Building Paddle Tug RELIANT

[Khephre]

Some of you may remember bits of this model from the Yahoo groups website.

I started my version of the Reliant two years ago and spent close to a year working on her, just a few hours here and a few hours there. But around this time last year I put her aside to work on a couple of other models - a ship assist tug and a barge for my young fella.

I dragged her out again two weeks ago, dusted her off, and have just spent a very relaxing afternoon building a couple of towing bars for her aft deck. I must say it's nice to have her back on the workbench.

Here's where I'm at ...

[Eddy Matthews]

The Reliant is looking really nice Tony. It doesn't look like there's much more work needed to complete her so you should have her on the water by the summer down there in NZ.

[thewharfonline]

Oh and bring on summer....it was so cold today that it started snowing in the suburbs...now all you international ducks are probably saying whoopdeedoo like it doesn't snow in suburbs...but (although i didn't see any and we didn't get a snow day!) it snowed in places where it usually doesn't down here in victoria! I'm so excited!

[mjt60a]

Looking really good, what are the dimensions/scale?

[Red_Hamish]

Hello all, Tony the understatement of making a couple of towing bars in an afternoon is impressive. I'd call that high quality craftsmanship.

cheers

Jim

p.s. any chance of making a pair for my PT Tipstaff  :wink:   :lol:

[Khephre]

Thanks Mick & Eddy, and no snow here, Sean - just rain, rain and more rain...

My Reliant's at 1:32 scale which makes her around 40 inches overall length, 8 1/4 inches beam and I think about 14 inches maximum width.

The hull is plank on frame, fibreglassed with 3/4 ounce cloth and faired off where necessary with auto body filler. The subdeck is ply over cambered deck beams - and the fore and aft decks are Obechi planks with joggled margins (my first attempt at joggling so a bit rough in places).

Sponsons are made from spruce and the paddle boxes are two layers of 0.8mm ply laminated together and planked with 0.5mm planks. The sponson houses are also thin ply that's been bent around formers and planked. Once the sponsons were done, I gave them a few coats of diluted fibreglass resin which soaks into the wood and gives it the waterproofing that the sponsons need.

Paddles by Graupner.

Upper works are 0.8 and 1.2mm birch ply. The 'bridge deck' was built on a former from three layers of 0.4mm ply laminated together, then planked with Obechi (I used the former to produce the camber on the deck, and as a working platform for soldering the stanchions and handrails.

Heaps of rivet heads added - one by painful one - the smallest being about the size of a flea's head (they effectively double in size once the paint goes on).

The ruddy great funnel is a piece of thin wall (2mm) aluminium tube with styrene strips wound round for the funnel rings and underneath it will be a 12V smoke generator from MACK Products in the States.

Most of the fittings are scratchbuilt but there are some that I simply don't have the skills or tools to produce - two-ball stanchions and ship's wheel were bought and used as supplied. The porthole surrounds were bought and lenses cast from clear alumilite; the cowl ventilators were also bought and details added - e.g. handles to turn them.

Inside the engine room there are two MFA 148:1 gearhead motors connected by O-Ring belt drives and pulleys to the paddle shafts. The motors are powered by two Action Kits speed controllers and 12V SLA betteries and put out 108 revs per minute at full speed. The pulley and belt drives gear this up by 1.5 times so the paddles rotate at up to 160 rpm at top speed.

I've tried an Action Kits electronic motor mixer to mix the two speed controls and rudder servo but wasn't impressed with the results so have sourced another brand to test - if that's no better then it's back to a caterpillar drive approach.

So there she is in a nutshell.

What's left to do? Steering chains and guides, scuttle hatches and skylights, deck lights, towing bollards, a tow hook and table on the foredeck, the mast and rigging and that's about it! Easy, when you say it quickly!

Roll on Summer.

Cheers
Tony

[Khephre]

Tks Jim, you're generous in your praise. But the answer's NO! (ever so politely). My workshop floor's littered with rejects.

I used 4mm T-section brass which is close in scale to the prototype, notched the centre strip every cm, bent it to the required curve, resoldered the notches and cleaned it up.

The upstands are two sizes of brass rod, 3/64 and 5/64, with suitable sized washers soldered on just above the end of the rods to give me something to anchor into the deck. Flattened out and tweaked the other ends to provide nice little lands for the joins with the towing bars.

