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

[Roger Pellett]

Not sure where I read it but I think that it is generally believed that the. Confederate ironclad CSS Arkansas was red rust colored.  Built in a backwoods shipyard, she was not painted before being rushed into combat.

 

Although there was no reason why the Federal Gunboats would not have been painted, any bare metal resulting from wear and tear or combat would have immediately rusted in the humid environment of the Mississippi Delta.  I spent 20 years of an engineering career working in a business that fabricated steel pressure piping.  The plant was located in the Ohio River Valley, another humid environment.  Customer painting specifications required painting of bare steel surfaces within 8 hours.

 

That’s what the picture that you posted shows.

 

Roger

[mtaylor]

Sandbags?  Interesting.  Possible I think or maybe it "tote" sacks filled with cotton, etc.?

 

Seems discussion on historical correctness is a common topic around here.   I hope you can find some more info on the colors, etc.

 

I believe what Roger says about painting and rust.  Being from the mid-west, the humidity can sometimes make you wish you had gills instead of lungs.

[mbp521]

Hello again everyone,

 

I figured it was about time that I get another update out there since it has been a day or two since my last one.

 

I continued with work on the roof beams. I started with the area around the chimneys first, since there were so many pieces to fit together. The frames around the top of the flume were built first.

 

Then the frames for the funnels were built.

 

Once the whole section was assembled it was installed on the boat.

 

Next I built the hangers for the piping. These were made from 24ga wire for the hanger rods and some scrap 3/16" x 1/16" strips for the supports that I had. I used small beads to simulate the nuts on the ends of the rods and painted and stained everything up.

 

Then they were installed along the roof beams.

 

Next I moved on to the roof beams forward of the boilers. This area contained the access hatch for the pilot house. This was another area that was lost during the salvage, so I did the best that I could to truly represent the way that I though this might have been built up. The location of the hatch is shown on the HSR plans and I used one of the examples for the comings from one on the existing gun deck that survived.

 

 

Next it was on to constructing the skylight over the boiler. This was another area that did not survive the salvage. It was crushed when the mid-section of the ship collapsed in the cables when being moved to the barge so details are going to be pretty much left up to builders liberties. So what I did was follow the HSR plans that called for framing of 16 openings covered with a mesh screen that sat above the boilers, most likely to let out the excess heat and smoke. My take on this is that the funnels that sat just forward of the chimney could be turned into the wind to direct the airflow down into the boiler hold. The forced air from the funnels would flow through the boiler room, then up and out of the skylight. 

 

This is the template I used for the framing.

 

Frames constructed.

 

Mesh installed and then the whole assembly placed in the roof frames.

 

Then the remainder of the roof beams were installed.

 

 

 

Once I had the roof beams installed. I moved on the ships boats. These boat have taken on a life of their own and have been a very time consuming project. In one of my previous posts, I had shown that I had used the Model Shipways 5 3/16" lifeboat kits for these. Since these were the longest kits that I could find, they had to be modified and stretched to 6 3/16" to fit the proper scale of my build. I was having some difficulty trying to get the correct color schemes for these boats and I finally decided that I was going with a black hull with an off-white interior, to match the one shown in the only photo of the Cairo.

 

I had first started out with the plan to build all four boats covered, since there was very little detail on the boats. However the more I thought about it, the more I figured, I am going through all the trouble to try and get this build as accurate as possible, then why not show some of the detail in these boats. I then decided that I would do all of them uncovered with the interior details because I wasn't sure if I could get the look of the boat covers to look right. Finally, I went ahead and decided to go with two covered boats and two uncovered. My confidence level was not very high on simulating the tarps, but how am I ever going to learn how to do something if I don't try.

 

So here is my process for the boats.

 

I started with the covered boats first, since I was still researching the correct colors of the interior and of the oars. The boats were initially painted with the reddish-brown color, which I later on found to be incorrect, but since I was going to cover them, I figured there was no need to go back and paint them again.

Here is the construction of the covered boats.

