Christiaan Brunings by Richard44 - FINISHED - World of Paperships - 1:100 - CARD

[Richard44]

The Christiaan Brunings was commissioned in 1900 at an Amsterdam shipyard, with luxury accommodation (including a marble fireplace) and was apparently used as a “directorate ship”. It was also suitable as an icebreaker. The initial engine was compound steam, replaced in 1998 with a Scottish twin coal-fired boiler. After the war, it was used as a measuring vessel by the Dutch Government until 1968. It was then offered to the Dutch Historical Maritime Museum Association, and since then has been a museum ship.

 

The kit from World of Paperships contains seven pre-printed sheets of A4 plus one sheet of laser-cut details. Some of the sheets are printed on both sides, making backup tricky. There are two and a half sheets of instructions and two illustrated sheets. The printed sheets look to be very good, the instructions we’ll see, but the illustrated sheets lack some clarity.

 

The first photo shows the bare hull parts cut out ready for assembly, while the second shows the basic hull assembled.

The hull with the two piece deck in place.

The hull sides are in two pieces, within some obvious compound curves at the stern.

The stern done. Some minor deck details have been added as well.

Both sides are complete. The bulwarks are somewhat wavy, hopefully this will be corrected when the bulwark supports are added.

Cheers

Edited June 7, 2022 by Richard44

[robdurant]

Looks like a good start. Hope you don't mind me following along.

[Richard44]

Thanks for the likes and Rob, you’re very welcome.

 

The bulwark supports are laser cut and quite delicate. One is shown below.

The waviness of the port bulwark is apparent in this photo. Also shown is the strip of pre-bent wood I used to hold and straighten the bulwark before gluing the supports in place. Those on the starboard side have already been done. A few small deck items have been placed.

The strip of wood clamped to the port side with a few supports in place.

The hull with both sides complete.

Cheers

[robdurant]

That wooden former is ingenious. And the results speak for themselves. All the waviness is gone. Nice to have some of those finer parts laser cut, too. 

 

I was fortunate enough to stumble upon this vessel a few years ago when I visited Amsterdam and the Scheepvaart (National Maritime) museum. She's a very handsome vessel, and seemed very nicely maintained.

[Richard44]

Thanks for the likes and your comment Rob.

 

The next job was to glue the cap rail onto the top of the bulwarks. As supplied, this was in four pieces, but unfortunately, it didn’t fit, especially at the stern. Slight differences in my build would be the reason. So a new cap rail had to be made. The immediate problem was to get an accurate pattern of the top of the bulwarks. I couldn’t see that trying to trace the outline of the hull onto paper was going to work owing to the sheer of the deck and hence the bulwarks. The hull was not going to sit flat on the paper. So I decided to try photocopying the hull. The first photo shows the result of doing this and the second shows the new cap rail in one piece. Two attempts were required, the first not quite fitting.

 

The cap rail in place. Also visible are six black fairleads on the rail - these are laser cut pieces.

Next was the boiler house. The photo shows the partially complete unit, additional bits yet to be added and also the parts for the funnel. The latter can be made either fixed or pivoted so that it folds down aft. This was to allow the boat to pass under bridges. I decided to make the funnel fixed.

The completed boiler house. The funnel is to go on top, and the rod that allows it to pivot is at the rear of the house, and the counter weights to balance the funnel are the large circular pieces on the end of the arms.

 

 

 

Temporarily in place.

Cheers

[Captain Slog]

Coming along nicely!  I like problem solving, gets the mind working. 

Edited May 21, 2022 by Captain Slog

[amateur]

Nice work! 

Almost all inland steamtugs had funnels that could be lowered.

It is rather difficult to find a pic of a lowered funnel, though. I have been looking for it, and I found one (at 1:35 you see a boat nearing the bridge) 

 

 

Jan

[Richard44]

Thanks for that video Jan.

 

[Richard44]

Thanks for the likes.

 

The wheel house, cabin and boiler room loosely in place.

I forgot to take photos of the next stage, so skipping ahead a little…The parts for the searchlight and the completed unit.

This photo shows the printed parts for the navigation lights.

The boat with most of the deck fittings in place. Also visible are the navigation lights, the searchlight and roof vents. The nav lights are not quite as I would like, but as they are only 4mm high, they’ll pass. The kit provides duplicates for the windows, doors, hatches and gratings and these can be overlaid on the basic printed part to add some depth.

Cheers

Edited May 24, 2022 by Richard44

[Richard44]

Thanks for all the likes.

 

The next job was to make the cowl vents - three of them. The kit provides three choices for these - a simple folded version, a slightly more complicated version with a cylindrical body and a simple hood, or the complicated one with the hood made up of individual segments that have to be folded and glued together. Two of them as printed are shown here. I went for these.

