SMS WESPE 1876 by wefalck – 1/160 scale - Armored Gunboat of the Imperial German Navy - as first commissioned

[druxey]

Hervorragend! Quite outstanding.

[GrandpaPhil]

Looking good!

[FriedClams]

Splendid work - very tiny and very nice.

 

Gary

[wefalck]

Thanks, gentlemen, for your appreciation !

 

*************************************

 

Kitting out the deck

 

Painting the various parts takes quite a bit of time. Some parts can be spray-painted, while other parts need to be brush-painted because either they are difficult to mask for different paints or because the parts are too delicate for this.

 

The deck of the barbette was fitted with the pivot, races for the gun and the rack that is used in training it. These parts were made a long time ago. The races are turned from steel, because I always think nothing looks like metal as real metal. Although, the races were probably rolled iron (like railway tracks), they looked to bright. So they were painted black all over and then the areas that likely show wear from the rollers of the lower carriage were rubbed with a lead pencil. In some areas also the paint come off again. Overall this gives the races a used look. The toothed rack was bronze and hence was made from bronze.

 

There is also the lid of the opening through which the powder-charged was man-handled up from the powder-chamber beneath.

 

Deck for the barbette with pivot and races for the gun installed

 

The rear deck was fitted with the brass skylights that illuminated the quarters of the officers and other rooms. These were like portholes, but not moveable and had thick glass inserts. On the underside the inserts were shaped as multifaceted pyramids to collect and distribute the light from the deck above. The brass insert were turned and the glass simulated by pushing the brass parts into a drop of Acrifix 192 on a piece of smooth aluminium foil. The bright side of the aluminium-foils imparts a glass-like finish to the cured Plexiglas glue disc. I left the brass bright for a bit of contrast and interest to the deck. At the moment it looks to ‘model-like’, but over the years the brass will dull by oxidation to a more realistic colour and sheen – though I have no information on what they really looked like at that time. The glasses presumably dulled with time by the crew walking over them. It might have been better to imitate with a drop of white glue instead.

The double bollards and coal-scuttles (not visible on the image) were painted black as per prototype and installed

 

Rear deck with sky-lights and bollards installed

 

To be continued ....

[druxey]

Lovely progress! The toothed rack for the pinion at this small scale is remarkable.

[wefalck]

The rack was cut (a looong time ago) on my hand-shaper with a dividing head clamped to it:

 

 

I ground a special cutting tool for this:

 

[BANYAN]

Your tooling skills are every bit, if not better, than your modelling skills Eberhard.   An artisan!

 

cheers

 

Pat

[mbp521]

Beautiful work! Nothing like having the right tools for the job. 
 

-Brian

[wefalck]

Thanks, gentlemen. These antique small machines are actually a secondary hobby, which justified kind of the expenses  ...

 

**********************

 

Fitting out the barbette

 

As small update: I have further kitted out the barbette with the ladders that allowed the gun-crew to scramble over its sides into it and with the racks for the ready-ammunition. Also installed were the gratings over the stairs down into the crew-accommodation below the barbette (which also housed the cranking mechanisms for turning the gun) and over the hatch through which the shells would be lifted up. These gratings are somewhat conjectural, as the existing drawings could also be interpreted as showing stairs. However, I assume that hatch down to the turning mechanism must have been covered to prevent crew from tumbling down, but also open to allow voice communication with the guys cranking away. For the access to the shell-room, the grating must have been hinged in some way. There was a small gallows-like crane above it to allow the shells being lifted up.

 

Also, there is a box in one corner with a kind of rack attached to it. Their function cannot be deducted from the drawings and the hand-written explanations are not readable in the scans available to me.

 

 

Barbette with shell-racks, ladders and hatchways installed

 

The next step will be to install the various portholes in the deckhouse and the hull. Their actual look is quite well-known, as one specimen has been recovered some years ago from the wreck of SMS SALAMANDER off a Dutch beach and which is now in private hands and of which I obtained pictures. However, on the model only a narrow brass ring will be visible from the outside. They were actually very small, only about 16 cm in diameter, which translates to 1 mm on the model.

 

My idea was to dip thin-walled pieces of brass tube into Acrifix 192, as was done for the skylights, but this Plexiglas glue is too viscous to penetrate into the 0.8 mm diameter opening of the brass tubes. Have to figure out a different way …

 

To be continued ....

[druxey]

Is there a suitable solvent you can use to dilute the Acrifix and reduce its viscosity?

 

Lovely detail. Again I marvel what you are able to do at this small scale.

[wefalck]

Thanks, David !

