USS Cairo by Cathead - FINISHED - BlueJacket Shipcrafters - 1:192

[Cathead]

Happy New Year! Got some work done on a few small details, starting with the small and large skylights.

 

The small skylight has an angled roof. You're given a tiny block of wood and told to shape it to the proper angle, which I did with a sharp hobby knife. Then you bend a piece of flat brass to match the roof angle. This should come to a sharp point simulating the two sides of the roof coming together. There was a similar bend needed in the side armor, but that piece had a scoring line on it that made the bend easy, consistent, and sharp. Didn't work that way with this tiny piece. When I tried the bend, it kept coming out as a curve, no matter what I tried, and it kept getting more mangled. I finally more or less flattened it to "close enough"

The brass piece also seems quite a bit larger than the provided wood block, so there's a rather "Alpine" roof overhang on the assembled part (see below). But I can't do anything about it, because there's another fine piece of brass grating that goes over this (see photo above), and cutting down the base piece of brass would mean that part would be too big. So again it's just going to have to be "good enough"

After painting, here's what the skylight looks like. I used a silver pen to hint at light between the gratings. It's really hard to photograph parts this small with an iPhone, so apologies for the bad image.

 

Next up is the large skylight. This is simpler since it's flat. Just glue a piece of brass to a thin strip of wood, paint, then glue brass gratings over it. I painted the lower brass to look like brighter glass, pre-painted the grating, and assembled.

 

Meh. Here they are set in place on the casement:

 

Now for the real fun. I got started on the pilot house and ran into a doozy of a problem that I'd like advice on.

 

Here's how it's supposed to work. There's a resin core in the shape of the pilothouse, over which you place various pieces of laser-cut wooden "armor". Not sure why these are wood and not brass, for a more consistent texture on the model (where all other armor is brass), but whatever. I'll give the kit credit here, they provide extras of these flimsy little pieces.

Looking closely, you see that there are two sizes of armor; slightly larger ones that go on the front three panels, and slightly smaller ones that go around the rest of the structure. Seems pretty straightfoward, right? The resin part is designed to match the wood, you just sand the armor edges to fit and they make a nice neat pilot house. Like this:

But first you have to get rid of that big lip of flashing all around the base of the resin core (the armor should reach the deck). Also notice that the core is a little taller than the armor; see it sticking up above those pieces? I cut away the flashing around the base carefully, at which point I discovered that the core isn't even close to evenly cast. This is hard to show for such a small part, so I took a couple different photo sequences.

 

First here's the front of the core once the flashing base was trimmed away, followed by the back:

OK...here's what happens when you hold a few of the proper armor pieces against the core. Trust me that the tops of these (hidden behind my fingers) are flush with the top of the core:

 

 

There's basically a huge angular wedge of resin at the base of this thing; it's properly flush at the front but really thick at the back. Remember that the armor is supposed to reach the deck. Here's another view, trying to use calipers. I couldn't photograph this perfectly, but calipers confirm the huge difference in thickness front-to-back:

 

The smooth sides meant to hold the armor are accurate; their bases line up all the way around. It's this big wedge of extra resin at the base that's the problem. How do I get rid of this? Seems like a ton of sanding (and nasty resin dust), while I'm not sure how to cut it away evenly because the piece is really hard to hold or brace. 

 

The instructions simply say "remove the disc of flash from the bottom of the cast resin pilot house". Not much help there. They also later say "sand the tops and bottoms of the sections [meaning the wood armor] flush with the top and bottom of the pilot house", which is funny because the opposite is true. The resin casting is too tall on top (see earlier photo) and has a big wedge on bottom.

 

So my question is, what's the best way to remove this bottom wedge of resin to get a smooth bottom surface that will sit flat on the deck? Do I just take my best shot with a razor saw and hope I don't mangle it too badly? Definitely not thrilled with the quality of this casting or the bare-bones instructions on how to handle it.

