Golden City by Louie da fly - Scale 1:50 and 1:25 - solid hull - Paddlewheeler

[Jim Lad]

Great work, Steven. I can't wait to get down that way again so I can have a ride on the real thing!

 

John

[Louie da fly]

It's a very nice trip around the lake, nice views and just an enjoyable time. But just a heads-up - only on Sundays (it's run purely by volunteers), and subject to weather conditions (the lake can get a bit scary in high winds). Here's their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/goldencitypaddlesteamer But I'm afraid they don't necessarily keep it updated as much as they should, so perhaps phone them beforehand to check if she's running that day.

 

Steven

Edited November 16 by Louie da fly

[Jim Lad]

Thanks Steven.

 

John

[Louie da fly]

But when you come to Ballarat, be sure to let me know you're coming and I'll show you around.

 

Steven

[Mark Pearse]

Hi Steve,

 

Nice work on the wheels.

 

Looking at the photos, the scolloped edge is fabric rather than rigid, so perhaps paper. Cutting that shape will be difficult though. I wonder if there's a craft scissors that do it, like the zig-zag ones but curved....Spotlight are good for stuff like this & just might have it.

[Louie da fly]

Yes, I'm still trying to work out the best way to do it. Scissors don't come with that profile, unfortunately (though they do for half the scale, so long as it's paper you want to cut). I'm thinking mainly of fabric impregnated with paint, and cutting carefully with a craft knife or similar. Or perhaps silkspan . . . As it's by a lake, I have to think about the effect of moisture.

 

Steven 

[Jim Lad]

How about thin aluminium sheet? It would be a bit harder to cut, but it would stand up to the moisture.

 

John

[Louie da fly]

I do have aluminium sheet and I have considered it, but I think it would be harder to work than painted fabric. I'll experiment to see how it all goes.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

Putting on the safety railing and the mesh below it. I cut the mesh a little wide so it would overlap the upper and lower edges a bit and leave me a little wriggle room - once the upper and lower edges were attached I could trim it to fit exactly.

Upper edge panel added aft of the paddlewheels. On the real thing there is a rail behind this panel, made of steel pipe. But I didn't bother to put that on - it would have been invisible anyway. Forward of the wheels doesn't have this panel, just the rail. My trusty plastic mini-pegs put to work again!

The panel is made of very thin wooden sheet which bends easily around a relatively tight radius. The sheet wood was only long enough to do one side, so I had to cut two strips and join them at the stern with a vertical mini-scarph joint.

 

And the top rail - made of a thin bamboo rod from a bamboo blind (think of a kitchen bamboo skewer - very similar, but longer), sliced in half so there was a flat face against the mesh. I didn't take photos of the beginning and intermediate steps with this one.  

And the lower edge added to sandwich the mesh between it and the deck at the bottom. Due to the configuration of the deck, I couldn't use pegs, so I used dressmaking pins instead. Very useful at times, and better than push-pins because they make a much smaller hole.

The scarph joint. I didn't want to put pins too near the edges of the bottom strip in case they made it split, so I held the ends down with a bit of masking tape over the top.

 

And once that was added, I put on the paddle wheels. I kept that till very late in the build because they're fragile and I didn't want to break them while I was working on other things. To push the top surface of the wheel assembly up against the bottom of the deck, I slid a couple of bits of wooden sheet in between the wheel and the table, acting as a sort of clamp.

That being done, I finally got onto the wavy top border for the awning. I got a bit of old bedsheet (grey unfortunately, I didn't have white) and impregnated it with white acrylic paint, to change the colour but more important to stiffen the fabric so I could cut the wavy border into it later. Then I measured the pattern of the wave and hand-drew it onto the fabric. Very time-consuming.

And here it is about half-way through the cutting. Seems to be working ok, but also very time-consuming and rather hard on the fingers.

 

Steven

 

 

 

 

[Jim Lad]

Pretty hard on the concentration as well, I would think, Steven - but it's really looking good.

 

John

[BANYAN]

You've knocked it outa the ball park Steven; looks great!

 

cheers

 

Pat