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

[mbp521]

Beautiful work Eberhard! I’ve often thought of building a sea diorama, just not up to trusting my skills yet in that medium and don’t want to risk messing up any of my builds. 
 

-Brian

[FriedClams]

Nice tutorial on the base Wefalck.  That will go in my note folder in case I ever decide to try it myself.  Very nice result.

 

Gary

[wefalck]

Thanks to all for your kind words and the 'tumbs up' !

 

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Beginning putting everything together

 

Over the years many parts have been produced and more recently painted. It slowly time to put everything together.

 

 

The first step was to semi-permanently install the boat in the seascape. I do not expect to have to remove it again, but one never knows, so I am leaving filling the gaps around with acrylic gel to the very end. The model was screwed to the base from the bottom using a single wood-screw in the middle.

 

 

At this point also the deckhouse could be permanently installed. Which in turn allowed to install the various ladders. These had been fitted with ‘brass’ anti-slip pads and shoes to keep them in place.

 

 

The various skylights also have been installed and the steering-wheels together with the associated binnacles.

 

 

The seams between the deckhouse, the skylights and the decks were touched with paint and some light ‘weathering’ with pastels applied with the idea to ‘pull together’ all parts visually. Thus, corners were touched up in dark grey pastel and typically more worn areas in front of ladders etc. were given a light rub with white pastel. This has to be with restraint, as the boat is meant to be depicted in a relatively new and well-maintained state, around 1878, so not much rust etc.

 

 

 

BTW, the model is 286 mm long or 11 1/4 " ...

 

To be continued ....

Edited April 6, 2022 by wefalck

[druxey]

Looking terrific! Again, it's hard to believe the detail at the scale you are building this model to.

[Keith Black]

 What a great little beauty, Eberhard. Absolutely amazing work. 

[BANYAN]

Wow, she is looking great Eberhard, very crisp detail.  Lovin' it.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Ras Ambrioso]

Beautiful work Wefalk. All that’s needed now is the cannon. 

[Gahm]

Wonderful job!

 

Thomas

[mbp521]

Absolutely beautiful work Eberhard! I love all the minute details that you are able to get in to such a small scale. It just amazes me. 
 

-Brian

[Hubac's Historian]

Truly a wonderful model!

[FriedClams]

Ditto to all the above - looking terrific.

 

 Gary 

[KeithAug]

Eberhard, the 2 steering positions are very exposed. Was there an alternative protected steering position? The forward steering poison must have been a bit exciting when the gun was fired. Lovely detail.

[wefalck]

Keith, it seems to have been very common (still) in the 1860s and 70s to have the steering and commanding position(s) rather exposed. It's the same for e.g. the preserved Dutch amoured battleships BUFFLE and SCHORPIOEN (see e.g. http://www.arbeitskreis-historischer-schiffbau.de/mitglieder/ontour/buffel/). Perhaps this has something to do with the fact commando transmission was largely orally and in those years before smoke-less powder it was rather difficult to keep a good overview over the situation.

 

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Further Assembly

Since the last post, turning handles made from 0.1 mm wire shaped in a die on the jeweller press that also flattened the end uniformly were glue onto the various ventilators. This operation was left to the last moment, as these handles are extremely flimsy and easily damaged or broken off. The ventilators now were ready to be spray-painted.

There is some uncertainty around the interior colour of the ventilators. The interior appears very dark on the earliest photograph, suggesting that they have been either black or red. On later photographs with the black-white-yellow colour-scheme according the 1878 ordinance in some cases the interior seems to be the same colour as the exterior, namely white or yellow. There is no written evidence of a red interior, so I went for black to keep within the somewhat more sombre colour-scheme of the 1874 ordinance.

Given the flimsy nature of all those parts that come on board now, I am working ‘inside-out’, so that I do not need to reach over already installed parts with the risk of breaking or bending something. This requires some strategic thinking.

Now the lower carriage of the gun was finally assembled with the platform for the gun-captain, the shell-crane including its hand-cranks, and one training-shell in its wheeled loading-tray.

The carriage was glued in place on its pivot. Unfortunately, once installed in the barbette many of the little details that took a lot of time to make are not visible anymore. However, I did make the effort, because there may be certain angles of view, where they may be in part visible at least.

Next thing up will be the chain-rail around the deck-house. I think I found a way to simulate the chain, but I am waiting for some speciality wire (0.05 mm Konstantan wire, which is a copper-nickel alloy, which is somewhat tougher than pure copper).

 

To be continued ....

[Roger Pellett]

She’s really coming together nicely!

[Keith Black]

 Eberhard, great update. This model is so well done It doesn't require any imagination to make me believe that I'm looking at the real Wespe.  

Edited April 30, 2022 by Keith Black

[KeithAug]

5 hours ago, wefalck said:

it seems to have been very common (still) in the 1860s and 70s to have the steering and commanding position(s) rather exposed.

Eberhard - thank you for the explanation, it must have been quite stressful waiting for the gun to discharge. Also thank you for the link, I wasn't aware of this ships existence. 

 

Lovely model work as usual.

[BANYAN]

Simply wonderful work Eberhard; she/he is turning into a very eye-pleasing model.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Ras Ambrioso]

Wefalk, you never stop to amaze me. I worry about parts less than 0.5 mm and, here you are, working at 0.05 mm. Your ship model looks more like a 1/16 scale. My hat is off to you.

[druxey]

This is beyond terrific, Eberhard!

[mcb]

Its really starting to come together now.  The 'gun pit 'is beautiful.  I hope some of it will be visible in the end.

Excellent work.

 

mcb

[Gahm]

I can only agree with the above comments. It is beyond me how you can do such marvelous work at such small scale! I am really looking forward to see this model move to completion!

