catopower

Hi Robbyn, I feel your pain! Or rather, I felt your pain when I went through the same thing. Your model is looking great. Quite a challenge! Nice job, Clare

Thanks Chuck, I'm now at the point where I'm starting to wonder if I should have stopped early and had a nice un-rigged longboat model. Addling blocks to the mast and all, I already managed to snap the mast at one of sheave holes. It's repaired now, but I worry it may be a little weak. I'll have to be extra careful adding all the rigging. Still moving forward though. Clare P.S. I'll email you the latest newsletter, but the SF club isn't nearly as interesting as the San Diego group!

Hi Scott, I have that book too and love looking through it. Like David B I was fortunate enough to visit Dr. Arnold Kriegstein's home to see his collection. Simply amazing models and, as has been said here, all done without power tools. Put's my own ship modeling work to shame... Of course, so do so many great ship modelers on this site. Clare

I'm determined to finish this model up in the next week or so. During the week, I finished the gudgeons and pintles, and finished making the windlass and handles. Yesterday, I added the thole pins. The windlass is made from square stock basswood. I considered making this from boxwood but the basswood worked well enough. The hardest part was creating the holes for the handles. I drilled, poked with a pointy #11 X-Acto knife and got them about the right size. Finally, I just pushed the handle into each hole. The square section of the handle kind of evened out the square opening. It's not perfect, but I think it's about the best I'm going to do, at least this time. The thole pins were kind of interesting. I'm not much of a jig maker, but this time, I ended up taking a piece of brass and making a drill pattern so that all the thole pins are spaced a consistent distance apart. Last thing on the rudder were the decorations. Again, mine were printed on decal paper. I realized at some point that I had used clear decal paper instead of white decal paper. The problem with this was that if the decals are placed directly on wood, the color are very subdued. This wasn't a problem with the friezes at the gunwales as I had already painted these areas white. For the rudder, I found that I had to paint white ovals where the decals were to be located. After these dried, I added the decals, which looked fine. For the handles for the rudder and the windlass, I gave up trying to make a decent looking set out of basswood. Instead, I just took some boxwood strips and made these. They are the only use of wood on the model that is not basswood. Clare

Hello Bob, I just added my build log to the group and dropped in to take a look at your build. You've done a beautiful job and I'm intrigued by the departures you've made from the kit. Very interesting! I can't wait to see what comes next... Clare

Thank you Bob, it's good to be here... finally! I have to say, I originally thought the kit was just okay. But, over the course of working on it, and yes I took the long slow route, I've really come to love the way this model looks. You know, I'm tempted to do another one. If I did, at minimum, I'd try adding nails at the frames or at least simulate it. Of course, I'd better finish this one... and maybe some of those other projects that are just sitting around waiting for attention. Here's one more photo taken at the Good Sam Showcase of Miniatures in San Jose, CA a couple weekends ago. The South Bay Model Shipwrights club was given 1/2 a table to set up a display, so I brought my Mary Taylor model and this "in-progress" model. I'd made a simple base and stand for it in time for the show. I think that little bit of work on it made me realize I need to get it done. Here's the longboat displayed next to a couple 1:350 models done by Patrick Moloney, one of the other members of the group. And, the in-progress longboat up close. I made the base from a piece of cherry wood I had. I seldom use the router table I bought a couple years ago, so it was nice to have a quick job to do here. The posts are actually brass tubing over a thinner brass rod. The inner rod actually stops about 1/2" from the top of the tubing and small brass rods were fit into the keel of the longboat that fit snugly into the tubes. Works well and allows me to remove the model to work on it. I have other models where there is a fixed rod that fits into holes in the keel, but it is too easy to miss the holes when mounting the hull. The result is small dings to the keel or hull. This way, the model keeps clear of the stand until the ends of the fixed rods in the keel are fit into the tubing of the stands. Clare

