Peerless 1893 by Cathead - 1:87 - sternwheel Missouri River steamboat

[mtaylor]

Excellent solution, IMO, Eric.  I think they look great.

[kurtvd19]

The sign fix is nicely done.  Neat project.

Kurt

 

[Canute]

Good save on the signage.She's looking good. 👍

[Cathead]

Well, I quietly missed the one-year anniversary of this build, but I have made some progress by starting on the final "big" project, the paddle wheel. First I cut a whole stack of cherry lumber (same as that used for the main deck) on my Byrnes saw. This is more of the material I harvested here on-farm.

Then I laid out a pattern by estimating the size I wanted the wheel to be, from the one decent photo I have, and fiddling with different round objects until I found two diameters that were close enough. Once this was drawn, I set down tiny patches of double-sided tape on each leg's location and began laying out the wheel:

 

Each leg is hand-tapered to fit its neighbors using a sharp knife and sandpaper. I didn't worry about the exact outer length as I'll trim them all down later. I was most concerned with a consistent inner pattern and leaving a clean hole for an axle at the center. When I had them all dry-fit to my satisfaction, I removed each one, put a dab of wood glue on its inner surfaces, then re-assembled the wheel and let it dry.

 

Once this was solid I began hand-cutting the outer circle, formed from a series of small wedges custom-fit between each leg. This is all slow, fiddly work that goes well with a baseball game on the radio. Here's the final result:

And here it is test-fit on the vessel:

As previously discussed I'll be cutting off a small portion at the waterline but intend to do that once I have all three rings made and can be certain I do them all consistently in the right place. I think it's easier to build the whole wheel and cut it down than try to guess ahead of time exactly where I want the cutoff to be.

 

Overall I think it looks pretty good! Thanks, as always, for the kind comments and support.

 

 

 

[mbp521]

Looks great Eric! Tedious work to say the least. One down, two to go. 
 

-Brian

[FriedClams]

Time consuming and repetitive, but a very nice result, Eric.

 

Gary

[Ras Ambrioso]

Eric, I am getting close to your stage in the build of our respective paddlewheel. My last challenge is the paddle wheel itself. My little Unimat cannot swing the 2 5/8" diameter of the outer tire of the wheel. You have given me a great idea of how to build mine. Thanks.

[KeithAug]

A wheely good start on that paddle Eric. It does seem like quite a tedious job.

 

[Cathead]

Ras, happy to provide inspiration! I used a similar method on my other steamboats and it's become a comfortable approach for me. This time, as you'll see below, I only used one pattern and built successive wheels on the first one. Another approach would be to computer-design a pattern and print out a whole series so that each wheel can be assembled on its own pattern, I think I did it that way before too.

 

Here's some more weekend progress. I built the other two wheels directly over the first one, to ensure that they all matched. I'd rather have them all consistently eccentric than near-perfect but not matching. So I laid small strips of double-sided tape on the first wheel, then started hand-cutting and shaping each spoke to fit:

When they were all shaped, I glued the assembly together and used clamps to ensure it stayed parallel to the first pattern wheel while the glue dried. One thing to be careful of here is not to let glue squeeze out below such that the two wheels get glued together right at the hub where it's hard to get to. I tried to avoid this but it happened slightly; I was able to separate them with a thin knife. It would probably have made sense to put a thin piece of tape or other masking at the hub area to avoid this. But it worked out fine.

 

I then marked the locations for the spacers and slowly assembled those, too. The end result was three wheels that match pretty nicely for hand-made assemblages. At this point I also trimmed all the ends to be reasonably consistent in length.

I wanted some "hubs" to help bind these together, so cut a stack of thin discs from a dowel, painted them black, stacked them together with strips of double-sided tape, and drilled down the middle to create a consistent axle hole:

 

Then I painted the wheels and assembled each one with a hub on each side. Here they are threaded on an axle for show, but not in any final orientation:

 

Next up will be working on the "buckets", the proper name for the horizontal slats that actually grab the water.

