SS Xantho, Western Australia's First Steamship - Scratchbuild - 1:100

[Celestialsphere]

Steve.

Never before, in the history of modelmaking, have so many people wanted a model of a Panzerhaubitze 2000 to be finished, photographed, put in the cabinet, and the bench cleared for the next project!

 

Cheers Andrew

[Bandsaw Steve]

SS Xantho - Western Australia's Fifth Steamship.

 

Hi Xantho Fans

 

Since I'm now coming to the end of the pure research phase of this project I feel compelled to clear something up.  When I started this project I accepted the simple assertion that Xantho was the first steamship in W.A. but in fact - it turns out - Xantho was definitely not W.A.'s first steam propelled vessel.  Whether or-not it was our first steam ship seems to depend much on the definition of the word ‘ship’ and is therefore open to discussion. I'm going to leave the heading of this thread as it stands and don't really want to argue one way or the other but in the interests of transparency and completeness here are the facts as far as I know. 

 

The notes below are drawn primarily from Keith O. Murray's 'From Oar to Diesel on the Swan' Published by the Western Australian Historical Society in 2004.  Here are the contenders:

 

1854 - Speculator.        On the 13th of October 1854 a paddle steamer -  the 'Speculator' - was launched into the Swan river. Apparently this vessel and its engine was entirely locally built and despite some understandable maintenance difficulties it was actually quite successful. As far as I can gather it was only used in the river and was not sea-going.
 

1855 - Le Trois Amis.   On 15 March 1855, 'Le Trois Amis' arrived at Fremantle , although I'm not sure from where.  She was a small screw-driven steamer of just 70 feet long. Unfortunately she drew 1.5m of water and therefore had too deep a draught for many of the jetties in the Swan river. Consequently she was soon sold to a Mr George Green who apparently made use of her in some unspecified capacity along the W.A. coast for several years.  She was lost off the coast of Timor in 1884.  
 

1856 - Lady Stirling.      Parts for this vessel were delivered to Fremantle on the 17 Nov 1856 and she was launched at Fremantle on 21 Feb 1857.  She made her first trip from Fremantle to Perth on the 16th of May that year and was still operating in 1881 when the Guildford to Fremantle railway opened. This vessel also seems to have been employed almost exclusively on the river.
 

1869 - Black Swan.       Black Swan was a steam driven dredge that the government imported in 1869 to assist in keeping the shallow waterways of the Swan and Canning rivers open to shipping.  Apparently she was not well suited to work in such very shallow waters and was laid up in 1878.  A contemporary painting of her is currently on display in the library of the W.A. Historical Society and is shown below.

 

 

 

So, strictly speaking - as is normally the case in history - this topic is open to interpretation and discussion.  In the meantime the Museum is sticking to it's story that Xantho was the first steam-ship out here. Fair enough I suppose;  it helps make the Xantho story much more compelling.  

 

Bandsaw Steve

 

[Bertie McBoatface]

2 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

So, strictly speaking - as is normally the case in history - this topic is open to interpretation and discussion.

 

That's what makes it so fascinating, I think. It's a dialogue between the present and the past!

[Bandsaw Steve]

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

 

 

 

[ColonelKrypton]

23 minutes ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

Paulownia 'Hobby Wood'

 

10 pages in and just getting started with the cutting and fitting - a long time coming but you have a good start.

 

I had heard of paulownia wood before but never really took note. One of my favourite hobby stores are the local dollar stores ( Dollarama by name here in Canada ). Lots of interesting and neat bits and what not; some of which are bits of thin plywood sheets and shapes. I had "assumed" it was some sort of inexpensive birch or similar and a lot of it is but some of what I was finding was different and now I am thinking it might just be paulownia.

 

Amazon here ( amazon.ca ) has many listings for basswood, balsa wood, and hobby wood, sometimes mixing all three types into one listing. Can be confusing. No doubt some of the listing are basswood or balsa and I do find listings for paulownia. I am starting to wonder if some of the listings for basswood or balsa are really for paulownia. 

 

I will be patiently waiting for your next installment.

 

cheers, Graham

[ArnoldAmbrose]

1 hour ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

The balsa supplies seemed strangely inconsistent. Some of it was darker than usual, a little bit harder and and a little bit heavier - 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

Gidday Steve, congratulations on "Laying the keel" so to speak. I've never heard of Paulownia either. I used to make ships from balsa many years ago (mid 1970s to early 1980s) and I noticed that balsa varied quite a bit in hardness. Assuming it was all balsa, it was labelled as such. Looking forward to watching your technique here. It looks ship-shape already.