 

 

 

To simulate the tarps, I first wrapped the boats in some press and seal I borrowed from the Admirals kitchen (with her permission of course). This would allow me to remove the tarp once it formed to the boat.

 

I then took an old pillowcase and wrapped that around the boat.

 

Then I applied several diluted coats of clear Elmer's glue to stiffen the fabric, then several coats of white acrylic paint.

 

Once the pain had dried, I removed the tarp from the boat, flattened it out and started installing the tie-down ropes. I also added some weathering to give a little bit of an aged look.

 

Back on the boat, I started securing the ropes and fitting the tarp back into place.

 

 

 

It was at this point, that I found that I was not happy with the way this was looking. Something seemed to be missing. When I was weathering the tarp, I tried simulating the seams of the canvas that would have been sewn together the make the cover and thought that this needed more. So I went back and tried it again.

 

Following the same procedure as before, this time I decided that the ropes needed to go completely around the boat.

 

 

 

This seemed to add a more realistic look to the way the covers fell over the sides of the boats and provided some separation of the cover sections.

So I tossed the original one and built two this way.

 

 

Then it was on to the open boats. I painted these with a white interior and gave them a bit of an aged, off-white look with some pastels.

 

I went ahead and stained the benches, since I had already built the floorboards and stained them and I wanted them to match.

 

Using all of the great input from everyone, I went ahead and finished out the oars. I used the same stain as the benches and floorboards to keep the colors consistent. I then used some small heat shrink to simulate the leather sleeves that protect the oars from wear in the oarlocks. 

 

I painted the handles black, only because I liked the look of the black with the stain.

 

Then the oars were bundled together.

 

Then lashed to the insides of the boats.

 

A shoring rope and tiller was added as well as some more weathering to the oarlocks.

 

And the second uncovered boat was completed.

 

All four boats complete.

 

All four boats on the ship, just to give an idea of what they will look like in place. They will actually rest in the davit supports slightly outboard of the current position now. Since the forward port boat will hang over the cutaway opening, I am thinking of showing this boat as in the process of being launched and sitting at the water level but still in the rigging. This will keep the boat from blocking the view of the interior and add a little action to the build. 

 

Lastly, I started playing around with the coloring and some of the weathering. I finally found a base color that I am happy with for the casemates. I mixed together black with a touch of white and raw umber. It gave me a nice looking dull gray that is not too light, yet not too dark either. I also played around with some weathering pastels, adding some rust to the railroad irons and armor plating. I also toned down the bright white of the port door interiors with pastels and added the inside straps and rivets. I cannot get the lighting right to do the pictures any justice, but from what I can see, I am liking the colors.

 

 

Well, that is all for this update. As always, thanks for stopping by and all the likes and kind comments.

 

-Brian

[Keith Black]

 Brian, I just came from Gary's (FriedClams) log and coming here I get gobsmacked all over again!  The boats turned out fantastic but then everything turned out fantastic. You are one of the top builders I've been privileged to watch who has the ability to use styrene to create such believable realism. 

[mtaylor]

The only words I can think of is "wow!  wow!".

[BANYAN]

You have done a great job on this model mate; the details are outstanding.  Love the way the covers for the boats worked out; I'll tuck that idea away for future use.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[FriedClams]

Wonderful exacting work Brian, as I always know it will be.  The boats came out great and the canvas is very believable.  Your modeling is always very complete and you never skip over the small details - like pipe hangers, or elbows on your steam piping - excellent, I love the surprise of the unexpected.  Nice grey base color too.  There’s just something about raw umber that adds a deep, complex look of age.

 

Gary

[Cathead]

I can't tell if it's a trick of the lighting, but did you add a little color on the tarps beneath the ropes? Or is that just a shadow? Because it would make sense for the ropes to leave a little staining under their run. I can only echo the others in saying how fantastic that all looks, and that I want to remember that boat tarp technique.