[Canute]

One idea is to take a dead flat piece of glass, glue down a sheet of 80 to 120 grit sandpaper and start working the conning tower resin in a circular pattern. Check frequently to ensure you are staying even. Do it outside and wear a dust mask. Slow and steady. Hacking off an irregular sliver of resin with a razor saw is not for the faint of heart. How could you hold it to cut?

 

I've done this sanding on some limited run resin kits. The parts are made in open molds and the backsides of parts can be uneven.

[GrandpaPhil]

I would use a scalpel and shave it off slowly and carefully.

 

I’ve done that with resin models in the past.

[mbp521]

Another suggestion I could offer up would be, if the wood "armor" is even all the way around and matches up at the corners of the resin form, you could possibly glue them all in place on the resin cast and line them up at the top. Once everything dries, you could then do as Ken @Canute suggested and sand the bottom down on a piece of glass or other hard flat surface until the bottoms all match up. 

 

As a side note, to entice you on a previous post about a railroad ferry project, I took this picture in the Vicksburg Rail Road museum on our visit last year. I thought it looked like a pretty neat project, and something that I had thought about doing some day. My great-grandfather worked for Union Pacific years ago and was in charge of shuttling the RR cars on a ferry similar to this one between Baton Rouge and Port Allen.

 

 

-Brian

[gak1965]

Just my $0.02 here, but if you overcut the bottom, is it really that much of a problem? Mount the "armor", fill in any bottom gaps with putty, then glue the whole thing on the deck. 

 

Looking good and I'm sure you'll find something that works.

 

George K

 

 

 

[Roger Pellett]

Eric,  Can you use the resin casting as a former to be removed once the Pilot house has been assembled?

[Cathead]

Thanks for all the diverse thoughts and advice! I've gotten it worked out, using an approach closest to @gak1965. Basically, I realized that part of the problem may have been me misunderstanding the vague instructions. When they said "remove the disc of flash from the bottom of the pilot house", I focused on cutting vertically first to eliminate the visual disc extending away from the pilot house, not realizing how much extended below and how uneven it was. What they might have meant, and what I should have done regardless of whether they meant it, was to cut horizontally in the first place, using the upper edge of that flashing disc as a guide for a razor saw. I made a drawing to illustrate this:

That drawing took me five minutes to work up and is the sort of thing that should be included in clear instructions. What you see in the background is all that you get. Note that the drawing doesn't show the "wedge" shape of the flash, which made fixing this harder than if it was even thickness all the way around.

 

So I just eyeballed a horizontal cut across the remaining flash, as I realized (like gak) that it didn't really matter if I cut too deep.

This took some care not to slip and cut my fingers, but it worked. After this it took about 20 minutes of careful sanding to get the base flat, and short enough that the armor would extend down to the deck. I thought about cutting off the top instead (a lot less material to remove!) but test-fitting pieces showed me that that would screw up the geometry of how they fit together at the top. @Roger Pellett's point about just using the casting as a mold would have worked well, I think, but I'd already completed my version when I saw it.

 

So once I finally got the darn thing in workable condition, I sanded the armor pieces' edges to bevels that would fit together, and started attaching them. I found that no matter what I did, the armor pieces didn't quite line up when held against the casting (and you can't sand much as there's little margin for error), so I did my best and decided that paint, scale, and distance would fill any remaining gaps. This, again, is where Roger's suggestion might have helped, but oh well.

Note that I intentionally shortened the casting enough so the armor pieces stick up higher, allowing me to sand the whole thing flat. There were some gaps at the top, which I filled with wood glue, then resanded.

And here it is freshly painted (and so still shiny). I know, bad photo, it's cold outside where the better light is. For now I just want you to see it in reasonably completed form.

Next up I'll be posting about another maddeningly vague bit of instructions and seeing what Cairo experts like @mbp521 think I should do.

 

[Cathead]

So next up is the paddle wheel house, which is assembled from various (mostly laser cut) blocks of wood. Seems pretty straightforward. Here's the only illustration in the instructions ("Sketch 9"), and here's what it looks like mocked up (the long piece gets cut to fit).

