Zebulon B Vance by ESF - FINISHED - Dean's Marine - 1:96 - PLASTIC - RADIO

[Jack12477]

Looks great, Steve.  Cool video.  I've heard that soundtrack before. 

[ESF]

To those who gave likes, thank you and thanks for stopping by.

 

Denis and Jack, thanks for your kind comments.

 

Steve

 

Damage report.

 

There was a comment earlier that all the added details might be a reason to refrain from sailing.  The damage report from the first two outings was limited to two lifeboats knocked loose from their fastening point at the bottom of the davits.  The davit rigging held them in place.  The out of water damage was caused by inattention to the nearly invisible radio antenna strung between the masts.  This resulted in a sideways jerk to the upper superstructure which knocked another lifeboat loose, with one of its davits popping off the deck; and one aft ladder separated from its mounting point.  All damage has been repaired and was a small price to pay for the joy of sailing.

[cog]

Well, Steve, damage repaired, ready for the next ... build. What is on the list?

[ESF]

To those who gave likes, thank you and thanks for stopping by.

 

Carl, I grew up across the Hudson River from the entrance to the Erie Canal and spent many hours at riverside watching all manner of watercraft including boats, tugs, barges and the occasional larger vessel come and go.  The 200th anniversary of the Canal opening is in 2025 and I was thinking about a packet (passenger) boat from the early period.  I obtained two sheets of drawings of a packet boat at 3/8" to the foot scale from a regional museum which are currently being shrunk to 1/4" (1:48) scale at a local printer.  I think the 3/8" scale would be an easier build but more parts and people are available at 1:48.  Not a particularly graceful boat (hence my hesitation to commit) but an important one in our country's history (On the other hand the Vance was a bit of a tub too).  My thought, if I do it, is to have one side partly open to show the living conditions within the boat, which often packed 100 passengers into a very small space on a boat about 70 feet long.  It's all a bit of dreaming right now since it would be a full scratch build which I know next to nothing about, save for all the building design and drawing I did during architectural practice.  Right now I'm doing a well needed shipyard clean and purge to get ready for whatever comes along.

 

Steve

[cog]

Sounds promising Steve. I don't think with your background, you will be having much problems. Look at it as just another one of your architectural models/mock-ups, for which you have to make some parts yourself as those are unavailable.

 

Clean up is good, Legodude can do some work finally  

[Jack12477]

1 hour ago, ESF said:

Carl, I grew up across the Hudson River from the entrance to the Erie Canal

Steve, are you still in that area ? If so, I am about 50 plus miles south on west shore of river.

[Kevin]

CONGRATULATIONS on a successful completion and launch, its been a pleasurable experience watching from start to finish

[ESF]

To those who gave likes, thank you and thanks for stopping by.

 

Carl, Legodude has had a very busy summer.  Hopefully I can steal some time for us to work on the skiff this fall.

 

Jack, yes we are still in the area but not as close to the Canal.

 

Kevin, thank you for your kind remarks and for hanging in there.  I'm learning a lot watching your builds.

 

Steve

[lmagna]

Hi Steve

It is with mixed feelings that I watched your video. While is is great seeing the Vance in the water at last, it is also sad to see her go. It has been an interesting build to follow and brought back a number of memories of builds and launches of my own. Good days.

 

Your choice of pond/lake is fantastic. I don't know how parking is and how far you needed to carry the Vance but the scenery is fantastic and the whole area looks like a great place to pull up a chair and do a little afternoon of just leisurely sailing. Kind of looked like you guys had the whole area to yourselves.

 

Looking forward to your next build, I am certain that you will again make it interesting and informative.  

Edited August 19, 2019 by lmagna

[ESF]

To those who gave likes, thank you and thanks for stopping by.

 

Lou, I truly appreciate your hanging in there throughout the build and for your helpful guidance.  The Vance carry to the pond shore was about 20 feet.  It's a beautiful spot at the end of our block.  

 

Steve

[lmagna]

If I had a location like that a block away and I was a little shorter on three back and one ankle surgeries there would be no way I would have ever stopped running RC ships. I am officially jealous!  

[ESF]

To those who gave likes, thank you and thanks for stopping by.