[mbp521]

17 hours ago, FriedClams said:

Wonderful exacting work Brian, as I always know it will be.  The boats came out great and the canvas is very believable.  Your modeling is always very complete and you never skip over the small details - like pipe hangers, or elbows on your steam piping - excellent, I love the surprise of the unexpected.  Nice grey base color too.  There’s just something about raw umber that adds a deep, complex look of age.

 

Gary

Thank you Gary. I sure wish I was a better photographer because the pictures truly do no justice to the color. I lost count as to how many coats of different grays I put on my mock-up before I finally found a color that I liked. I was struggling to get the blue out of mixing the black and white and the Raw Umber was the final addition that did the trick. 
 

-Brian

[mbp521]

9 hours ago, Cathead said:

I can't tell if it's a trick of the lighting, but did you add a little color on the tarps beneath the ropes? Or is that just a shadow? Because it would make sense for the ropes to leave a little staining under their run. I can only echo the others in saying how fantastic that all looks, and that I want to remember that boat tarp technique.

Thank you Eric. On my first attempt I used the pastels to show the seams in the tarp, so when I redid it, I used the same technique. What I did write not about in the post was that there was another attempt before the final one where I ran the ropes across the top of the tarp, then covered it with tissue paper to give the look of the ropes being sewn within the seams. This idea proved to be a big mistake and looked horrible. So I went with my third version and strapped the ropes across the tarp and then highlighted them with the pastels. I was going for the look of the sewn seems underneath the ropes and never thought about the rope staining the canvas. However, that is a great accidental detail you pointed out that I’ll have to use again in the future. 
 

-Brian

[KeithAug]

Great progress but most of all thank you for your comprehensive commentary as it brings the whole build to life.

 

[mbp521]

On 11/26/2021 at 11:18 AM, mbp521 said:

Mark,

 

I was digging through some of my pictures and ran across this little gem from my visit to Vicksburg back in 2014. It is one of the information plaques from around the Cairo display showing a painting of her being torpedoed. I'm going to have to go back and do some research on the painting itself to find out if it was Civil War era painted by an eye witness or something done more recently for the exhibit. However it does give a good look at the coloring of the ship (not sure of its accuracy), and it brings about another interesting detail that I might want to add to my build. The sandbags added around the pilot house. I have read that there were many boats that used cotton and hay bales as a armor, mainly a lot of the tinclads and converted packet steamers. So it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for the ironclads to use sandbags for additional protection from enemy fire. Going to have to play around with this idea some more.

 

-Brian

 

 

 

I was just following up on this post from last month. I was able to dig up the info on this painting and unfortunately it is a recent one and not from the 19th century. Although the coloring looks like a true representation of what Cairo may have looked like back then, there is no way of really determining the real colors, but I think I am satisfied with what I have come up with and will move on. The painting is titled "Infernal Machines" by William R. McGrath and was painted sometime around 1992. Mr. McGrath has numerous Civil War era paintings on his website https://www.wrmgraphics.com/, several of these are of different Ironclads, all beautifully done and worth a look if you are interested.

 

-Brian

Edited December 7, 2021 by mbp521

[mbp521]

Happy Holidays everyone,

 

I wanted to get one more update in before the new year, so here goes.

 

Picking up where I left off on the last post. I finished up on the roof beams.

 

 

 

From there I built up the forward skylight.

 

Here is the basic frame.

 

With the remainder of the frames and the mesh installed.

 

Temp installed on the Hurricane Deck.

 

And finally all painted and temp installed.

 

Once the skylight was completed I started finishing up the rudders. The will not be mounted until I am almost done with the build. Knowing my luck I'll knock them off while moving this beast around and spend a couple of days sulking about it.

 

I started by making the tillers from strips of aluminum, the same material that I made the paddle wheel from, and brass rods.

 

Then I shaped the pintles and soldered the pins in place.

 

Next I installed the tiller on the starboard rudder to get the correct tiller arc. The arc was then drawn on the deck for the metal pieces that define the arc. Forgive my lack of knowledge of these parts, I did a little research on them, but couldn't seem to come up with a name for them.

