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

[Ras Ambrioso]

I went back to your build to gather more information about the ships of this era. My Amapá is growing and I always learn something when looking at your outstanding micro scale workmanship. Still amazed and learning new things about this era of shipbuilding every minute. 

[wefalck]

Thanks to all for the continued moral support !

 

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Porthole Glazing

 

Following the discussion on ways to make the porthole glazing further up, I looked over all available photographs and came to the conclusion that one does not actually seem to see the bronze frame from the outside. On the other hand, most photographs or their scans do not have sufficient resolution to really see such detail.

 

In order to make my life simpler, I decided to go for solid Plexiglas plugs. I did have 1 mm Plexiglas rod in stock and short sections were cut from this to make 2 mm long plugs. The plugs have to be a bit longer than their diameter, so that they can be inserted straight. The front face was turned flat on the lathe and the back-end was given a bit of a chamfer for easy entry into the pre-drilled holes after which it was painted black using a black permanent marker pen. The pieces were then transferred to the micro-mill for polishing the front face with a silicon rubber polishing bit.

 

In order ensure that the porthole plugs are set at equal depth, a little ‘tool’ was made, a punch with a recess of 0.3 mm depth around the rim.

 

Collection of Plexiglas plugs ready for insertion

 

Glazed portholes

 

 

Glazed portholes

 

To be continued ....

 

[druxey]

Very convincing effect!

[Tony Hunt]

Are you going to paint a face on the inside of one of them? 😃

 

Seriously though, they look really good. Was it difficult to get them polished properly?

[mbp521]

What a great method for simulating the portholes. Those look fantastic. 
 

-Brian

[BANYAN]

They look great Eberhard.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Keith Black]

 Eberhard, a elegante solution. I'm always amazed with your problem solving at this scale.  

[wefalck]

Thanks, Gentlemen !

 

Tony, it is actually surprisingly easy and fast: you move the rotating silicon bit until it touches the surface to be polished and make one pass; then you advance the bit by 0.1 mm and make another pass. This is usually sufficient. Like for any other such grinding operation, it is important to keep the part moving, otherwise you will get circular scratches in the surface.

 

Here is a similar operation, when I polished the the sloping faces of a Plexiglas block that forms the core of a skylight:

 

 

Plexiglas is a plastic that polishes very well to a glass-like surface.

 

[FriedClams]

Nice convincing solution.

 

Gary

[KeithAug]

On 12/6/2021 at 8:05 AM, wefalck said:

it is actually surprisingly easy

Eberhard - thank you for the advice - excellent portholes.

 

[wefalck]

An enigmatic feature in the barbette

 

On the plan view of the original drawings from the mid-1880s two enigmatic features appear, but they are not represented in the cross-sections, which could have provided further insight. These featured have puzzled me for a while until I realised that the oval shaped items look like the cross-section of a rifle-butt – we are looking down onto two rifle-racks. This interpretation was confirmed, when I came across a later drawing that showed the same feature, but with an annotation.

 

Enigmatic feature in the barbette

 

Warships at all times were provided with some small arms to fend off boarding-parties, or to form boarding- or landing-parties themselves. According to RECKENDORF (1983) ships of the Imperial German Navy at that time in question were provided with the Jägerbüchse 71 and the appropriate side arm. The Jägerbüchse 71 is a refined version of the Gewehr 71 that was introduced after the Franco-German War 1870/71 to replace the famous ‘Zündnadelgewehr’. Jäger stands for hunter and Büchse for rifle. Compared to the standard infantry weapon Gewehr 71, the Jägerbüchse was more precisely manufactured/inspected and had a finer trigger, as the Jäger-batallions received better gun training and a good proportion recruited from the hunting and forestry professions. Both weapons were still single-loaders, chambered for metal cartridges.

 

In the cited book and on the Internet I found good photographs of the rifle. At 1:160 scale it is only 7.8 mm long, so requires considerable simplification. I drew the stock to be cut from two layers of 0.2 mm thick Canson-paper using the laser-cutter. At the same time, I drew my interpretation of what the rifle-rack might have looked like, as I only had the plan-view.

