USS Carondelet 1/96th scale Civil War Gunboat

[Devin]

I'm working on my first scratch-build, about three weeks of real serious work on it down, and I wanted to start posting. The full information is on My Site if you want to see it all. I'm not going to post everything I put on my site here and on other websites, it's just too much work.


This build is of the USS Carondelet. For some specifics about the City Class gunboats, of which she was a member, and a bit of history on Carondelet, visit my website above. The build will be mostly of styrene, but I will use cast resin parts and brass where I can get away with it.

Anyway... first off is the overhead plan. I scanned the plans I'm using into Photoshop, sized them, printed them out, taped them together, and used contact adhesive to attach them to .060 sheet styrene (~1.5mm).


Next comes the cutting. Here's the main deck. The large channel down the middle of it is for the paddle wheel. These City Class boats were of a mid-wheel design, utilizing the casemate and hull thickness for protection of the wheel assembly. The holes drilled in the deck are for the passages down into the lower hull where they stored ammunition, ropes, stores, etc. I drilled them round here because it was easier then cutting square holes in such thick styrene. When I plank the decks these openings will be squared off.


The City Class gunboats hull was completely parallel between the upper and lower levels. Measuring this distance and allowing for thickness of plastic, I came up with a frame height of 21mm. Fortunately, my strip wood/styrene cutter's maximum extension was exactly 21mm. Couldn't have planned it any better.


And continuing on the "that was easy!" track, MOST of the hull angles for the frames are 45-degrees. Out comes the chopper.


Everything cut to length and with the 45-degree angles cut, assembly was quick and straight-forward.


Until it came time add the lower part of the hull.


One of the sets of plans I had showed that EVERY angle on the hull was 45-degrees. As can be seen in the above image, that doesn't work out so well when you get to the forward and aft part of the hull. In retrospect I should have figured that out before hand, but oh well. I lost a few hours to marking the new frame angles, snapping off three of them aft and 8 of them forward, cutting them again, then attaching once more. Much better after all of that extra work:


I continue on...

[Dave Wooley]

Hi Devin good to see your first build on the board . Interesting period and USS Carondelet is different . Look forward to more of your posts. Interesting collection of cutting tools you have there . Where did you source your strip wood/styrene cutter , not seen one of those before?
Dave Wooley

[Devin]

Dave,

That tool is marketed as a Wood Strip Cutter by Micro-Mark:

http://www.micromark.com/WOOD-STRIP-CUTTER,6625.html

It's a pretty good tool, but I find that a #11 blade tends to flex a bit when using it on thick styrene. In the future I'll either back the blade with a shim of steel, or just use a thicker blade.

-Devin

[Neptune]

Great work Devin, I like that cutting tool too. Perhaps you can just cut lighter and do it over a few times? Looks pretty handy for styrene work for sure!

I'll be following this with great interest too, I have a serious lack of knowledge on the monitor and paddle wheel ships so it'll be interesting to find out what they look like too! It adds more variety to the board too, we have lots of scales and lots of subjects nowadays!!!!

[Devin]

Thanks for the comments, Neptune and Dave. Yes, Neptune, I think maybe I'm a little ham-fisted when it comes to cutting styrene. Too much pressure. I can't seem to get a handle on cutting with a scalpel, so I'm sure that's it.

A couple more photos. After I made sure that the bow frames matched up nice and neat, I then noticed that the hull bottom at the stern matched up fine in width, but not length. I was able to fix this by cutting the bottom and inserting spacers, along with a couple more frames to support the joints.


With that resolved and a little sanding to begin to shape the frames along the curves of the bow and stern, and a few extra stringers between the frames at the extreme curves for added stability, it's starting to look like a proper hull. At this point the bow-to-stern measurement of the hull is approximately 21" (53.5cm). The next step is to sheet all of this, but I need a beer and a few deep breaths before I continue on.