 

Both tillers constructed and in place.

 

I then set the pintles aside for painting since they will not be needed until I place the rudders and then installed the metal tiller arc guides.

 

And the rudders are all done. They will now be put aside with the pintles for installation later.

 

Next up was construction of the paddle wheel house. I kept this build as simple as possible since the insides would not be seen at all. Just a basic piece of 1/4" poplar cut to follow the paddle wheel arc, a few scrap pieces to hold the width of the wheel house (the will be removed once the top pieces have been added) and then decking planks.

 

 

I added some thin basswood veneer strips to the sides to simulate the shiplap boards that were used for the walls.

 

Here it is temp installed in place to see how it looks and to make sure that I got my measurements right where everything lines up.

 

I think it will work.

 

 

Then it was time to move on to closing this thing up by adding the deck planks on the Hurricane Deck.

 

I wanted to make sure that the LED's that I had installed didn't bleed through the deck planks. This is the reason for the lights being on. For those areas that did tend to show through the boards, I took small pieces of aluminum tape and stuck them across the beams over each light to block it out. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of these.

 

 

All decking in place.

 

 

After the decking was installed I started work on the hammock racks. I needed to make sure that I got these properly scaled so I scaled me down a sailor from the original picture of the Cairo. I estimated him to be about 5' 10" (according my readings the average height of sailors in the 19th century) which placed him at about 3.7cm in 1:48 scale. This gave me a decent guide to go off of to get the height of the hammock rack walls. 

 

As I started building these, I kept going back to the old pictures of the City Class boats for reference. From the numerous pictures that are out there it is hard to tell which would be correct since over their short lifespan there were so many modifications done to them. Some pictures of the different boats show the hammock rack walls at different heights, some show them completely removed and others match the same makeup of Cairo. The one thing that I could not make out is what their construction was on Cairo itself. From what I can determine is that the outboard walls were made from planks with a top rail, but it is hard to tell how the insides were built. The other thing that I was having trouble determining was the presence of an opening between the ships boats to allow access to them. Since this part was going to require a little more research, I decided t place the hammock racks on hold for a while.

 

While I pondered my hammock rack quandary, I decided to move on to the pilot house interior features. 

 

The ships wheel was another item that was either lost during the salvage, or had rotted away over time, so what it looked like will be really hard to tell. I just used my builders liberties to make up my own version.

 

I started out by cutting two basswood rings and a small spool for the hub.

 

I cut slots in the rings for the spokes to go through and then glued the two pieces together.

 

Next I added the spokes. These were just made from brass wire I had leftover from the hog chains.

 

Then I used some more of my decorative toothpicks to make the handles.

 

The wheel was then glued to the hubs.

 

I also made up a simple speaking tube from brass wire and a small piece of copper sheet.

 

Then finished up the ships wheel with the bell stand and temp installed on the deck. I'll get these painted up and installed once I have the rest of the deck furniture in place. They'll go in, along with the tiller rope, just before I mount the pilot house. I am trying to decide what other details I want to add to this area. Since there are no details of the pilot houses, I'm not real sure of what to add. I had though about just using a standard steamboat setup with a bridle, foot controls and other features, but I am still not sure how far to take the details. I still have time to think on it though.

 

 

Next it was on to the chimneys. These I made from 3/4" rigid copper pipe and aluminum tape to simulate the rivets.

 

The pipe was cut to just under 7" to allow for the proper height above deck and the remainder to sit on top of the flume just below the Hurricane Deck surface.

 

I then added the horizontal rivets to simulate the individual joints. I estimated these to be about 4.5' for each section to give the chimney height of 27.5'. Per the picture of the Cairo, there looks to be a ring at the top of the stack that would most likely add some rigidity to the end. I simulated this with a thin piece of heat shrink tubing.

 

The lower heat shields were made from some thin walled 3/4" pvc pipe and then added at the bottom of the stacks.

 

The vertical rivets were added.

