Caroline N by mbp521 - Scale 1:64 - Mississippi River Towboat

[mbp521]

16 hours ago, kurtvd19 said:

A lot more barges can be pushed with the current than against it.  Much also depends on the speed of the current and the angles of the turns.

Kurt, that makes perfect sense. There are many twists and turns along the rivers and some of them fairly sharp. I can see where a long line of barges could be difficult to navigate as well as current speed being factored into the equation. I can't speak for other rivers, but I know for a fact that the Mississippi runs a whole lot swifter when the water levels are higher than when its low, and I'm sure it is a struggle to get those barges upriver fighting that swift current, or controlling the turns going downriver.

 

16 hours ago, Keith Black said:

From earlier reading the Coast Guard is the governing body that places tow limits. I'm not sure if that is dependent on the stretch of river and river levels. At some point X number of barges in a tow is going to be potentially unmanageable and potentially dangerous.

 

 To my untrained flatlander eye that last picture you posted in the above of the 48 barge tow looks like port side disaster is at hand. 

Keith I totally agree. Too many barges can be a disaster waiting to happen, that may be what is going to transpire in that photo. From the looks of it the pilot does have the starboard engines running full speed or all rudders are hard to starboard. He definitely looks like he is trying to turn it around.😁

 

1 hour ago, Cathead said:

In other words, there was a slow evolution from the powered river vessel being the primary means of carrying cargo (classical steamboat) to the powered vessel towing some of the cargo in independent loads, to the powered vessel being adapted to push those separate loads (the beginning of the modern towboat), to the powered vessel becoming nothing BUT the power source (more like a railroad locomotive) for independent barges. But the original terminology never changed. Just like how we still "dial" phones.

Eric, in my Cairo research I ran across many instances where the ironclads would have their coal barges lashed to the sides of the ship. This could be one of the transition periods where riverboat pilots were getting away from "towing" then and migrating towards "pushing" them. Although pushing the coal barges with the ironclads would not be the most safest thing to do, especially with an 8" and two 42lb cannons pointed in that direction. 😁 Also, Great point with the phone example. I hadn't thought about the transitioning from towing to pushing and just having the name remaining out of habit.

 

-Brian

[Keith Black]

 Tow size info and towboats in general.

 

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/towboat.htm

[mbp521]

Alrighty, I figure it's time to get this thing started. 

 

So I managed to get the bench cleaned off and ready to go.

The plans have been scaled and marked up. I went through and got my measurements, divided up the hull bulkheads and made a few adjustments to the plans to reflect the differences between the actual boat and the drawings. Not too many adjustments were needed, just a few structure details that didn't match up.

 

The plans are on the wall. When I was at the printshop the first attempt at printing didn't come out to the right scale (they came out a bit too small). The clerk was nice enough to give me those drawings free of charge, so I will be using those as my wall reference and I can use the correct scale ones for my templates and other measurements. This worked out better since the smaller scaled ones fit better on the wall.

 

I got as far as printing out most of the bulkhead templates. These will be glued to some 1/4" MDF then cut out and shaped. No hold details will be done on this build, so the hull will be the basic POB. Still trying to decide on if I will plank the hull with basswood strips, then smooth out the lines with body filler, or just go ahead and cut out the hull shapes from 1/16" basswood boards and shape it from there. I would like to try and simulate some of the steel plates on the hull If possible, to give it a little more detail. I've got some time to figure it out.

 

Not too much more to report on this update. I have the main deck printout cut and ready to build, just need to make a run to the lumber yard for supplies. I thought I had enough MDF to get a good start, but I seem to have come up a bit short. In the mean time I am going to get the bulkhead templated glued down and cut out and hopefully next time I will have more progress.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

-Brian

[Roger Pellett]

The rivers are best thought of as an integrated system.  In addition to the Mississippi there is the Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, Monongahela, Allegheny, Cumberland, Kanawah, Arkansas, The Ten Tombigbee waterway, and countless navigable tributaries that I have failed to mention.  This makes it possible for individual barge cargos to be sent incredible distances to a wide variety of ports.  With the exception of the Mississippi below Cairo, Illinois water level is controlled by a series of locks and dams built, maintained, and operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers.  I believe that minimum water level is 9ft.  Historically, the US Government has not charged tolls or users fees to use this waterway system but proposals to assess them surface from time to time.

