USS Cairo 1862 by MPB521 – FINISHED - Scale 1:48 - American Civil War Ironclad - First Scratch Build

[wefalck]

The 'depth' is exactly what you normally want avoid here ... the impression of depth is brought about by filling surface roughness that reflects more light, while using pastels just uses the surface roughness of the 'chalk' ...

 

However, as noted above, you can also use the pigment of the pastels and their ease of application and then turn this into a sort of in situ paints.

 

BTW, water colours or guaches can also be used for weathering, say for water streaks and the likes. The same effect can be achived with dilute acrylics, but you can wash it off, if you are not happy with it. Water colours would also need some 'fixatif' to prevent them from being rubbed off, when handling parts.

[mbp521]

20 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

Brian,

 

Civil War Navy Ships Boats usually had a “wash strake” fitted above the regular planking.  The wash strakes were pierced with openings that served as rowlocks for the oars.  This construction is shown on two of the pictures that you have posted.  To be exact, the rowlocks were often “composition” metal; the term then used for brass or bronze, castings.  These castings were grooved and segments of the wash strake fitted into the grooves.  

 

Roger

 

 

Thanks for the additional info Roger. These boats are proving to be a tiny build in themselves. So many little details to show. I have however made the decision to go ahead and leave them all uncovered and add the interior details to each one. The main reason for this is that I just couldn’t figure out a good way to simulate the tarps in a way that would look realistic and the lack of photos that show them covered at all. Might as well give myself another good challenge. 
 

-Brian

[mbp521]

20 hours ago, wefalck said:

There are 'fixatives' for pastels, sold by art-supply houses. I am not sure what they consist of, but may the same thing as hairspray minus the perfume. For me the main point is the resulting sheen, that depends on what kind of varnish or 'fixatif' you use - some people want to have their models flat all over, while I personally prefer to more realistically respresent the the different sheen of different materials or surface treatments. The point is not to douse the pastels in varnish, but just to spray it lightly, so they are bound without the varnish necessarily forming a continuous layer. You will have to experiment.

Wefalck, I hadn’t even thought about using different sheens for different materials. Up to this point I have just been using a satin varnish for everything. Now I am going to have to go back and rethink my paint scheme. This is not a bad thing though. After doing some experimenting with the pastels, I am finding that the satin finish is not the greatest to get the pastels to adhere to. I have to say at least the cleanup is easy, but I have to watch my hand placement or I’ll smudge my work. 
 

Here are my first attempts. 

 

 

-Brian

[Keith Black]

 Brian, I like the weathering a lot but realistically, how much weathering took place in just one year? 

[mbp521]

5 minutes ago, Keith Black said:

 Brian, I like the weathering a lot but realistically, how much weathering took place in just one year? 

Thank you Keith.

 

That is a great question. From my research and reading, Cairo saw a lot of action in her one year of existence, but she also had a good bit of downtime. From the time Cdr. Selfridge took command of her though, she was on constant patrol until her sinking, so there is not much telling how much time they had to really square her away. Since the only known photo of her is the one that was taken shortly after she was launched, it would be next to impossible to tell what she looked like right before she went down. My best guess is that since the build of these boats was rushed, not a lot of time was given to her paint. Touchups could have been done during the couple of refits Cairo went through (additional railroad irons added to the forward casemates and the upgrades to the pilot house) but would she have had a fresh coat of paint added? No telling.

 

I want to try and add a bit of weathering to her without looking like she just slid down the ways, but not so much as for her to look like she's been on patrol for several years. I figured that she would have a bit of river grime on her from cannon ball splashes during her skirmishes and possibly a few battle scars, but not too much more. Some of the details of the weathering shown previously will be muted a bit, once I "fix" the pastels. I am still experimenting, so we'll see what comes out.

 

-Brian

[mbp521]

So here was another stab I took at weathering the pilot house. I used a basic brown pastel to get into the seams of the armor plating with orange for the rivet accents and portal cover hinges. I then went with a very light coat of white pastel to accent the portal openings. 
 

The colors seem a bit subtle and the pictures don’t do much justice for it but they did knock a bit of the satin sheen off. I’m thinking that I may go ahead and put a matte finish on my mock-up and try again on that. 

