Sternwheeler From the Susquehanna River's Hard Coal Navy by Keith Black - 1:120 Scale

[wefalck]

41 minutes ago, Keith Black said:

I detest ambiguities when trying to replicate a thing as it always takes three to four times longer to build rather than the simple monkey see, monkey do.

Whom are you telling ...

[Keith Black]

55 minutes ago, wefalck said:

Whom are you telling ...

 Any and everyone. It's merely a statement of non importance on how I feel about trying to build something when lacking what I feel to be adequate information. 

[GrandpaPhil]

Keith,

   That’s great news about your health!  Your model is looking incredible!

[Keith Black]

11 minutes ago, GrandpaPhil said:

Keith,

   That’s great news about your health!  Your model is looking incredible!

 Thank you very much, Phil. 

[Dr PR]

When I first saw your pictures I imagined an auger screw stoker mechanism as used on some steam locomotives. But then I realized it was a conveyer bucket system. These were in common use so it makes sense.

 

But it would be interesting to see how it actually worked. It was probably steam powered. When steam pressure was high the stoker would run slower, and when the pressure was low it would have to "shovel" faster. I hope you find more information about how it worked. I wonder if it was patented?

[Keith Black]

31 minutes ago, Dr PR said:

When I first saw your pictures I imagined an auger screw stoker mechanism as used on some steam locomotives. But then I realized it was a conveyer bucket system. These were in common use so it makes sense.

 

But it would be interesting to see how it actually worked. It was probably steam powered. When steam pressure was high the stoker would run slower, and when the pressure was low it would have to "shovel" faster. I hope you find more information about how it worked. I wonder if it was patented?

 Phil, I also thought it was an auger system but that didn't square with the blocks and spreader bar above the coal crib. 

 

 The drive shaft to the wheels runs directly beneath the boiler, stoker, and coal crib. It could have taken power off the shaft with a levered gear system that was operated by the skipper as need required?

[Keith Black]

 Thank you to everyone for your kind comments and likes. 

 

 What a taffy pull it was getting the wheels built. For as long as it took I should be dancing a jig but alas, that's not the case. 

 

 The wheels are loosely placed as more work in the stern is required before they are glued into place but this little ugly duck now looks the part. 

 

 I poly coated the wheels to represent being wet.

 

 The buckets are 14 inches to scale but could have been a tad bit wider. 

 

 I did a poor job pairing the Amati ships wheels used for the  framework as evidenced by the port side wheels canted bucket. Not all Amati ships wheels are created equal. 

 

 

 

I'm not staying up until the wee hours of the morning working anymore so the pace it's going to be a little slower going.

 

 Thank you guys for your support by following along and being part of the journey.

 

  Keith

[clearway]

😁

[Paul Le Wol]

Looking great Keith! Nice overhead shot 

[Knocklouder]

I will miss you in the wee hours of the morning Keith lol ,  but do stop by and say Hi, lol I am so excited about the Peg, I will try to stop by and see more of this wonderful  log. Thanks for letting me tag along my friend.  🐧 .

Knocklouder 😁 

[Rick310]

Looks great Keith!!

Rick

[Glen McGuire]

Awesome, Keith!!  I showed your work to Rosanna and it put a big smile on her face!

[John Ruy]

5 hours ago, Keith Black said:

 

 I did a poor job pairing the Amati ships wheels used for the  framework as evidenced by the port side wheels canted bucket. Not all Amati ships wheels are created equal. 

Great job Keith, Paddle Wheels have got to be the worst part of building these steam ships. Not looking forward to building the Klondike’s Paddle Wheel. 
 

John

[Keith Black]

22 hours ago, clearway said:

😁

 Thanks, Keith

 

22 hours ago, Paul Le Wol said:

Looking great Keith! Nice overhead shot 

 Thank you very much, Paul. 

 

22 hours ago, Knocklouder said:

I will miss you in the wee hours of the morning Keith lol ,  but do stop by and say Hi, lol I am so excited about the Peg, I will try to stop by and see more of this wonderful  log. Thanks for letting me tag along my friend. 

 Thank you, Bob. Guess who was working on their project at three this morning? 

 

20 hours ago, Rick310 said:

Looks great Keith!!

 Thank you, Rick. 

 

20 hours ago, Glen McGuire said:

Awesome, Keith!!  I showed your work to Rosanna and it put a big smile on her face!

 Thank you, Glen. Bless Rosanna's heart, I need to send her a big ole bag of Michigan corn silage.

 

17 hours ago, John Ruy said:

Great job Keith, Paddle Wheels have got to be the worst part of building these steam ships. Not looking forward to building the Klondike’s Paddle Wheel. 

 Thank you, John. I thought I did well on Lula's wheel so I was disappointed that the ugly duck's wheels didn't turn out better than they did. But they're now glued in place so all of that is in the rearview mirror. 