 

The rain cap I made from copper sheets. I first made the templates from cardstock, then glued these to the copper sheet and cut them out.

 

Then they were shaped around the stacks and then glued into place.

 

Finally everything painted up and temp installed. I will eventually paint these up with my gray paint, I just wanted to get a good basecoat with an enamel paint to adhere to the copper a little better.

 

Finally, while I played around some more with the weathering, I decided to install one of the upper gun port doors. I am not quite ready to install all of these, I just got impatient and wanted to see how they were going to look.

 

And some additional weathering pictures.

 

 

 

 

Before I go, I wanted to share one of my Christmas presents from the Admiral. I'm guessing that she felt sorry for me since I have not been able to get my shipyard built out in the barn for the past two years. I have been tying up one of the spare bedrooms (which also doubles as my work from home office thanks to COVID) and have never really gotten things organized the way that I would like to. I found these little gems on one of the Facebook groups that I am a member of, so the Admiral said to go ahead and get what I needed to help organize my workbench a little.

 

These desktop organizers from HobbyZone USA (they also have a dealer in Poland for our European builders) were a great addition to help organize my parts and tools. The polish website actually has a designer site where you can place the modules into whatever configuration you want and gives you a parts list. If you are in the US, you can then take that parts list over to the USA site and add the pieces to your cart from there. They can get a bit pricey (especially the shipping), depending on the modules you get, but imho they are money well spent. The only downside to them (if you want to call it that) is that you have to assemble them, but It's like building a side project.

 

So the for the past few days I have been converting this:

 

into this:

 

I am not done with these yet, there are still several modules that I want to get, but it's a good start, It also gave me a good excuse to clean up my workbench.

 

Well that is all I have for now. Thank you all for stopping by, the likes and the kind comments. Everyone have a safe and Happy New Year and we'll see you next time.

 

-Brian

[wefalck]

Quite a bit of nice progress on various fronts 👍

[Keith Black]

 Brian, super nice work. It's hard to believe how much you've gotten done in just three weeks. 

[BANYAN]

Very nice work on the rudder heads, races, funnels and steering wheel - some very well detailed fine work Brian - take a bow!

 

Those desk tidies certainly help in organising the workspace.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[mbp521]

3 hours ago, BANYAN said:

Very nice work on the rudder heads, races, funnels and steering wheel - some very well detailed fine work Brian - take a bow!

 

Those desk tidies certainly help in organising the workspace.

Pat,

 

Thanks for the nomenclature on the rudder parts. Some of the part names are easy to name because they are similar to typical steamboat parts, then there are those parts that are more specific to the gunboats and harder to define. The typical parts are easy enough to look up in some of the books that I have, but since there was little documentation on the construction of these boats some of the more obscure parts are a little more difficult to place a name to. 
 

As for the organization modules, it’s crazy to think how I got along without them for so long. they sure help with the clutter. 
 

-Brian

[yvesvidal]

Brian,

 

What a fantastic model. I love the attention to details and the creativity with materials and parts.

 

Your bench is looking great with all these organizing boxes.

 

Yves

[Roger Pellett]

Very nice work, Brian.   She just keeps getting better and better.

 

Here is a cross section from 1873 of hammock stowage for a seagoing US Navy vessel.  The book still refers to them as “Hammock Netting’s.”  I’m a firm believer in the idea that Form Follows Function, so even though not a river boat this might help.  The outside is vertical tongue and groove white pine paneling.

 

Sorry, the dreaded forum glitch will not let me upload the photo.  I’ll try again later.

 

[mbp521]

22 minutes ago, Roger Pellett said:

Very nice work, Brian.   She just keeps getting better and better.

 

Here is a cross section from 1873 of hammock stowage for a seagoing US Navy vessel.  The book still refers to them as “Hammock Netting’s.”  I’m a firm believer in the idea that Form Follows Function, so even though not a river boat this might help.  The outside is vertical tongue and groove white pine paneling.

 

Sorry, the dreaded forum glitch will not let me upload the photo.  I’ll try again later.