 

 

I am definitely open to any thoughts or opinions. 
 

-Brian

[wefalck]

I think it is coming on nicely ! It enhances the 3D-impression and enlivens the surface.

[mtaylor]

Looks good from here.   As for the "sheen", cast iron does have a subtle sheen to it.  I'll have to check but I recall somewhere that they rubbed the iron down with something or maybe paint to fight the rust.

[Canute]

Take a look at Pan Pastels here: https://modelingcolors.com/

They have some tutorials on the site. I like them because the oversprays seem to have less of an effect on the pastel colors. Other chalk pastels I've used seem to disappear after the spray fixative

[mbp521]

25 minutes ago, Canute said:

They have some tutorials on the site. I like them because the oversprays seem to have less of an effect on the pastel colors. Other chalk pastels I've used seem to disappear after the spray fixative

Ken, Thanks for the link, it was indeed helpful. I just read though Rob Manley's techniques section of this site and it confirmed what I was thinking. For the best results you need to apply a flat finish prior to weathering. 

 

-Brian

[wefalck]

Indeed, you need some surface roughness for the pastels to take a foothold.

[vaddoc]

I truly enjoyed catching up Brian. This is a magnificent model, the mechanical bits and piping are so realistic. Weathering will lift this model to another level. I have no experience with it, I am looking forward to the rest of this journey.

 

Regards

Vaddoc

[mbp521]

Hello everyone,

 

I have been somewhat busy on the build and will have an update coming in the near future. It's been a lot of tedious work, especially with the ships boats. The have taken on a life of their own, and in reality I could have started a separate build log on these themselves. The research on them has been time consuming to say the least, and one thing that I discovered is that there was no consistency with any of the City Class Ironclads in what type of boats they carried. To be honest, I think they just used whatever they had on hand that would fit in the davits. What I settled on was to build a couple of cutters and a couple gigs and leave it at that since only one of the boats from Cairo is clearly visible in it's picture. More to come on these in my next updates.

 

This time around I am seeking some advice and opinions. While working on the ships boats, I started constructing the oars for them. More research involved with this as well to get the right style. I finally determined that there are 100's of types out there that were used in the mid 19th century and none of the old pictures show what was used on the Ironclads boats, so I picked the style that I though fit best. This is when I ran into a problem. While I like the style that I chose, I am stuck on the paint scheme that they may have used. Again, none of the pictures of the City Class Ironclads have a clear shot of any paint schemes on them and of course, what is available is all black and white, so I wanted to ask advice and opinions.

 

I have about 24 oars made up right now and painted up a few of them with different colors.

 

Here are the steps I took to make up the oars:

 

The handles are made with decorative toothpicks and the paddle faces are just thin strips of basswood. I cut a slit in the toothpick from the point and slid the strips into the slot. Glued the strips into place, then sanded everything to shape. Pretty straight forward. I scaled these out at between 11' and 12' long. This seemed to be the standard for 25' boats of the time according to my research. This calculated out to be about 2 3/4" at 1:48 scale.

 

Then I painted up a few to get some sort of idea of how they would look. Even though these are the schemes that I came up with, it doesn't mean that I have to go with any of them. I want to get them as accurate a possible.

 

Here they are in the still, yet to be finished work boat, to see what they look like with these colors. Even though they will all be lashed together, I don't want them getting lost in the colors of the boat.

 

As always, I value any comments or opinions, so please feel free to let me know.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

-Brian

[Keith Black]

Brian, really nice work on the oars. They are a minor item, not taking them lightly is admirable. 

 

 As they lay in the ship's boat, the oar shown at the bottom is the more stealthier. I don't know how much white oars would show up at night if a crew was trying to depart or land without notice?  

 

 

Edited November 12, 2021 by Keith Black

[mtaylor]

Nice detail work on the oars.  I'm not sure they would have been painted but Keith makes a good point for being dark colored.

 

If I remember right, there's a couple of models at Fort Donelson and I don't remember seeing oars in the boats.   But, memory could be faulty on this.