      Regards, Jeff.

[Malc2]

Fantastic!!!!

Great start. Well I say start, as Graham says, this is the culmination of a huge amout of research.

Looking forward to seeing how it progresses.

 

M.

[Courageous]

Nice to you back Steve, a good start.

 

Stuart

[Ray S]

It is good to have now cut wood on this long term project Mr Bandsaw. I too have never heard of your newly discovered type of wood, but it sounds interesting. I have plans to try and build another steam coaster at some stage and that wood could be quite useful. The work you have done looks very neat indeed and I am looking forward to the progress on Xantho.

 

All the best, Ray

[Clogged]

Good to see this begin!

I’m presently  Scratchbuilding a 1/36 plank on frame ship (Le Rochefort), using Cherry.  But also I’m using boxwood, a great wood for the details. Boxwood however is fairly expensive and hard to come by.  However one source are old style wooden rulers that were made of boxwood.  

Will  you be looking at adding figures? obviously you would need to source 1/100 scale I suppose.  

[Bandsaw Steve]

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.

[Chewbacca]

14 inches long and 1/100 - she's tiny!  I had visions she was much larger.  Good to see you've started.  All journeys have a first step!

[Andreas.R]

Hello Steve

I feel the same way, some projects take forever, but in the end you can see that the time invested was really worth it. I'll be following the build with interest.

[Brandy]

About bloody time!

I think you need to enlist Baby Bandsaw to speed things up a bit, provided she keeps her shoes on. Are the bugs still a problem in your new "den"?

 

Ian

[brianthemodeller]

On 9/19/2022 at 12:21 PM, Bandsaw Steve said:

 

Yes,  I have a few 1/100 scale figures, a fact that helped me settle on changing scale…

Nothing at all to do with it being easier to divide by 100 rather than 72, then?!?

[roginoz]

Paulownia, sometimes called powton, is a deciduous tree of Chinese origin often grown, as @Bandsaw Steve suggested above, as plantation timber. There are, or were several such plantations here in Victoria but I've heard nothing of their success as an investment, which I believe was the object, apart from the timber  harvested.

It's an attractive tree, we have one in the garden, deciduous and forming horse chestnut-type panicles of blue-mauve highly scented flowers, usually prior to leaf formation.

It is indeed, very light and ideally suited to models such as this......said he, hastily returning to topic.

Here endeth the horticulture lesson.......

Rog

[Bandsaw Steve]

On 21/09/2022 at 00:08, Brandy said:

About bloody time!

I think you need to enlist Baby Bandsaw to speed things up a bit, provided she keeps her shoes on. Are the bugs still a problem in your new "den"?

 

Ian

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

[Bandsaw Steve]

On 21/09/2022 at 18:41, brianthemodeller said:

Nothing at all to do with it being easier to divide by 100 rather than 72, then?!?

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. 

[Bandsaw Steve]

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.

 

 

 

 

[ArnoldAmbrose]

35 minutes ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

I'll have be careful here; an uninformed observer might think I know something about joinery. I don't.

       Gidday Steve, I thought that joinery was cutting two pieces that fit together and then, er, fitting them together. But that last photo suggests to me you've mastered that. 👍 I'm watching avidly to pick up tips because sooner or later I'm going to have to scratch build an entire hull myself.

       Regarding the screw/propeller, do you know the number and shape of the blades?       Regards, Jeff.

[Ray S]

Good work Mr Bandsaw, and now I know why your glue was blue! As for the joinery, it was spot on, even if you did not know about the subject. The work on the brass fore and aft was very illuminating, and as it is something I may well have to learn, thanks for showing the process with the jeweller's/piercing saw.

 

Good luck with the rest of the build, 

 

Ray

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Maybe check props for all the various model scale's as well as RC boats. If nothing shows up that looks the part then there is if course 3D printing ? 

[Bandsaw Steve]

7 hours ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

       

       Regarding the screw/propeller, do you know the number and shape of the blades?       Regards, Jeff.

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

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday Steve, I'd imagine that the shape of screw blades would vary over the years. If you can find any early photos of screw ships in drydock that might help. Also if the screw is left- or right-turning (the direction of the top blade when viewed from behind the ship).       Regards, Jeff.

[robgizlu]

Good to see this "In labour" as it were Steve.  The epithet "Bandsaw" is well earned!

Rob