My problem is that two key steps have no clear guidance or illustration that I can find. First, the instructions say "cut the roof sections from the 1/64" plywood sheet and glue them in place". OK...but nowhere in the instructions or plans are any roofs shown clearly. Sketch 9 shown above certain doesn't, and this is the closest the plans come:

How much overhang? You can sort of guess from this, but it's a pretty rough drawing and doesn't show the other dimension. Does the curved part get a roof panel too?

 

Second, and related, the little side buildings aren't supposed to have flat roofs, but angled ones. The instructions say "sand the pitch into their roofs". OK, what's the pitch? You get a 3D hint from Sketch 9 and a loose sense from the plans above, but for someone actually interested in accuracy it would be nice to have a clearer idea. The little piece of basswood you cut to length also needs to have an angle put on it, and again no clear guidance is given for this. Wouldn't be hard to include a quick plan view with an actual template for doing this.

 

Maybe I'm complaining too much because you can more or less figure out a workable approximation from these drawings. But it's just so sloppy, and again the kind of thing that will befuddle a beginner and annoy a perfectionist.

 

The most specific question I have, and it's the one least answered by the kit, is whether I'm bending a plywood roof over the curved part of the wheelhouse. No drawing shows this one way or another. I think it would make sense for visual consistency, but I'm curious what Brian and others think.

[Keith Black]

Eric, the pilot house turned out great considering. If the curved portion is supposed to be roofed, were it I, I'd use card for the roofing material. 

[Cathead]

As you might have expected from my style on this project, I ended up just plowing ahead because I had time today. Just made executive decisions about that I thought would work, with loose consultation of the kit plans and the better digital plans I also have. The kit's 1/64" plywood worked fine for roofs, it bends easily and holds it shape. So here's the whole assembly put together and mostly primed (I forgot to add the ladders until after the first layer of primer. It's not too shabby. Paint will tie it nicely together, I think.

 

 

 

[mbp521]

On 1/7/2023 at 8:53 AM, Cathead said:

The most specific question I have, and it's the one least answered by the kit, is whether I'm bending a plywood roof over the curved part of the wheelhouse. No drawing shows this one way or another. I think it would make sense for visual consistency, but I'm curious what Brian and others think.

Eric, your solution to your pilot house conundrum worked out great. This was indeed an unusual shape to get correct and I struggle with it a lot. I ended up making several mock-ups with card stock for the sides trying to get the angles correct, and the forward three panels with their added thickness just made it that much more difficult. At least the kit provided a resin mold to somewhat ease the pain of getting the shape correct. 

 

For your comment above, I know I am a little late in responding, my apologies but my arm was giving me fits this past weekend and my pain medicine tends to make me a little loopy. However, the curved section over the paddlewheel was not "roofed" like the rest of the structures built around it. From the contemporary photos of the City-Class boats I was able to discern that this area was planked with much thicker timbers (much like the deck material) and the rest of the structures were thinner planks and tarpapered. This can be seen in the photos of the Cincinnati and St. Louis.

 

On 1/7/2023 at 8:53 AM, Cathead said:

Second, and related, the little side buildings aren't supposed to have flat roofs, but angled ones

The pitch of these roofs was minimal. Basically just enough to shed the rainwater off. I believe is set my pitch at about 3-4 degrees.

 

Hope this helps.

 

-Brian

 

[Cathead]

Thanks, Brian. I hear you on the medication and related issues.

 

It's interesting that your photos (and I believe your model) show a gently curved roof on the structure aft of the wheel, while both the BlueJacket plans and the more detailed digital plans you sent me show that to be flat. I went with flat because it's how the kit was designed and it was easier. You probably covered this in your log but I was lazy and didn't go looking for it.

 

I think I have the roof angle on the little side structures too steep, but oh well. Not the first inaccuracy this model will have.

 

I suppose I could try "planking" the curved area over the wheel with very thin strips to see if I can achieve the effect you're describing. 

