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

[wefalck]

After many trials and tribulations I completed the awnings over the hatch that leads down into the the deckshouse. Such hatches were protected by railings made from polished brass tubes with connectors cast in brass. The railings had sockets into which arched awning stanchions could be fitted. The hole arrangement could be dismantled in order to be able to cover the hatches in very bad weather. The old photograph shows a similar arrangement on an austro-hungarian warship of the same period. The contemporary drawings of SMS WESPE show such quite complex hatch-cover.

 

Hatch and its cover on board of an austro-hungarian warship of about the same period

 

I first attempted to turn the stanchions from brass wire or small brass nails, but both materials turned out to be too soft given that they are 5 mm long with a diameter of only 0.3 mm. Even my sophisticated steadies didn’t work. In the end I had to fabricate them from 0.3 mm with 0,5 mm sections of 0.5 diameter brass tube slipped over them. The upper connectors were cross-drilled in the dividing head on my micro-mill for the 0.2 mm horizontals. I also attempted to turn 0.7 mm diameter knobs to fit onto the stanchions using a specially made cutting bit. While they turned out reasonably well, it proved impossible to fit them – I lost them faster than I could make new ones ... the knobs are simulated by tiny blobs of of white glue, painted in brass. Acceptable at normal viewing distance, but pretty awful in close-up photography.

Attempts to provide the stanchions with sockets for the awning-stanchions failed and I simplified the construction by just making a wire-loop at the end, that slips over the stanchions before the knobs were made. The knob in the centre was turned and cross-drilled.

The hatch-coaming was fabricated from two layers of bakelite so that it would rest on the deck. The corners were drilled 0.3 mm for the stanchions.

Assembly proved a major challenge for my patience and took me several evenings. Luckily, SMS WESPE has only one such hatch cover. The whole structure was assembled using lacquer. It would have been better to solder it, but I wanted to keep the polished brass appearance – nothing looks more like metal, well, then metal ! Nevertheless, I have some very good metallic paint made by a Czech company (http://www.agama-color.cz/en/products/colours) that was used on the knobs.

The model representation. The hatch is 7 mm x 11 mm – close-up photographs are unforgiving

 

To be continued soon(?) ...

[lmagna]

Great job on the framework, especially after working so long on it. You may want to turn it around 180 degrees so that the crewmen do not run into the cross bar when the get to the top of the ladder. Like you said, close-up photos are unforgiving!

Edited September 19, 2019 by lmagna

[BANYAN]

Wow, nice clean work at such a micro scale mate.  

 

cheers

 

Pat

[druxey]

Well, that was a challenge at that size!

[wefalck]

Thanks all.

 

Well, I just put the ladder in for the photograph - have to pay attention not to mess things up, when the pieces finally come together after painting.

[lmagna]

6 hours ago, wefalck said:

when the pieces finally come together after painting.

Hi Welfalck

I may have missed it somewhere in your build log or possibly forgotten, but could you tell me what types of paint you use on this material and what precautions you need to use for proper coverage and adhesion? Or are there any problems?

[John Allen]

Welfalck,

 

Well done

[wefalck]

Imagna, I am not at the painting stage yet. I tend to complete most of the parts, before painting anything in order not to damage any painting while fitting and handling parts.

 

For painting, I use high-quality acrylics readily diluted for air-brushing. Apart from ensuring that there is no grease on the surfaces, e.g. from one's hands, by wiping with aceton (if this can be done safely - not on parts cemented together with lacquer, obviously) I do not make any special surface preparations. Acrylics usually stick very well to the surfaces of the materials I use, when air-brushed.

 

Once painted, the parts are handled as little as possible to avoid any damage to the paint coat and not to leave finger prints that may alter the sheen (if matte paint is used).

Edited September 19, 2019 by wefalck

[lmagna]

Thanks

[KeithAug]

Nice hatch cover Eberhard. A tricky little job expertly done

[wefalck]

Thanks, Keith, for the nice words, but I had the feeling that it was more a tinkering than an engineering job in the end ...

[wefalck]

Engine-Room Telegraphs

On the ‘official’ lithograph of SMS WESPE from the early 1880s an unsual form of engine-room telegraph was drawn. It has a horizontal dial. In the earliest known photography of the ship during fitting-out, the telegraphs had not yet been installed.

A short while ago I discovered during a visit to Oslo in the Norsk Maritimt Museum a very similar telegraph on display. Unfortunately, the legend is not readable on my image. I seem to remember that the inventor or patentee was named. A search on the Internet and in my library did not produce anything, so I would be grateful, if anyone has an idea, who the inventor or patentee might have been.

Horizontal engine-room telegraph in the Norsk Maritimt Museum, Oslo

The telegraph was redrawn from the lithography in order to serve as a working drawing with measures to guide the lathe operation.

The original lithography and working drawing

The whole telegraph seems to have been made from brass and accordingly the model was turned from brass. The indicator arm and follower were made from flattened brass wire and the ‘wooden’ handle built up from PVA glue.

The two engine-room telegraphs at their place

SMS WESPE had two telegraphs, one for the starbord and port engine each, of this early twin-screw naval vessel.

 

To be continued soon(?) ...

[druxey]

And that is a regular match head?!!!

