The Ship Model Forum

Bou hou hou ! fantastic , wish I had your skill !!!

Somewhat belated thanks, setori, for your praise !

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Foredeck Chain-Rails

Progress has been slow over the last few weeks because of various travels in the course of May (Italy, Germany, Spain) and because installing the rails is actually a slow process with breaks in between steps to let glue or paint dry.

I was a bit worried about the various corners these chain rails take on the foredeck – not a problem in real life, but the fake chain made from double-twisted turned out to be surprisingly compliant, without getting kinks that could not be straightened out.







Also, the ventilators for the crew-quarters beneath the foredeck were installed now.

Next thing on the to-do-list will be the anchor-buoys that, according to the photographs usually were tied to the rails near the anchor-davits.

Apropos anchor-davits: I realised after taking the above pictures, that I didn’t put them back yet – I had taken them out to facilitate the threading of the chain-rails.


To be continued ....

_________________
Eberhard

Former chairman Arbeitskreis historischer Schiffbau e.V. (German Association for Shipbuilding History)

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Aaaah, its really beautiful, Wefalck!

_________________
"I've heard there's a wicked war a-blazing, and the taste of war I know so very well
Even now I see the foreign flag a-raising, their guns on fire as we sail into hell"
Roger Whittaker +9/13/2023

Wonderful work Eberhart!
The 'fake' chains look great

Thank you very much for your encouraging comments !

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To begin with: in the meantime, I have completed the chain-rails around the barbette:



This was a straightforward operation with the experience gained previously and only one corner to go around.


Anchor-Buoys

A fairly conspicuous detail on warships of that period were the buoys for the bow-anchors that were lashed to a convenient place near the anchor-davits, when not in use. Their purpose was to mark the location of the anchors. It was important to know, where the anchors were laid out in order to detect, whether they may have shifted and to indicate their location to newcomers, so that they don’t throw their anchors across yours, which could cause trouble, when you have to raise your anchors.
At the time of SMS WESPE, the buoys were made from galvanised sheet-iron and had the shape of two cones joined at their base. A web of served wire-rope gave two attachment points, for the rope with which they were attached to the anchor and for a fishing-lanyard.


Instruction leaflet from 1909 for the construction and fitting out of anchor-buoys of the German Imperial Navy. Source: https://forum.arbeitskreis-historischer ... &mode=view.

As per the official instruction sheet from which this illustration was taken, the sheet-metal was supposed to be painted in red lead-oxide primer. There is, however, no clear information in what final colour the buoys were to be painted. Typically, modeller chose green for the starboard anchor-buoy and red for the port one. There is a certain logic in this, because in this way the anchors can be identified, even if the boat may have swayed around them.
There is a picture taken on board of S.M.S. HERTHA around 1876 that shows seamen working on such anchor-buoys:


Seamen at work on the deck of S.M.S. HERTHA in around 1876, Source: https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/ ... w/11408859.

There are two buoys visible, one on the left in a quite light grey and another one, almost covered by the seaman at the front, which is a lot darker. Considering that the glass-plate negatives of the time were less sensitive to red than to green, which would appear darker in the positive print, one can conclude that the buoy on the left was probably painted green, while the other one was probably painted red. This is so far the only evidence from the period in question for them having been painted in different colours.

While the shape is seemingly simple, it is not so easy to produce and to manipulate. The two cones have to be turned separately and then fitted together. I choose Plexiglas for ease of gluing the halves together. Turning proceeded in steps: first the diameter for the wooden caps was turned and a groove to mark the overall length, then the top-slide was set over at an angle of 28° to turn the cone. As per prototype four notches were cut into the caps using a pointed cutting tool set with the cutting-edge vertical. Finally, the cones were parted off. The two cones were glued together making sure that the notches for the rope-web were offset by 45° at each end.


The unpainted anchor-buoys

Another consideration was how to reproduce the carefully spliced web of served wire-ropes. I decided that tightly twisted 0.1 mm diameter tinned copper-wire would be the best route. Four strands of twisted wire with a loop at the end were produced and slipped over a ring of twisted wire which then was soldered closed. The four strands were distributed equally around the ring and fixed with a tiny amount of varnish. The arrangement was slipped over the buoy, gathered together at the end and secured with a short winding of thread soaked in varnish. One of the strands was bent into an eye and secured with a half-hitch of thread. Finally, all the ends were trimmed down to the binding.

The buoys then were sprayed red and green respectively and once the acrylic was dry, the wire-rope was picked out with a sepia artist’s marker pen (which seemed to give more control over the paint flow than my brushing technique).

