Germania Nova 1911 by KeithAug - FINISHED - Scale 1:36 - replica of schooner Germania 1908

[druxey]

Excellent result, Keith. That series of gratings looks terrific.

[mtaylor]

Keith, your problem solving is incredible.  I'm out of words.... 

[G.L.]

Perfect, Keith!

[Mark Pearse]

Hi Keith

 

That looks fantastic. The illusion of scale is getting better & better.

 

Looking at the images, it occurred to me that another possibility for the mystery cleats is lashing points for the boom. A simple lashing to the boom stand would suffice in many cases - but in difficult conditions more would be needed to restrain it all as the boat lurched around. Aligning with the helm, lashings would interfere less with the most critical sight lines. Maybe.

[Retired guy]

Brilliant Keith very nicely made 👍

 

Regards

Richard

[KeithAug]

Pat, Druxey, Mark, Geert, Richard - thank you all for your kind comments.

On 6/2/2020 at 11:15 PM, Mark Pearse said:

it occurred to me that another possibility for the mystery cleats is lashing points for the boom.

Mark thank you for your feedback. I can see my brackets are worrying you. Before the end of the build I am hoping more Germania photos will come to light and then perhaps we will all find out the purpose.  Your guess may well be correct.

 

And so on to the vents. 

 

One of the things that attracted me to starting Germania was there plethora of ventilation cowls, seemingly totally over the top and to my eye very teutonic. As usual with me I had imagined them to be much bigger than they turned out to be. 

Somehow the scaling of photographs proved quite difficult and I had to repeat the exercise several times using about 10 different photos before I was happy. The following photo is the one showing most vents but there are number more.

The good news about the vents is they are a fairly simple shape - essentially the mouth is a dome ended cylinder while the stem is another cylinder.

My mammoth attempt at scaling convinced me that three different sizes of vent exist. The following sketch reflects these. Sorry but the scale is metric and each square is 1mm x 1mm.

The larger size has a 8mm (.32") mouth and a 6mm (.24") stem - 4 of these are required.

The middle size has a 6mm (.24") mouth and a 4mm (.16") stem - 12 of these are required.

The small size has a 4mm (.16") mouth and a 3mm (.12") stem - 2 of these are required.

 

I plan to fabricate them as follows:-

Step 1 - is to take a round bar and machine the outside diameter to size. Then drill a hole just over half way through the bar.

Step 2 - is to take an end mill the same diameter as the the stem outside diameter and widen out the hole to a depth equal to the bars radius.

Step 3 - is to turn the outside profile of the vent mouth using a profile tool.

Step 4 - is to insert the stem and solder it in place, Followed by boring the inside of mouth using a ball ended milling cutter.

For each size of vent the wall thickness will be 0.5mm (.02"). 

 

I made the 3 profile tools by grinding high speed tool steel by hand, it took time and patience to get them right. The next photo shows the profile tool for the middle sized vent.

Here is the profile tool with its corresponding ball ended mill.

Tomorrow I commence the production run - hopefully by Sunday evening I will have 18 vents.

 

 

[druxey]

Completing them will be quite the e-vent. Sorry, Keith, I couldn't resist! They look well-planned.

[wefalck]

Keep venting ...

[KeithAug]

found this on you tube - quite a feat of endurance.
 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5IT90vZBRo

[BANYAN]

Thanks for the link Keith, some effort indeed.

 

Look forward to seeing the process you use for the cowls/vents/.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[KeithAug]

Vents:-

 

I started off by making all the stems - the ones in the next photo just happen to be the 4 largest ones.

The next sequence of photos covers the manufacture of the cowl. Starting with the drilling and milling of the holes to take the stem. The end stop is set on the milling vice so that all holes for a specific size of cowl are subsequently drilled the same distance from the end of the bar.

In the next photo the stem inserted to test the fit.

The stem is removed and the outer profile of the cowl is machined using the profile tool. The tool is advanced very slowly to minimise cutting forces. The tool position is set such the the radius of the profile is at the left hand edge of the hole drilled in the bar.

The bar is then removed form the lathe and the stem is reinserted.

A small piece of solder is placed in the bore of the stem and the assembly is heated to melt the solder.

This produces a neat solder joint with no excess solder to clean from the outside of the cowl.

Then its back to the lathe to bore out the cowl mouth. I found that drilling a small pilot hole eased the passage of the ball ended end mill.

The small spigot holding the cowl to the bar is then cut off and then finished with a file and emery cloth before polishing.

I started with the middle sized cowls. The first one took about an hour. In the next photo you can see the completed cowl with 9 other stems. I had miscounted when making stems and had to go back later and make 2 more.

I took a celebratory photo when I got to 4. By this stage manufacture time was about half and hour.

By the end of day 1 I had the 12 middle sized ones complete.

