I made sure to allow for that. A bench top belt sander made quick work of the deck shear, but it’s important to slow down when getting anywhere close to the shear line so as not to cut away too much. Once the deck shear is cut, the deck camber can be added. I added this by simply drawing the height of the deck at the edge on both sides of the hull. Then, I cut a curved piece of wood the shape of the camber as a guide and sanded the deck carefully to match the guide. With that, the basic hull shape was essentially done and pretty much what you would get if you went out and purchased a solid hull ship model kit (minus all the plans and fittings, of course). Clare Some of the station profile templates I made

I've just been in an emai conversation with Roger Jeya who owns Ages of Sail. Seems he just bought Billing Boats USA, so you might try giving him a call or email: Click here for the contact page: age of sail - Contact Us Hope that helps! Clare

I'm really glad you've reposted this Bender. While it will be a while before I get to it, I recently inherited the kit. It's only partially started, so it's almost the complete build. You've done a terrific job, particularly with the planking and the gun ports. I'm following this one now so I can learn. Thanks, Clare

I built 3 AL kits early on and enjoyed building them all. The thing I like about their kits is that they're fairly easy to build and they build into nice "decorative" models. That is, they may not be the most accurate kits on the market, but they make neat "classic" ship models for your living room or den. In general, I've found that they're designed to go together pretty easily and their design seems to work – At least it did for me. Of course, if you start to kit bash and upgrade, adding details and all, the amount of time it takes to build one of these will increase along with the difficulty level. So, you may not see much benefit in building their kits at that point and might find a more sophisticated manufacturer/kit. With the experience I have with ship modeling now, I probably wouldn't pick one of their kits for my own build today. But, I enjoyed them and I think they're perfectly good kits. It just depends on what you're looking for. Clare

Hi Norman, I've used quite a bit of cherry in ship modeling. I did the hull of my privateer Lively using cherry as well as the deck furniture and spars. However, I wouldn't recommend it for decking. It will darken with exposure to light and after a while, so it won't look the way it looks when you are planking. The final color comes out a reddish brown. It's a pretty color, but probably not ideal for a deck. For wales or whatever, it's fine, but I would just get a piece the right thickness rather than fool around with trying to build it up using the 0.5mm stuff just because you have it. Clare

Hi JPett, Wish I had noticed this thread before. I have the Vanda-lay AcraMill Plus to which I've added a drill press attachment. I don't actually use this so much any more as I've since added other tools to my collection. The Vanda-lay system holds the Dremel just fine. I hated my old Dremel Drill press, which I actually got the version labeled and sold by Sears. It had so much flex that the holes I was drilling would often not end up straight. The Vanda-lay does still have some flex due to being mounted on a cheap wooden base. However, the table attaches directly to the Vanda-lay hardware and not directly to the base, so it doesn't affect the work. If you're going to attach your own x-y table, however, you'll probably want to spring for the aluminum base too, otherwise you may still have a flex problem. I find the Vanda-lay equipment holds the Dremel quite well since there are two very solid aluminum clamps. It's easy to over tighten them on the Dremel, but it just takes a little practice. Someone mentioned that there is only a single bolt that holds the Dremel clamps to the Drill press assembly. That can be true depending on the orientation of the Dremel (you can set it up as a kind of cut-off saw), but even with just the one bolt, it clamps quite tightly and I've never had a problem with slippage. Of course, my experience is really more with the mill set up and not the drill press per se. But, it's all basically the same stuff just configured differently. Clare

Actually, I'm confused by the different websites for DeAgostini. I found this one where you select your country and that affects what items are available. Model Space - Ship Models from De Agostini With this, for US builders, it looks like the choices are HMS Victory, HMS Surprise and IJN carrier Akagi. This is all Artesania Latina stuff. Yes, in the long run it's more expensive this way. But for many of us, it's easier to part with a limited amount of cash each month than a big chunk of cash all at once. Plus, if you get stuck or run out of time, I think you can just cancel the subscription either temporarily or restart it later (assuming this subscriptions are still available then). I think it's a pretty cool option to be able to build this way, though I have to admit, I never went for any of those "build in stages" offers that Model Expo would periodically have. Still, options are better than no options. Clare

Thanks Michael and Mark! I'm not sure what happend to the images on Post #5, but all I got were question marks where the photos were. So, I edited the post and re-attached the pics. While I'm at it, I discovered a couple more photos of the earliest stages of the solid hull build. These illustrate the uncarved lifts marked and stacked on the building board. The one thing I've learned in building this way is to extend the lifts all the way to the end of the longest lift. This makes is simpler to make sure the ends are in perfect alignment. Clare I glue copies of the waterlines onto the wood using rubber cement. I can then remove these after the lift is cut to shape and alignment marks (station lines, center line) are drawn onto the wood. Before removing the paper, I also drill alignment holes for the screws which will be used to temporarily hold the lifts together while I'm working on them. The lifts stacked up showing the rough shape of the hull. The station lines visible here are of course temporary and used to check that the lifts are properly aligned before the carving and sanding take place.