[mbp521]

1 hour ago, Cathead said:

It's interesting that your photos (and I believe your model) show a gently curved roof on the structure aft of the wheel, while both the BlueJacket plans and the more detailed digital plans you sent me show that to be flat. I went with flat because it's how the kit was designed and it was easier. You probably covered this in your log but I was lazy and didn't go looking for it

This was a real noggin scratcher when researching how to build the roof on the forward and aft structures of the paddlewheel house, and to be honest I can't remember if I covered it or not. Since there is only one known existing photograph of the Cairo it is really hard to tell how this was constructed. I stared at the picture for hours on end trying to figure it out. The HSR plans show the roof to be flat and I think they were drawn that way going off the Cairo photograph. But the more I researched and studied the picture I came to the conclusion that what it looks like in the Cairo picture that makes the roof look flat is the loading booms that were sometimes attached to the aft mast pole were stored on top of the forward roof when not in use. These booms can be seen in the Cincinnati photo in my previous post, and I added them as a deck detail on my build. 

 

Since the Cairo, Mound City and Cincinnati were all built at the Mound City shipyard, I took it upon myself that they would have all been built the same way. The contemporary photos of the Cincinnati and Mound City, show that the rooftops on these two structures do have a curve to them as well as the four other boats built in the Carondelet shipyard, so why would the Cairo be the only one with flat rooftops. This was my reasoning for building my version with the curved roofs. I may have gotten it wrong, but I think it will definitely be hard to disprove my theory that the Cairo had round rooftops as well. 😁 In the back of my mind I would sure like to know for sure, but there is just not enough information out there on it. I'm sure the guys in St. Louis have run into the same issue, but since there is a photograph of they aft end of the St. Louis, they had an easier time with this part.

 

-Brian

[rcmdrvr]

Even if the decking below the wheelhouse were slightly curved (maybe to provide more strength to the structure); at the scale of the model it would not make much difference.  Your progress on the model has been good.  I found that fashioning and attaching the deck furniture was quite "fiddility".

[Cathead]

Quick update on the wheelhouse. I decided to upgrade the curved roof slightly by scribing "planking" on a new piece of 1/64" plywood and adding that. Here it is in raw form:

 

And here's the wheelhouse after painting and a first light round of weathering.

[mbp521]

Man that structure is tiny! I don’t think there is any way that I could do a full build at that scale. Even the tiny bits on my boat gave me fits. Definitely like the added details. 
 

-Brian

[Cathead]

Yeah. It's small. Don't think I really appreciated just how small when I bought it! Been working on some more details.

 

First I decided I really didn't like the plywood roofs on the rest of the wheelhouse either, so used an old trick and glued some tissue paper over them to simulate the texture of tarpaper or canvas.

I then mixed up some black with a little brown, to emphasize the subtle change in texture. It really doesn't come through in photos but it's visible in good light. I liked the effect so much I used the same mix to repaint all the wooden parts of the main casement, again giving a subtle difference in appearance from the metal armor. Whether or not it's prototypical, I think it adds to the visual effect. Maybe I'll get some outdoor shots at some point and you can see it then.

 

Next I made the chimneys. These are brass tubes slid down over metal fittings. Actually straightforward for once. As directed, I drilled one hole in each for the support rod that'll go there later. I roughed up the tubes with sandpaper, then I primed and painted them. Had a bit of a disaster when I masked the upper chimneys to add the grey stripe that was Cairo's distinctive visual marker; the tape stuck to the paint below and peeled it off down to the brass. So I repainted and freehanded the stripe. It's not great but it'll work at distance, like the rest of the model.

 

Next I worked in the bulkwarks around the bow and stern, which are made of a square styrene strip. I prepainted this so I wouldn't get paint on the weathered deck. At the bow, I made two strips, shaped one end of each to match the casement, then glued a small section in place. Once that was firm, I bent the rest, cut it carefully to fit against the prow, and glued the rest. I used the same procedure at the stern.

 

 

Next the instructions have you cut the fairleads through which cables and anchor chains run. These are ridiculously small at this scale but it'd look odd to leave them out. Following directions, I drilled a small hole through the bulwark in each location. But instead of using a knife as directed, I used small jewelers files to widen and round a notch. I used my lit-up magnifier for this because it was so darned tiny.  

Once I painted over these I'm not sure you can even tell there's anything there.