I did not take any pictures of the manufacturing process, as each step was actually quite straightforward.


Finished anchor-buoys

On several photographs one can see that the anchor-buoys were tied to the chain-rail near the rear anchor-davit. I don’t know how long the rope was with which the buoys were tied to the anchors, but I would think it would in the order of 20 m, accounting for typical anchoring depths. A thin ‘rope’ was produced on the rope-walk from slightly brownish material, assuming that such rope would be heavily tarred to resist its permanent exposure to the elements. A ring was formed and tied together with the buoy to the rail.


Stowed anchor-buoys


To be continued ....

_________________
Eberhard

Former chairman Arbeitskreis historischer Schiffbau e.V. (German Association for Shipbuilding History)

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A very successful ship indeed.

_________________
Pascal

•Battleship Bretagne 3D: https://vu.fr/FvCY
•SS Delphine 3D: https://vu.fr/NeuO
•SS Nomadic 3D: https://vu.fr/tAyL
•USS Nokomis 3D: https://vu.fr/kntC
•USS Pamanset 3D: https://vu.fr/jXGQ

Beautiful work on those Buoys Eberhart!

I wish I had more opportunities to break out the lathe. It is so much fun!

Thanks for your kind comments!

Indeed, I found, when working on 'older' subjects, that is wooden ships, one needs less those fancy machine tools. More modern, metal ships, have more details that can and should be reproduced using machine tools - because this is what was used on the originals.

My follow-on project will be wood and sails, so very little work for the mechanical workshop I have amassed

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Eberhard

Former chairman Arbeitskreis historischer Schiffbau e.V. (German Association for Shipbuilding History)

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The Orthochromatic plate and film emissions of the time were pretty much sensitive to blue light only. For developing the films, a red "safe" light was used in the darkroom during development. Much in the way that a safelight is used during paper development for prints (B&W).

All that as irrelevant, the model and it's construction are spectacular.

Regards: Tom

The shipyard re-opened in early September after a long summer-break that I spent away from the workshop, but it was followed by various business and private travels. So, producing a small detail took an awful lot of time …

Some ‘clutter’ on the deck-house

I found producing the stanchions for the awnings too much of a challenge at this small scale and didn’t like the look of them anyway. So, I did not install them on the model (and even omitted their sockets, as I did not have any information on how these really looked like). My excuse was that the model will be shown in a semi-battle-ready gun-exercise situation, where the stanchions would be stowed.


Photograph showing awning-stanchions in a storage rack on the deckhouse

There are quite a few stanchions, which are tapered and slightly curved at the upper end with the ring. The upper section is round, while the lower section that fits into the sockets is square. According to one picture available, it seems that the stanchions were stowed in sort of racks along the rails of the deck-house when not in use. The same applied presumably to the wooden beams that formed the centre ridge of the awnings.
Mass-producing these stanchions that would be barely seen, when stowed in the rack, from brass-wire seemed a disproportionate effort. Hence, I decided to laser-cut them from card-stock. They are very flimsy and were stiffened in varnish before proceeding them to paint them with acrylic paint. The paint was applied quite generously to have a sort of rounding effect.


The two racks ready for installing on the model

I could not find any picture that showed the stowing racks, so I had to invent something that seemed reasonable. Somehow the racks seem to be associated with the rail-stanchions. I devised a sort of cage with a laser-cut base and uprights made from thin tinned copper-wire. The racks also accommodate the (foldable) wooden beams that support the awnings amidship. In addition, it seems that the mops etc. for the gun were stored in these racks.




The racks installed

To be continued ....

_________________
Eberhard

Former chairman Arbeitskreis historischer Schiffbau e.V. (German Association for Shipbuilding History)

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In the meantime, I had to make myself a list of all those tiny details that still need to be fabricated and installed. It is easy to forget them, when you are getting closer to the end …

Crane above the projectile hatch

Projectiles and powder bags were stored in different compartments for safety reasons below the barbette and in consequence, each had its own hatch. That for the powder bags was round, while the one for the projectiles was rectangular in order for them to lifted out on a trolley.
As discussed in a much earlier post, the lithographies from the early 1880s do not show any mechanical device to help the 330 kg heavy projectiles from their storage space to the floor of the barbette. Man-handling clearly is out of question. However, drawings related to a later re-fit show inside the deckhouse a winch marked as ‘winch for the hoisting of projectiles’ and a simple derrick-like wall-crane bolted to the rear wall of the barbette. In these drawings it is not shown how the runner rope would have been led from the crane to the winch, there most have been some sort of opening in the rear of the barbette. Also, not clear is, how the in the gun-crew in the barbette and the men in the projectile storage room would have communicated with the winch-men inside the deckhouse.
Interestingly, in the same drawing a simple wall-mounted crane for the powder-bags seems to be indicated, but no winch belonging to it. Perhaps the 45 kg bags were hoisted up with the help of a tackle.


