The Ship Model Forum

In that second photo that's something definitely covered with a canvas, not a solid structure like a head/outhouse or a free flying piece of canvas like a sail. You can see from the shadow that it overhangs the hull a bit. I'd be willing to bet that's the light, but who could tell what it actually looked like under that cover.

_________________
We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley

It does look like that sheet (dirty laundry ) in those pics does cover something, just not sure if it's a headlight or not, interesting though, I'll do some more digging... But if it is, it'll be included on the CAD model, working light and all.

MartinJQuinn,
thanks, more on the Onondaga to come.

Owen,
good pics, thanks...

Dean

I read something about the light recently, maybe in Canney, and he said it was a standard coal-oil fired locomotive headlamp. That wouldn't be hard to replicate, but they surely had it mounted on some swivel mount.

_________________
We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley

I hate to say this, but that canvas box-like thing looks like the WC that they used to hang off the back of the ship. Normally they would be mounted on the aft of the vessel due to... well, due to reasons that most of you can probably imagine. Maybe the wind was in the wrong direction that day?

I would think the lamp would be up on the turret so that they could get it higher up to shine on the river bank. In one of the pics, you can see something on the top of the forward turret, but I can't make out what it is.

Here are the rest of the Brady photos that pertain to the James River.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnational ... 128023567/

Click on the photo and you'll get a white page with the photo in the middle of the page. Click on it again and you'll get the pic on a dark background. In the top right corner you'll see a button for 'view all sizes'. Click on that and you'll get another white background. Click on 'Original' to get a 3000px image.

Owen

That makes sense about the light being mounted higher up, but with the WC, you wonder why they would hang it instead of just dumping it overboard, unless they had another use for it.

And thanks for the link, great pics,
Dean

The Head got its name from the days of sail. It was an area right where the bowsprit attached to the hull, and it was there because the winds from aft that filled the sails would blow the... aromas, forward and off the ship. With the advent of powered ships, the winds changed, so to speak, and they moved them aft.

The turret mounted light doesn't really make sense to me. It would have had to be mounted on the rotating part of the turret, which would have been problematic. Vibration from gun discharges, and when reloading guns monitors always turned their turrets away from the targets, which would take the light out of play. But the biggest reason I think it's on the bow is that's the location I've read in several accounts. I'll dig into "Old Steam Navy" tonight and see what Canney says specifically.

_________________
We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley

Dean,

In your post about 3D stereolithography, what is the thing you labeled "ultra detailed material painted?"

It looks like a track-type landing gear. They tried something like this on the B-36 to make it capable of operating from undeveloped airfields.

Phil

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A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Phil,

It does look like those tracked landing gear doesn't it. I did a quick search on their website for more info on it, but I didn't find anything, just that picture labeled painted ultra detail, but it sure looks similar.

Dean

I'm no expert on the Cold War Bomber force, but it does look like one of these.

I've started a prop for my Monitor renders. It's going to be either a tender or a Rebel gunboat (or, re-dressed, as both!). What gets me is that this took about 90 minutes to model. It's once you get into the details and rendering that the time this takes explodes exponentially.



Owen

Yep, that's the landing gear, they sure did some unique stuff in those days, nice find...

Really good start on the gunboat Owen, and I couldn't agree with you more about the details, seems to take forever on the little things. I have maybe 2 hours on the Onondaga in that last pic of it, and that's with re-doing the turrets. And rendering, I could spend a day easily on trying different settings. We must be mad I tell ya.

Cheers,
Dean

Hello all,

Sorry to join the discussion a bit late, but I've been making 3D ships through Shapeways for a few months now and thought I could show off some of my stuff.

http://s871.photobucket.com/albums/ab27 ... FUD_Ships/
http://www.shapeways.com/shops/objects
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67769300@N04/6168203482/
http://collins355.blogspot.com/2011/09/ ... ildup.html
http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=243599
http://modernwarsinminiature.blogspot.com/

(note: everything which is well painted was painted by me, but I designed the models)

The new-ish Shapeways "Frosted Ultra Detail" is really a very nice material to work with. I've mainly been doing ships in 1:2400 to 1:6000 scale, which is a little small for here, but have still been able to get good results. It seems that ships get fairly pricey at the larger scales (Shapeways charges by volume), but doing components should be quite possible.

thanks!

afrodri,

Wow, great looking micro ships, they are just too cool...

Feel free to add your experiences with having them made, and if you have anymore, I'd love to see them too. I'd also be interested in seeing the CAD models you used to have these made, really nice work.

Regards,
Dean

Thanks. I'm glad you like them. I don't have a huge number of photos (I've been modeling in virtual space more than real-world recently), but I have about 100 different classes rendered at http://www.shapeways.com/shops/objects?section=Seaships. Of course, they aren't textured or anything, so they don't look that impressive...

I started playing around with 3D printing through Shapeways a couple of years ago and have been using Blender for modeling. About three or four months ago someone asked me to make a couple of ships in various scales for wargaming and painting, and so I started making ships as people asked. I've got about 100 different ships now, mainly in 1:2400, 1:300, 1:4800, and 1:6000 scales though with the odd 1:2000 and 1:1200 about.