[BANYAN]

Clever use of the toothpicks Brian; those oars turned out nicely.  I have seen examples of painted oar handless but not their blade tips.  The dark paint on the tips, in the photos at least, appears to foreshorten the blade and make them look flat ended - perhaps not a problem to the naked eye?

 

cheers

 

Pat

[gak1965]

Not the clearest photo and not of a City class but compared to the white hull, I'd say the oars were bright. Ship is the Commodore Perry. From the URL below.   https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:wd376x76z.

 

 

I think that makes sense, everything about the City class was done in a hurry. 

 

Anyway, your mileage may vary.

 

Probably getting old hearing this, but the build is absolutely awesome.

 

George K

Edited November 13, 2021 by gak1965

[leclaire]

A question Brian - how did you cut the slot in the toothpick to insert the paddle blade. Something that small would be a huge problem for my shaky hands.

 

Bob

[KeithAug]

Must remember the toothpick oar idea. Now filed for later use.

[mbp521]

On 11/12/2021 at 3:17 PM, Keith Black said:

Brian, really nice work on the oars. They are a minor item, not taking them lightly is admirable. 

 

 As they lay in the ship's boat, the oar shown at the bottom is the more stealthier. I don't know how much white oars would show up at night if a crew was trying to depart or land without notice?  

 

 

Keith,

 

Thank you for the input and compliments. I'm right there with you. I was thinking the same thing, but if you look at the below picture of the Cairo boat, it looks like the interior is painted white or some sort of light color. I'm leaning to white since it was pretty much readily available at the time, and cheap.

 

To me the white would stick out like a sore thumb if they were trying to be stealthy. This was the reason for experimenting with the white oars. And you are correct, it would be harder to see the darker ones. I still cannot make up my mind as to how I want to paint them up. I want them to be seen when looking at the model (since I am going through all the effort of researching them and building them, but I want them to be as accurate as possible. Oh the decisions we have to make. 🤪

 

 

-Brian

[mbp521]

On 11/12/2021 at 3:44 PM, mtaylor said:

Nice detail work on the oars.  I'm not sure they would have been painted but Keith makes a good point for being dark colored.

 

If I remember right, there's a couple of models at Fort Donelson and I don't remember seeing oars in the boats.   But, memory could be faulty on this.

Mark,

 

Thank  you for the compliments. I have searched several different museum models of the City Class boats (Cairo, Carondelet and St. Louis) and they all seem to have the work boats covered with a tarp. I am beginning to think that there is a reason for this. Possibly that there just isn't any or enough information out there on what they truly looked like.

 

-Brian

[mbp521]

On 11/12/2021 at 5:36 PM, BANYAN said:

Clever use of the toothpicks Brian; those oars turned out nicely.  I have seen examples of painted oar handless but not their blade tips.  The dark paint on the tips, in the photos at least, appears to foreshorten the blade and make them look flat ended - perhaps not a problem to the naked eye?

 

cheers

 

Pat

Thank you Pat! I mainly just painted the tips on a whim. I ran across several pictures of them that had the tips painted different colors and thought it looked neat. Not real sure of it's accuracy though. One other detail that I found was some had rope wrapped around them somewhere half way between the handles and the blades. I thought of doing this as well. I want to do a little more research on this to see what purpose it served first.

 

-Brian

[mbp521]

On 11/12/2021 at 11:06 PM, gak1965 said:

Not the clearest photo and not of a City class but compared to the white hull, I'd say the oars were bright. Ship is the Commodore Perry. From the URL below.   https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:wd376x76z.

 

 

I think that makes sense, everything about the City class was done in a hurry. 

 

Anyway, your mileage may vary.

 

Probably getting old hearing this, but the build is absolutely awesome.

 

George K

George,

 

It never gets old hearing that! Comments like this are what keep me going.

 

As for the boats, it seems that all of the City Class Ironclads had work boats with black hulls (at least that is what I can interpret from the photos that I have been able to uncover on them). I am assuming that the hulls were painted to match the Ironclads paint schemes. The interiors on the other hand are a different story. As I told Keith Black above, from the pictures, it looks like the Cairo's boats had a white interior and black exterior. From the picture you show, it does look like the oars are a darker color on the handles with rope wrapped around them, but it hard to tell the color of the blades. The forward one looks like it almost has a white painted blade. I may have just opened up an oar wormhole with this one.

