'Q' ship reissue

"Beat the Devil' was on TV recently. Filmed on the Amalfi Coast, I think. John Huston was director.

I'm zipping along now. Like I said, it's all Evergreen from here. And a piece of brass tube for the stack.

I'm in the hunt for the steam cargo winches, and do not want to get too carried away. I looked longingly at the ones in the JOB kit and was hoping that there were improved ones in the PE set, but there aren't. Each winch is a sweet little nine part kit, but using them here would be like drinking beer from crystal at Delmonico's. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Hi.  Wow, your model is looking great.  I suspect mine will probably look a bit more "toy-like" than your's or Onyxman's  :)

you brought a new ship to the party and I really want to see her get done.

Don are you still thinking about a Laker?

I bought a bag of watch gears for $ 5.

They called it a Steampunk jewelry set.

Last night I managed to knock over a near full bottle of liquid plastic cement! I just managed to save the two (2!) hulls on the table. Most of it went onto my pile of evergreen scraps. Now I have a Pollock-esque sculpture to be proud of and a room that will need to have the windows open for about a week! Taking a break!

But speaking of winches. I can't see any obvious mooring winch on the stern. Maybe it was a small electric capstan.

onyxman

Last night I managed to knock over a near full bottle of liquid plastic cement! I just managed to save the two (2!) hulls on the table. Most of it went onto my pile of evergreen scraps. Now I have a Pollock-esque sculpture to be proud of and a room that will need to have the windows open for about a week! Taking a break!

But speaking of winches. I can't see any obvious mooring winch on the stern. Maybe it was a small electric capstan.

Sorry for you, had it happen to me. Not my finest moment. 

Do you have any Debonder to help with the clean up? 

Sounds like solvent to me, Duster. Debonder won't help.

Happened to me too.

Usually now I squirt a little at a time on a piece of blue tape and apply with a toothpick.

Back ASAP I hope Fred.what would an electric capstan look like?

In one photo there's a cylinder sticking up right in the bows that looks like nothing more than a bollard about 9" -12" in diameter and a couple feet high.

I

A capstan would look like a bollard, round and more like 3+ ft in diameter. Mooring lines on the bow would be handled with the anchor windlass. Bits for securing them would be in pairs. A single thing could be a fairlead, so that you can lead the line straight onto the winch heads from any direction. I have the fo'c'sle deck pretty much completed. It's a lot of guesswork.

Rule of thumb on merchies is that the paying spaces (e.g. cargo) are as inviolate as possible.  So, the chain lockers are right forward, no further aft than the forward cargo hold.  The windlass rae usually plumbed directly over the chain lockers  Angles from the  windlass wildcats to the hawsepipes can look odd, but that's they way it is.

There's a funny chain stopper used on windlasses; memory want to recall that common practice is to stopper the entry to the chain locker with cement, which gives a unique look (and a spray of cementitious bits when the anchor is let go.

Quite right, but the cement, with canvas, was merely to plug the space around the chain at the spillpipe to keep seawater from filling the chain locker. The gear that actually secured the chain is the riding pawl and various claws tightened by turnbuckles.

So the mooring capstan would be between these chains, right up in the bow.

I'm building deck houses now, making scale decisions from my photos.

The boat deck and pilot house deck are just sitting loose until I get some painting done.

You are moving right along! Looks great. It will be interesting to see how close our two builds end up, going from the same pictures. Re the mooring winches, a capstan is technically a different thing from  the anchor windlass. The anchor windlass is up aft and between the chain hawse pipes. There should be a couple of larger wheels that handle the chain, but then on each side a drum, traditionally called various names that are no longer in vogue, to say the least. The parts that pull the anchor chains can be disengaged from the parts that would pull mooring lines. The axis of rotation for a capstan is vertical. Old sailing ships had hand powered capstans.  Today I'll take a picture of my foredeck.

Some good pictures here, scroll down to the horizontal windlass. ( I don't know why I can't get the hot links to work )

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/55-501/chap21.htm

By the way, this ship may have had steam winches or it could have had electric, even in 1911, but steam is most likely I think. I've got some bits back aft, but still need to study the pictures to figure out what else they have back there.

Fred

Letting go the port anchor on a containership while bewildered cadet looks on. This ship has separate machinery for each anchor, but our 1911 ship would have both handled by the same windlass, a mirror image for the starboard side. 

Two zooms from different pics:

That drum-like thing on the centerline and in the middle of the poop could be a capstan, though it looks small. 

Here it looks like there could be a horizontal windlass. Your guess is as good as mine.

