USS Tecumseh - Canonicus Class ACW Monitor

[tea monster]

Hey, starting a digitial build of the USS Tecumseh. I've just started out so not that much to see yet. I'll keep you posted about the build. I do have a few questions about the form of certain parts of the ship as various plans/pics and other sources seem to disagree.

I'm using Blender.

Here is my start

My apologies for the dead photo links. Photobucket recently changed thier EULA to read that they, in effect, owned the photos on the site, regardless of user's copyright, so I have removed my photos from there. Sorry for the inconvenience. I will upload a few pics to the ModelWarships site, or another provider soon.

Owen

[tea monster]

Update:

[mcg]

Looks good, keep it coming. I especially like the ventilator and the turret glacis. Where did you find plans for the Tecumseh? Is this the monitor that was sunk by a mine in Mobile bay? Michael

[tea monster]

Thanks! I've dug up some plans from a PDF on the preservation of the wreck. I've got the Warships and Osprey books. With that and a load of photos, I decided I had enough to make a start.

Yes, this is the monitor that struck a mine and spawned the famous "Damn the Torpedoes" line.

[DrPR]

I'm glad you are posting something created in Blender. I have thought about playing with it myself, but haven't had time to learn yet another program. I am especially interested in what it can do with rendering.

Is Blender still freeware?

Phil

[tea monster]

Blender is still free. Rendering is better now. They are working on a high-quality internal renderer at the moment. Until then, there are several 3rd party renderers out there (open source and paid) that fill the gap. Luxrender is a good one, sort of like Maxwell, very good, but slow. Yafarayis a good biased raytracer with a bit of speed. There are also plug-ins for V-Ray and a few others.

Latest progress on the Turret - next I'm going to put some rivets on.

Does anyone have any info on what was on the top of the Pilot house? Some sources say it had holes, but pics of the Passaic class have a plain rounded roof.

EDIT: 06/03/2020 - repaired dead PB links.

[tea monster]

Got the hull roughed out. I've gone back and updated the smokestack and ventilator as it seems that it had plain vents during the war, and only got it's funky vent funnel after the war. I've put in some deck details and added more to the turret.

[Roscoe]

Does anyone have any info on what was on the top of the Pilot house? Some sources say it had holes, but pics of the Passaic class have a plain rounded roof.

It seems like it was a plain rounded roof from everything I've seen, but as you know, things changed throughout the ships lifespan, and finding reference pics that actually match each other is rare. I've going through some of the same problem's with a Milwaukee class and others I'm working on, it seems like almost every pic has something different. Fun, isn't it?

Keep up the good work,
Dean

[tea monster]

It is fun actually. I've wanted a model of one of these since I was about 10. I remember looking through the American Heritage Ironclads book and being amazed when my I found out that there were actual photographs of a lot of them.

Thanks for the help, yeah, I'll keep pottering along.

[Cadman]

nice work

[tea monster]

Thanks!

I've got one of those photos from the Smithsonian's download site and found you can often download a high-res tiff file. So I did that and ran it through Photoshop to increase the contrast and blow it up a bit to clarify some of the details. I've got some interesting results. I've deliberately shot the contrast way out the roof to pick out the detail on the pilot house and deck.

There is no periscope on top of the pilot house like there is in a lot of plans and in this photo (which, in hindsight, may not be of a Canonicus class monitor anyway).

Can anyone shed any light on this? Did the Canonicus have any differences from other ships in the class? The other thing is that it seems to have a plain ring around the base of the turret. In later shots and on the plans, it has a ring around the base of the turret, and then a separate ring on the deck protecting the join.



Also, has anyone got any clearer shot of what the propeller well looked like?

[Roscoe]

It is fun actually.

Yeah, I should have put a smiley after my remark, it can be fun at times playing detective trying to figure these things out...

Anyway, you probably already have this drawing that somewhat shows the prop (if it's accurate ) and the other pic shows a close-up of that ring around the turret.
Hope these help.

Dean

[tea monster]

Thanks, I'd seen the first one, but I hadn't seen the close-up of the turret. I've got that angle, but it's long shot of the whole vessel.

I'm going to consider the war-time pics as gospel. So I'm putting the deck ring in with the wooden deck and the elliptical funnel heads as part of the post-war upgrade package. Shame really, as they looked cool!

So I've started to 'retro-fit' the turret back to its ACW standard. That includes removing all the bolts that I did as I found on the mailing list, and from photos, that the Canonicus class had flush bolts.

I've got the propeller well sort of done.

Next is the deck gubbins and the anchor chains.

[Roscoe]

Looking good...

The close-up of the turret was taken from the same angle pic you have, but I found one that is 10161x8054 and 156 megs, it's huge, but I can't remember where I got it... If I find it again I'll post the link for you.
And I agree with you on the stacks, the curvy ones do look cooler.

I hope you don't mind me asking, but how long have you been using Blender? I played around with it a couple years ago, just never really followed through with it, and I've been tempted to give the latest release another whirl.

Regards,
Dean

[tea monster]

Cheers! I got my ginormous images from the Library of Congress online archive. They have a few ironclad images up there. It's great what Photoshop can do with those large images!

I've been using Blender for about seven years. My portfolio is here:

http://www.owenegan.co.nr

I was sort of on and off-again with Blender when I started. I found a good tut that really showed me how to get to grips with it and I was off and running.

http://www.katsbits.com has a lot of tuts. They are angled more towards game modelling, but they should get you used to the interface and basic modelling. One is here. Blender do a quickstart series as well here.

[Roscoe]

Thanks for the links,
excellent portfolio too, I particularly like the Steam Walker, Mark V and Big Daddy (great game).

Carry on.

Dean

[tea monster]

Thanks for the kind words. If you ever need any help in Blender, either PM me or drop me a line at the email address on the portfolio page.

More progress today. Got the propeller well more to my liking. I've added the hawser guides and the lifeboat davits. Also adjusted the turret some more.

Also did a quick and dirty render test in Yafaray, a free raytracer. No materials yet and just a standard skybox, but it has promise. I think it will look nice with some more detail and some proper textures with bump maps.

Again, if anyone sees anything out of place, please let me know.

Next up is more deck details.

[DrPR]

In one of the photos below you see one gun extended and the other drawn back into the turret. I think this is the way the original Monitor worked. Could both guns on the Canonicus be run out at the same time, or pulled back into the turret at the same time?

Phil

[tea monster]

It does strike a chord, but I can't remember specifically if and when I read it. It might be that they were on a one-out/one-in mechanism. I've checked my reference photos (I don't have my 'Battles and Leaders' any more) and in most of the pics, one is out and one is slightly back. I'll run one in for the next renders.

[Devin]

The original Monitor was the one that couldn't run out both guns, but that was only initially. After her battle with the Virginia they fixed that and she could run out both guns. The main reason you usually see monitors with one gun out and one in is that a lot of the photos are of Passaicclass monitors during the war, most of them had one 11" and one 15" gun, and the 15" gun was too large to fit through the port. By the time the Canonicus class came about, they were turning the gun barrels to be thin enough to fit.

Beautiful work on this model. I've got some plans for Tecumseh but not enough to do the lower hull to my liking. That's the only thing that has kept me from scratch building a model to go with my USS Weehawken. It looks like you've done a good job of figuring that out, even the flare between the hull and the upper "raft" is well depicted.