With this installment, I'm about up to where I was on my other build log. I've done some work since then, but I'll leave it for another time to update the log here. As you can see in these photos, I've added the floorboards, risers, platforms and stern seats. I used Chuck's technique for scribing the moldings and was really happy with how they turned out. The wood is all treated with a 50/50 mix of Golden Oak and Natural stains. The paint was my own mix of acrylics. I know the brighter red is more authentic, so I chalk up the darker color mix to artistic license. In the fourth photo, if you look carefully, you can see the light shining through the thin planking above the waterline. Finally, I did start the metal work here, shaping the kit provided brass and using the "Brass Black" solution that Bluejacket sells. I find that I get better results using their product than with A-West's "Blacken-It" product. Anyway, the blackened brass was then given a clear coat and glued into place. Clare

Here are the photos from my second installment of the build, following up the planking with trimming the framing. Now we jump ahead a little because I didn't take any photos of the process of painting and applying the friezes. As with others, I found the printed friezes in the kit didn't fit my model. Chuck was nice enough to provide reduced size friezes, but I found that even then they were still too big. But, with the files that Chuck provided, I could simply reduce them myself to get something that would fit nicely. In my case, I reduced the art to 95% and it fit great. The next problem I encountered with the art was that my printer wasn't producing something that I found satisfactory. It's a good printer, a Canon 780, but adjusting the color just didn't work well enough to suit me. I also tried different kinds of paper, but still not happy. Finally, I remembered I had some Testors brand decal paper and I tried that. Worked like a charm and I was very happy with the results. The color looks good, though different from the original art, and the decals are nice and thin. Clare

I'd had a build log for my 18th Century English Longboat going on another site, but it's time to post it here with my other build logs. I started this kit back when the item first came out. I'd been working on some scratch projects and I thought it would make a good diversion to pull out and work on now and again. It's been "in progress" though for so long and far enough along now that I'm ready to put all my effort into finishing up this model. I've had a great time with this kit and I'm pretty happy with how it has turned out. It's pretty rare for me to build a kit without changing things, but so far I've pretty good about not fooling around with changes and just building the model. It's not as nice as some of the fabulous work I see in some of the other build logs. But aside from skill issues, I like to blame any faults on my desire to keep this as a tinkering model to bring out now and again when I need a break from another project. I'll begin here with a photo recap of the project. Again, this began around January of 2012 (I think that's when I got the kit – it's all kind of a blur now...). As you can see, I had a little trouble with the bending of the basswood at the bow, particularly dealing with the third plank up from the garboard. I also had enough trouble with the edge bending that the planks weren't all laying flat. So, I sanded to compensate. As a result, there's some REALLY THIN planking there. In a later photo, you might see the light shining through it. However, I did manage not to sand all the way through and the planks look pretty even. Clare

Is it appropriate to wish everyone a Happy Trafalgar Day then?

On a different note on ordering products from Ancre Books, a friend and fellow ship modeler followed up my discussions of the new book I bought from Ancre by ordering a copy of fourth book in the 74-gun Ship series. He had the first 3 books and just needed the fourth. When he received his order, he discovered that he'd been sent the entire series instead of just the one book he needed. He only got charged for the book he ordered. So, if anyone in the U.S. is interested in getting 3 of the 4 books. Let me know and I'll pass the word. He's looking at selling the books and sending the money to Ancre. The books are brand new and cost around $300, but you'll end up saving a bundle on the shipping since it's all domestic shipping. Clare

Hi Andy, Your model is looking great. It was a pleasure meeting you recently and I'm anxious to see your progress updates! Clare

Hi Jay, Glad to see you haven't given up on ship modeling after all. Sorry you didn't come to our little gathering in Vallejo. It was a nice get-together and I got to meet a couple more ship modelers in the general vicinity. Hope I wasn't bugging you too much to attend, but I really wanted to meet the man behind the beautiful model! I'll be looking forward to following your updates. Nice job on those windmills too! Clare

