Bandsaw Steve

Yes it has. My old shed used to leak a lot and tended to be a bit dank so some of my older tools started to get a bit of surface discolouration. Then they spent six months on the patio under a tarpaulin while the new shed was built. Several of them came out looking much worse. I’m slowly going through the collection and repairing or replacing as required. New Stanley blades just jumped to the top of the list.

Catching up - Part 2 I'm still making pretty good progress on this project but must admit that I'm failing somewhat in my promise to keep this thread up to date, mostly because I'm really enjoying my time in the shed at the moment and am sinking any spare time into building Xantho rather than updating this narrative. Sorry about that folks. Anyway - this should be quick. There's nothing fancy to write about here, its all fairly straightforward stuff. The main thing to note is that there is no way that I'm brave enough to try to 'plank on frame' this hull and besides, since Xantho was made of iron, there's absolutely no requirement anyway. Here's where we were at the end of the last construction post. I spent some money on a balsa plank (it's not cheap) and have started filling in the gaps between the paulonia skeleton. It's a pretty simple process and being so soft the balsa just squeezes into place and sits there with a nice friction fit. The blue goo is not really doing much in reality. I used to shun balsa, but now I'm finding more and more uses for the stuff. Any surplus balsa gets trimmed off and re-used. Like I say, it's expensive. Whittle any surplus off. More whittling - this time around the bow. Use the pre-cut decking (and of course the skeleton itself) to ensure that the balsa is whittled back close to the correct profile. Use a scoop chisel to get into some of the trickier bits where the shape is changing quickly. Trim any excessively high bits off the top of the decks. Use a rasp to start working toward the final profile. At this point I realized that I should have painted the outside edges of the skeletal frame red so as to be sure that I was not rasping away any of the basic structural frame. I will know for next time. Very coarse sandpaper - about 120 grit - can also be used to shape balsa quite effectively. And here is the hull that results. As you can see nothing much has been done with the bow or the stern yet. That can be the next post. Stay safe and best regards, Bandsaw Steve

That’s exquisite!

Beautiful! In my opinion the best looking car ever made. I really enjoyed seeing this. Thanks for posting.

Thank you! Unfortunately my knowledge of German is practically nil. I studied it once at University but did not do well, so I greatly appreciate your summary. It’s really interesting to get a more in-depth view of the engineering details that make this system so well regarded. The air gun ‘shooting’ the ammunition into place is fascinating as is seeing the action of the automatic loader. I’ve heard that even quite recently the Australian gunners preferred PZH 2000 above any other SPG but the government chose the K9 Thunder, presumably for political and cost reasons. BTW - I was interested to see someone has an even bigger PZH 2000 model than mine!

Looking good. With the single tall red funnel she reminds me a lot of my Carpathia project. Happy days.

Hi @ArnoldAmbrose That’s a good point you make about the somewhat variable quality of small sea-going vessels, even in the modern era. It make’s me even more comfortable with the idea of a mis-sized prop. As for the 1.83cm; that’s a six foot propellor as represented in 1/100 scale. Not the actual size of the propellor itself. Am I going to make one? Not sure. I’m certainly going to need one. So I’ll either make it by hand somehow, buy one or 3D print. Time will tell.

Which is also the principle behind most of my model building!