I then made the 2 smaller ones - not very big at all.

I then moved on to the 4 larger cowls.

By the end of day 2 I had 18 all made.

[wefalck]

You seem to be getting closer to my size range

👍

 

Yes, one can't really bore that well with a ball-endmill, but it also depends on how it is ground.

 

[Keith Black]

Beautifully done, Keith. 

The first picture in post #1147, the cowl mouths are black, is that paint or shadow? One sees the insides often painted red, what was the reasoning behind painting the inside of a cowl? 

[Moab]

Beautiful work. I’ve never used a mill or metal turning lathe but I totally admire the parts you create...Moab

[KeithAug]

1 hour ago, wefalck said:

depends on how it is ground.

Eberhard - the mill was ground with the cutting edge all the way to the centre (almost like a wist drill). I did do one cowl with just the mill and it worked ok, but the pressure seemed  a bit on the high side. Using a centre drill to about 3/4 the required depth just seemed to make the cut a little easier. 

1 hour ago, Keith Black said:

The first picture in post #1147, the cowl mouths are black, is that paint or shadow? One sees the insides often painted red, what was the reasoning behind painting the inside of a cowl? 

Keith - the insides are all brass but I don't think they get polished. Ships cowls are generally made from steel plate and hence need painting (inside and out) to avoid corrosion. I am not sure why the insides are frequently painted red but maybe it relates to the use of red-lead oxide paint.

 

Thank you both for commenting.

[wefalck]

Why and since when cowl vents are painted red inside still seems to be an unresolved question. We have been discussing in various fora etc. for the Imperial German Navy, but the discussions remained unconclusive.

 

At some stage white seems to have been common, apparently to serve as a light conduit as well. I have also seen black ones - e.g. the boiler-room ventilators on my SMS WESPE at least in the early years; presumably to make coal dust less visible. French ventilators in the 19th century seem to have been the same colour outside and inside.

 

Another suggestion for the choice of red as colour has been that it resembles (faintly) the copper from which many early (smaller) ventilators were made.

[ccoyle]

Keith, we are going to run out of superlatives for your work. This build log illustrates as well or better than any that a truly great model consists of a myriad of equally great smaller models.

[druxey]

Well played, sir, well played!

[Retired guy]

Work of art Keith 👍

 

Regards

Richard

[KeithAug]

Eberhard, Chris, Druxey, Richard - thank you all for your comments. Also thanks to everyone for all the likes

 

I made the plinths for the vents and then mounted the vents by inserting spigots into the bores of the stems.

 

I took a lot of photos. I will post these a few at a time over the next few days.

 

I haven't sorted out the rope ears on the life ring yet.

The yellow card is a temporary dust shield - I am getting fed up with cleaning out below decks.

[Sceatha]

Hello Keith,

 

your metalwork has been a great education!

Just one question (sorry if you said this already and i missed it). Do you find it necessary to treat shiny bronze with anything so that it does not darken/oxidize over time? Is something like that even necessary, or does bronze retain it's shine even without protection indoors?

I have only just started working with bronze and have no experience on the subject, especially when the bronze is not blackened.

 

Thanks!

George

[Roger Pellett]

Beautiful!

 

Roger

[KeithAug]

45 minutes ago, Sceatha said:

Do you find it necessary to treat shiny bronze with anything so that it does not darken/oxidize over time?

George, Thank you for there compliment. The metal I use is brass - an alloy of copper and zinc, bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. Brass does tarnish over time (even indoors) losing its sheen and becoming quite dull, this takes several years. If you want it to  remain bright you can paint it with lacquer. I quite like to see the brass age so I don't bother but I am in the minority in this respect. 

 

Roger - thank you.

[Keith Black]

Look at all that shiny stuff!

The execution and precision of each piece is absolutely mind boggling, each one a little jewel set in perfect symmetry. Incredibly beautiful, Keith. You made my day with the deck photos, thank you. 

[Jim Lad]

A beautiful forest of ventilators!

 

John

[BANYAN]

Wow!  Those overall shots, especially the one from astern look great and really show the extraordinary work you are achieving Keith.

 

cheerrs

 

Pat

[mtaylor]

The photos are mind-boggling, Keith.  Pure food for soul of model building.

[KeithAug]

Keith, John, Pat, Mark - thank you and as ever thank you to everyone for the likes.

 

A few more pictures:-

 

[Ekis]

Here is a model of a rare elegance ! Bravo for the quality and precision of each element... 😲

[wefalck]

The deck now looks rather mushroom-infested

 

Did you experiment with image stacking now ? Or did you just use a telephoto-lense outdoors with a very small aperture to ge this depth of field ?

 

I don't envy the crew to keep all that brass shiny. It seems that on SEA CLOUD they originally installed gold-plated taps etc. because it was less work to keep them clean ...