Dryfitted everything using alligator clips, brass wire and ply spacers to hold the bits together, then soldered it all up - complete with the mandatory break to rinse Carr's Green solder flux from my right eye. Cheeeez, that stuff stings when it starts eating eyeball flesh!!!! My right eye feels/looks like I've been peeking through keyholes all night!

Went together quickly enough but I reckon that I spent a couple of days or more visualising how I would go about building these bars. So by the time I actually reached for the t-section brass I'd probably built and rebuilt these bars half a dozen times!

[Red_Hamish]

Hello all, Tony as is so often the case the final detail is what makes or breaks a model. The pictures that you have posted are absolutely lovely. Well done to you sir. Looking forward to seeing pictures of her in the water.

cheers

Jim

[steamboatmodel]

Hi Tony,
Re the solder flux in the eye may I suggest that you and all others use Protective eyewear when using solder also use in a WELL ventilated area.
Afterall we only get one pare of eyes.
PS on a side note they just showed some Kangaroos in the snow in  Australia to give us some contrast its 30 C here at the time.
Regards,
Gerald

[Khephre]

A brief update on progress.

This last week has been terribly disrupted with a bit of work-related travel, club meetings, etc., so not much progress to record. However I've managed to produce both towing bollards, including the foredeck bollard with its tow hook, table and supports.

The bollards are thinwall brass tubing with half-housing joints. I cut a few styrene disks and washers for the end-caps and deck flanges.

The towhook and table is a substantially modified Aeronaut fitting set which has been kicking around the workshop for a couple of years. While the casting is good I think that I have enough confidence to try scratch-building my own in future.

They're dryfitted at the moment so that I can continue to work on other deck fittings and hatches without too much clutter on the decks.

Also produced the steering chains and rods and the waterway blocks that they pass through, but those haven't been fitted yet.

Not much left to do now - a good handful of hatches and skylights, a few fittings, the mast and associated rigging, a few crewmen, the name, port of registration, a white band on the rubbing strake at the deckline, and a good clean-up and touch-up work on the paint, Finished with a wee bit of weathering (judiciously applied of course). Easy when you say it quickly!

So, summertime cruising is just around the corner. Yahooo!

cheers
Tony

[Khephre]

Well modelling is a great stress-buster, and the last few weekends working on Reliant have been powerful medicine indeed. Having said that I'm so close to the end that I've had to deliberately slow myself down to avoid "modeller's rush".

I've now got all of the hatches and skylights fitted, decklights installed, steering chains and assorted fittings done, and did the lifebelts last weekend before shooting down country for a few days with my new job.

To give a sense of scale the lettering on the lifebelts is only 2mm high - thank the Lord for BECC - I simply couldn't have done it freehand with my shaky hands. Still it took a good couple of hours to do all four with name and port of registration, all done about two inches off the end of my nose, so I was truly cross-eyed at the end of that particular ordeal.

Next thing to do is re-install the electrics.

A mate of mine is doing me some scrollwork transfers for the hawsepipes, so once they're done, I can step and rig the mast. Then it's time for a 1:32 scale magnum of champagne and a shake down cruise of the local pond.

[Red_Hamish]

Hello all, thank you Tony for sharing these wonderful photographs. The Managing Director / Shipwrights in your yard must be justly proud of their achievements  :lol: What a fantastic job you have done. Well done my friend. I bet you are dying to get this one in the water and receive many a deserved bucketful of praise for the sheer beauty of the Paddler.

cheers

Jim

[Khephre]

That's very generous of you Jim.

The 'yard foreman' does confess to being pretty satisfied with the outcome. I had her in the water half way thru the build and she handles nicely and looks a pretty sight under way.

I must say that there's something so much more satisfying about a subject like the Reliant, than those modern screw-driven tugs and suchlike. Whether it's the paddle wheel propulsion, the nostalgia of steam or the character of the vessel, they do make for great subjects.

Tony

[Khephre]

I mentioned a week or two back that a mate of mine was helping me with some scrollwork transfers for the bow of Reliant.

Well I spent a very pleasant couple of hours in Garry's company this morning and here's the result. He's done a superb job and I couldn't have dreamed of a better result!

[Eddy Matthews]

Very nicely done Tony!

Was it done by hand? It certainly looks like it - His hand is definately steadier than mine, even 6 pints of the amber nectar couldn't steady my nerves that much! :-)