 

Thomas

[mbp521]

On 4/30/2022 at 10:15 AM, wefalck said:

Unfortunately, once installed in the barbette many of the little details that took a lot of time to make are not visible anymore.

Eberhard, I can sympathize with you on this one. All the work that goes into the fine details that will eventually get covered up is a bit heartbreaking. Thank goodness we have the build log pictures to fall back on to see the wonderful work you have done. 
 

-Brian

[wefalck]

Thank you very much to all of you for your nice comments !

 

Brian, I agree with you that the building logs now are wonderful means to document the actual work done, including the rationales for doing certain things, and to document the bits and pieces that eventually may not be or only barely visible on the finished model.

 

In a way it may be more difficult to imagine in advance what would/could be visible and what not, rather than just making the parts, in case they might be visible. For instance, on the gunning carriage there are parts of which I knew rightaway that they will not be visible (e.g. the gear mechanism for training the gun encased in a sheet-iron box or the link between the upper and lower carriage), so that I did not bother to make them.

 

And then we all like to make things for the challenge's sake, to demonstrate to ourselves (and perhaps to the others) that 'we can'.

[wefalck]

Ship’s Boats

 

While I was waiting for the wire for the chain-rails to arrive, I turned my attention to the ship’s boats. At that time there were four, two class IV cutters, a gig, and a joll-boat. In 1:160 they are all less than 50 mm long and 10 mm wide. Thanks to some research of various colleagues in Germany, we have reasonably good information on these boats, including lines and their constructional arrangement. In addition, there has been a text-book on boat construction, published since 1878 with updates every few years until 1929, which gives quite a few details on the naval boats.

I don’t quite feel like building four boats with all their internal constructional and fitting-out details, so I decided to show three of them covered, ready for the sea, while the small joll-boat will be shown ready for launching in an emergency, as it was custom. I don’t actually know, whether this boat or one of the cutters was used for the purpose, but assumed that the smaller boat would be easier to get into the water in a hurry, say in case of man-over-board.

An additional challenge is that these boats were clinker-built. I once built a clinker-dinghy in 1:60, which was only 50 mm long, but it was much wider and deeper and with wider strakes. These boats typically have ten strakes on each side.

I picked the long, but narrow and shallow gig first. I had a body plan available, drawn by a colleague some years ago. In addition, the text-book (BRIX, 1883) provides constructional details. The text indicates the dimension of the various parts.

 Drawing of gig from Brix (1883)

 

I decided on an overhead plank-on-bulkhead (POB) construction, which in a way seemed easier than trying to carve the hull with its hollow lines aft from a solid piece of wood using templates. The individual framing stations were taken from the body plan and drawn with additional material on the top in order to arrive at a common reference plane for overhead construction. The bulkhead were laid out for laser-cutting from Canson-paper.

 

Laser-cut bulkheads and keel-pieces

 

A second drawing for laser-cutting contains another set of bulkhead and doubling pieces for the keel and stem, so that a rabbet for planking can be created. All pieces are doubled up after soaking in varnish to stiffen them.

 

2^nd set of laser-cut bulkheads and doubling pieces for the keel and stem

 

The pieces then were assembled as is tradition for POB-construction and mounted onto a piece of Canson-paper for extra stiffness. The whole assembly will then mounted in turn on a piece of wood to ease handling.

 

So far so good, but planking will be challenge, as the individual planks will be less than a millimetre wide overall. In theory, they should be only 0.06 mm thick in 1:160 scale, but I will give it a try with the 0.15 mm thick Canson-paper and see what it will look like. If the planking looks to coarse, I will have to start all-over again …

The assembled parts for the POB-construction

 

Tapering such planks by hand would be too much of a challenge an not quite feasible in paper I think. However, my 2D-CAD program gives the length of the Bezier-curves used to draw the outline of the frames. So, I simply took this length, divided it by 10, divided the result by 4 and then multiplied it by 5, which gives the plank width at each station line assuming that they overlap by about a quarter of their width (according to the drawing in BRIX, 1883). The contours of the planks were drawn for laser-cutting with this information. A first run, was not so successful – I will have to optimise the cutting parameters.

 

 

BRIX, A. (1883): Praktischer Schiffbau – Bootsbau.- 38 p. + 15 pl., Berlin (Hütte).

 

To be continued ....

Edited May 25, 2022 by wefalck

[Bedford]

The lines of that boat are sheer beauty!

You're a braver, more determined man than I.

I know you'll succeed with this but I'll wish you luck anyway.

Edited May 24, 2022 by Bedford

[BANYAN]

That looks like quite the challenge Eberhard; good luck.  Possibly not feasible at your scale, but I tired a similar approach at 1:72 in which I had the bulkheads laser cur for me designed with a breakaway outline.  That is, the full bulkhead was used as the plug by which to plank, then the inner portion of the bulkhead could be broken away leaving a remnant that became the frame at that station.

 

BTW love the lines shown in the boat plan you posted - very sleek.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[mbp521]

Eberhard, your patience on these small boats must be commended. It was all I could do to maintain my sanity making my four ships boats at 1:48 scale. At 1:160 scale they would have to carry me out in a straight jacket drooling and babbling to myself. Amazing work. Looking forward to the next installment. 
 

-Brian

[KeithAug]

Planking sound like a nightmare. Good luck.

[Ras Ambrioso]

Amazing challenge as usual. You are really a master at microscaling. I have similar boats to make for Amapa (at 1/64 scale). Following your steps,

The two large ones will be covered and I will do the little jolly boat using the paper for planking. 

 

[FriedClams]

Just catching up on this build and I see more amazing modeling as I knew I would.  I look forward to watching your progress on the sub-atomic ship’s boat.

 

Gary