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

[dvm27]

Beautiful launch Keith! On another topic my bedroom set is of a similarly stained dark wood and it shows every spec of dust. Have you had this issue with your model?

[KeithAug]

9 hours ago, dvm27 said:

my bedroom set is of a similarly stained dark wood and it shows every spec

Greg - thank you - yes dust is a problem. Germania will require a good clean when finished - and more cleaning thereafter. As for the bedroom the best bet is employ a cleaner or remove glasses before entering. (Anti-static polish helps a little).

[mbp521]

I’m having trouble distinguishing between the model and the real launch. Amazing!

 

-Brian

[FlyingFish]

Great job Keith - very classy looking launch. I think the rib looks fine, authentic to the original, so that's OK with me. However I know which one I'd take to the seafood restaurant in the marina...

[KeithAug]

Pat, Mark, Keith, Greg, Brian, Andy - thank you all for your kind comments.

 

The weather has been good here for a couple of weeks which means most of my time has been spent in the garden. I did find a bit of time for the boat and concentrated on the boarding steps. These fold up to store on the starboard rail.

I started by marking out the angle of the steps on a sheet of MDF before attaching mahogany strips to this with double sided tape. The strips were then slotted to half their depth using the table saw. The slots were .040" wide by .030" deep.

The strips were then removed and 1mm thick steps were cut. The sides and steps were then glued together.

 

The bottom and top steps are extended to form a platform and both are hinged to fold flat. These upper and lower steps include a grating section and fortunately I had grating material available from earlier in the build.

The upper and lower steps are heavily braced with metal strips.

The step sides are also reinforced at the ends with metal plates. These reinforce the pivot points.

The top platform has mounting holes for the demountable stanchions. These were made from tube and soldered in place.

One side of the steps has mounting brackets for more demountable stanchions. 

I now need to make the support frame that braces the upper platform agains the hull.

 

 

 

Edited July 10, 2022 by KeithAug

[Mirabell61]

very nice work Keith,

eyecatching details everywhere....

 

Nils

[CPDDET]

Beautiful, just beautiful!

[Jim Lad]

Right up to your usual standard, mate.

 

John

[Bedford]

3 hours ago, Jim Lad said:

Right up to your usual standard, mate.

 

John

What he said!

[BANYAN]

More of your high quality craftsmanship; thankyou.  What a way to start the week - candy for the eyes

 

cheers

 

Pat

[KeithAug]

Nils, CPDDET, John, Steve and Pat, thank you for commenting.

 

Its been pretty warm here - touching 33c Monday and due to get hotter. Not warm by what many of you see but certainly unpleasant enough here.

 

I finished the steps by making the support piece. It is a triangular frame pivoted at the wide end with a rubber buffer on the pointy bit.

It swings into place on 2 hinge pins (next two the match head)

These pins mount on to the frame on to the underside of the top platform.

The upper and lower platforms were attached to the steps by pivot pins. Here the steps are photographed in the working position.

The steps are folded flat for stowage on the rail.

[Keith Black]

 Amazing detail and beauty on an insignificant item. You set a high bar, Keith.

[Bedford]

15 minutes ago, Keith Black said:

 Amazing detail and beauty on an insignificant item. You set a high bar, Keith.

I was going to say, is there no detail you won't go to Keith?

[FlyingFish]

This is quite a step forward Keith. 😉

[mbp521]

The details on these steps alone are jaw dropping!  Lots of tiny bits to contribute to the floor gods. Hold on to them carefully. 😁

 

-Brian

[KeithAug]

Thank you Keith, Steve, Andy and Brian, your comments are always welcome. Thanks to everyone for the likes.

 

It got very hot here for a couple of days - 40.3 deg C a few miles up the road. The workshop faces north west so it never got higher than 25 deg. A good excuse for a couple of days of boat work.

 

For a while I have been contemplating the sails. They are quite large requiring about 1.5 square meters of cloth. It would have been good to model them full of wind but at the size they are I don't think it will be practical to get the material to hold a curved shape. I am not planning to do all that sewing some of you are very good at. At 1/36 scale my quality of stitching would be much too heavy, so I will go with the "pencil" approach to detailing the seams. As for the material I got a sample of Silkspan (tissue) but rejected this as too flimsy. I also bought some low weight polyester (kite material) but didn't like the patten of the reinforcing threads so that was also rejected. I visited some of the local material shops to look at cotton but couldn't find anything I liked. In the end I defaulted back to what I have used before Amity sail cloth from Cornwall Model Boats. I think it is a polyester.

 

The size of the Amity sheets is 1m x 0.7m so I had to buy two packs. I have a little left over from the previous model and hopefully this will make up for the slight shortfall relative to my estimated requirement. I also bought a couple of rolls of ripstop tape for reinforcing edges and adding the sail reinforcing details.

 

I decided hot weather was the ideal time to get the sheets prepared.

 

I started by building a frame just a bit larger than the maximum sheet size. I made it disassembleable learning from previous mistakes.

 

I mounted the material on the frame stretched by elastic bands.

 

I then gave it a couple of coats of 1/2  and 1/2 PVA diluted with water. Ideally the material wouldn't stretch but unfortunately it does. I tried to minimise the distortion but I would have liked to have done better. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

 

The 2 sheets are done and dry courtesy of our record breaking weather. It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good!!!!