Starting the Hull With the drawing done, I did some copy and paste work in Photoshop to make a full-hull waterlines plan. I made enough copies of this to cut patterns for each of the waterlines needed. I did the same thing with the body plan, making templates to check progress and accuracy when shaping the hull. At 1/8” scale, the waterlines came out exactly 1/4” apart, so I bought some 1/4” basswood to use for the lifts that would make up the hull. From past experience, I found that it was handy to be able to pull the lifts apart when shaping the hull, so I drilled holes in the lifts before shaping them and held them together with wood screws. Another set of holes allowed my to screw the whole assembly down onto a building board marked with station lines. The building board was extremely useful and allowed me to hold the hull very steady while carving and sanding, gave me a solid surface with clearly marked station lines for the proper alignment of the hull templates, and also made the whole thing easier to store. After the hull is shaped, drilling a couple holes in the bottom of the hull allows the hull to sit upright securely so I can more easily shape the deck. Clare One of my favorite aspects of solid hull modeling is to be able to sit outside and carve wood. Very relaxing. Shaping the lifts More shaping of lifts Now attached right-side-up so I can shape the deck

A Snapshot of the Saginaw The model I’m building will show Saginaw as I believe she appeared shortly before her loss in 1870. I’m basing her appearance on the 1863 plans, which show different style of wheelhouse decoration and no pilot house. Her deck arrangement had also changed slightly from her original 1859 plans. Her armament will consist of a pair of 30-pdr parrot rifles on pivot mounts, one foreward and one aft, four 24-pdr boat guns broadside, and a single 12-pdr (L) boat gun, probably on a portable two-wheel carriage mount lashed to the deck. The armament decisions were initially based on an article titled “The Narrative of William Halford,” published in The Naval Institute Proceedings in July of 1935, and a survey of the wreckage done by a NOAA research team led by Hans Van Tilburg and described in his book. Further details were found in the 1870 “Armaments of US Vessels” of Mare Island, which I discovered on one of my research visits to the National Archives in San Francisco. The rig on the model will be modified from that shown in the 1863 rigging plan to match the only known photo of the ship. While the photo is undated, I found a comment in Halford’s narrative that indicated that Saginaw operated mostly under sail in later years, and I think it’s reasonable that had her rig beefed up a little at this time. I’ve also decided to build the Saginaw with a hurricane deck that spans the space between the wheel houses. These are not shown on any plans and BlueJacket didn’t build their model with one, but there is more than one reference to a hurricane deck in the book “The Last Cruise of the USS Saginaw” by George Reed, one of Saginaw’s officers at the time of her loss. I’ve also discussed this at length with a fellow ship modeler, who wrote two fine Ship’s in Scale articles on his models of similar paddlewheel gunboats and built both of these with hurricane decks. Preparing the Drawings After spending time sorting through the plans of the different configurations of the Saginaw, I settled on the waterlines and shear profile plans that I would use for the model. Carefully studying the text on the drawings, I’d determined this set to mostly likely be the original plans of the Saginaw. Oddly enough, there was only one body plan included in all three sets of drawings, and it had only the aft stations labeled. The forward stations were drawn, but not labeled. So, I took some measurements and immediately ran into a problem. There were different station lines drawn on the different sets of plans, and some of the station lines in the body plan were not on waterlines and shear profile plans that I chose to use. This required me to draw in new station lines on my shear profile and waterlines plans. Clare Saginaw body plan from 1859 drawings Shear and waterlines plans from 1858 drawings. Saginaw drawings from 1859 showing old wheelhouse cover and a pilot house.

Thanks John, Grant. It's a bit of a brain stretch to go back and review the issues I had at the start of the build, but it's also kind of nice to revisit it. There's a lot I need to look at again to rebuild my analysis (reprogram my brain really), so it may be slow going at least at the start. Clare

