SS Sagamore 1893 whaleback 1/700 scratch-build

[SG1]

Amazing. A pleasure to see

[marijn van gils]

+1!

[JIM BAUMANN]

still steadily working forwards....

when the Sagamore was alongside -- discharging Cargo--the cargo-booms
were located to the ' upper' hinged gooseneck fittings

When the ship was at sea .the whaleback rounded main deck was often awash--especially when fully loaded,
hence the cargo booms were stowed in the 'lower ' position so as to form a Catwalk,( as per Windjammer Sailing ships)

in order for the crew to be able to move between the ' turret' structures without being washed overboard
the cargo booms were set up as twin booms had stanchions-and-cable railings to facilitate
a degree of safe transit

I cut the bottom off some GMM Gold Plus twin bar rails, and depressed the centres to give the impression of loose cable
in the photo below they are painted dark grey--
==>.....but have since been given the suggestion of being thinner by being highlighted on the top and mid grey on the sides-
( it works quite well ! )

The stair railings were made individually of very thin stainless wire-- much thinner that usual stair PE handrails

The ship carried two capstans-- one fwd and one aft
the fwd one was taller these were made of tube and very small circles of wire

a very distinctive feature on this ship was the large canvas sun-awning covering the bridge the full width

This Sun awning is not erected in every photograph-- but some / most of the framework is ....

The framework was of rectangular timber beams, so as to emulate the larger depth that width of the beams
I could use wire

I used etched brass strips that were thinner than they were deep
( intended for IJN lino strips )

These were cut carefully and joined with matt varnish first( tacky)

and the had runny CA glue dribbled in to the joints

It was a fiddly fragile and small assembly...!

whilst the white glue ' canvas roof' was drying...

I set to making the numerous life rings that were dotted about on
the bridge superstructure railings -
--....in the usual manner
of a soft wire spiral round a small drill shank the spiral then cut and flattened

the failure/ discard rate was 50/ 50...(!)

more soon

Jim Baumann

[Iceman 29]

Superb!

[Pieter]

Very nice awnings Jim. How do you keep those PE beams from moving under the pressure of the white glue drying? On Batoe I used .3mm brass rather than PE sheet for that reason.

[MartinJQuinn]

Incredible craftsmanship and attention to detail. Wow.

[JIM BAUMANN]

Thank you Martin

....the trouble is... scratch-building...==> you have to make everything yourself...!!

( this is not News alas-- but it all takes longer!

======================================================================================
@ Pieter--- I thin the white glue about 65-70% water to glue-- that weakens its shrinkage
and inhibits the deflection of the frame (..... I have found anyway!)
=======================================================================================

I must say that on the real ship the ' set' of railing dodgers
seems somewhat lackadaisical ...!!

I think the ' tattiness' it is because the corners had triangular panels that could be raised--and are often dropped

in addition....the entire panel could be raised it seems ( alas not a great deal of visibility or elegant! )

But... apropos awning ==> herewith a few overall views of the awning on the model...;

whilst studious of the aft end...

I discovered and extra cowl vent !!

whilst at the aft end I noticed this little awning

which I think I shall add as it will brighten up the aft end a little

The time had come to add the railings atop the hull; these were of course stanchions set into a base
( may have been hinged..?)
-- without the water-rail at the bottom.

the railings on the rest of the vessel were stainless steel and very very fine...

but for the deck railings I chose to use GMM Gold plus ultrafine-- as they were brass and almost as fine
but a little more yielding to the double curvature of the hull... !! ..

Because if the lack of a water-rail/ spurn-water... they needed the bottom cutting off

I used scalpel for the first cut on a piece of thick glass
and ' Fiskar 'curved scissors for the second cut
the couple stanchion bottoms that got deflected were straightened by
placing the railing on the sticky-pad end of the post-it note pad
( which held it firmly without point loadings)
and peeled off the ' sticky' by placing a scalpel blade and gently lifting

attaching them was quite and adventure... the glue contact area is minimal
I used thinned white glue 80 water/ 20a glue
this is very tacky and dries really very fast .
...and is --once all the stanchion bases have had a bit of glue brushed on
with a point fine paintbrush--the bond is quite strong--
the excess glue was washed away with a wet paintbrush wetted with water )

Positioning the rail was tricky because I needed to have it in place before gluing...
conundrum

the image below explains it all -- Blu-Tak to the rescue

the stern needed quite a bit of ' cut-n-shut ' of very small bits of railing
and many a deep breath...

