Bandsaw Steve

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!

Thanks mate. AE2 is now on permanent loan to the Koorda military museum (yes there is such a thing) and by strange coincidence Just this weekend I drove up there to see it. First time I’ve seen it in about 3 years and, although she’s as good as new, she looks different to how I remember her. The sea-scape in particular seems to look better in photos than in the flesh. Still I’m happy with the model and the curator raved about it - so everyone’s happy.

I think I recall seeing this one at WASMEX. Nice work.

Brilliant! Any details on the book? I’d be interested in a copy.

Beautiful work. Congratulations on a superb bit of modelling, and a great subject too.

Wooden ships! Excellent! I’m doing one also but I don’t have a clue what I’m doing… welcome aboard.

She’s looking great Jeff!

Boxwood - old rulers Hmmmm…. Worth remembering. Yes, I have a few 1/100 scale figures, a fact that helped me settle on changing scale, but they are sci-fi spaceship ground crew so will need some significant work to turn them into Victorian sailors and a businessman.

That’s really good!

Finally! This project began when I visited Dr McCarthy in June 2018; which is more than four years ago. Now, finally I have actually started building this thing! My most recent plan was to finish the PZH 2000 and get that project completely out of the way before starting this one, however the endless stream of remaining details on the PZH is sapping my enthusiasm, so I've decided to jump into this one instead. One of the most accomplished maritime modelers here in Perth builds all of his hulls by making a balsa 'skeleton' and then skinning it with balsa. I'm not going to do this job exactly that way but was planning on doing something fairly similar and so went to Bunnings to stock up on balsa. The balsa supplies seemed strangely inconsistent. Some of it was darker than usual, a little bit heavier and quite a bit harder, almost like a different species of wood. Eventually I checked the tab on a piece of this stuff and found that in fact about half of the wood on the balsa racks was in fact not balsa at all. This is 'Paulownia' which is a wood I have never heard of before. According to Wikipedia 'Paulownia' is very fast growing wood commonly grown in Chinese plantations. Among many uses it is employed by R.C. aircraft enthusiasts when they need wood that is considerably stronger than balsa without paying a large weight penalty. It promised to be almost ideal for this kind of shipbuilding, especially because... it is very warp resistant! Considering that this piece of wood is 5mm thick and 915 mm long this piece is incredibly straight. So I bought some Paulownia 'Hobby Wood', took it home, stuck some plans on it and... Made the very first cut of this project! Since Paulownia is soft and this is only 5mm thick I'm using the scroll-saw rather than the bandsaw. I'm really getting the hang of this scroll-saw now and expect to be using it a great deal on this job. After about 5 minutes of cutting we had this. I then started on the deck Which gave me this. Returning to the keel I cut a series of rebates for the hull frames / bulkheads. and started work cutting them out. So it was all quite quick and easy to get this far. Which held together by friction looks like this. Which I'm pretty happy with! I'll talk a bit more about the rudder and the figure-head in the next post. BTW, I've changed the scale of this project. Originally I was going to make this 1/72 but I've dropped it down to 1/100 to make it a bit more manageable. This is the first time I've built a model this way, next time I might make something a bit bigger but for now this will do. The hull is about 35 cm long which is just under 14 inches. Finally - We're off! Best Regards, Scroll-saw Steve

That is an impressive bit of modelling. Very good photography too!

Nice one @Luka. I built another one of Sergei’s Mig-15’s a few years back so this one immediately caught my eye.

Keep your eyes peeled on the nautical pages!

Not quite that bad yet! I still consider this a live project, whereas after the millions of years your Fairey Monoplane has sat there, I’m guessing it will have turned into a fossil.

Hello @Romeo Alpha Yankee I regret to say that I have not done anything more on the Mirage beyond what is posted here. The shed took muuuuuuccccchhhh longer to finish than anticipated but is now done and I have a far superior working area than before. Unfortunately I still have three active modelling projects on the go; the PZH 2000, the SS Xantho and this one. I’m trying to focus on getting the PZH out of the way as it’s nearly done, but the large number of final details Is sapping my mojo. With three major jobs already in hand, I don’t think I’ll be up to starting anything to mark the 75th anniversary of the formation of the USAF in two days time. A shame really because I have a good set of plans for a USAF xyz in 1/xx scale!

GREAT to see this back here and active. A few months back I was going to start my own Aquitania for the ‘Big and British’ group build but for other reasons, that never happened so I’m very happy to see this here. Watching with interest!

I like the model and love the subject! Hate the colour though! Still, your model your choice, do as you will and enjoy doing it.

Very cool. Good work!

Fantastic!