 

I think the manufacturer (formerly Röhm GmbH, then Evonik, but I think they have changed hands again) does give recommendations, I think for suitable solvent. Maybe Acetone works, I have to check. They also produce about three dozen similar formulations of 'liquid' Plexiglas with different viscosities and different curing times. The one I have here is a sort of allround one, good for constructing with Plexiglas, but as soon as it is hit by a quantum of light is gels - perhaps because I had the tube for over 20 years albeit it spent most of its time in the fridge.

 

Another issue is that during my process the outside of the brass tubes was smeared, which is something I cannot have. They have slide smoothly into the boreholes.

 

I think I will turn down some 1 mm Plexiglas-rod to 0.8 mm, which is the ID of the tubes, to a sort of press-fit. This was my original idea, but I thought the route via the liquid Plexiglas would be faster.

 

I like Plexiglas because it can be polished flat to a glass-like finish.

[KeithAug]

lovely paint job Eberhard. You seem to have made rapid progress of late, is it the sprint to the finish?

[wefalck]

Well, not really. It is just a jerk forward. I accumulated so many parts over the years, that in some cases I forgot what exactly they were meant for. So I decided to empty the many little boxes and put things together, at least to a stage, where they do not obstruct further work. And in some case parts have to be made fit to other parts in situ, which can be done only when the other part is permanently fixed.

 

So, I am still far away from completion. I still have to make the boats and then comes the most dreaded part of all: rigging the two-chain-rail around the deck-house and the forecastle. That gives plenty of opportunity to screw things up. Also installing the boat-davits with the boats will be a challenge - I definitely will have to work from the middel of the ship to the outside to make sure I do not damage things.

[FriedClams]

It’s unfortunate that the liquid plexiglass didn’t work out as I too think that would have produced an excellent result.

 

I’m happy to hear that you’re not nearing completion as I selfishly enjoy reading this log.

 

Gary

Edited November 9, 2021 by FriedClams

[wefalck]

Assembly of the steering-stands

 

Progress has been slowed down somewhat due to travels and bread-winning work …

 

Much time has been spent painting various details, often beginning with a basic layer applied by airbrush and then detailing with a hairbrush. In many cases several coats of paints and washes are needed. In particular parts that are meant to resemble varnished or oiled wood will need a base-coat followed by washes of darker paint and again followed by several coats of varnish to increase the ‘depth’ of the colour. ‘Oiled’ wood is finished off with Vallejo satin varnish, while ‘varnished’ wood is finished off with a 1:1 mixture of Vallejo gloss and satin varnish. The satin varnish is not glossy enough to simulate varnished wood.

 

Below are a couple of shots of the assembly of the two steering stands from the laser-cut parts produced earlier. The steering wheels and the brackets are painted in Prince August (Vallejo) transparent ‘mahogany’, while the gratings were given a base-coat of Prince August (Vallejo) ‘wood’, followed by washes of Schmincke ‘ochre’ to simulate teak.

 

I have to take some better close-up shots, but the steering-rope leads into flared down-pipes fashion from 0.6 mm OD/0.4 mm ID brass tubes by widening one end.

 

 

 

 

BTW, the steering rope looks a bit like an anachronism in 1876, when steering chains and even steam-steering was available. However, it seems that warships have retained this simple mechanisms for a while, presumably because it was easier to repair battle damage off-shore.

 

To be continued ....

[Keith Black]

 Eberhard, beautiful work as always. Did the Wespe have backup steering capabilities?

[BANYAN]

Very nice work Eberhard, certainly looks like wood.  "Victoria' used rope also but made from 'green hide' kept well oiled.  I think your assumptions are spot on , especially for ships still using wood wheels (rather than iron etc).

 

cheers

 

Pat

[G.L.]

Looking awesome, Eberhard. Without the one cent coin you can hardly believe it is so small.
What is the 'handle' on the right wheel?

[wefalck]

Thank you very much for the friendly comments !

 

Well, G.L., that's an interesting question I have asked myself and various colleagues very knowledgable on the German navies, but no one could come up with a conclusive answer. It is drawn on the existing plans. One of my guesses was that it might have been for holding the lanyard to the steam-whistle, but at that stage no steam-whistle was fitted. Perhaps it was for a kind of course-indicator for the helmsmen ? It will remain an enigma.

 

Keith, the WESPE-class gunboat had two steering positions, one on the bridge and one in the stern. Both where equipped with binnacles, but only the one on the bridge was equipped with engine-telegraphs. The stern one also had poor forward visibility. I gather it was meant only for emergency situations or perhaps when backing up.