We can do better than that Jeff. Propellors and Other Stuff The propellor was still with the wreck when the archeology team surveyed it. The original plan was to display the engine and propellor as shown below, but in the end recovering this much was beyond the limited financial means of the project. Whether the propellor was recovered or remains on the sea-floor I do not know. I have no recollection of it being in the Xantho gallery so suspect it's still in-situ. The team of steam-engine enthusiasts who spent some 20 years de-concreting the engine found out a number of very surprising things along the way, each of which reveal just how makeshift Xantho's machinery and conversion from paddler to screw steamer really was: They found a small loose nut (as in 'nut and bolt') inside one of the cylinders. It must have been accidentally dropped into the cylinder and then sealed in place upon the engine's assembly. It stayed there rattling around for the rest of the vessel's life. They found that the bilge pump drive was permanently connected to the engine. Apparently whenever the engine was running, the bilge pump was working. There was no choice about it. With this in mind please note that my comment at the start of this thread ‘The decision was made to turn back to Port Gregory and the ship's pumps were started' is apparently incorrect as the pump must have been running from the start of the journey. The propellor was of the opposite pitch for that which was supposed to be fitted to this engine! Therefore to drive the ship forward the engine had to be run backwards and vice-versa. Apparently this can be proven by the layout of the engine's lubricating points which indicate that the lubrication was only optimal when the ship was reversing! Apparently this greatly increases the wear on the engine and underscores the fact that the engine was very much a supplement to the sails and not the other way around. If it had been run too hard for too long it would have soon broken down beyond repair. Suffice to say that the whole set-up was pretty jury-rigged. During preparation of the drawings Ross Shardlow burned a few too many calories worrying that the tips of the six foot diameter propellor would very nearly break the surface of the water. I had already struggled with exactly this problem and came to the conclusion that the tips of the propellor blades would be right at the surface (see below). Ross argued that this would be inefficient and no competent engineer would design such an arrangement. Doubtlessly that's all true, but it's clear that design efficiency and high standards of engineering were not Mr Robert Stewart's prime concerns. My interpretation is that he just slapped on whatever propellor he could find and if the tips of it splashed about a bit it was not his problem. Ross reluctantly relented. If you look at his drawings below he's sheepishly drawn the propellor in, but only very faintly, he's still not happy with it! Archeology eh... Interesting stuff. Bandsaw Steve

Ironically So far I haven’t actually used a bandsaw once on this project.

Yep - three bladed and six foot diameter, which in this scale is 1.83 cm.

Catching Up - Part 1. I must admit that I've been working on Xantho most evenings and now this log is a bit behind the true state of play. I'll try to make an effort to get this caught up over the next week or so. Generally speaking the trickiest bits in making a ship's hull are the two extremities; the bow and stern. Both have the most complex and subtle shapes in the ship and Xantho is an example of this. The bow has a classic clipper shape to it with a bowsprit and a figurehead, the stern is an elliptical 'counter' with several complex curves, a rudder and propellor. The propellor might prove especially difficult. If I cannot find something commercially available I might even resort to 3D printing. So to give me the best chance of tackling these difficult areas successfully I have decided to start working on them early. I have chosen to use brass for any ‘sticking out bits’ in order to ensure that they are really sturdy. These bits will be very difficult to replace if broken. As I do not have any specialist tools for working with metal I'm going to improvise a bit. Here I'm using my Dremel with a metal cutting drill bit to chain-drill around the bow and the figurehead. I then use a jeweller's saw to cut out the shape. File off the rough edges and polish up the finished part. I have not worked the figurehead to the final shape yet so there's some more detailed work to go. I also had a re-think about how long the main body of this piece needed to be after I finished this so I've cut it down to a much smaller piece and kept the off-cut for use on the rudder. Which I made using exactly the same process. Some folks call my 'jeweler's saw’ a 'piercing saw' and here's why. Since the blade is easily detached from the frame it can be used to cut irregular holes in sheet metal. It can therefore pierce the work. With an appropriate slot cut very carefully at each end of the keel frame the two brass pieces can be held in place by friction. Compared to the ends of the hull the middle bits are relatively simple. Here all of the frames are held nicely together without any glue at all. I'll have be careful here; an uninformed observer might think I know something about joinery. I don't. Now let's glue everything together. During the recent construction of my shed I discovered this blue 'Acrylic Stud Adhesive'. People use it to hold houses together so it is seriously strong. It grips immediately but has a good working time - about 30 minutes or so - which allows you to set things exactly where you want them and be very confident that they will stay exactly where you want them. This stuff spreads like butter and has none of the tackiness and stringiness of some glues. Gram-for-gram it's very inexpensive, I'm adding this stuff to my ever-growing glue collection. Here's the result. That's it for now. I'll try to make an effort to get you all up to speed soon. Expect 'Catching Up - Part 2' in the next few days. Best Regards, Bandsaw Steve.

Well, maybe a little bit to do with that, not that the numbers make much difference at this stage as I am mostly just scaling directly off the plans.

No, definitely not. Even mole-crickets cannot get through a solid concrete poured floor.

Even just by itself like that the gun looks awesome!