My old build log is gone, but progress on the model continues. So, it's time to get the log going again. A Brief History The Saginaw was the first ship built at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard on San Francisco Bay. She was launched in 1859 as the USS Toucey, in honor of the then Secretary of the Navy, but was commissioned as the USS Saginaw. The last paddlewheel steamer built before the American Civil War, she was specifically ordered for use in the shallow waters of the China station where she operated until she returned home to be refit and relaunched in 1863. She served in the Pacific Squadron during the Civil War, being on the alert for Confederate activities and for the Confederate raider Shenandoah, whose captain, James Waddell had originally served aboard the Saginaw as one of her officers. Among other activities, the ship charted the coastal waters of the newly acquired Alaska Territory in 1868. In 1869, after the US Army's run in with the Tlingit Indians (apparently following several incidents over the years), she was ordered to destroy three evacuated villages on an island near what is now Saginaw Bay. On October 29, 1870, following the support of dredging operations at Midway Island, she was returning to San Francisco by way of the rarely visited Ocean Island, where she went to check for stranded sailors. She arrived ahead of schedule, but struck a reef in the process, which doomed the ship. While her hull was pounded by breakers, her crew abandoned the ship, taking as many supplies as possible, and went ashore on the desert island. In mid-November, one of the ship's boats was built up and a small group of volunteers sailed for 31 days and 1500 miles to the Hawaiian islands. Sadly, in the breakers off Kauai, the boat overturned and only one member of the starving and weakened crew survived. As soon as his story was relayed to authorities, the king of Hawaii dispatched a steamer to rescue the stranded crew. This model represents the ship shortly before she was lost in 1870. At that time, she was equipped with two 30-pdr parrot rifles on pivot mounts, four 24-pdr boat guns, and I managed to discover from Mare Island logs in the National Archives that she also carried a light 12-pdr gun, though the mount is unspecified. While she was originally rigged as a fore topsail schooner, which is illustrated in the plans in the National Archives, I believe she was probably rigged with topsails on both masts by 1870. This is how she appears in the only known photo of her and I believe this is from later in her career, as I found one reference indicating that for at least one year late in 1860s, she operated almost exclusively under sail. I would tend to suspect that this was during a period when she was a little more heavily rigged. There are several other small structural changes between her original 1859 configuration and that following her 1863 refit. These include the removal of her original pilot house, the rearrangement of her boilers, coal bunkers and forward hold, a change in the appearance of her decorative work on the wheel houses, and the relocation of some of the deck hatches. The Model and Initial Research The model is being built at 1/8" scale (1:96) as plank on solid hull construction. The solid hull is built up from basswood lifts and is planked over using holly. Keel, stern and stem posts are beech and the deck planking is boxwood. This is actually a prototype model that I'm using to work out various details since Civil War period ships are somewhat out of my area of knowledge. So too are steamers and, in particular, paddle wheel ships. My plan is to build a larger version, probably at 3/16" scale (1:64), though I expect that I'll probably build that as plank on bulkhead. I was originally inspired by a photo of a custom Saginaw model that BlueJacket built for a client. I've always been somewhat intrigued by the ships of the sail and steam transition and then some simple online research turned up the fact that the Saginaw was the first ship built at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, which is just about a 30 minute drive from where I live. My normal suppliers for ship plans showed no sign of Saginaw plans, so inquired with BlueJacket about their source. But, when I asked about the plans, they told me that because their efforts were funded by their client that they couldn't share any information with me. After a while, I sent an email to one of the librarians at the J Porter Shaw Library at the San Francisco Maritime National Park. My main contact there is always very helpful and she again showed her worth when she did some searching and found that copies of the National Archives plans were available from Maryland Silver Company. I ordered these plans without delay and, while I was waiting for those, began researching what I could. I discovered that a book had been written about the Saginaw called A Civil War Gunboat in Pacific Waters: Life Aboard the USS Saginaw, but it's an expensive one, and the local library's inter-library loan system had no access to it either. I discovered that there was a copy at the UC Berkeley library, but that is a real pain to use unless you are a student or faculty. But, fortune was smiling on the project and it turned out that the author of the book, Hans Konrad Van Tilburg, had done some of his research at the Vallejo Museum and gave them a copy of the book. So, a trip to their research library gave me access to this and some other records on the Saginaw. Though it was a pricey book at about $70, I found that it had enough information in it that I was compelled to buy a copy. In the meantime, the plans from Maryland Silver Company arrived and I had also discovered that there was an article in the Nautical Research Journal regarding the construction of the Saginaw and that I had it in their back issues CD. Clare

Hello Robert, You've done a really fine job on the model. I'm very impressed with how well your lapstraked planking looks. Are you using the Ancre monograph (Boudriot and Berti)? I ordered my first Ancre plans set on the Cutter Le Cerf, which also has lapstraked planking. But, I was thinking about also ordering the Le Coureur also. I'm not sure why, but I really like the look of the lugger rig. Or, maybe it's just the look of this particular vessel. However, Le Coureur is only available in French and my French is not so good. But, hopefully, I'll just watch your build log and maybe I will be able to figure out the plans. Clare

Wow, Karl, this is an incredible build. I don't think I saw this the first time around. It's going to take me a while to absorb all that detail on your model. Do I understand correctly that this is 1:36 scale? And, my apologies if I missed the information, but what wood(s) are you using? Wonderful and inspiring work. Ausgezeichnet! (Admittedly, I had to look up the spelling) Clare