 

Pat, you are so lucky to have all these specifications. In comparison, very little is known about such details on German ships say before the 1890s. A good deal of the records have been lost during WW2, or rather in the chaotic weeks after 8 May 1945, when war-time storage places were either looted or the contents taken away as war-booty. Some archival material was returned from St. Petersburg in 1990, but even during the intermediate storage in the military archives in Potsdam material was stolen and popped up later on ebay et al. A group of volunteers from my association reviewed and catalogued in Potsdam the material returned from Russia in the early 1990s and found that in between visits material had disappeared, drawings cut out of bound material etc. At least sometimes such material did not disappear in someone's private archives, but was made available to others - I assume that the drawings on www.dreadnought.org might have been acquired in that way. 

 

 

[mbp521]

Eberhard, what amazing detail work, on such a small scale! I have troubles painting pieces like this that are double the scale. 
 

So are the floor gratings and the comings two separate pieces or just one? From the pictures the grating looks as though they are framed due to the color differences. Either way, fantastic work!

 

-Brian

[wefalck]

Brian, the gratings are laser-cut in one piece, meaning the actual grating and the coamings. However, they are built in two layers of card, so that from the underside they look like the prototype - though that will never be seen really. Various reinforcement/support battens underneath have been added as well:

 

 

I tend to think that with photoetched parts it would have come out crisper ...

 

The coamings were given an extra layer of ochre wash to make them look a bit different from the gratings.

 

[KeithAug]

2 hours ago, wefalck said:

I tend to think that with photoetched parts it would have come out crisper ...

 

Eberhard - Try using actual size photographs. or console yourself that they would have looked much worse under a microscope. No one will ever notice.

[mbp521]

3 hours ago, wefalck said:

The coamings were given an extra layer of ochre wash to make them look a bit different from the gratings.

That definitely explains the reason for my question. It’s all in the appearance, and from what I see it looks great! Like Keith said, unless you were to put it under a microscope, no one would be none the wiser that it was all one piece. 

-Brian

[BANYAN]

Hi Eberhard, perhaps the item was an 'axiometer',(tell-tale), which had been introduced into RN service by 1835; for the rudder or wheel.  Some ships had a double, some a single - the attached is a double (one for wheel, one for rudder) but I cut it off   Your example may have stood independently.  The picture below is the wheel from HMS Nelson (1814).  I have also attached an example of its mechanism (NMM Collections – ZAZ6817).

 

cheers

 

Pat

 

 

[lmagna]

On 11/23/2021 at 11:24 PM, G.L. said:

What is the 'handle' on the right wheel?

I was thinking that possibly it was some kind of tension or friction brake on the helm to either cause drag in rough conditions and stop the helm from whipping about as easily or even locking it. But Pat's example seems more logical. 

[wefalck]

Lou, looking at the only drawing that is available, I don't think it is a break.

 

 

Pat, it could be an axiometer, but there are no front-views and the only photograph that shows the bridge is too small to show details. I tried to make the model to look like what is seen on the photograph below (ok, it turned out a bit more chubby).

 

 

The above is a blow-up from this photograph. Unfortunately, this photograph is only known as printed reproduction from a still unidentified publication - I once came across a cut-out page from it, but unfortunately did not buy it on ethical grounds, as I hate people cutting pages from books, hoping that I would find the original book on day ... the picture is rather 'pixelated' due to the printing process.

Edited November 25, 2021 by wefalck

[druxey]

It is not, perhaps, a fancy form of speaking tube?

[wefalck]

This also crossed my mind, that it might be a holder for a speaking tube, but no such tube is shown on the drawings of that time. At later times, when an armoured conning tower was installed, the drawings show such pipes.

 

The colour-coding for the enigmatic pillar is brown for wood on the drawing.

 

The navy/-ies seem/s to have used all sorts of from a modern perspective enigmatic devices. Recently I saw on the bridge of the German imperial yacht of that time a frame with slots for cards of some sort. It was explained to me as a sort of note-book on which the courses, distances, speeds etc. of the other ships in a flottilla were recorded for reference.

 

Edited November 25, 2021 by wefalck

[Roger Pellett]

I wonder if the tall vertical column is intended to aid the navigating officer to line up on a navigational mark;  lighthouse, church steeple, smokestack, etc.  Like a rear gunsight.  These inshore craft would required accurate pilotage in the shallow, waters of the North German sea coast.

 

Here in the US, vessels sailing on inland rivers and the Great Lakes used similar pilotage aids.  Riverboats featured Nighthawks, a vertical pole at the bow and the very long Great Lakes steam ships had a steering pole; a lightweight bowsprit.  Different solutions but the same idea.

 

Roger

[wefalck]

Roger, I am familiar with the concept, but it would not work here, because in order to use it this way, you would need to stand right behind it, which is not really feasible in this case, because the boiler-room casing would be in the way.