 

It's nice to feel like I'm making some regular progress again. Thanks for reading!

[KeithAug]

They worked out pretty well Eric - very precise reproductions.

[Ian_Grant]

Paddlewheels like that strike me as an ideal candidate for 3D printing. Then again I have 3D printing on the brain now. 🤪

[Cathead]

There's a clear argument for going that direction, but I currently have no interest in 3D printing. I enjoy working with my hands, using mostly natural materials. I spend enough time on a computer professionally that about the last thing I want to do in this hobby is spend more time staring at a screen doing computer design!

 

Obviously there are arbitrary limits on where any of us draw the line; I won't be hand-carving any 19th century figurines from hand-milled wood. I just find, personally and without broader judgement, that 3D printing takes the hobby in a direction I don't really want to go personally, though I'll almost certainly take advantage of certain products like figures or detail parts that may well use the technology. But I don't want to use it myself.

[mbp521]

Just catching up Eric. Very nice work on the wheels!  
 

On 6/30/2024 at 6:32 PM, Cathead said:

One thing to be careful of here is not to let glue squeeze out below such that the two wheels get glued together right at the hub where it's hard to get to. I tried to avoid this but it happened slightly; I was able to separate them with a thin knife. It would probably have made sense to put a thin piece of tape or other masking at the hub area to avoid this.

What I found is that if you are using PVA or wood glue is to put a layer of Saran Wrap between the pieces to keep them from sticking and it’s clear so you can line up the pieces without anything obscuring your view. If you are using CA, that’s a different story. CA tends to stick a little too good. 
 

As for the 3D printing, I’m with you on that. They are nice to mess around with and can be handy in a pinch if you need small detailed stuff done that is just too much to deal with by hand (I cheated on my Cairo and ordered 3D printed lanterns). But nothing beats creating things by hand. Although, now you have me feeling a little guilty since I’ve been using my laser tool to create many of the parts on my current build. 😁

 

- Brian 

[KeithAug]

5 hours ago, mbp521 said:

since I’ve been using my laser tool to create many of the parts on my current build

Yes, you are on the slippery slope Brian.😬

[Cathead]

On 7/2/2024 at 10:13 PM, mbp521 said:

Although, now you have me feeling a little guilty since I’ve been using my laser tool to create many of the parts on my current build.

Nah, to each his own. 

 

I finally had a relatively quiet weekend here and got quite a bit done! We had absurdly beautiful weather for this time of year, so I got out my portable work station and took the model up to our screened in porch so I could enjoy fresh air, natural light, and birds while working on the model.

For the buckets, I cut some strips of on-farm maple the full needed width, then split them with a knife to make two planks. This looks better visually and milling the thinner strips would have wasted a lot more wood from the saw's kerf.

I then marked the proper orientation for each wheel (to ensure all three matched), then started slowly gluing pairs of bucket planks on.

I also spent time carefully measuring and marking where to cut off the bottom of the wheel. Here's the final product, with the bottom-most spoke cut off entirely and one on either side cut down partly (including their buckets).

The raw maple is visually very attractive but it needed to be painted for accuracy, so I did. In the meantime I'd made and painted two housings to hold the axle, then glued them in place. Here's the current state of the build, with the wheel on its housing (though the axle is still removable and not yet painted). I also glued on the forward timbers. The light's a little wonky but you get the idea. I'll take better shots soon.

Next up is to develop the bracing that supports the wheel housings, and the driver arms for the pistons. I think those are the last structural details. I have some detail parts on order and that'll just about complete her at this time. The end is near! Thanks as always...

 

[Knocklouder]

That is some very nice work. It is hard enough building a riverboat from a kit  I am gobsmacked at yours, truly nice work !!

    Bob  M.

[Keith Black]

 Very nice, Eric. She's looking every bit the part. 