 

So here's a photo of the current progress that might maybe show the subtle color differences in the wheelhouse and casement, as well as the finished stern bulwarks.

 

Meh, it's progress. Next the instructions have you make the hammock nettings, which look really fiddly. Some other time, I'm burned out for now.

 

 

[Canute]

Like you're using the tissue paper roofing. I've used that once or twice on cars and structures. The paper used to wrap presents seems to work well for this.

 

Flat black is a light sink for photos. I think a charcoal gray shade would work better. I've used Tamiya German Gray, NATO Black and tire black. They're slightly lighter shades of black

[Cathead]

Ken, that's exactly what I used, I went back to our Christmas stash and grabbed some white paper.

 

I took a few outdoor shots today in better light. The smaller structures aren't attached, just placed loosely for the photos. This shows the softer color on the wood, vs. the darker armor, better. I think I like the subtle contrast, even though I still don't like the texture of the plain wood.

 

 

 

[Canute]

Might try the deck wash RGL/Greg applied to his Heian Maru.

[mbp521]

I wrestled with the black color of the boat and went through several versions before I settled on the dark gray that I used on my Cairo. It was just seeing the boat in the different lighting and dependent on the time of day that would frazzle my brain.

 

-Brian

[Cathead]

Next step is to install the hammock nettings. This is an area where I initially thought I'd consider some nice upgrades, but I'm now very much in "just get it done out of the box" mode. The instructions for this stage were, as elsewhere, both confusing and in my opinion oddly structured.

 

These are made by sandwiching a piece of styrene (the hammocks) in between two pieces of etched brass (the stanchions and nettings). This is the order of operations in the instructions:

1. Round off the top of the styrene to look like rolled-up hammocks
2. Glue the styrene onto the deck. 
3. Glue the brass netting strips onto the styrene. 
4. Glue various tiny pieces of .020x.020" styrene onto the nettings to fill out the stanchions.
5. Paint in place on the model.

In retrospect this order makes no sense, and I should have seen that coming. It's insanely fiddly to do all that detail work when the basic structure is already glued to the model, and in the process of trying to handle and tilt it so I could do this work, paint started chipping off the armor. Plus, I found it impossible to paint parts after they were already installed and got into a nasty cycle of leaking paint onto the deck/armor, then trying to correct it, then trying to cover those leaks, and so on. This was a super maddening stage and I came close to binning the whole thing. Here's what my attempts looked like:

 

I pre-painted the top of the styrene in an attempt to head off the "painting on the model" problem, then glued the strips on:

 

I also prepainted the brass netting/stanchions for the same reason, and glued those on. What I did not do, and should have, is prepaint all the styrene detail strips (though these are so tiny, this would have been awkward). I also should have assembled the styrene details on the brass strips BEFORE adding them to the model, as I found it nearly impossible to glue them on straight. You can also see the paint chipping that developed as I attempted to maneuver these microscopic pieces into place.

Next you're supposed to cut a bunch of tiny styrene strips and fit them horizontally between these stanchions. I found this nearly impossible to do well on the model. I wish I'd done this all on the workbench as one assembly.

 

And look, more paint chipping! You can also see how I'm building up too many layers of paint in attempts to correct past mistakes and damage, such that the surface is looking ever less realistic.

So the problem here was that, despite my pre-painting of the main parts, I found it impossible to paint these styrene details without getting black paint on the styrene hammocks. So then I had to try and touch up the hammocks, and doing that in place on the tiny model meant some brown paint got on the stanchions, so I had to touch those up...and you see where this is going. I'm not done trying to correct each round of mistakes yet and the paint layers are getting thicker than they should. Here's two shots after I just gave up and painted the whole darn thing black before trying to reapply a solid layer of brown (which didn't work well but I haven't taken photos):

 

You're also supposed to glue a thin styrene strip all the way along the inside of these assemblies, after they're on the model. I decided to skip this step. I didn't think I could maneuver a 10" long .020"x.020" strip into place behind those tall stanchions, with glue drying on it, without making a giant mess, and it's such a small detail it won't even be seen. 