[BANYAN]

Beautiful work Eberhard; miniature perfection   You don't happen to have a spare around do you?

 

Just the other night I cam across a reference somewhere  which I will need to find for you again; unfortunately just as I found it our woeful National Broadband Network (NBN) which is MANDATORY her can you believe, played its usual trick of losing connection).

 

Hopefully I can  find it again and I will copy, not that is much except a description which describes a similar horizontal tabl;e (as they called it) for communicating with the engine room - 1940s I think and it was under a patent listing I think.

 

cheers

 

Pat

 

 

p.s.   This is another one I had found c1858, similar bit a little more refined.  Not sure where I found this as it was in the days I hadn't realised how important to note the source withing the image title   - possibly from one of the contemporary 'The Repertory of Patent Inventions ' periodicals?
I will need to try and track down the other one referenced above, but not so confident in finding it as it was one of those random things that popped up while doing another search.

 

 

Edited October 5, 2019 by BANYAN
Added info

[lmagna]

Amazing work!

[KeithAug]

On 10/5/2019 at 11:53 PM, druxey said:

And that is a regular match head?!!!

I'm with you Druxey - Eberhard is using fake matches - is all part of the fake news conspiracy.

[Gahm]

Unbelievable! Superb miniature work!

 

Thomas

[wefalck]

Thanks gentlemen !

 

Unfortunately, I seem to loose or damage parts during assembly faster than I can make them. It's kind of two steps forward and one step backward all the time. Meant to assemble the binnacles today, but dropped parts unretrievably on the floor and messed up some with my beloved CA   😡

 

Update coming ... one day.

[druxey]

Sorry to read about that.

[BANYAN]

Ah the joys of micro modelling; glad to see you still maintain a sense of humour about it.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Bedford]

Don't you just hate it when you put in the time and effort, get it right, then break or lose it.

 

 

[mtaylor]

Sorry to hear about the flying parts, Eberhard.  Seems to be a normal occurrence in this hobby.  

[archjofo]

Phantastic work!

Edited November 3, 2019 by archjofo

[wefalck]

Thanks for the sympathy, gentlemen !. In the end, I persevered

 

Binnacles

 

WESPE-Class was originally equipped with three binnacles, one on the bridge, the mother-compass on a sort of pole in front of the engine-room skylight, and the third one in front of the emergency steering-wheel at the stern. In the 1890s a fourth binnacle was installed on a platform atop the engine-room skylight, but is left off here. As SMS WESPE was built in 1876 the original binnacles lack the conspicuous compensation spheres, that were only invented in the 1880s by Lord Kelvin. Also other type of compensation gear is not visible on the lithographs and the earliest photograph. A photography of the early 1890s shows a much more substantial binnacle in front of the emergency steering-wheel, which preumably now houses the compensation gear and also sports the compensation spheres. Originally, the compasses must have been illumanted by petroleum lamps, but from the lithographs it is not clear, where these lamps would have been attached. At least there are exhaust funnels on top of the binnacles, which have disappeared in later photographs. This seems to indicated that electrical illumination might have been introduced, when a dynamo was installed on board in the early 1890s for a search-light.

The binnacles as they appear on the early 1880s lithograph

 

For the model the individual binnacles were redrawn from the lithograph in order to serve as a basis for working sketch to guide the lathe- and mill-work. One needs to keep in mind that the total height is somewhere between 10 and 15 mm.

 

Redrawn binnacles, broken down into individual components to facilitate machining and painting

 

The columns presumably were made from mahagony and were turned from brass rod before being transferred to dividing head on mill to cut the octogonal shape.

 

Milling the octogonal section of the binnacle columns

 

The actual compass was made, as usual, from brass and so on the model. Body and funnel did not provide a particular challenge, not considering the small size. To the contrary, the glass hood with its narrow frames of perhaps 15 mm width on the original. The body was roughly turned from Plexiglas and then transferred to the mill. Here the octogonal pyramid was milled. Using a 0.3 mm ball-head burr narrow grooves were cut into the edges and these grooves filled in with brass paint.

 

Set-up on the micro-mill to shape the octogonal pyramid of the glass hood

 

 

Milling the faces of the octogonal pyramid

 

Cleaning up the faces after painting the edges

 

Once the paint had thoroughly dried, the faces were very lightly milled over, which resulted in sharp narrow brass strips at the edges. This is a technique that I copied from making engraved scales.

Each binnacle is made up from four parts

 

Originally I had the crazy idea of placing a miniature compass-card underneath the Plexiglas hoods, but even without it, assembling the binnacles was fiddly enough.

The binnacles provisionally assembled, pending the painting of the stands (apologies for the poor quality picture and the missing match for scale)

 

To be continued soon(?) ...

 

Edited November 3, 2019 by wefalck

[KeithAug]

Well done Eberhard - fine work indeed.

[Bob Cleek]

Exquisite work!

 

[BANYAN]

Beautiful work, they look excellent.  Are you going to imitate the wood with paint?

 

cheers

 

Pat

[druxey]

Like faceting gemstones! And those binnacles are gems.

[Bob Cleek]

4 hours ago, druxey said:

Like faceting gemstones! And those binnacles are gems.

I was thinking the same thing. CZ's would look great in that application!  

[mtaylor]

Just amazing.