 

Template for laser-cutting the rifles and the rack

 

The individual parts were laminated/glued together Zapon-varnish and painted using Vallejo acrylics.

 

The rifles were fitted out with barrels from appropriate lengths of 0.2 mm tinned copper-wire. The rings that fix the barrel to the stock are flattened 0.1 mm tinned copper wire. As I still did not get around to build the miniature rolling mill for which I had drawn plans years ago, I flattened the wire by rolling a piece of round steel on a thick glass-plate.

 

Jägerbüchse M71 in 1:160 scale

 

As the tiny rifles are difficult to handle, they were glued into the already assembled rack at this stage using some satin acrylic varnish. Originally, I intended to complete them with trigger-guards made from 0.05 mm wire, but I did not manage to glue down the tiny 0.4 mm diameter rings, so I only added shoulder straps from rolled 0.1 mm wire that was painted in brown leather colour. These were also attached using satin acrylic varnish.

 

Given the amount of work that went into constructing these tiny rifles, I decided to only equip the most visible rack with them.

 

The completed rifle-rack

 

To be continued ... 

 

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RECKENDORF, H. (1983): Die Handwaffen der königlich preußischen und kaiserlichen Marine.- 172 p., plates, Dortmund (Eigenverlag).

Edited December 22, 2021 by wefalck

[Keith Black]

 Eberhard, incredible, just incredible. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours.  

[Gahm]

Wow! I actually have difficulties to really imagine the size of this rifle rack.

 

Thomas 

[mbp521]

Eberhard, 

 

Absolutely stunning details. Especially at that size. 
 

-Brian

[Roger Pellett]

Very nice work!

 

It must have been difficult keeping these small arms serviceable in this exposed position with the salt water environment.  Probably kept several sailors  with time on their hands busy.  Maybe there was a canvas cover over the gun rack?

 

Roger

[Keith Black]

 Roger, I don't think keeping the rifles serviceable would have been an issue. I would think that each rifle in the rack was issued to a particular sailor and that each day/night they had to clean their rifles for daily inspection.  

[wefalck]

Thanks for the kind words, gentlement !

 

Roger, the rifles were not kept in the barbette for storage, but only when 'battle ready'. There is a storage area in the rear of the deck-house, away from the seamen's quarters for a total of 36 rifles. So basically every crew-member could be issued with a rifle. I don't know, whether the seamen were issued 'personal' rifles in the Kaiserliche Marine, or whether the rifles were assigned to the ship. One thing I wondered though was, whether the rifles were supplied with (leather) muzzle covers. So far I have not found any information on this. Certain cleaning and maintenance utensils were not issued per rifle, but for groups of rifles - there are old records available on the delivery of the rifles from the factories to the Navy that indicate this.

 

 

[Keith Black]

When your life depends on how well a personal weapon functions, you trust only yourself to keep it maintained. 

[wefalck]

Probably true, but the Navy handled things differently from the Army. It seems that only the side-arms have been personal weapons.

[Keith Black]

I can only speak from personal experience as a Marine. 

 

 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Keith Black

[mtaylor]

Wow.  A fantastic detail and very well done, Eberhard, I'm a bit surprised about using leather for the straps as I would have thoight cloth would worked better in the humid environment.

 

 I hope you have a fantastic holiday season.

[BANYAN]

That is incredible detail Eberhard; take a bow!  

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Ras Ambrioso]

You never fail to amaze me. On my Amapa, I am working at 1/64 scale and I am having trouble with pieces smaller than 1 mm. I Don’t have the right depth perception while using magnifying goggles and my hands tend to shake proportionally to the magnification. You are a master. 

[mcb]

More great work and ingenuity here. 

I will have to try rolling wire flat the next time I need small flat brass/copper as it seems to be getting scarce in the hobby shops.

There is a lot to be learned from this thread. 

Thanks for posting it.

 

Merry Christmas,

MCB

[wefalck]

Thanks again, gentlemen, for your kind words !