 

-Brian

[mbp521]

On 11/13/2021 at 8:35 AM, leclaire said:

A question Brian - how did you cut the slot in the toothpick to insert the paddle blade. Something that small would be a huge problem for my shaky hands.

 

Bob

Hi Bob,

 

All I basically did was cut the tip of the toothpick off. Not too much, just enough to blunt it enough to get my Xacto saw on.

 

Then all I did was saw a small slit down the toothpick to the desired length.

 

After that I sanded the slot smooth and inserted strip into place and sanded to shape.

 

It was fairly easy. Getting the saw started in the center of the toothpick was the toughest part.

 

-Brian

[mbp521]

2 hours ago, KeithAug said:

Must remember the toothpick oar idea. Now filed for later use.

Keith,

 

I actually bought these decorative toothpicks a few years ago when I was building my Chaperon. I used them to build the ships wheel, and thought later on they would make perfect oar handles. I had built a few for my Chaperon, but never used them, then I revived the idea with this build. Hopefully you will be able to use the idea some time.

 

-Brian

[Keith Black]

 Brian,  I came across this image, hope it's useful.

 

[mtaylor]

1 hour ago, mbp521 said:

Thank you Pat! I mainly just painted the tips on a whim. I ran across several pictures of them that had the tips painted different colors and thought it looked neat. Not real sure of it's accuracy though. One other detail that I found was some had rope wrapped around them somewhere half way between the handles and the blades. I thought of doing this as well. I want to do a little more research on this to see what purpose it served first.

 

-Brian

If I remember right, the rope wrapping was to protect the oarlock (as such that it was) and the oar itself from wear.  It also silenced pretty much the oar made during rowing.

 

If all else fails, just put a cover on the boats.   But then again, no one can actually say that the oars are the wrong color.

[Keith Black]

Brian, a thought. If you painted the interior of the ship's boat white (or light color) the darker oars would stand out. In the photo I just posted, the interior appears to be white. 

[mbp521]

1 hour ago, Keith Black said:

Brian, a thought. If you painted the interior of the ship's boat white (or light color) the darker oars would stand out. In the photo I just posted, the interior appears to be white. 

Keith,

 

Thanks for the photo. I can not get enough of looking at these moments in history. I often stare at them for long periods just wondering what was actually going on at the time the photograph was taken, just like this one. It looks like a Monitor type boat anchored in the river possibly waiting on resupply, or just taking it easy for the day. But upon closer inspection there is another row boat in the background headed in the opposite direction. Possibly a scouting mission to find a good landing place to set up camp for troops? Who knows. But then if you look even further back into the picture there is what looks to be a partially sunken hulk on the right side. Was this a mission to see what could be salvaged from the wreck? Again, who knows. It's just simple things like this that get my brain cogs to turning, and chews up a lot of time, but just totally engrosses my curiosity.

 

But getting back to the original part of the post, the interior does appear to be white as do all the ones on the Cairo picture. This may just be a change I'll have to make on my boats. Another thing that piqued my curiosity was what are the little round doohickeys hanging off the side of the boat. Are they some sort of bumper? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

-Brian

[mbp521]

2 hours ago, mtaylor said:

If I remember right, the rope wrapping was to protect the oarlock (as such that it was) and the oar itself from wear.  It also silenced pretty much the oar made during rowing.

 

If all else fails, just put a cover on the boats.   But then again, no one can actually say that the oars are the wrong color.

Mark,

 

The rope info is very much appreciated. I may just have to add this little detail into my oars. 

 

Originally I was going to cover all but one of my boats, and researched several videos and articles on how to simulate tarps, I just felt that this wasn't a technique that I was ready to take on just yet. I felt that it would take me a while to get it done correctly, and I just didn't want to chew up that much time, time that I could be focused elsewhere on my build. Some day I may play around with making tarps, but I think that right now I want to learn how to properly weather this build, and learning two new skills would really task my little pea brain.

 

-Brian