Tapered top-masts were made and installed ; the small trucks at the top
were simulated with a blob of paint!

More progress soon

Jim B

[Pieter]

Thanks for the hint about thinning the glue. Must try that one time. It is nice to see your overview pictures now. This ship looks alive.

[hypno7]

The attention to detail is as always very impressive. As Pieter said, it does look alive.

Looking forward to the next updates!

[JIM BAUMANN]

sometimes you just cannot believe your luck....

idly surfing the internet for " just -please-one-only more " image of the SS Sagamore,...

and this Gem turned up--never seen or found it before! what a result !
from this post/ blog
http://solwaypastandpresent.blogspot.co ... -just.html
very interesting--...
but what an image !!

and whist idly looking further...

this from an old book... same dock, same time-but a different angle...

It confirms so much--and also clarifies small details that I still need to add!

Happy Monday !
Jim Baumann

[Rui Matos]

sometimes you just cannot believe your luck....

idly surfing the internet for " just -please-one-only more " image of the SS Sagamore,...

and this Gem turned up--never seen or found it before! what a result !

You were NOT lucky, Jim... it only shows that you are a tenacious ship modeller

This built, as usual, is a lesson on how to think out of the box in order to solve problems/ faults/ issues...
Highly educative and fun to watch!

Cheers,
Rui

[Joe Simon]

Outstanding work Jim!

[anyahajobuzi]

That is some excellent scratch-building skills, Jim. I think you however made a mistake when stated the scale: meant to say: 1/5000??


700... That's a different animal, requiring some very different mindset and tools. And a set of eyes! Very amazing "to scale" weathering!
Beautiful job!

Cheers: Laci

[wefalck]

Good that I am not in Jim's workshop - I would suck in his models and bits pieces, by my gaping deep breath ...

[EJFoeth]

Question on waves from Jim Does the wave pattern follow the usual rules?

The most important parameter for ship wave systems is Froude's number, or, Fn = speed / sqrt(g*shiplength), ending up around Fn = 0.12 for the Meteor at 8-9 knots. At this range the waves are typically very small with diverging waves from the bow/shoulders (people tend to focus on the exact bow, but the shoulders a bit back may contribute to these waves). Around Fn =0.15 the waves should become more noticeable with the 'dip' in the wave pattern near the fwd shoulder deepening, the more so if the hull is quite full forward. At Fn =0.15, when the ship is very full a transverse wave is often seen travels along the hull and they may not go much faster at all (submarines at the surface shows this wave really well). On that one image of Meteor above I see only a very mild diverging wave though, and, if it could go up to 15 knots that's Fn = 0.225 or typically merchant ship speeds that are not very full.

I added this pic of HMS Hood as I happened to have that one calculated (if I had taught myself how to make a 3D hull quickly I could run the Meteor through the same program, but alas). This is at a ship speed of 12 knots, which is the same Froude number. This is very very slow in terms of waves. Note to undulating pattern of wave crests and troughs with a mild transverse wave in the wake. For deep water a wave length of a wave running along the hull is V = sqrt(g*wavelength/ (2*pi), or, about wavelength=24,4 m/s at 12 knots, and I count about 10-ish waves along the hull; you should expect the same number for Meteor at 8 kn. Which seems to be roughly the same number as the B&W image (coincidence maybe?). In both the photograph and the figure you notice that the diverging waves move away from the hull and no waves are really visible near the aft hull until you reach the stern. So it appears the wave patterns are roughly similar.

You'll also notice a frothy trail from where the bow waves are breaking and that foam is transported along the hull (that is, it is deposited on the water surface and stays there) while the ship moves on. Between the foam and the diverging waves there are all kinds on tiny waves; these do not even show up in the calculation and are visible only on calm surfaces. I'm not sure what causes these small waves though---fortunately my speciality is not ship waves---but I tend to notice them more often... as below from my "wave collection":

Note that these diverging wave patterns are always contained between an angle of 39 degrees, if the water depth is large. But, the angle starts to increase as the water depth decreases and when sailing in channels (angle up to 90 degrees is possible... briefly). So you can deviate from that angle and if anyone makes a comment on a too wide angle attribute that to shallow water effects.