The assembled and painted parts at their place, port view

The small detail (about 3 mm by 3 mm) of the projectile crane caused me a lot of aggravation and took a long time to fabricate. I drew it in several versions to be cut from Canson-paper on the laser-cutter until I arrived at a solution that worked. Assembly was also rather difficult and several parts jumped into the invisible black hole on the workbench, so that they had to be replaced. The pulley was turned from 1 mm steel rod.

The hook was fashioned from tinned copper-wire and the shape built up from Vallejo acrylic paint ‘oily steel’. A short piece of rope was spliced into the ring and the spherical weight built up from acrylic paint.

Likewise, the powder-crane was cut from two layers of Canson-paper, soaked in varnish and painted. There is no information on what it may have looked like. I did not model the tackle, assuming that during the gun-drill in which the model will be presented, no charges were used and therefore, the tackle was not rigged. Only a shackle was fashioned from tinned copper wire.

Lamp-boards
Another small item on my to-do-list were the lamp-boards. According to the very first photograph of SMS WESPE these were placed at the front end of the deckhouse surrounding the barbette. In the lithograph and in later photographs they are shown on short poles towards the rear end of the deckhouse and raised above the rails.

These lamp-boards were laser-cut in three parts from Canson-paper and painted appropriately after assembly. The petroleum-lamps are not shown, as during day-time they would have been cleaned and then stored in deckhouse(?).


The assembled and painted parts at their place, starbord view

Not much to show actually for the amount time and effort spent on the parts …


To be continued ....

_________________
Eberhard

Former chairman Arbeitskreis historischer Schiffbau e.V. (German Association for Shipbuilding History)

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Beautiful work - especially at 1:160!

Phil

_________________
A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Thanks !

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The last two weeks were spent travelling on business, to Stockholm (including a renewed visit to the Maritime Museum there) and to Brussels. Friday and Saturday I spent at the information desk of Association des Amis du Musée de la Marine, which has been finally re-opened (see other thread on this). So, not much time in the workshop, but I still managed to complete the

Banisters

These banisters are flimsy matters so that I left them to the end as far as possible, still following the pattern to work ‘inside-out’ in order to not damage delicate items.

The information is somewhat patchy as to what the banisters actually looked like. They are represented in the lithographs and on one or the other photograph, one can see parts of them. Basically, there are two types: bend pipe-work and straight stanchions located in sockets that support a wooden rail.



As the metal parts are laid out in yellow on the lithography, they appear to have been made from brass (or bronze). One picture shows bare metal for the pipe-work. Hence, I decided to make them from bare 0.3 mm brass wire. At the moment this looks rather bright, but I assume that it will tarnish somewhat with time.



The pipework ones were bent over a scale copy of the lithograph. The ends, where they attach to the stairs appear to have been flattened, which duly was represented on the model.

For the ones with wooden rail at the end of the deckhouse, I cheated a bit and instead of having individual stanchions, I flattened the wire in the area of the wooden rail to have a support for it and bent the stanchions down sharply. The sockets were cut from 0.5 mm OD brass tube, which is a sliding fit on the 0.3 mm wire. The ends were milled down to the appropriate angle. The wooden rail was fashioned from two laser-cut strips of paper laminated together with varnish. With hind-sight, fashioning all parts from brass and soldering them together in a jig might have given crispier results.



All parts were cemented in place with clear varnish.

Overall, these quite simple parts took surprisingly long to produce.

To be continued ....

_________________
Eberhard

Former chairman Arbeitskreis historischer Schiffbau e.V. (German Association for Shipbuilding History)

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Apologies to all, who looked here in vain for new developments, but real life severely interfered with my workshop time and the zen mental state to carry out miniature work ...

In the meantime, I wish all Forum Members a peaceful Christmas and a successful New Year 2024 !

_________________
Eberhard

Former chairman Arbeitskreis historischer Schiffbau e.V. (German Association for Shipbuilding History)

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Mery Christmas Eberhard!


We can't wait to see what happens next with this gem.