 

 

[BANYAN]

Love the stretching/holding frame - sometimes the simplest ideas are the best (but one has first to think of them ;)) - thanks Keith.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[mbp521]

Great idea for the sheets Keith, I need to file this method away for my canopies. 
 

On 7/20/2022 at 1:02 PM, KeithAug said:

The 2 sheets are done and dry courtesy of our record breaking weather.

Sorry to hear of the record breaking heat over in the UK, and most of Europe for that matter. Hope you all can stay cool over there. We’ve been in a heat wave and drought for over a month now here. Yesterday it was 111f here. Good Time to soak up the AC and work on the boat. 
 

-Brian

[Ian_Grant]

Fine looking engine lathe you have there!!

[Bedford]

2 hours ago, mbp521 said:

Good Time to soak up the AC and work on the boat. 
 

-Brian

From what we're being told in Aus, only about 5% of private residences in UK have AC, they just don't (normally) need it. We're used to those temps in Aus but we know our Brit mates aren't. They are talking about having to learn from us and the US because they just aren't equipped for these temps and fires. Their emergency services just can't cope.

[KeithAug]

14 hours ago, mbp521 said:

We’ve been in a heat wave and drought for over a month now here. Yesterday it was 111f here. Good Time to soak up the AC and work on the boat. 
 

 Hi Brian - yes it is true that many areas of the world have much higher temperatures than our little heat wave. Having mild winters and summers does have advantages but the main disadvantate is that very few homes in the UK have A/C. My brother in law who lives in Phoenix Arizona has his A/C set at 25 deg which is a bit lower than our lounge which was registering 35 deg.

 

12 hours ago, Bedford said:

Their emergency services just can't cope.

Steve it was a bit of media hype, the fires were pretty limited especially compared with the wild fires being experienced in other parts of the world and of course the emergency services dealt with them reasonably well. Fire brigades here prioritise preservation of life (including their own) above the preservation of property and some media types choose to ignore this when dramatising the situation for televisual effect. The main issue over the hot spell was that in the UK people don't normally have to be mindful around parched ground and unfortunately the fire safety behaviour of some isn't great.

 

13 hours ago, Ian_Grant said:

Fine looking engine lathe you have there!!

You might be horrified to hear it is Chinese. I see a lot of negative comments about the quality of Chinese machine tools but I have to say I would find it hard to find fault with this lathe especially for light modelling work. Many years ago I used a lathe that had been the personal property of Sir Henry Royce, it was beautiful. However I have to say that my cheap Chinese lathe produce work that is just as good.

 

15 hours ago, BANYAN said:

Love the stretching/holding frame

Pat - thanks ------- but I just assumed everyone would do it that way.

 

 

 

[druxey]

Royce's lathe? That must be quite a story!

 

I like the elasticized clips on the frame for stretching material. If you had a greater number of clips around the periphery, it would take care of the ripples when the fabric is wetted.

[KeithAug]

3 hours ago, druxey said:

If you had a greater number of clips around the periphery, it would take care of the ripples when the fabric is wetted.

Druxey. I did try it but it just produced a wavy edge and a more random distortion. In the end I decided a more regular distortion would perhaps work better.

 

3 hours ago, druxey said:

Royce's lathe? That must be quite a story!

In 1969 at the age of 16 I started work as a Rolls Royce Engineering Apprentice. The first year of training included 32 weeks of manufacturing training in the Apprentice Training School in Mickleover Derby. Royce's lathe was in the corner of turning training bay. It was immaculately maintained and had a polished brass plate explaining its history / ownership. If you were very good (or lucky) you were allowed to use it. I must have been lucky. My everlasting memory of it is that it was like an alter at which the lucky few got to worship.

 

[KeithAug]

I was messing around lamenting that I couldn't see much of the main cabin interior though the door, so I pushed my very old and poor quality phone camera up against the door and took a photo.

The low quality of the image seems to me to have helped the "atmospheric nature" of the image. i really liked the computer screens, keyboards and instrument panels. I also liked the roof beams with the lights peeking out, but most of all I liked the reflection in the porthole window. Sometimes it is good to take a backwards look.

[Keith Black]

 Keith, I agree 100%. The low quality makes the photo look like the real deal. Someone decades from now is going to be quite delighted and intrigued when they do the same thing. I can almost hear their astonished voices. 

[Bedford]

Keith, you've done so much beautifully detailed work on this build that I'd forgotten about that interior work. It was a nice re-surprise if you will.

[mtaylor]

That photo has a "wow" factor all it's own, Keith.  Between the lighting and resolution and build skills, it's just incredible.

[mbp521]

I would have swore that was taken aboard the real Germania if you wouldn’t have said anything. Great shot!

 

-Brian

[Valeriy V]

8 hours ago, KeithAug said:

I was messing around lamenting that I couldn't see much of the main cabin interior though the door, so I pushed my very old and poor quality phone camera up against the door and took a photo.

 

Kate, this is a great shot, a great interior, and a wonderful piece of craftsmanship!   

[wefalck]

A bit off-topic: it seems that at some stage RR made their own lathes - http://www.lathes.co.uk/rolls-royce/. I looked again at this page, because I thought that there might be a shot of Sir Henry' lathe, but not. You wouldn't remember what make it was?