[John Ruy]

4 hours ago, Keith Black said:

Thank you, Bob. Guess who was working on their project at three this morning? 

Old habits die hard. Who needs sleep at our age anyway. LOL 😂 

[Keith Black]

3 minutes ago, John Ruy said:

Old habits die hard. Who needs sleep at our age anyway.

 I can only sleep in four hour segments. I went to sleep at 8:30 last night and woke up at 12:30 AM. I went upstairs and worked till 3:30 AM, went back to sleep and was up at 7:30 so it was all good. The problem is if I stay up and work until those early morning hours I sleep in late and then I'm unable to take care of Maggie.  

[John Ruy]

1 minute ago, Keith Black said:

 I can only sleep in four hour segments. I went to sleep at 8:30 last night and woke up at 12:30 AM. I went upstairs and worked till 3:30 AM, went back to sleep and was up at 7:30 so it was all good. The problem is if I stay up and work until those early morning hours I sleep in late and then I'm unable to take care of Maggie.  

Best to stay on that schedule if it works for you and Maggie. 
John 👍

[Keith Black]

 Thank you to everyone for the comments and likes.

 

 Page #3, post #68 helps to clarify my work in the below photos. 

 

The wheels are now permanently attached. What tedious work it was trying to replicate the piping used to keep the wheel shaft from moving side to side.

I used 24 GA annealed wire to imitate the piping.  

 

 

 

 The white thingies on top of the post are both working lights and stern lights. They're supposed to represent bare lightbulbs. Being fresh out of 1:120 scale lightbulbs I had to use belaying pins and paint accordingly. They are not glued in so I can change them out if I can come up with something that better resembles lightbulbs. It may require a trip to the basement and dig through Maggie's tubs of beads. 

 

 

 

 Work can now start moving forward in earnest.

 

 They used a design to try and prevent hogging. It took me looking at the photos another hundred times () to realize what I was seeing. More on this in the next post.

 

 Thank you so much to everyone for your support.

 

   Keith

[Coyote_6]

Keith - what a great looking piece of history.  It really looks the part (color, textures, "patina")!  Very cool!

[Keith Black]

10 hours ago, Coyote_6 said:

what a great looking piece of history.  It really looks the part (color, textures, "patina")!  Very cool!

 Thank you very much, Steve. 

[Keith Black]

 As @mcb noted in post #31 there is evidence of hogging in the original photo. This towboat has 1930's technology so I assume it was built around 1935 but the deckhand is dressed in bluejeans, teeshirt, and baseball cap which didn't come into style until the late 40's early 50's. The quality of the photo and the deckhands dress suggest to me the photo was taken about 1955. That would mean the vessel had been in service for at least 20 years.  

 

In the below photo is what appears to be an anti-hogging system. 

 

 A. Turnbuckle. 

 

 B. Large Clevis joint.

 

 C. Eighteen inch support post were the pipe/rod passed through hole drilled a the top of the post. 

 

 I assume the pipe/rod run below the waterline to the bottom of the hull. 

 

 

 Whether this design was in place when the boat was built or after hogging stated to stop any further hogging is anyone's guess. It's not much of a system compared to the designs we see in other paddlewheel vessels. It's another quirky piece in a likewise quirky boat. 

 

 Any thoughts are appreciated, thank you for following along,

 

   Keith

[Dr PR]

Interesting. Hogging in pointy boat hulls results from less water displacement at the bow and stern, and therefore less lift to support those parts of the hull. Midships is broader and displaces proportionally more so it has greater lift. So the bow and stern droop, causing the hogging.

 

But in your sternwheeler the hull is rectangular. If it was a 3D rectangular solid it would have the same lift at all parts of the hull and would not be subject to hogging. I suppose it might have been tapered wedge-shaped below the waterline at the bow and stern, like typical flat bottom fishing boats. This would lessen the displacement, and therefore lift, at these parts. That would result in hogging.

 

The placement of heavy machinery and deck houses would also influence displacement. For example, the weight of the paddlewheel hanging aft of the hull would pull the stern down. The deckhouse up forward would push the bow down. 

 

I doubt that a lot of nautical engineering went into the construction of this boat so it could have been very prone to hogging. The pipes you show could have been an add-on after a few years of operation when the hogging became apparent.

[Keith Black]

 Phil, thank you for your thoughts.

 

 

I found the below link in unrelated research.  

https://nauticalarch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/INA_42.1_v18_Press.pdf

[Canute]

Wood railcars of the 1800s used trussrods to level out the floors. The floors sagged in the center, so several trussrods were run from the end beams toward the car center over queenposts. There could be as few as 2 rods up to 6 that I've seen in photos of the old wood passenger and freight cars  from the 1890s. Turnbuckles tensioned the rods; some were near enough to another rod that boards could be used between the turnbuckles to prevent the turnbuckles from loosening. These boats most likely were build using similar engineering principles. They just didn't have to put up with the jarring ride over the rails.