 

If I could do this over again, I'd build each hammock assembly on the workbench, paint it, then install it. That would make it so much easier to install all the tiny bits when the assembly is flat, when there's no risk of damaging the model while fussing with it, and where I could correct mistakes without making anything else worse. I just don't understand why the instructions think you should do all of this ON the model, raw, and THEN paint it all while somehow keeping the hammock color separate from the surrounding netting and stanchions, much less off the inner deck, at this scale. Like this:

 

1. Round off the top of the styrene to look like rolled-up hammocks
2. Lay out the  brass strips and install all styrene details flat on the workbench.
3. Pre-paint the styrene hammocks and the brass/styrene assemblies.
4. Glue finished/painted brass assemblies onto styrene hammocks at the workbench.
5. Install finished assemblies on the model.

 

 

I've also started on the paddle wheel, which was just as frustrating and oddly designed, but I'll recap that separately once I'm done (in multiple sense of the word).

 

Can you tell I'm not having fun? Thanks to a kind member for contacting me privately and offering support for just binning the whole thing. I really appreciate the logic behind that advice, but I want something for my hundreds of dollars and many hours, even if it lives in a darker corner of the display cabinet.

 

Thanks for putting up with my whining! 

 

[Canute]

Eric, it's a sad state of affairs when you get a kit with so many issues.  I admire your stick-to-it-tive-ness.

[mbp521]

Eric, I admire your tenacity with sticking with this build. I for one would have shelved (or trashed) it a long time ago given your frustrations with it. I have a couple of builds that have been shelved for years, due to frustrations with the instructions and the kit itself. I, like you, didn’t just pitch them due to the fact that I have a few hundred dollars tied up in the kits and felt it was a waste of my hard earned money to just toss them. I figure one day that I will dust them off, and give them another go, but for now I have plenty of other projects in the works to keep me busy for a while.

 

Stay strong my friend, you will persevere!

 

-Brian

[Keith Black]

 Eric, I agree with Brian. Were I you, I'd have long ago made this model of the Cairo as "Being raised from the Yazoo River" after soaking it in a bucket of muddy water and repeated bashing with a two pound ball peen hammer.  You definitely have more patience with this piece of bull pucky than I would ever have had. 

[Cathead]

A certain amount is my fault, too, and I'll end up writing a recap/review of the whole process and kit eventually. I'm not blameless. But I do think this kit has serious flaws.

 

Anyway, here's the process of building the wheel. It's just a fraction of the total wheel, meant to show the part that sticks down below the main deck, between the two halves of the hull. The kit provides a jig to assemble this, basically a piece of wood with four laser-cut slots that are meant to hold the wheel parts while you glue up the assembly. Makes sense in theory.

 

Except that the slots in the jig are much wider than the very thin pieces of brass, so they aren't held in place, but wobble all over the place. I had a devil of a time assembling this because nothing stayed put and I found it impossible to keep all four pieces lined up. You're supposed to feed five strips of wood through the wheels and glue them in place. Here's the best I could do:

 

Doing this was a royal pain in the butt, with every brass piece sliding all over the place as I tried to slide the first piece of wood in there, while trying not to get glue everywhere. Even once the first one was dry, the assembly wobbled and deformed as I tried to get the next one in. That jig is nowhere near enough to hold this steady. If I were designing the kit, the jib would be a piece of wood the full footprint of the wheel, with guides slots the actual thickness of the brass cut the full length of the brass pieces, so they could be slid snugly in and held tightly in place during assembly. 

 

If you look closely, you see that the one at far right is oddly spaced; it's at the opposite side of the struts as the rest. That's because it wouldn't fit in the smallest space provided, where it's supposed to go. It's a measure of how disgusted I was after doing the first four, that when I discovered this, I didn't even bother just thinning it down a bit to fit, but slid it in the other darned side and glued it up. This gets hidden under/inside the hull anyway and I'll just put that toward the back where no one will ever see it.

 

The good news is that paint hides many sins, and this is getting hidden under the model (I almost didn't bother making it):

One more step on the road to completion!