[Dave Wooley]

Hi Devin Thanks for the information , I must try and track one down here in the UK. A beer and a deep breath , sounds good to me . Your hull is taking shape rather well.
Dave Wooley

[Devin]

One thing I've noticed over the last several builds I've done online is that the building is a lot of fun, web updates not so much, and they seem to take LONGER than the actual model building. So, that's my excuse for no update last weekend, and now for some more boat.

With the hull bottom, main deck, and all the frames stuck together, it's time to sheet. Along the hull sides where everything's nice and straight, I simply glued in .030 styrene and trimmed to shape. For the curves forward and aft, though, I "plated" the areas with blue masking tape, trimmed it, then stuck it to sheet styrene and cut it roughly to shape with shears.





It was then glued to the hull and trimmed and sanded after the glue and styrene had dried.



One of the few curves on a City Class gunboat is on the bottom of the hull, where the flat bottom hull transitions into the paddle wheel well. This is illustrated here, boxed in red, on the David Meagher plans.



I transferred this curve to the inside of the hull trough by cutting the curve out of a copy of the plans, taping it to both sides, and tracing it with a pencil. I then affixed one end of a strip of styrene to the lower hull's end in the trough, let that dry, and then gently curved the styrene to follow the pencil mark, careful to make sure that the ends of the strips on both sides broke the surface of the main deck at the exact same point.



Here I show one plank installed, before the curved sections were cut flush with the deck, to make sure everything lined up. Eventually the entire curve will be planked with strips of styrene like this. I need to allow for steam exhaust piping, however, and I'd rather wait until the boilers and piping go in so I can cut the planks before attaching, rather than doing a retro-fit.



This is how she sets now. At this point I'm filling gaps with styrene and using my rasp file and sandpaper to make sure everything is straight. I don't have to be too concerned with neatness at this point, as everything shown will be planked with another coat of styrene, but I still find myself obsessing over little things. That's half the fun of it, I suppose.

[Neptune]

Holy **** Where were you when I started scratch building five years ago????
Amazingly simple, yet excellent method for doing that bow shape. Never really thought of using tape to shape it, but the result definately speaks for itself! Got to try that next time too. Very smooth finish that way.

Also very nice work on that well and curves, takes some patience!
Love that paint collection you have in the background too, very envious of that

[MartinJQuinn]

Love that paint collection you have in the background too, very envious of that

It's just for show - he never really uses it!

Fantastic work Devin - I love it.

[Devin]

Thanks, Neptune. The tape idea was a happy accident as I was trying to figure out how much I'm going to need to bend the styrene I'm going to plank the hull with. The Vallejo paints came from me trying a couple of bottles of them several years ago, immediately falling in love with them, and replacing all of my old paints with Vallejo a little at a time. I pretty much use them for everything except priming (Mr. Surfacer) and metallics (Alcad).

And thanks, Martin! Now I think I could tackle that CV-5 hull. Well, maybe a bit more practice...

[Wrench]

How is this progressing. Always liked the City class.

[Devin]

I haven't done much on it for the past week or so. I'm on a retreat with my writing group, something we do once a year, and so the focus has been on sticking words together, not so much styrene. When I get home I hope to start scribing the planks on the inner trough walls and adding the individual hull plank to the outer hull.

[Devin]

Not a lot of progress due to travel and writing, but I wanted to put up something since it's been over a month. Above I stated how I don't have to be too concerned with neatness at this point, as this skin over the hull is the first of two. I do, however, want to fill any major dips so that the planking doesn't run too wonky. Enter Aves Apoxie Sculpt. This is much like your basic two-part putty. I use it almost exclusively. It's more time intensive than something like hobby putty or Bondo as it must be mixed and it takes a day to dry. The benefits are that there is no shrinkage when dry -- absolutely zero -- and if you use it to build up an area you can then sand an edge down until it's a razor sharp edge, or as a filler it will feather out until it's translucent. You can roll it into a tube, let it dry, and work it in a lathe. I've never seen a putty that works as well or is as versatile as this stuff.