 

The Geography of the rivers effects the tows and the boat’s that push them.  In most cases the size of the tows is dictated by the size of the lock chambers although it is possible to beak tows apart when going through the locks.  On the other hand, the locks and dams serve to control the rivers’ currents.  The Lower Mississippi (from Cairo South) is a different story as there are no locks to navigate and without dams controlling water levels the current is faster.  This allows larger tows but requires larger, higher horsepower boats to push them

 

Roger

[mbp521]

20 minutes ago, Keith Black said:

Tow size info and towboats in general.

Excellent info Keith, thank you. While I was reading the article I noticed that they discussed the M/V Mississippi and all of the previous boats to carry the name. When the Admiral and I took our trip to Vicksburg last year, we visited the Lower Mississippi River Museum. They have on display the fourth M/V Mississippi (the first diesel powered vessel to carry the name) and of course, we took a tour of it. Beautiful museum boat. These guys had very nice accommodations. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Brian

[Keith Black]

 Brian, your workspace is way too neat. Just joking, it's a really nice setup, I'm envious. Good to see pieces parts in the process. 

 

 Thanks for the photos of the M/V Mississippi.  Wow, they had/have great quarters. I see Marquette Transportation has openings, maybe I should do my wife a favor and apply. At this stage of my life I don't what use I'd be, maybe they have a boat's cat that needs taking care of? All kidding aside, I wish I'd been exposed to this lifestyle and opportunities 50 years ago but then....

[mbp521]

1 hour ago, Keith Black said:

your workspace is way too neat

Give me a couple of days, I'll take care of that. 😁

 

1 hour ago, Keith Black said:

I see Marquette Transportation has openings

One of the reasons I joined the Air Force was the main areas of industry back home were either work at the refineries or work the port docks. Neither sounded very appealing to me. Looking back though, it might have been interesting to work on these boats. Just the scenery alone would have been worth the hard work.

 

-Brian

[Cathead]

One more resource for getting one's head around how river tows work: the PBS series "Rivers of Life" has episodes on the Mississippi and Yukon Rivers, both of which feature towboat operations. The Yukon one is especially fascinating given the distinct challenges of navigating that river. Overall I found the series a little simplistic for my taste, but they do have some nice footage of working/navigating along the rivers. https://www.pbs.org/show/rivers-life/ 

 

If you're not a PBS member for streaming, you might be able to get DVDs through a library.

 

Otherwise, great to see the build underway. Envious of your workspace setup, I'm still operating out of a small portable tray as we haven't been able to move forward on renovating the spare room that's intended for my workshop long-term.

[mbp521]

Something just for fun. I ran across this website while researching the Caroline N. It shows and tracks marine vessels by their ship ID. In this case, the Caroline N is currently on the Ohio River in Louisville, KY.

 

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:3566996/zoom:10

 

 

-Brian

[mbp521]

On 2/7/2023 at 3:06 PM, Cathead said:

Otherwise, great to see the build underway. Envious of your workspace setup, I'm still operating out of a small portable tray as we haven't been able to move forward on renovating the spare room that's intended for my workshop long-term.

Thank you Eric. My workspace isn't a whole lot to brag about. I just have a yard sale geek desk in the corner of one of our spare bedrooms with the Hobby Zone storage units. I share the room with my other desk I use for my home office. My plan is still to build out one corner of our barn to incorporate my office, shipyard and reloading room, some day (hopefully soon). I have been taking up the spare bedroom for the past few years and I am surprised the Admiral has not told me to pack it up and remove myself from the premises. I have a feeling it will be coming soon. Thankfully we have not had any company that would require the use of the room during this time. 

 

-Brian

[Roger Pellett]

Put the company in the barn🤣!  

 

I looked up the history of MV Mississippi IV.  She was built for and operated by the Army Corps of Engineers.  As such she would have occasionally hosted visiting dignitaries in addition to her more mundane river maintenance duties.  She was therefore something of a showboat.

 

Half of my career was spent working for Dravo Corporation, a large integrated engineering and construction company.  In the 1980’s Dravo designed and built a highly regarded series of towboats known as the Viking Series.  I had nothing to do with this project as I was part of their Pipe Fabrication Division, not their Shipyard but I was able to get aboard at least one of these boats, highlighted at annual management meetings.  My recollection is that these boats sold to commercial customers and used in Dravo’s own fleet were more spartan and less spacious than the MV Mississippi IV.

 

Roger

[KeithAug]

On 2/8/2023 at 10:07 PM, mbp521 said:

Admiral has not told me to pack it up and remove myself from the premises. I have a feeling it will be coming soon.

Brian, sorry to hear about your marital problems. You give them the best years of your life and they just toss you out with the trash. Chin up mate, maybe someone better will turn up.😀

[FlyingFish]

19 hours ago, KeithAug said:

Chin up mate, maybe someone better will turn up

Jeez Keith, for a man who nearly had to saw the top off his mainmast you sail very close to the wind, my friend!

[mbp521]

On 2/9/2023 at 12:37 PM, Roger Pellett said:

Put the company in the barn🤣!  

Not a bad idea. We’ve had some company before that belonged in a barn. 😁

 

On 2/9/2023 at 12:37 PM, Roger Pellett said:

She was therefore something of a showboat.

That is somewhat the role of the current MV Mississippi V. Going off the stats, she is the biggest towboat on the Mississippi and is use by the Corps of Engineers as their flagship. I wouldn’t mind touring that one as well. 
 

On 2/9/2023 at 7:07 PM, KeithAug said:

You give them the best years of your life and they just toss you out with the trash. Chin up mate, maybe someone better will turn up.

Too funny Keith. We’ve been together for 34 years, I’ve got a feeling if she hasn’t got rid of me by now I’m in good shape. Either she a glutton for punishment or she’s just keeping me to protect other women from having to deal with me. 😁

 

-Brian

[mbp521]

Hello again everyone.

 

Made some progress this past weekend, not a lot, but some.

 

I managed to get the main deck cut out and sized to the plans.

 

I built up a table saw slide to cut the rabbets for the bulkheads.

 

Next, I glued all the bulkhead templates to the 1/4" MDF and got them all cut out.

 

Here are all the bulkheads lined up on the deck template.

 

First bulkhead getting glued in place.

 

More bulkheads going in. Not sure why, but I couldn't get this particular picture to insert right side up.

 

And more bulkheads getting glued down. Slow tedious process.

 

And all of the bulkheads in place.

 

That is as far as I have been able to get this week. Hopefully more progress next time. I'm going to work finish up with the #1 bulkhead then on to getting the bulkheads shaped and faired, then start working on the hull plate templates.

 

Thank you all for the like and stopping by.

 

-Brian

[leclaire]

Brian - I have to say that your idea of "not a lot of progress" is sure different than mine. Looks like a whole lot of cutting and gluing to me. I just spent two full days getting the paint job on the cannons for my Philadelphia to look halfway realistic. Keep up the good work.

 

Bob

[Zetec]

Like the look of this boat so will be following along.

 

John

[KeithAug]

Brian

I am never very sure about MDF but i suppose for display models it is both cost effective and stable. I suppose i am too set in my ways. I need to get out more! I agree with bob re slow progress. Seems really quite fast to me.

[wefalck]

MDF is rather stable as long as you don't soak it in water. So it is important that in particular the edges are sealed or not exposed. Bulkheads from MDF shouldn't be a problem, as the planking/plating will cover the cut edges.

 

I gather the boat was welded? Perhaps covering the wooden planking with thin Bristol-board would save a lot of time in filling and sanding and the individual plates could be simulated that way. Otherwise, I used copper foil (as in copper-sheathing wooden ships) to simulate on-off riveted plates. Could be used for welded hulls as well. The welding seams could be simulated by engraving or embossing. 

 

Modern boats like this are not my subject area, but I am curious, how you will tackle this project.