Bending and gluing the segments was an exercise in patience. To make it a little easier, the vent was held down on a steel rule with a small modified alligator clip (the teeth had been flattened).

A finished vent, and the three of them in place.

Next thing to be made was the bow winch. Again the kit provides options, simple and detailed. On the left is the detailed version with the simple version on the right, and again I’m doing the detailed one. The only guide to building this is contained within the red square (no actual instructions), and it hasn’t helped to find that some parts are mis-identified. Nevertheless, it was completed and glued in place.

Cheers

[amateur]

Mis-identifacation or not. I would call it a pretty close match to the original

[Richard44]

Ahhhh, I just realised after looking at that photo that I've left off the bits that represent the outer drums!!! I'll have to fix that tomorrow.

 

Thanks for that photo Jan.

[Captain Slog]

Nice work, particularly with the vents!  I struggle with them. 

[ccoyle]

4 hours ago, Captain Slog said:

Nice work, particularly with the vents!  I struggle with them. 

 

Agreed! Your vents turned out great. I always find constructing them a bit of an exercise in terror and frustration.

[Ian_Grant]

I'm a bit late to this build, but very impressed!  Between you and Chris I am thinking I should try a card model of some sort; will have to look around to see what appeals.

 

Happy modelling!

[Richard44]

Thanks for the likes, and the comments Captain Slog, Chris and Ian.

 

Not much to tell this time. The funnel is in place. This was a simple rolled tube with a joiner on the inside. The whistle that is alongside the funnel was made from a dowel as suggested in the instructions. A printed version came with the kit, but trying to roll a long, three mm diameter tube, proved to be beyond my skills. In particular the actual whistle at the top of the tube looked weird as it was an integral part of the print. The latter was therefore made from a short length of dowel. The completed whistle was attached to the funnel using small brass eye pins. The three guy ropes are elastic thread and the one running towards the stern is attached to a hand winch used when the funnel needed to be lowered. That winch is a card tube with the handle made from styrene rod.

 

Also visible are two bench seats that were laser-cut.

That’s it for now, not a lot more before it’s finished.

 

Cheers

Edited May 28, 2022 by Richard44

[Richard44]

Thanks for the likes.

 

There are four davits amidships and one at the bow. All are provided as prints or lasercut. The photo shows a midship davit, the image on the left being the lasercut version while the printed one is on the right.

The lifting tackle is shown as lines on the latter, but as a solid “bar” on the lasercut one. The appearance of neither appealed to me, so I decided to rig some actual tackle on the lasercut davits. The “bar” between the tip of the actual davit and the hook at its end was removed and thin thread was used for the tackle. Not easy and the results were not quite as I had hoped. The following photos show one of the rigged davits and all four in place. The bow davit was left unadorned.

Finally, the mast. This was fashioned from a length of strip wood, following the provided template. The base is made up of three printed parts, and would allow the mast, on the actual vessel, to be lowered before passing under a bridge (as was the funnel). The masthead light was made and rigging added. I found a photo on the net which showed the rigging more clearly than did the kit illustrations.

So that’s the finish of this build. A little bit difficult in parts, the instructions are vague in places and the illustrations could definitely be improved. But I enjoyed it.

 

Cheers

[Blue Ensign]

Nicely done Richard, a  sweet little model.

Are you going to display it on a waterline setting?

 

B.E.

[Richard44]

6 minutes ago, Blue Ensign said:

Nicely done Richard, a  sweet little model.

Are you going to display it on a waterline setting?

Thanks for the praise B.E..

Funny you should ask about a waterline setting. World of Paperships actually has a free download of a jetty that CB could be moored to. I've got the file and will make it up in a day or so.

 

I'm intermittently following your build of Sphinx and continue to admire your skills 🙂.

 

Cheers

[ccoyle]

A very convincing model, Richard. I'm going to have to remember the trick you came up with for straightening the bulwarks, too.

 

Cheers!

[AJohnson]

A very nice build Richard, I'm about to embark on my first card boat build and your log full of good tips!  👍

[Captain Slog]

Well done, looks great!

[Richard44]

Thanks for all the comments and likes.

 

One tool that I found to be very useful was a set of Micro Mark micro punches https://www.micromark.com/Micro-Punch-Set. (I bought mine from Hobby Tools Australia).

These were good for punching small holes or for punching out discs instead of trying to cut them. The photo shows a couple of discs punched out of one of the printed sheets from Christiaan Brunings. I found that sometimes thin CA dripped onto the back of the proposed disc before punching out made for a cleaner cut.

Cheers

[GrandpaPhil]

Congratulations!  Nicely done!