Here you can see where I have applied the Aves to the hull. When I sheeted the hull I started with the straight runs amidships and fit them between the two decks. When sheeted forward and aft, though, I put the sheeting on the outside of the deck radius. Not a big difference, but it's a better bond, and I ended up with a step-down in in those areas.

*Note my cool make-shift holders for rolled plans!*



This is it sanded smooth -- mostly, I put a little dab more in a gouge that I made while sanding -- and you can see how it feathers down to almost nothing when sanded. I don't want a lot of it on the styrene for this purpose as I want as much of a styrene-to-styrene bond between this layer and the next as possible.



Another bit of work as to do with starting the keel. This is something that had I thought it out further before I started then I would have made this an actual structural keel going from the bow to the fore end of the engine room, but I didn't, so live and learn. When I sheeted the bow area I left a gap and then fit this piece of rectangular styrene stock. I used a lot of plastic cement and my machinists squares to make sure it's all true and straight. The gaps along the side will be covered by the fitted planking in the next pass.



Now I'm waiting for the rest of the Aves putty to dry, sand that out, then I get to extend that keel on the bow to the lower hull and start planking the bottom of the hull.

[Neptune]

I'm sure that putty is dry by now! So how's the progress? Any updates???

[Devin]

Yeah, the putty is well dry by now! Since my last posting I've only been able to add the three keels to the hull and begin planking the lower hull. Life -- as it often does -- has intruded with me being called back to work, and I had some editors ask to see some samples of my novel, so those items have been taking priority. I'll try to get some photos posted this weekend.

[Devin]

I finally got some time off (my first free weekend in nearly a month). So, an update:

Had to do some damage control. I realized that I hadn't fixed any bolts inside the hull to mount it to the base. I opened up a couple of the holes in the deck and put them inside, positioned them with a paint brush handle, tacked them in place with super glue, then packed epoxy putty around them to get a solid join.



Here's the curve between the lower and upper hull that I showed started a few posts ago. Now I've finished planking the curve.



The City Class had three keels. Here's the centerline keel with the upturn for the bow. Nice, simple 45-degree angle here.



Here's the rear end of that centerline keel, attached to the hull. I had to rip this piece out once as it was WAY off of the center line. Working backwards I found a measurement here and there off by only a millimeter or two which added up the problem. A lot of sanding and swearing and re-measuring fixed the issue.



Here's where I sit now. The three keels are clearly visible here. I've started planking the lower hull. I'm using Evergreen strip styrene, 3mm wide by 1mm thick, cut into 103mm lengths. It's slow, tedious, yet rewarding work. I'm leaving the keels and the planks proud of the hull edge for now so that I can trim and sand them all at the same time for a uniform finish.



That's it for now.

[JP64]

Hi, Devin

Nice to see that your Carondelet is growing up !!!
But you need just a bit more of free time

Cheers

JP

[Devin]

It's kind of repetitive to say how busy I've been lately, but it does impact the modeling time. I continue with the tedious task of laying the 1mm X 3.2mm X 102mm planks. Each plank is cut to size, all four edges of the top surface scraped with a scalpel to knock off the sharp edges and give definition between the planks, and then glued down. I'm laying them in a staggered pattern of 4 rows before I repeat the pattern. I futzed around with the contrast and such on this photo so that hopefully you can see what I'm talking about.



That's it for now, but I believe I might have worked out how to begin laying out the casemate, something I've been pondering for a couple of months now. Hopefully I can proceed soon, or at the very least finish planking the bottom of the hull and move to the hull sides, which will be done in the same manner as the bottom.

[Dan K]

Great work but, what a pain on the planking. What kind of glue here? Just more Tamiya thin liquid? I ask because I would think it would dissolve the seam between the planks.

[Dave Wooley]

Hi Devin Good to see more up dates on this unusual subject. Your styrene work is clean and crisp.
Dave Wooley