The fo'c'sle so far:

Very nice looking. I'm guessing the forward and stern most pairs of bitts are mooring.

What's the angled set for?

I like those chain ramps or whatever they are called very well made.

I'm taking away from this that I need to put collars around the hawsepipe holes.

Cadged my anchors from another 1/300 kit that I've decided isn't worth building. And I have a PE set for.

Will give me watertight doors, railings and other stuff.

But gosh I've counted ladders and I need ten!

You aren't at the middle deck houses as you are detailing as you go and I plan to go back over everything later. A question- what do you think the height and diameter of the stack is?

I tried a piece of 3/8" tube and it looks right, which is 9' and I would not have guessed that much.

I messed around with the height and 1 1/4" seemed right- about 30'. I'd be interested in your opinion of course.

In the pictures at Boston there's a lot of tropical rig on the bridges. Have you looked at the sun shade structure over the open pilot station up top?

Need a couple of wheels too.

All the paired bits could be for mooring lines. I can't say why i angled those two, except it looked familiar. By collars I assume you mean the doubler plates around the hawse pipes? Yes, that looks good, doesn't it? You would need some extra steel at that location where the chain rubs the edges.

I had not thought about the stack yet, but how about measuring the kit's for height? Some of the kit details actually seem OK once you apply the new scale. The stack certainly seems tall and skinny in the photos.

I am thinking they stood a lot, if not all of bridge watches up on top there. The JOB PE has an awning for the topside bridge station that I thought I'd look at. Also, some of that railing around there could just be canvas tied to the rail, not solid.

Have you figured out what the Port of Registry is on the stern? It could be New York, but I can't say for sure.

Yes it looks like New York, and the Bull Lines were incorporated there.

I looked through the remaining kit parts. The two larger boats  with the ship lap look like they'll do for the boats on the forward deck house. I'll file a transom on them, as they are dory style in the kit.

The after boats on the automatic davits look steel- worry about those later.

The kit masts are too thin for my liking, but may work ok for the top masts. But I leave masts booms and rigging for another day and will really be bugging you for guidance.

Want to see that wood hull model too, P.

The forward boats are on gooseneck davits, which can be just bent brass rod. The after boats are quadrantal davits like the T-2 tanker used. I've got a ton of those in my spares, but they may be too small.

I haven't begun to think about masts yet. I will post a picture I found in the American Merchant Seaman's Manual of the foredeck of a similar ship. It has some good detail.

Fred

edit: The Liberty ships also used quadrantal davits, but I don't have any spares from them. It shouldn't be too hard to scratch them though.

onyxman

I had not thought about the stack yet, but how about measuring the kit's for height? Some of the kit details actually seem OK once you apply the new scale. The stack certainly seems tall and skinny in the photos.

Hi,

I got messing around with my 3D printer today and decided to try and print up some hatch coamings and hatch covers for the ship to see how they might turn out.  The coamings look OK, but the hatch covers and the paltform in between them, for the boom winches came out a little rough.  I didn't have my printer set at its lowest speed so that may have something to do with it.  I may try those again, or I may just try and mock those pieces up with styrene.  But for now I'm going to play around a little with seeing if I can bound the ABS plastic to my existing cargo decks and see how that looks.

PF

PF- you have a good idea there. But first of all don't try to solve everything at once.

The straps, battens or whatever they are on the Trumpeter Liberty ship are in my opinion way too big. Why I think that I don't know because its hard to find pictures of the on deck back then but they scale out to be maybe 9" high and 18" wide.

I'd suspect they were quite a bit thinner and probably less wide.

My Evelyn doesn't have them in any pictures I've seen, and in fact the hatches seem to be open while she's sailing.

Try making the canvas top by itself and adding the straps/ battens with tape or tin foil.

I'm working on how to make the hatch covers look like canvas stretched over wood. Current thinking is nylon stocking material stretched over a basswood shape, immersed in glue and painted.

Some daylight photos tomorrow.

Wow, your model is looking great.  Thanks for your feedback/suggestions on my hatch covers.  I think I'm gonna try some additional ideas on my hatch covers.

Looks like you are getting way ahead of us, GM. Re the masts and cargo gear, this is what I see in the pictures:

There are two booms for each hatch, so four on each mast. They are at least double part topping lifts, so you have a block at the mast and also at the head of the boom. This is different from the Liberty, which has single topping lifts. For the running wire there is a block at the heel of the boom, underneath, and one at the head of the boom, underneath. 

For #2 hatch there is also a heavy lift boom which is stepped on deck just aft of the mast.