 

Lou, we’re so used to driving around the pond on the way home that we usually just give it a quick look, but had I known it would be so easy to sail on it I probably would have done it a lot sooner.

 

Steve

 

A tasty alphabet soup

What a find!  After searching all over the web I discovered that a local printing company, who I dealt with years ago for architectural drawing printing, can make waterslide decals with white letters.  They had to go to one of their out of town locations to make them but all I had to do was go around the corner to pick them up.  Once I give the decals a shot of clear matte the semi-shiny background should go away.  If anyone has a need the web link is www.godataflow.com.  I used the Albany, NY location.

[Jack12477]

Lettering decals look great Steve. Likewise the draught numbers.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Jack12477

[ESF]

Thanks Jack.  The nice thing is the numbers are on a single strip, as is the full Vance name.  Trim, wet, slide, done.  I did the layout in MS Word and experimented with the row spacing for the numbers so they are about a scale foot apart.

 

Steve

[popeye the sailor]

if they can do roman numerals.........that would be sweet!  I had quite the time with my Revell Cutty Sark........the watermarks were the only ones I couldn't do.  great job on the Vance Steve......hope to see another fine project soon!  scratch building is like this:  if you have what you want to do in your mind,  and you have vision of what you want her to look like.......all you need to do is make her so with your hands    you seem a creative sort......I have no doubts that you can pull it off!   hoping there's more to this project.........if not,  congratz on a job well done !

[ESF]

To those who gave likes, thank you and thanks for stopping by.

 

Denis, thanks for your kind comments.  I'm guessing the printer can make anything you send them into a waterslide decal.  I made the name and numbers in MS Word and saved the file as a pdf, then emailed that to the printer.  I used black for the text so I could see it and asked them to change the color to white.  Roman numerals are just a bunch of letters (I - V - X - M - C) so that should be easy.  For the numbers I set the alignment to Right Justified so they would line up along the right edge and experimented with row spacing until I got something that was close to a scale one foot between numbers.  I also included two different size names so I could have a choice.  It was all on one sheet of paper.

 

Steve

[cog]

Steve,

Draught numbers are usually in roman numbers, hence Denis' remark, and are usually placed straight (90degree angle) on the waterline ... unless it is build by you. I checked the first picture in the build log. I do need to look for such a print shop here. Could use some draught numbers for my plastic builds.

Edited August 20, 2019 by cog

[ESF]

To those who gave likes, thank you and thanks for stopping by.

 

Carl, I was actually looking at the Vance in her John J. Meany hospital mode (see below) when I was trying to figure out how to align the numbers to the hull.  Looking at it now I see the numbers are horizontal but the alignment is on an angle.  That would be an interesting experiment in a word processor.  In any event I ended up with neither fish nor fowl since the strip of numbers isn't vertical nor does it perfectly align with the bow 🙄.  At least the name is pretty straight. Maybe I'll have better luck next time.

 

The print shop said they had to go to one of their other locations because it was the only one with a printer that used white ink on waterslide decal paper.  I read about such printers but didn't know they are still around.  Maybe they would ship overseas.

 

Steve

[popeye the sailor]

one printer that I know of is the ALPS printer.   I'm not sure if they are still in production,  but there are refurbished ones out there for sale.   roman numerals were quite common in early times,  but numerical markers can be found on fishing vessels and filtered in among Naval and commercial vessels commissioned to the Navy.   I've had some luck changing the background color and using white decal paper,  but the background color needs to be at least a 99% match with the hull color,  to be successful.  no pastels please    roman numerals can also be purchased in PE form too.

[lmagna]

I must say that you have confused me a little Steve.

 

On picture #1 it shows the red waterline painted close to the 10 foot line. On the Meany it appears that she is resting at 16' and the boot is at the 22' mark. You chose to set the boot at 14'. Was there any reason for choosing this depth, or was it just arbitrary?

 

Just curious. 

