Trireme Olympias by Richard Braithwaite

[BANYAN]

What a great result Richard, can't wait to see the completed product.  Nice work.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Richard Braithwaite]

Here is my ram with the extra "decorative" bits added (on the left) with Olympias's ram on the right. John Coates is the man in the middle modelling their new fabrication...

Its not perfect but I'm reasonably pleased as its my first go at a complex fabrication like this with silver solder.

Interestingly it wasnt the long welds that were the most difficult. All the tiny decorative bits were surprisingly tricky. I used extra easy silver solder to reduce the risk of melting previous joints and plenty of Thermal gel plastered over everything away from the actual joint I was making at the time. I thought I wouldnt need as much heat input so started off with my smaller blowtorch, but couldn't get a melt. In fact it took a lot of effort with the large torch to get the solder to flow. I guess that is because the thick plating around the joints was sucking the heat up. In fact one of the issues of this fabrication is getting enough heat into the 1mm plate without melting/distorting the 0.2mm plate its attaching to...

 

Ive been trying out a couple of patination options (ammonia vapor and liver of sulphur), but I'm thinking I may just let it tarnish naturally...

Here is an image of the Athlit ram that John based his design on:

 

Edited Wednesday at 05:34 PM by Richard Braithwaite

[Michael Mash]

Bravo.  Looks as good as the real thing.

[BANYAN]

Very nicely done indeed Richard, that is a very true miniature copy of the the original.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Keith Black]

 That's absolutely amazing, Richard. 👍

[Pirate adam]

That really turned out incredible. Great work!!

 

Adam

[Richard Braithwaite]

Thanks for all the positive comments. Its been one of the more challenging little subprojects ive done...

[Richard Braithwaite]

Ram fixed to the model with 0.6mm "Tiny nails" from www.drydocksidemodelsandparts.com.

 

[Keith Black]

 That's the cherry on top! 

[Richard Braithwaite]

My copy of Ken Forans excellent book (Model Building with Brass) arrived today. Its a really lovely book and the quality of the work shown is fantastic. He suggests use of a Low melting point solder called "Stay-Brite" #8 with a much lower melting point than the high silver content solders I used in this project (cirva 250 degrees centigrade vs 720 degrees for the "Easy" grade of silver solder I used). I've never tried this but I can really see the appeal of not having to heat ones whole project to near melting point temperatures each time you do another joint! If I was doing this again I think I would have tried this material. Not sure if it would have had the strength for the fillet joint between the 0.2mm brass and the 1mm (where the contact width of the joint is only 0.2mm) without leaving a large fillet, but certainly sounds like it would be worth a try. Im probably not going to be ramming any other model triremes, so a high strength ram is probably not required!

[kurtvd19]

Richard:

I switched to Stay-Brite solder at Ken's urging when I quit making radio control boats where the strength was needed to resist the action of water against the rudder and in control arms controlling rudders to turn.  Some shafts required strength - like the rudder shaft.

There is nothing on a static ship model that requires the strength of silver solder.

Stay-Brite is a high silver content solder so it blackens nicely using various blackening agents just like regular silver solder.

With the various attachments you had to make on the ram, silver solder might still have been necessary but I would have tried Stay-Brite and some heat sinks just for the ease of not messing with silver solder.

Since switching to Stay-Brite and using Yyllow ochre (again from Ken) I find it so much easier and a lot less cleaning up of excess solder. 

 

The ram will not be left as bare brass so fillets could be made with any type of filler.  I am sure you will find Ken's book well worth the cost.

Take care,

Kurt