[KeithAug]

1 hour ago, Cathead said:

We had absurdly beautiful weather for this time of year,

I am happy to report that after several unusually hot summers British weather has returned to its predictable best. It has rained every day for the past few days and this is due to continue until Thursday. It is also quite cool and my wife is threatening to switch the heating on. Global warming is having a year off. I think I need a trip to Missouri!

Peerless is looking good - nice progress.

[Cathead]

29 minutes ago, KeithAug said:

I think I need a trip to Missouri!

Don't get ahead of yourself, I said we had A day of unusually nice weather. It won't last, we'll be back up into our normally hot and humid conditions by next weekend. Just prior to this briefly pleasant weekend, we suffered through a stretch where we received almost 9" of rain in three days, causing a wide variety of damage. Generally speaking, you do NOT want to visit here from mid June through early September if you're remotely adjusted to a British climate.

[Jack12477]

Yea, here in the Hudson Valley it is hot, humid, rainy, etc. In fact the air is so thick you can cut it with a knife, quite literally As I type it is 90 F 

[Canute]

Even here in the mountains, normally cooler than lower elevations, we have a relative humidity of 70%. It's 81/27 but thanks to the humidity its 84/29. No hiding from hot summer weather.🥵

[KeithAug]

 

1 hour ago, Canute said:

No hiding from hot summer weather.

Sat in my wooly jumper, being nagged by wife and daughter to put the heating on - 17c in the workshop. Plenty of room to hide here.

[mbp521]

Speaking of the weather, I’m just sitting here typing this up as I’m watching the rain and wind from Hurricane Beryl pass over us. Just grateful to not be on the coast. 
 

Very nice job on the paddle wheel, it’s just a shame that you had to cover up that beautiful maple with paint. 
 

-Brian

[Cathead]

3 hours ago, mbp521 said:

Very nice job on the paddle wheel, it’s just a shame that you had to cover up that beautiful maple with paint.

Funny thing about sawing and milling my own wood...it makes the material simultaneously more and less precious. Obviously a lot of work goes into that material compared to just buying a packet of wood from some retailer. On the other hand, at the scale of landscape management, I easily produce way more wood than I'll ever be able to use for modeling. A single firewood-sized chunk of maple still produces more wood than I'd use in a single model, much less a whole tree. So it doesn't matter how much I use (or waste) because there are multiple lifetimes of model wood sitting rough-milled in my barn that are a fraction of the broader wood use for firewood and cut as part of general forest management. 

 

Anyway, I pretty much finished the stern assemblage, shown here in this zoomed-in image:

And here's my version:

Let's back up. Harkening back to an earlier discussion on rudders, I made some rudimentary pieces that represent the tips of the rudders sticking out of the water. These will be mostly hidden by the wheel but I wanted them hiding back there:

The bracing that helps support the weight of the wheels was pretty straightforward. On the real vessel, the forward support post appears to go through the boiler deck, but I didn't plan ahead well enough and wanted this to be strong, so I carved a notch into the aft edge of the deck instead. This lets the post be at a reasonably accurate angle but be fully braced against the superstructure instead of just loosely glued to the top of the boiler deck.

The wheel is driven by two pitman arms that extend from the engines to either side of the wheel, connected by a sort of cam. I carved the latter from pieces of cherry, and drilled holes to accept small brass nails that would hold the assemblage together:

Here I'm pushing one nail through the cam into a pre-drilled hole in the end of the axle; same on the other side. No glue, letting me position the cam as desired when I fit everything together:

Then I cut two pitman arms from cherry and carved/sanded them to a shape I liked. At the forward end, these just butt up against the solid wood block of the "engine room", letting the dark paint pretend to be shadow. At the aft end, the nail in the narrow end of the cam goes into a hole predrilled in the arm. Here I'm testing the rough length of one arm:

And the other side:

 

Sharp eyes will notice that the pitman arms are cut to different lengths so that the port and starboard cams aren't in the same orientation. As I understand it, the arms were set to be 90º off from each other to allow proper functioning of the engines. Staggering them this way let each engine's stroke balance the other one out; if they were both set the same way, the whole system would stall as it tried to make a full rotation on one stroke.