[ESF]

Lou, the waterline location came from the kit instructions.  The distance between numbers on the model is approximately 1/8" (1 scale foot) resulting from experimenting with row spacing in the word processing software.  Those two together gave me 14 scale feet from near the hull bottom to the waterline.  When I was drawing the waterline it didn't occur to me to look at photo 1 - I was more focused on the discrepancy between the waterline location shown in the model instructions and the model side view on the full size drawing.  As to why the Meany shows the boot at 22 feet while the Vance was painted at 10 feet, who knows?  Maybe when they added the superstructure, the air conditioning, all the hospital rooms and equipment the ship sat lower in the water.  It didn't seem to make sense to have a strip of depth markings that are very close to a scale 30 feet high and then put the one foot mark someplace other than near the bottom of the ship, and since the model sailed well sitting at the painted waterline I let the 14 foot marker lay where it fell.  One justification is that the Vance in war bride mode was closer to the Meany configuration than to the Vance as a liberty ship so being off two feet (14 vs 16 ft) where the ship sets in the water seems a reasonable compromise, even if the Meany and war bride Vance boot tops don't line up.  Now there's some confusion and arbitrariness!

 

Thanks for caring.  I hope you are feeling better.  I'm going in for the first of two carpal tunnel hand surgeries next month to try to keep these old parts working.

 

Steve 

[lmagna]

Good luck on the carpal tunnel work. That is at least one part that is still working somewhat OK on my rapidly deteriorating body. My wife went through it a number of years ago due to the typing she had to do on a daily basis at work. She has been fine ever since. I expected that I would have to face it as well, after years of shooting relatively heavy caliber hand guns, but except for a little glitch in my right thumb at the upper joint where it meets my palm, that hurts a little more and is stiffer than it should, it does not seem to be an issue. But then I suppose I could fall on my hand going UP the stairs and break it too just for good measure. You never know what a stupid klutz is capable of! 

 

There may be little of note when it comes to the painted waterline on any ship, especially cargo ships. They float at one level empty and another when not. I believe Liberty ships were noted as being very unstable when not carrying cargo and they would pump harbor or river mud into the holds to bring them down to proper ballast for ocean sailing. I know that I have seen a number of pictures of Liberty ships that did not show any hull red at all. In fact I think this was more common than not.

 

I also think, (And other more knowledgeable people here could clarify it better) that proper depth was established with the Plimsoll Line, normally located somewhere close to midships. 

 

As you can see there is quite a range depending on conditions. You have a wide number of settings before you are "wrong" if that is possible. I was thinking that the heavier draft of the Meany and possibly the later Vance as well, was because unlike a conventional Liberty, she no longer had holds and had a greatly increased top hamper making her a little tender in cross seas or other conditions that would make her want to roll. So to compensate they just ran her deeper in the water than would be normal for this class of ship. Just a thought on my part and not to be confused with any real knowledge! 

Edited August 21, 2019 by lmagna

[cog]

Steve,

Good luck with the surgery. take care of those hands!

[Jack12477]

Good luck with the hand surgery. My wife had carpal tunnel  plus "trigger finger"  surgery done last year on both hands. All is fine now.

[mtaylor]

I hope all goes well with the surgery and you have a full recovery.  

[popeye the sailor]

hoping all goes well Steve

[Koa4225]

On 7/1/2019 at 4:44 AM, lmagna said:

Hi Steve

 

Bill's estimate seems pretty close. But his method is sound so it should not be too far off.

 

I used to have the formula written down in a book somewhere but I got so used to using it I had it readily available in my mind and kind of lost track of where I had it written down. It was roughly something like length X width X depth, (at waterline) X The hull coefficient. (Think of the hull being a rectangle of cubes. But your hull is both rounded and tapered so you need to account for this. Some warships like Destroyers have a coefficient of .65 or less, some tankers can be as much as .85 or more! .70 or .75 may be good for your hull.  Then you need the displacement of water in cubic inches. I always just used fresh water at .036. So your formula would go something like this; L x W x D x .70 x .036= displacement.  That is if I am remembering it right. Like I said I used to have it in my mind but then I lost my mind due to lack of use!

The "Hull Coefficient" you're referencing above is known as the Block Coefficient; a ratio of fineness or fullness.  Basically, how much of the cube (LxBxD) does the hull form take up.  A Liberty Ship's block coefficient was 0.745 (http://www.ww2ships.com/usa/us-os-001-b.shtml) so your estimate of .70 or .75 was pretty spot on!  

Edited January 2 by Koa4225
Fix spelling error.