 

 

Roger,

 

Thanks for the kind comments.

 

From what I have been able to find, and my interpretation, these hammock nets seem to be a sort of hybrid makeup. They have a wooden outboard wall and netted interior wall. The group building the St. Louis made the hammock stationaries from aluminum rectangular tubing, I assume to make them look like some of the earlier period ships hammock netting, but they haven't gone into detail as to how they were going to construct them. Again, my best guess was that they were going to use these stationaries as supports between the wooden outer wall and the netted inner wall. 

 

I am right there with you on the Form Follows Function idea. I will anxiously await your uploaded picture to see if my assumption is anywhere in the ballpark.

 

-Brian

[Roger Pellett]

OK,  I’ll try again.

 

[mbp521]

Roger,

 

Thanks for the picture, I do believe that this looks to be the way these are somewhat constructed. From the picture of the Cairo below, the main construction of the hammock rack sides looks to be made of wood with the stanchions placed every so often to provide lateral support. In the picture the areas circled in yellow look like  they would be the stanchions with the wood on either side and then another stanchion placed at the posts circled in blue.

 

This picture is of the St. Louis and it looks similar to the Cairo. While the stanchions are not as defined in this picture, but you can see a slight shadow of one over the left gun port door.

 

I think what I am going to do is build it up similar to the drawing you sent with the wooden walls and make it look like the picture of the Cairo. I think I will also leave an opening in between the lasts two posts to allow access to the ships boats. Similar to the way the Mound City was configured here. Since this area of the Cairo is covered in the picture by the boats, I think it would be safe to say that they had to be able to access the boats somehow. This would seem to be the most feasible option.

 

We'll see how it comes out.

 

-Brian

[Roger Pellett]

I think that the taller wooden posts double as awning supports.

 

[mbp521]

31 minutes ago, Roger Pellett said:

I think that the taller wooden posts double as awning supports.

 

Yes sir. That as well as anchor points for the chimney and jackstaff guys.

 

By the way, what is the name of the book that you have in the picture. It looks like it has a lot of useful info in it,

 

-Brian

Edited December 29, 2021 by mbp521

[FriedClams]

Great progress Brian and I particularly like the stack(s) construction.  Nice organizers as well.

 

Gary

[KeithAug]

On 12/27/2021 at 7:18 PM, mbp521 said:

I found these little gems on one of the Facebook groups that I am a member of, so the Admiral said to go ahead and get what I needed to help organize my workbench a little.

Brian - That looks really neat but I am sure that even with a desk organiser my workbench would be back in its usual state 30 minutes later. You seem to have made a lot of progress and I particularly liked the rudder detail and smoke stacks. Beautifully crisp work.

[mbp521]

48 minutes ago, KeithAug said:

That looks really neat but I am sure that even with a desk organiser my workbench would be back in its usual state 30 minutes later.

Thank you Keith, I am finding that this is the case with my bench as well. I am going to have to work on a little self discipline and put my tools back after I am done with them.
 

I mainly wanted them for the parts storage which has more than made them worth the while. It’s nice to have the pieces within arms reach instead of having to hunt for them in boxes on the floor or the shelf. 
 

-Brian

[archjofo]

Hi Brian,

you have created a wonderful model with an interesting historical background. 
Also the detail design is unique and very high quality craftsmanship. 
Regardless, you are obviously very well organized in terms of your workspace. I also like that very much.

[bdgiantman2]

You probably have already seen this, I personally have no clue how accurate this is, but this came up on my Pinterest feed if you are interested.  https://www.pinterest.com/pin/410460953556550451/

 

I have been enjoying following your progress on this model, doing a great job.

 

Brian D. 

[mbp521]

Thanks Brian for the kind words.
 

I have seen that picture before, it’s actually the one that I used to model my cannon rigging off of somewhat. It does give a good representation of what things might have look like aboard these boats, it’s just unfortunate that there is no way to validate its accuracy. But still, it’s a great drawing. 
 

-Brian