 

And here are a few views of the painted pitmans in place. These aren't glued, just set and pinned in place for the moment.

 

This last shot clearly shows the offset pitman arms and cams:

I initially painted them white as many steamboat photos I've seen seem to do that. But I then noticed that the historic photo zoomed in at the beginning of this post makes the arms look very dark, so I'm considering repainting these black. Thoughts?

 

Once I'm set on the final color, I'll install these permanently and paint over the nail heads. Then I think the structure of the vessel is basically done, awaiting only detailing.

 

In the meantime, as I write this, steady rain is developing outside as a moisture plume extending off ex-Hurricane Beryl makes its way into Missouri. Having had nearly 10" (25 cm) of rain in the last week, the soils here are fully saturated and any further rain could be truly problematic. The forecast models claim the storm track will go south of our location with only minor effects, but I'll believe that when I see it; they didn't predict the last 10" either. It's going to be a nervous night as we wonder whether we'll be flooded again by tomorrow.

 

In any case, thanks for following along and giving me so much encouragement along the way. Pretty wild to see this almost done.

 

[Ian_Grant]

Nice work!  Yes, they're at 90 degrees, same as a steam locomotive. That way one or the other is near the top or the bottom of their cycle and can be pushed or pulled to keep the wheel turning.

[KeithAug]

Eric - the connecting arms do look quite dark (probably black) but they also seem to be round. The slot where they come out of the deck structure has semi circles top and bottom which I think reflects the shape of the connecting arm. Not that this maters a lot because the model looks fine. She will be joining your fleet shortly.

Your hurricane generally arrives here as a storm about 4 of 5 days after it departs American shores. Fun to come!

Edited July 9 by KeithAug

[Cathead]

Goodness, Keith, I seem to really have altered that area from the original without even really realizing it. Not only is the pitman arm hole much smaller (and rounder) than my version, as you say, but there's a whole open slot between the engine area and the main structure that I just plain left out. I went back and looked at that part of the log (page 4) and I think I might have mis-interpreted the historical image the first time, thinking that the larger floor-to-ceiling slot was where the pitman arms went through, and shrinking that down because the full-size opening would have been too awkward with my solid-block superstructure. In this framing I guess I just ignored the tiny round hole as unimportant. I don't really know what I was thinking because I didn't fully talk it through in the log.

 

It's so obvious now! Why didn't any of you stop me???  

 

I also now see what you mean about maybe the pitman arm being round? Like a piece of metal pipe instead of the more traditional wooden beam? I could probably rig up a version of that with a length of styrene tubing, maybe I'll play around with that.

 

I'm definitely torn between trying to make some accuracy upgrades and just leaving it be as "my version".

 

[wefalck]

I think on earlier boats these connecting rods (as they would be called on locomotives and the likes) were indeed baulks of timber.

 

I gather the opening in the cladding would have been kept as small as possible to keep spray from the wheel out. Wouldn't have been there be quite a bit of repair on those boats, so you may be able to patch up the existing hole a bit.

[mbp521]

You are really moving along with this build now. Great progress and beautiful work!
 

I agree with Keith, I believe the arms were black as well. It’s so hard to put color in those old B&W photos but the could be red as well, but definitely not white. 

Another thought that comes to mind is didn’t most paddle wheels have thicker buckets on the opposing sides of the Pittman arms to help balance the weight of the crankshaft and provide a smoother rotation?

 

We ended up with about 5” of rain from Beryl, not a lot (by hurricane standards) but enough to saturate the ground a get the creeks to flowing. Hope you all stay safe up there and the waters stay low. 
 

-Brian

[Cathead]

Wefalck, they were definitely timber on most boats; I suspect Peerless is different being so much later than the peak era. I may try your idea of a little thin "repair" cladding over the broader hole if I switch to a pipe-shaped rod.

 

Brian, I had never run across that idea before so I don't know! Not a change I'm going to make, though

Edited July 9 by Cathead