[gak1965]

On 1/21/2023 at 5:38 PM, Cathead said:

You can also see the paint chipping that developed as I attempted to maneuver these microscopic pieces into place.

Well, at a minimum you can say that chipped paint would have been realistic for the ship in life . I had vaguely thought about getting this as a 'simple' project to have going once I start the Discovery, I'm a lot less certain of that now.

 

Keep it up, I know you'll get there.

 

George K

[Cathead]

The chipped paint might be realistic, but the shiny brass glinting out from underneath it...less so!

 

I don't know what to say regarding a recommendation. On one hand, I do think the kit has many flaws in both design and instructions. On the other hand, many modelers could probably make a pretty good go of it. I don't think it was a good choice for me at this time, it wasn't what I expected or wanted right now, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be a good choice for someone else. I'll write more about this in a final review when I'm done. Thanks for reading, I'll have another update this weekend.

[Cathead]

The rudders were another adventure, this time entirely of my own making. These come as laser-cut pieces that you're supposed to simply glue to the back of the model. I had sanded and painted these when I decided to clean up my workspace. Somehow I managed to throw out the rudders. At least that's the only explanation I have since they had vanished when I'd finished straightening up. Luckily, shaping new pieces from wood is a skill I do have.

 

I didn't have any scrap left from the kit that was the proper thickness and size to make new rudders. So I used some thinner pieces of wood and glued them in pairs of approximately the right size:

 

I then traced the outline of the rudders onto these sandwiches and carved/sanded them to final shape:

Painting was simple. I didn't trust the kit's instructions to just glue these to the back of the mode. That seemed highly delicate and likely to be knocked off. So I drilled holes and inserted two pins (made of small brass nails) to give more structural integrity.

And here are the finished rudders mounted on the stern. I also installed the absolutely tiny brass tillers and deck protectors (or whatever they're called). These were pretty hard to work with, they bend super-easily and I lost a couple in the carpet for a few minutes when I dropped them. Even trying to glue these down was hard without leaving any glue trace on the wooden deck. But the final appearance is close enough.

 

This also shows why I reinforced the rudders. Once you connect them to the fragile brass tillers, having them get knocked off would be disastrous since it would probably bend the tiller and you can't replace it. Actually, I see in the photo that the paint has chipped off the tillers in a few places that I need to touch up. Sigh. My version of this model doesn't hold up to close scrutiny!

 

The instructions want you to simulate hinges by cutting .020" strips of paper and gluing them to the rudders. I decided there was no way I was going to be able to do that in a way that would look better than just leaving them off.

 

At this point it's obvious that I left the whole hull black, as the instructions tell you to do. I know that others have argued for the lower hull being a dull red, and that's the sort of upgrade I'd initially intended to do, but I gave up on it as I started to get discouraged and annoyed with the kit. Simple hull color it is. I'll never make a claim that this is anything but a loose representation of the Cairo.

 

Now we move toward final assembly and detailing.

 

Edited January 28, 2023 by Cathead

[mbp521]

 

1 hour ago, Cathead said:

Somehow I managed to throw out the rudders. At least that's the only explanation I have since they had vanished when I'd finished straightening up.

I’m not really surprised that these would have gotten lost, at the small scale I would’ve had a hard time keeping up with those as well. Nice  job on the scratch built ones though. Yours are probably better than the kit provided ones anyway. 

 

1 hour ago, Cathead said:

deck protectors (or whatever they're called).

These were the races that the tiller rollers rolled along. I can just imagine the fits you would have if the rollers were included with this kit. They would  probably be the size of a pin point. 😁

 

1 hour ago, Cathead said:

I know that others have argued for the lower hull being a dull red, and that's the sort of upgrade

One of the issues that I had in research was trying to find if the hull was red or black. There is no information available that I was able to dig up that showed either way. When I was discussing this with Ray Hamel at Vicksburg NMP he said that tests had been run on pieces of the wood fabric but the results of paint color were inconclusive. So I just went with personal preference to break up the coloring a bit. To be honest though, the all black scheme looks pretty good too. 
 

-Brian