[Keith Black]

1 hour ago, Canute said:

Wood railcars of the 1800s used trussrods to level out the floors. The floors sagged in the center, so several trussrods were run from the end beams toward the car center over queenposts. There could be as few as 2 rods up to 6 that I've seen in photos of the old wood passenger and freight cars  from the 1890s. Turnbuckles tensioned the rods; some were near enough to another rod that boards could be used between the turnbuckles to prevent the turnbuckles from loosening. These boats most likely were build using similar engineering principles. They just didn't have to put up with the jarring ride over the rails.

 Ken, thank you for the input. While railcars are supported at the ends, water's support is greatest in the middle of a sternwheeler's hull allowing the ends to sag. It's physics my wee brain at times has a hard time comprehending. Nautical engineering be hard. 

[Cathead]

Yes, in square(ish) hulled riverboats, hogging is defined by the bow and stern sagging relative to the center. That's why it became called hogging, because it resembled the arched back of a hog in an era when everyone knew what a hog looked like. It's less an issue of hull shape than of uneven loading on the hull. This was accentuated in traditional sternwheelers by having the heavy wheel hanging off the far end of the stern while the boilers and engines were up near the forward end. So these vessels needed a robust set of hog chains (actually iron rods despite the name) running longitudinally. In sidewheelers it became especially necessary to use transverse hog chains because the heavy sidewheels hanging off the side would otherwise crack the hull down the middle. Hog chains were an absolutely necessary and extremely distinctive feature of standard North American riverboats until steel hulls came along.

 

In a perfectly rectangular and evenly loaded barge, you wouldn't need hog chains, but weight wasn't distributed evenly in powered riverboats.

 

Early railroad cars had the opposite situation, supported at the ends (by the trucks) and peak loading in the center. But the engineering solution was pretty much the same, because either way trusses help distribute loading across a span.

 

Keith's vessel is smaller than traditional riverboats, and also has a lighter wheel given newer metal technology, while the machinery is more amidships than on a "typical" vessel, but presumably the principle remains. Any wooden hull is subject to hogging and the weight distribution on his vessel is still uneven. And I agree that his photo shows a basic version of a longitudinal hog chain.

[Keith Black]

 Eric, thank you for sharing your insights.

[Cathead]

I should have added that the hogging problem was exacerbated by most riverboat hulls being built quite lightly, very different from your typical maritime wooden hull. A classic ocean-going hull was built super-strong, of heavy oak with very dense framing and lots of cross-bracing. These hulls were essentially rigid and didn't need additional trussing beyond the hull itself. But that's because they were deep-water vessels. 

 

Classic North American riverboats operated on shallow rivers and in an economic context that required them to be cheaply built, including that fact that their service lives were far shorter than that of a typical maritime vessel. So their framing was much farther apart and built of smaller timbers, their hull sheathing was light and thin, and they couldn't afford much cross-bracing without making the draft too deep. Plus, their hulls had to be flexible because they were highly prone to hitting bottom, where a rigid hull would break. So all of this meant the hulls were lightweight and needed the extra trussing of hog chain systems to keep them in line.

 

Keith's vessel is operating on a reservoir but clearly derives its lines and design from classic North American riverboat design, with a shallow blocky hull made of wood that would require trussing to remain stable.

[Keith Black]

 Thank you guys for your kind and informative comments and the likes. I appreciate your support so very much.

 

 

  The first time i saw the photos of this push boat I was smitten with the ugly, dirty, quirkiness of her but I had serious reservations when I started the build not knowing if I was going to be capable of doing her justice. It's only been in this last week that I've really warmed to the build as the work has finally developed a rhythm and flow and now I'm having a ton of fun, let the devil take the hind quarter. 

 

 

 First off, I want to apologize for the following photos.......bad camera day.    

 

 The steel plate is painted but not yet glued down. I looked at beads and a whole slew of other options for lightbulbs but nothing worked as well as the belaying pins. I did try filing  and sanding the shape from egg to ball, they're now acceptable.  

 

 I added coal to the coal crib and the auto stoker's conveyer belt. Coal has a slight gleam to it so I lightly patted poly on top of the coal to give it just a hint of shine. I also got the conveyer belt tail rigged through the blocks. 

 

 

 The stern maintenance hatch is made and glued in place.

 

 The coal crib and stoker are glued to the steel plate but the boiler is not yet glued to the plate as I have more work to do on it which is next on the list. 

 

 Thank you for following along and being part of the journey.

 

    Keith 

[MAGIC's Craig]

Wonderful detailing, Keith!  Another fine old rough craft brought to life for all of us to respect and appreciate.