_________________
Pascal

•Battleship Bretagne 3D: https://vu.fr/FvCY
•SS Delphine 3D: https://vu.fr/NeuO
•SS Nomadic 3D: https://vu.fr/tAyL
•USS Nokomis 3D: https://vu.fr/kntC
•USS Pamanset 3D: https://vu.fr/jXGQ

Indeed real life is a necessity to achieve anything. Having achieved so much with your miniature machining I can see where you might want to conquer new worlds!

May life treat you well! Tom

Well, again, real life with travels around Europe, mostly private have got in the way, plus of course, holiday preparations. Some small visible progress only, though preparations for installing the ship’s boats are under way.

Completion of the staying of the funnel

According to the principle of working ‘inside-out’, installation of the outer pairs of funnel stays had been left to a moment, when other work would not interfere with them anymore.


The remaining funnel stays installed

The stays are chain and they were simulated in the same way as the chains for the rails etc. Luckily the lithograph represents these chain-stays by dotted lines, so that the points where they have to be made fast are known. Miniature eyebolts were fashioned from wire and glued into holes drilled for the purpose. They also received laser-cut washers of 0.5 mm diameter. The stays are set taught with lanyards made from thread as used in the old days for mending ladies’ ‘nylons’.

Not sure, whether I showed pictures before of how I am making fake chains using twisted wire. The material is oxidised Konstantan (a Cu/Ni alloy), sofar the best material I found for the purpose due to its tensile strength.


Twisting two 0.06 mm wires together so that the length of each ‘twist’ is the desired length of the chain link.


Laying in half of the twisted wire and twisting it together in the opposite direction.


The finished ‘chain’.

Depending on the envisaged use, one could also pull the ‘chain’ through the fingers with some graphite to make the links more visible.

Micro-marlin-spike
In between I also spent some time on the lathe and made marlin-spike for the upcoming ropework. So far, I just used a hypodermic needle, but found holding it between the fingers not very satisfactory. I knew that hollow marlinspikes are being used for work with wire-rigging, but somehow it had not occurred to me to use it in the model-realm. Thanks to ‘archjofo’ who described his marlin-spike made from a sharpened piece of brass tube.


Hypodermic needle as marlin-spike

As I have quite a collection of hypodermic needles in my scrap-box, I selected a suitable size. The nice (real) ebony handle also has been in the scrap-box for a long time, waiting for a suitable use. I gather it came from my father’s estate, who had trained as a medical doctor during the war. At that time a lot of better-quality (biological, medical, dissecting) instruments that did not need to be sterile were made with ebony or ivory handles – looking rather elegant today.

The handle was almost ready to use and needed just a bit of turning down, where the ferrule will be fitted. The ferrule was turned from 6 mm brass rod and drilled out for the handle. A deep hole for the 0.8 mm hypodermic needle was drilled. The ferrule is a tight fit on the handle, but was secured with a drop of PVA glue, while the needle was just driven into the slightly undersized bore.


Micro-marlin-spike

Hypodermic needles, of course, are meant to cut through the skin and in consequence have very sharp edges – not so good, when working with fine threads. The cutting edges, hence, were dulled with an Arkansas-stone.


Micro-marlin-spike

Using such marlin-spike, it is possible to make fake eyesplices with ropes as thin as 0.18 mm …

The next post will concern the installation of the ship’s boats, perhaps the most dreaded operations of all due to the exceeding flimsiness of some parts.

To be continued ....

_________________
Eberhard

Former chairman Arbeitskreis historischer Schiffbau e.V. (German Association for Shipbuilding History)

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Arkansas stone.

From Hot Springs, Arkansas, where I grew up. We used to hike on an 800 foot (244 meter) high hill of Arkansas stone ranging from dark gray and coarse to extremely fine pink stone that you could read a newspaper through.

Phil

_________________
A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Sorry, yes, somehow lost the second 's' in Arkansas, must have been thinking of the pronounciation ... good stuff anyway, but expensive. I've got a small slip-stone and and a small wheel for the lathe to hone lathe-tooling.

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Eberhard

Former chairman Arbeitskreis historischer Schiffbau e.V. (German Association for Shipbuilding History)

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Yeh. Those dumb hillbillies are picking rocks off the ground and selling them for exorbitant prices. And to top it off, much of that hill I mentioned is in a National Park!

It is an interesting area geologically. One of the largest deposits of bauxite (aluminum) in North America, gold, silver, quartz, one of the highest concentrations of zirconium on Earth, diamonds, and the hot springs. And there is a huge lodestone (magnetite) that causes magnetic compasses to point the wrong way. It was an interesting place to grow up in.

Phil

_________________
A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle