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

[mbp521]

Thank you Keith. I am definitely happy with the way the underside of the hull turned out. Lots of little details going on there that I am not used to.

I may have to look into installing a mirror under the hull once I’m finished. Right now my plan is to only have her sitting about an inch off the base, so I’m not sure how much would be visible in a mirror, but that plan can change. One never knows. 

 

I still think there were more photos of my progress that I had on my old laptop that I was not able to recover. Fortunately it died before I downloaded all of them off my phone so I managed to hang on to the bulk of them. 
 

- Brian
 

 

[wefalck]

I have a separate hard-drive for backing up everything (as I also use the computer for work) around once a month and I only remove images from the telephone, once I have copies on two independent devices ...

 

I was wondering about these rudders in front of the Kort-nozzles: do they move? If not, the boat would be quite sluggish to turn, I could imagine.

 

And: oh, yes, the project is coming on nicely !

Edited April 17 by wefalck

[Cathead]

Note to self: use a thesaurus to assemble a list of superlatives before Brian's next update. Or switch to a new language; I've always been partial to German's "ausgezeichnet" because just pronouncing it provides a feeling of accomplishment. 

 

I totally agree with Keith that the bottom needs to be visible somehow. You may not go this direction, but a great benefit of the larger display cabinet I had built for my models is that the multi-level glass shelving makes it easy to see the undersides, which is especially good for my  openly framed Bertrand's hull. It's also a lot more space- and material-efficient than a bunch of individual glass cases.

 

Also, as a fellow Mac user, welcome! One thing I particularly appreciate is the seamless coordination of photos (and other documents) between phone and computer, then up to iCloud storage, so I don't have to think about manual backups or worry about the loss of a device.

Edited April 17 by Cathead

[KeithAug]

17 hours ago, mbp521 said:

Well that is it for this update,

Quite an update Brian. Everything is looking really smart, your rails turned out really well. Fascinating rudder arrangement, although I am not quite sure why the designers took that approach. 

[mbp521]

7 hours ago, wefalck said:

I have a separate hard-drive for backing up everything (as I also use the computer for work) around once a month and I only remove images from the telephone, once I have copies on two independent devices ...

Thank you Eberhard, I have the same setup and keep all of my photos on a backup drive and generally back them up monthly. When I take pictures of my builds I put them in a different folder that contains all my research and other documents. I have to scale them down, otherwise the files are too big and MSW website will not upload them. Once my build is completed I save the entire folder on the hard drive as well to free up storage space. This folder is also backed up monthly. Unfortunately, my old laptop died before I could back it up and lost some of the pictures, but I was fortunate enough that most of them were still on my phone. 

 

 

7 hours ago, wefalck said:

I was wondering about these rudders in front of the Kort-nozzles: do they move? If not, the boat would be quite sluggish to turn, I could imagine.

 

36 minutes ago, KeithAug said:

Fascinating rudder arrangement, although I am not quite sure why the designers took that approach. 

Keith, Eberhard, this rudder arrangement is pretty standard on this type of towboat. They are called flanking rudders and are used to add maneuverability to the boats when setting up the tows and to help with navigating the twists and turns of the narrow, shallow rivers. They help the main rudders at times by providing sideways force to help swing the tows around, which can get to more than 1000' long. 

 

 

7 hours ago, Cathead said:

I totally agree with Keith that the bottom needs to be visible somehow.

I am definitely considering it. Since I am building this one for somebody else, I'll need to make sure that there will be enough room where he plans on displaying it. 

 

8 hours ago, Cathead said:

Also, as a fellow Mac user, welcome! One thing I particularly appreciate is the seamless coordination of photos (and other documents) between phone and computer, then up to iCloud storage, so I don't have to think about manual backups or worry about the loss of a device.

Going to a Mac was the best computer move I ever made. I wish I would have converted sooner. I've already filled my complementary iCloud storage and had to purchase more. Still worth it.

 

-Brian

[kurtvd19]

2 hours ago, mbp521 said:

 

Fascinating rudder arrangement, although I am not quite sure why the designers took that approach.

The flanking rudders move to aid maneuvering.  Water flowing over a rudder from the props is very effective in turning the boat (high velocity) while water flowing over the rudder in baking up and not from the props is very ineffective in steering (low velocity).  Thus the flanking rudders being ahead of the props work very well in controlling turning while in reverse.   The boat can move sideways when the flanking rudders are turned one way with the steering rudders (behind the props) are turned in the opposite direction with one prop in reverse and the other going ahead.  I can't remember the combination of port or starboard props in forward and port or starboard in reverse with the direction of the flanking rudders being to port or starboard and steering rudders to being to port or starboard, but both props and rudders must be set in opposite directions to move the boat sideways.

 

Pilots can do this in their sleep before they are entrusted to operate a towboat with barges.  I have spent a lot of time on towboats on the IL River when I was associated with the owner of the business and while I did a lot of steering on mostly straight parts of the river or gentle sweeping turns I would never have thought of asking if I could attempt a sharp turn where operating both sets of rudders and using reverse on one prop to aid turning knowing the pilot would absolutely not allow it.  Back then I was into R/C boats and had a twin screw towboat with steering and flanking rudders with individual motor control.  The towboat company had a real nice shallow pond adjacent to their office building and our Radio Control Model Boat club was able to enjoy operating our boats there.  I used to truly enjoy calling out to a Captain or Pilot and ask them if the wanted to operate my tow.  They all said yes without hesitation - the first time.  After a quick explanation of which control lever on the radio was the steering rudders with the other by default the flanking rudder, the port and starboard motor controls were very obvious which controlled the props.  On a 1:1 towboat the steering controls are horizontal levers that operate on a concentric pair of control rods to the rudders.  The engine controls are side by side levers with duplicate sets of motor controls on each side of the steering levers.

 

Like I said earlier all Pilots and Captains can make their boats move in any direction by combining steering and motor controls as describer earlier.  They don't have to think about forward/reverse/port/starboard.  But the simple fact that there  is a different R/C control layout than in any towboat caused them to screw up the simplest maneuver.  Most would hand me the radio and walk away after just a few minutes.  But most of them came back later because "no toy boat is smarter than me!"  We did have a lot of fun operating at the shipyard.

 

[mbp521]

Thank you Kurt for chiming in with that detailed explanation. Being a complete novice in this era of ships, I was only able to explain what I read about while researching the rudder design. I didn’t delve too much into the science behind it, but it all makes sense. 
 

I can only imagine the enjoyment you got showing up the pilots with the RC boats. I used to be into RC planes and it was a similar situation when actual pilots would show up to the model air fields thinking that if they could fly an actual plane, an RC one would be a piece of cake. I never had the opportunity to show a pilot up myself, but at some of the model air shows I attended I saw it happen more than once. Fortunately I never saw any of the attempts end in disaster. Most of the RC pilots only allowed them to fly with a trainer lead attached to their remotes. 
 

-Brian

Edited April 18 by mbp521

[wefalck]

Thanks, Kurt, these are interesting insights into the operation of such tow-boats. Of course, if these flanking rudders can move, they make perfect sense, when going backward.

 

This would be a classical application for Schottel-props, but I gather they may be too delicate for the shallow rivers full of debris. There is also a limit to the amount of HP they can bring into the water. Turnable pods with Kort-nozzles would obviate the need for all those rudders, but again debris might be a problem and the shallow draught needed.

 

In the early 20th century for working on shallow (central and eastern) European rivers systems, where the props worked in half-tunnels were developed. Some tow-boats also used early forms of water-jet propulsion to aid maneuvering and turning in tight bends.

 

 

[KeithAug]

8 hours ago, kurtvd19 said:

Thus the flanking rudders being ahead of the props work very well in controlling turning while in reverse.

Ah! - that makes perfect sense.

[mbp521]

So I thought that I would give into peer pressure a bit and give the mirrors a try. I had bought a package of locker mirrors for my Cairo display and had a couple left over, so I used one here as a test. Since the hull is pretty hefty I didn't want to make it too top heavy, so I made up a base that is the length of the hull and slightly narrower and set the pedestals at 2" high. You have to get at the right angle to see the underside properly, and when viewing from the port side, only the starboard rudders and Korts can be seen and visa versa. However, when viewing from the stern, all the details are visible. With the black hull the lighting also has to be right to reflect upward and highlight the features. Apologies for the blurry mirror images, I could not get my camera to focus on the hull and the mirror at the same time.

 

Looking to get an opinion from everyone, should I go with the mirror or scrap the idea?

 

 

-Brian

[Cathead]

Absolutely. To my way of thinking, not only does it show off your workmanship more effectively, but it gives the viewer a better angle into something we otherwise never see in the real world (details below the waterline). If part of the goal of modeling is education (a core mission of the NRG), then given you've put the work into those normally hidden details, make them as accessible as possible! I'd bet the vast majority of people have no idea that's what towboat propulsion looks like, as opposed to a vague idea of some sort of basic ship's propellor like on the Titanic or something. 

 

As for proper lighting, pretty much everyone has a flashlight in their pockets these days, so it's not hard to get light to where it's needed. This is one of the reasons I haven't bothered running lighting into my steamboat models; it's so much easier just to point my phone light in toward the machinery if anyone wants to see it in detail. That and I don't like working with electronics but that's not the point!

[Keith Black]

 Yes on the mirror for the reasons Eric gave in his post above. IMHO a larger mirror (slightly larger than the width and length of the hull) would look better. Also, get a better quality mirror, one that's not so blurry.  

[gsdpic]

I agree, I like the mirror too.   Perhaps you already plan this, but any chance you can inset the mirror into the base instead of just having it sit on top?  Maybe with the help of the fancy new laser engraver?

 

[Cathead]

If cutting an insert into the base is too hard, Brian could also make a veneer sheet the same thickness as the mirror and cut the mirror shape out of that, which is almost certainly easier to do than routing out the base with a laser or regular router.

[mbp521]

Thanks Eric and Keith for the input, I feel like the decision has been made and adding the mirror it is.

 

Keith, I'll see if I can polish that mirror up a bit.  

 

10 hours ago, gsdpic said:

Perhaps you already plan this, but any chance you can inset the mirror into the base instead of just having it sit on top?  Maybe with the help of the fancy new laser engraver?

Gary, I hadn't thought about using the engraver to recess the mirror, that is a great idea, I appreciate the tip. It would definitely look better being flush with the top of the base rather than sitting on top.

 

-Brian

[FriedClams]

Very nice update on the Caroline, Brian.  As always, your modeling is clean, crisp and beautifully detailed.  Excellent!

 

Gary