Hi Popeye, Your build is looking great regardless of the whole caprail issue. And on that, there is one of the dangers of having photos of an actual ship or replica available. If you didn't have those photos, you might be perfectly happy! And as far as kits and those "Oh, Sh**" moments, as Bob put it, I've been working on a scratch project and seem to have a lot more of those moments than ever before. You just can't escape them no matter what... Clare

Thanks for your thoughts John, Cap'n'Bob. I agree that red will look nicest and create a nice color contrast for the paddle wheels. The illustration with the red paddle wheels would have been how she looked pre-war. My build, being 1870, the year she was lost, is post-war, so maybe red makes sense there too. I have some Tamiya Bright Red, which when sprayed onto a surface just looks plain red and seems good. A darker red is probably less accurate, so I'll try this and see how it looks. I'll get the hubs of the wheels done first and give it a shot. Thanks, Clare

Hello Ed, I'm watching you build with a great deal of fascination. The Young America is one of the subjects I have considered for a future build, but certainly nothing remotely close in detail to what you are doing here. I'd figured on sticking to plank on solid hull at a smaller scale and using the Crothers plans or the Chapelle plans (for the hull) and using some high resolution scans of photos I'd gotten of the Young America. Some of the poop deck detail, like the small cabin at the forward end is a bit confusing since the various sources don't agree. I'll definitely be watching your progress to see what you come up with. I'm not sure if I'm ready to handle the POF work that you're illustrating in this build. It's just fantastic work. However, I have been considering getting your books and taking on the Naiad build. Thanks for posting here in such great detail! Clare

And, I should add about the handspike/capstan bar question... Clearly capstan bars have to be stored somewhere and the bulwarks seems to be the place, so I will definitely add those. I'm thinking that hand spikes should be stored similarly. Probably, at 1/96 scale, handspikes and capstan bars won't look any different, so I just have to make a mental note as to which are which and where to store them. That ordnance instructions e-book should give me an idea of how many hand spikes are needed per gun. So, I'll just plan on putting an appropriate number of "poles" in various locations. As to what is actually shown in the photos, I'm not sure since both capstan bars and hand spike I think are usually tapered a little and have more of a square cross section at the heavier end. Those bars in the photos look round and straight. And then where were boarding pikes kept? Would there be lockers for those perhaps? Questions, questions... Clare

So, the next issue coming up now is going to be the proper color for the paddlewheels. A lot of civilian ships appear to be painted red. The USS Powhatan, which served in the Pacific around the same time as Saginaw, appears to have been painted black on most models. Also, Japanese woodblock prints of Perry's arrival, while stylized and not detail accurate, probably have the color right and show the wheels as black. I do have one color illustration of the Saginaw in her original configuration that shows red paddlewheels, but I don't know the history of this illustration. If the paddlewheels were red, I would expect them to have been painted with red lead. The problem I have with that is that red lead is a color that most people don't see anymore and it's actually more of an orange red. It's not particularly nice looking on the model. So, I'm trying to decide, if I use red and, if so, if I should use a little artistic license and use a darker shade of red so that model looks nice. Or, I could try to be color accurate and use a red-orange. The other option is to go with another ship of the time and paint the wheels black. Not sure yet, but will have to decide soon. Undated illustration of the Saginaw in her 1859 configuration. Model of the USS Powhatan. Clare

Mark, you rock! What was particularly interesting was an e-book link in the Civil War Talk forum you posted at the end there. Interesting discussion about handing pivot guns, but that e-book "Ordnance Instructions for the US Navy, 1866" that was an incredible find! 100+ pages of all the details about handling boat howitzers, the maneuvering of pivot guns, what everyone's job is at the guns, organization of boarding parties and small arms... everything. I've got a ton of fascinating reading material now. Thanks for the info! Clare

Thanks for the ideas about those bars John and Cap'n Bob. I think I originally dismissed the possibility that they could be capstan bars because they seemed too light. Also, on the Nipsic, that boat gun appears to be on the Quarter Deck, which I figured was probably officer's country and didn't seem like it would be a place they would store capstan bars. Plus I wouldn't think there'd be a capstan that far aft. Unless perhaps those particular bars are actually hand spikes for use on the boat gun pictured. I suppose I should see if I can track down a deck plan or more photos of the Kearsarge to see if there is a capstan somewhere fairly close to where the bars are pictured. Thanks again, Clare

Yikes! Are you just giving me a hard time about my ongoing photo etching issues? Shall I just pass the salt so you can rub some of that into the wound too?