My overall modeling process is pretty simple standard. The main difference between modeling for a printer (as opposed to just for rendering) is that you need to remember some design constraints. The main ones are that the details smaller than 100 microns don't really show up, and that walls thinner than 300 microns can't be printed (these numbers are for the "Frosted Ultra Detail" (FUD)material, other materials are thicker). Also, I have found it useful to unify the mesh (i.e. use Booleans to join overlapping meshes until there is just one), although this is not supposed to be needed. From there, its just upload and print...

Shapeways has had some delays recently, so sometimes an order will take a week or so longer than their 10 day target, but in general they are pretty fast.

The FUD and "White Strong and Flexible" material themselves are pretty easy to work with. You can cut, drill, sand and scrape them, and they accept paint well, though they may required a little work before you jump right to painting. Some of my experiences there can be found at:

http://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&goto=9283&#msg_9283 (painting WSF)
http://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=6121 (painting FUD)

I've "open sourced" some models of modern french ships at:

http://www.we-be-smart.org/~afrodri/

feel free to use them however you'd like

thanks!

Those are some cool little models. The amount of detail you are getting in relation to the size you are printing is impressive.

I got a big flash-back on the starships as you're using a lot of the techniques I used to use for figure painting, back when I used to paint D&D miniature critters for people.

How does the whole Shapeways shop thing work? Do they pay you for the original mesh, or do you get a percentage of each order?

Owen

Yeah, the new FUD process has very nice resolution.



Yup, that's how I got my start as well. .
In fact , I originally got into 3d printing do I could make my own spaceships, but then got into naval minis.



Percentage. You can set your markup per material. I usually add 10% to the base cost as my fee. It doesn't make much money, but I enjoy seeing others use the models.

It seems that the 3d printing is largely cost competitive with conventional techniques at the smaller scales (1:1200 and below). I'm not sure about scales larger than that. It seems like there might be a market for components (turrets, anchors, etc) at larger scale.

The model railroad community seems to have also jumped on the 3d printing bandwagon. There are a lot of model trains being posted these days.

afrodri,

A little late, but thanks for the ships models and the info on printing, I definitely have to give it a try. And when you get some more models done, I think we would all like to see them, so feel free to post them here if you like... looking forward to some more micros.



Being late is starting to be my MO here, but I had some time today to work on the 1/200th scale Chickasaw, and it was decided that it will be two halves, top deck half and bottom hull. Here's a couple pics of the top half, the lower half should be done in a day or two, depending on free time. Now, I need to get Devins input on this first, but everything on this half is notched and ready to make cut files from. We decided to go with .03in thick Styrene for all the main framing, and the way I set up the top half is all the flat areas are inlay-ed and notched into the frames for ease of assembly. That leaves the front, back and between the flat sheet areas to fill and blend into shape.
Well enough talk, lets hear some crits...








And a YouTube link...

http://youtu.be/m8UbgpbntNM


Dean

Looks great!

One suggestion is to make sure that the entire footprint for the turrets is recessed, no need to be more than the .030 thickness of the sheet, but having that little bit gives a nice slot for the turrets to positively align to, just enough depth to cover any imperfections in the bottom of the turret casts, and it's true to the original.

_________________
We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley

Thanks Devin,

Yeah, that's why I recessed the turret slots more than the styrene thickness and added that ring as a solid surface for them to rest on, it lines them up, lets them be movable, and gives you a little leeway with the turret bottoms while keeping them to scale.
I'll also have cutouts for the pilothouse and smokestack to rest in too, that should take care of alignment and location on those too.

Anymore thoughts or suggestions are welcome, I want to make this to your liking, not mine.

Dean

Dean,

I'll respond to your last email here, as I only have time to really look at the internet at work, and all of my emails are on my home PC.

I think for the stack and the pilot house that tubing or turning them on the lathe is the way to go. At that scale I think the radius would be too sharp to bend sheet styrene around a framework to make the structures. I may have access to a lathe over the holidays, when I visit my family, so I can take care of them then.

I agree with having a test print of the turret done, just to see what we get. Let me know if you want to do it or if I should; I wouldn't mind getting one myself just to see what they can do. Also, on the turret rivets, I have some of those, but I get mine from Archer Transfers.

Really looking forward to this build. It should be really fun and educational.

-Devin

_________________
We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley

Devin,

Yeah, posting your thoughts here is fine with me, and I agree, having those two items (pilothouse & smokestack) turned up on a lathe would be pretty easy, it's not like they are really that detailed. I'll send you some drawings on those like I did for the turret, and for the other items too, like the outhouse, anchor stows, etc.

And as far as having a turret printed, sure, we can both get one, I'm kinda curious too as to how it'll come out. One thing I can do is make two versions, one with the rivets and one without, that way if you want to use those 3D rivet decals, you can use the non-riveted one. Either way I'll have them ready to send to the printer ASAP. And depending on how they turn out, I can also make drawings for a resin mold too for you. (another lathe project)

I'm just about done with the bottom half, which this whole thing should have been done weeks ago, but for some personal issues that kept me from working on anything. Anyway, I'll looking forward to seeing this all come together, it should be pretty cool.

If you can think of anything else just let me know,
Dean