[JIM BAUMANN]

WoW !-- I think that answers all my queries ref the wake pattern of a whaleback .!
I will endeavour to interpret the information to my model's base!

I will post my progress; thanks EJ !

Jim Baumann

[bigtodd]

Wow great thread. The crazy thing is I just watched this video on the history of the whale back boats.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OPbf3_cZQ ... FjayBzaGlw

So to follow this is great.

[JIM BAUMANN]

@bigtodd

Sagamore was different to most of the US whalebacks in that her machinery was much further forward and she was designed to be a seagoing vessel,( England to the Black Sea ) was designed as self-unloading-- hence the large number of masts and profusion of cargo booms.

====================================================================
Anyhow.... this is the last update before 'final-model-images' will be posted here and a ' full' gallery shoot

The chain fwd for the 2 x anchors passed through the bow eyes acting as fairleads ( hence the outer two were larger )

ALL PE chain I had -even the very smallest looked --- large and over-scale

So I tried the David Griffith method of plaiting wire to make an imitation of chain. It looked very good for a large chain/ large ship but even using the thinnest wire would not pass though my bow-eyes
Hence I twisted just two strands of slightly thicker wire-- in situ on the ship, painted and highlighted it looked pretty good ( on the model I used a tighter / shorter twist than in the photo below )

I could not avoid the problem any longer--and started the process of raising the water-level in 4 layers.
I used for the first coat a lower density faster drying structural gel
in the image it looks like the ship has stranded on a white beach... ! .?

Once the water-levels had dried ( 2 weeks !) the first coats of paint went on.....
aiming at a shade and hue suitable for the grey -green of the coastal waters of England,
adding coats wet-on-wet of differing and lightening shades

Thereafter I added a few sparse figures, the main hull deck being an untenable location at sea, and I made a start on the the rigging --this was done--as ever using stretched sprue.
( using my tried an tested methods
as here viewtopic.php?f=4&t=37536 )

In itself the rigging was not that complex or difficult, but because was not much of it, there is no hiding place and it needed to look even more like the real thing!
This meant a lot of gazing at often fuzzy old images to try and ascertain
what all the ' string ' actually did ; and where is started and where it finished !

>>> ....When Sagamore was built in 1893 for the original ship-owners William Johnston and Co of Liverpool,
Sagamore's unorthodox design prevented her from being given a classification and load line for registration in the United Kingdom. ( )

Therefore Johnston's and Doxford's ( the ship-builders) created a jointly-owned subsidiary to own her, Belgian American Maritime Company SA, and registered her in Antwerp.
In 1897 Johnston's transferred Sagamore to the Belgian Marine Trading Company. She remained registered in Antwerp.....<<<

I had naturally ( but wrongly! ) assumed that the ship would nonetheless carry a Red Ensign ( British merchant fleets)

The only image where the flags were discernible as a guide for flags I had was this image below
( taken with orthochromatic film- hence the distorted colour values)

In images I found on the 'net , the deep golden yellow of the Belgian flags...when on a ship with back-light and 700 x smaller faded somewhat!...

So I used a faded yellow post it note to make numerous Belgian flags...

from which I could narrow down my choice

The house flag was harder to find online-- but persistence and e-bay (! ) produced a result

This was made of thin paper, drawn and painted with coloured aquarell pencils
The lettering eluded me -- but small dabs of white gave an impression thereof

Once the flags were attached to their halyards, I finished off the seacsape, added a propeller blade
( visible as the ship is running light ,in a gentle swell en-route to another port to load the next cargo...

I checked carefully over the model for dust particles and errant hairs etc,
and then sprayed it with matt Winsor and Newton Galeria varnish


the images below were pre-varnish --

[Rui Matos]

Hi Jim

Well... it looks perfect (as usual with your works)!


Congrats and... what's next??
Cheers
Rui

[Iceman 29]

Well done Jim, you've really succeeded with this original ship. The ship's wake is perfect.