 

There are a couple of (semi-)commercial sources of flat wire: it seems that certain guitar strings are wound with flat brass-wire, which could be one source. The other one are NiCr-wires used in various heating devices, which not only use round wires, such as in toasters, but flat ones as well. In Vienna we had a supplier that catered for the repaired trade and had all sorts of such flat wires - they should exist in other parts of the world as well.

 

Apart from rolling with a steel bar on a flat, hard surface, short lengths of a defined thickness I can also produce with my horological jewelling press (that I got cheaply of ebay, because no tools came with it), for which I made custom anvils.

 

[Roger Pellett]

This is in the “it’s worth what you paid for it” category as I have not personally tried it.

 

A number of years ago, there was a shop note in the NRJ by a guy who photo etches narrow brass strips.

 

Roger

 

 

[wefalck]

Roger, this is indeed another possibility - in principle. I doubt, that say 0.05 mm thick brass or even steel sheet would be stiff enough for the process of photoetching. At least not under artisanal conditions at home. There are photoetched seat-belts for aircraft models that look very good, with buckles and everything. 

[Keith Black]

https://www.beadalon.com/artistic_wire/flat_artistic_wire.asp

[wefalck]

Keith, these wires are nearly ten times the size I needed 

 

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Completing the skylights 1

 

The basic structures of the skylights had been produced a long time ago, but completion was delayed until the painting stage and just before fitting onto the model, as many of the details are very delicate and could be easily damaged during storage.

 

The large engine-room skylight had been constructed from etched brass and bakelite paper parts over a Plexiglas plug milled from the solid. After the different parts had been painted it remained to insert the brass protecting bars. For these, notches had been etched into the underside of the frames to ensure the equidistant positioning of the bars. The bars were cut from 0.1 mm brass-plated copper wire. A diameter of 0.1 mm is equivalent to 16 mm in reality, which is probably too heavy for such bars, but this was the thinnest brass-coloured wire I could find. I have also dark-brass coloured molybdenum in smaller diameters, but it proofed too difficult to cut to exact dimensions in such short lengths due to its hardness.

 

The etched fret for the engine-room skylight

 

The wires were cemented using shellac. To this end I made myself a solution of shellac in alcohol with a consistency of thick honey. This solution is very tacky and stays so for an hour or so – plenty of time to position the short lengths of wire and enough time to cut new ones, if they should jump off your tweezers. A drop of alcohol will also redissolve the shellac should further adjustments be needed.

 

The process of cementing the protective bars with shellac

 

Installation of the bars complete

 

Outside view of skylight cap

 

The skylight received a base-coat of Prince August ‘wood’, followed by a wash of ‘transparent mahogany’. To give this mahogany simulation some ‘depth’ a couple of coats of Vallejo ‘satin varnish’ were added before the bars were installed.

 

Finally, the frame, the Plexiglas plug and the skylight cap were assembled. A small turned brass button was added to simulate the vent – the actual look is conjectural, as it is barely visible only on the very first photograph that was taken of SMS WESPE.

 

The skylight cap fitted to the Plexiglas-plug

 

The two holes in the grille will eventually receive two cowl-vents, but these will be installed later in the process, as their handles are very flimsy.

 

The assembled engine room skylight

 

(I have to take some pictures in diffuse light with the DSLR – these iPhone close-up snaps under the bench-light emphasise all the imperfections …)

 

To be continued ....

 

[Keith Black]

 Eberhard, sorry, I thought the .12 x .03 inches might work for you. Ten times smaller you say, good golly man, that would be .012 x .003 inches. I can't imagine how difficult that would be to work with. 

 

 The skylight is a beauty, great color. 

 

1 hour ago, wefalck said:

I have also dark-brass coloured molybdenum in smaller diameters, but it proofed too difficult to cut to exact dimensions in such short lengths due to its hardness.

 Would it be possible to bundle and glue with CA several ( 50 or more) of the molybdenum wire in lengths that could then be milled and once cut to length the bundle soaked in acetone to separate?