By the way, does anyone know what these poles are that sometime appear on the bulwarks of Civil War era ships? The following is a photo of the Kearsarge. There are some that look very similar behind the Dahlgren boat gun on the USS Nipsic. Finally, there is something similar, but not painted white in a rack behind these officers aboard the USS Malvern. Any thoughts? At first, I thought they might be hand spikes for handling the cannons, but they seem too small for that, particularly for the large pivot gun in the first photo, and there are a lot of them together in one place. Boarding pikes? Seem short for that too, though that might just be a perspective issue. Clare

Thanks for the support guys! Sorry progress has been so slow. Perhaps with this "breakthrough" on the paddle wheels, I can get some forward momentum going again. I did finish all four sets of rims. Next, I'll be working on the hubs of the wheels and the connecting spokes. Finally, come the cross bracing and paddles themselves. We'll see how all that goes. I'm thinking now about how I want to make the hubs. I was initially thinking of making one-piece hubs turned from brass. But, now I'm realizing that adding the spokes will be easier if I can make separate hubs for each rim, add the spokes and then put the halves together. I'll let you know what I come up with... Clare

Paddle Wheels I decided to set aside the armament constructions while I get back to an assembly that's been holding everything up on this model as I was trying to use brass etching and improving that technique. So, I finally decided that enough was enough and it was time to just build the paddle wheels. I went back to an old fashioned method of metal working to make flat rings for the paddle wheels. I had use large gauge (relatively speaking) copper wire wound into a circle and then flattened with hammer and anvil making the wire into a flat ring. I used this method to make circular tracks for pivot guns on a few models in the past. It worked then and maybe my touch has improved a little. At least I can hope. For the Saginaw's paddle wheels, I would need 2-1/2" diameter outer rings. The diameter of an inner set of rings depends on which drawings you look at. I chose to use the original sheer plan drawings of the Saginaw, which show a basic paddle wheel structure. There is another set of detailed drawings available, but it's not clear if these drawings are actually specific to the Saginaw since the name doesn't appear anywhere on them. In any case, the inner ring diameter I'm using is approximately 1-9/16" diameter. I made up some template on my computer and used them to create a set of MDF formers for the ring sizes needed. The templates were glued to the MDF board and cut to shape. The formers were then glued to an MDF board base. 18 gauge copper wire was bent around formers to create rings of appropriate size. The copper wire rings were then carefully set on an anvil and tapped carefully with a hammer, flattening out the wire little by little. The wire tends to straighten itself in the process and is regularly bent on the former back to shape. The wire also tends to twist, so the piece is turned over regularly to undo any twist. As the wire is tapped flat, the ring flattens and widens. At this scale, the ring should actually be only about 1/32" wide (just under 4" at full size), but that makes it too flimsy for me to work with, so my aim has been about 3/64" to 1/16". Once the rings were made, I had intended to silver solder them closed, but found it was easier for now just to CA the ends together. The effort here is to get these done so I can get work on the hull and deck structures going again. I made another template for lining up the rings and the spokes, again printed off the computer. For the spokes, I used 1/32” thick by 3/64” wide boxwood I had on hand. For the time being, I just deal with the part of the spokes connecting the two rings. The longer spoke sections that reach out from the hub, do so at an angle, so I simply left room along the inner ring for these to seat. The very first spoke was run across the whole assembly to hold the rings into place while all the short spokes were glued into place. Clare