[mbp521]

On 2/24/2023 at 2:07 PM, KeithAug said:

I am never very sure about MDF but i suppose for display models it is both cost effective and stable.

Keith, MDF is a fairly stable wood for forming the frame. It is a tad bit heavier than plywood, but makes a nice solid, sturdy base. As Eberhard stated above, as long as it’s is kept dry there should be no issues with it. 
 

4 hours ago, wefalck said:

I gather the boat was welded? Perhaps covering the wooden planking with thin Bristol-board would save a lot of time in filling and sanding and the individual plates could be simulated that way. Otherwise, I used copper foil (as in copper-sheathing wooden ships) to simulate on-off riveted plates. Could be used for welded hulls as well.

Eberhard, I have a couple of experiments I am working on to simulate the welded hull. One of them uses aluminum foil tape over fine tread to show the weld lines. I am currently working on covering the bulkheads with basswood panels. Once the basswood is in place I’ll see which experiment works best.
 

I hope to have some pictures posted soon of the progress. Work has been crazy busy, so my time at the bench has been limited. 
 

-Brian

[wefalck]

Brian, to add to your arsenal of ideas:

 

- styrene sheet with seams engraved into which one lays fly-tying thread

 

- there are also commercially available 'weld-seams' as decals, but their scale may to large (1:35) and they may be rather pricey for such large hull.

 

[Roger Pellett]

These boats were completely welded, no riveted seams.  During WW II Dravo Corporation pioneered the technique of “upside down” construction at their Neville Island (Pittsburgh area) shipyard to minimize the need for overhead welding.  In some cases this involved building the entire hull of a 175ft Navy PC patrol craft upside down and then rolling it over.  These and other advanced fabrication practices would have spread through the Ohio Valley including JeffBoat by the time that Caroline was built.  

 

About 1980 I visited our Neville Island Yard to see a multi head panel welder that they were using. This could weld several vertical stiffeners to a flat steel panel simultaneously.  Hull panels were butt welded and stiffeners added with fillet welds.  Welding was done by the MIg process.  Not all stiffener welds were continuous.  The machine could be programmed for start and stop fillets.  Testing was by high pressure hose.  No leaks OK.

 

So, what’s the point of all this?  With this type of modular construction heavy manual weld seams with heavy reinforcement on the outside of the hull were minimized. Also, the yards had optimized weld procedures to control heat and, therefore, weld shrinkage.  If this interests you I believe that there are a number of papers presented at SNAME (Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers) meetings. These may be available on line.  I would, therefore, suggest that you go lightly on showing external weld seams.

 

 There is also a specific type of model that I’ll call the “Office Model.”  These were and still are professionally built models built for vessel owners.  A subset are built for naval vessels and are prized by high ranking officers.  By convention these do not show weld seams, riveted lapped plates, etc.  Since this is being built for the boat’s owner you might take this approach.

 

Roger

[mbp521]

21 hours ago, wefalck said:

- styrene sheet with seams engraved into which one lays fly-tying thread

I’m going to have to experiment with this method as well. Thank you.

 

 

19 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

With this type of modular construction heavy manual weld seams with heavy reinforcement on the outside of the hull were minimized.

Roger, so do I understand this correctly, through this process there were no welded seams on the outside of the hull. The plates were butted up against each other and welded from the inside? Just curious, and want to get this right and if this was the case, what prevents water from entering the seams? I can see the benefit of the welds being on the inside of the hull, in that it would make it more streamline with no drag on the welds. 
 

-Brian

Edited February 27, 2023 by mbp521

[wefalck]

Perhaps Roger referred to the modern section building methods. Section building as such has been used since the 1960s, I believe, but later came CNC-cutting and then CNC-welding machines. Depending on how big the assembly hall and the cranes were at the yard, quite large sections could be assembled not by hand-welding, but using numerically controlled welding machines, which result in narrower and more uniform seams.

[Roger Pellett]

Dravo Corporation pioneered what British author J.D. Ladd writing in “Assault from the Sea” called “advanced techniques” in 1942. This was done to mass produce smaller welded steel naval combatants; LST, and LCI landing craft, PC patrol craft and even Some Destroyer Escorts.  Much of this work allowed hiring of employees with no welding experience, particularly women.  These techniques included subcontracting of prefabricated assemblies, modular construction, and especially manipulation of large subassemblies and sometimes complete hulls to minimize difficult overhead welding.  As “lead yard” for the LST program, Dravo introduced these techniques to the “cornfield shipyards” being established throughout the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys.  For example, many LST’s were built at Evansville, Indiana.  This yard did not exist before the war and no trace of exists now.  Evansville is home to LST 325 one of only two surviving WW II LST’s.  She was built by Dravo.  There is no reason to believe that Dravo’s Competitors, especially JeffBoat would not have taken advantage of their WW II experience to build barges and towboats for the commercial market.  All of this was of course before CNC equipment that began to be used in American shipyards in the 1960’s.

 

Brian,  where possible, welding is done “down hand” using mechanized equipment.  This works particularly well for flat panels.  Plates can be butted together and longitudinal seams welded with mechanized equipment.  With properly applied weld procedures weld crown height is minimized.  Generally 1/8in on the plate side facing the welder.  The width of this might be 3/8in  On the other side of the plate there will be a slight crown, necessary to assure complete penetration of the weld 1/16in x1/4 in approx.  Stiffeners, such as frames are then welded to these flat panels, usually by double fillet welds with a preplanned skip welding technique.

 

These stiffened panels are then assembled into modules, this requires more hand welding.  The modules are then hoisted on to the building ways and welded together.  Depending on accessibility these final assembly welds will be made from the outside of the hull and will be noticeable.

 

Roger

 

 

 

 

[mbp521]

Thank you Eberhard & Roger for the useful information. I have seen videos of some of the modern day military ships going together, i.e. the Aircraft Carriers Gerald Ford & John F. Kennedy where the hulls are assembled with the modular concept. It is very impressive to watch and even more impressive that they can get all these modules lined up perfectly. I was a welder for several years, 25+ years ago, albeit on semi trailers and not ships, and I am all too familiar with the skip welding technique. This method is a prime example of less is more, where as at certain areas a solid line weld can actually cause more stress and breakage on the steel where the skip method allows for some flex removing the stress and minimizing breakage. I am not much on up on the engineering of ship hulls, but I would guess that even with the stiffening bulkheads there is always some flex. But I could be wrong.

 

-Brian

[wefalck]

A bit off-topic, but this here is probably one of the most advanced shipyards in Europe and a leading cruise-ship builder (not that I endorse these products, however): https://www.meyerwerft.de/en/technologies/optimized_processes/index.jsp

I think there was also somewhere a video that showed their plate-cutting and welding.

[mbp521]

Now that is impressive, thank you for the link. What is even more impressive is that there is a building big enough to house a 345m (1132ft) cruise ship! The Admiral and I are going on a cruise in a couple of weeks so I will definitely be looking to see how the ship was put together and taking notes. 😁

 

-Brian

[Roger Pellett]

Brian,

Building a welded ship is not that different from fabricating a welded truck trailer; just much larger and more complicated. The yard’s design office furnished detailed drawings complete with welds sized in accordance with the relevant construction standards.  In this case it probably was ABS, (American Bureau of Shipping).  Another department, Production Planning or Industrial Engineering would then break the structure down into subassemblies.  These people with specialized knowledge of the yard’s equipment, production load, and the build’s critical path would try to make maximum use of mechanized welding techniques, while not affecting work on the critical path.  For example, I have read that a factor that pushed the use of sub assembly fabrication was the need to move work away from bottleneck launch sites.  Each yard’s assembly techniques would have therefore been different.  To look for welds to show on your model, see if you can find photos of Drydocked vessels built by JeffBoat.

 

Roger

Edited February 28, 2023 by Roger Pellett

[Keith Black]

49 minutes ago, mbp521 said:

The Admiral and I are going on a cruise in a couple of weeks so I will definitely be looking to see how the ship was put together

 "Sir, would you please stop crawling around on your hands and knees and peeling back the carpet"