Mississippi Paddle Steamer Robt.E.Lee

Hi all.
        I have been building this boat since November last year and I'm not even half way there yet.  With working full time and most Saturdays it doesn't leave much time to do all of the other things that life throws at you, but I hope to retire at Xmas so I will just plug away until then.  Well here goes with the boat.  I will post some of the photos that I have taken so far along the build but if there is anything you want to see in more detail just ask. The hull is made by milling out 2 solid slabs of Jelutong timber this timber comes from a rubber tree. I am digressing from the plan a little bit on the rudder, my boat will have 2 rudders to make for better stearing I am still working on this area of the hull. I have only got my engine plumbed this week thanks to the boys at Miniture Steam in Montrose. So this is where I am up to so far.

Trial assembly of engine into hull.



Engine & boiler mounted on machine plate with paddles attached. No plumbing yet.
 

Starting to attach top deck, all held together with dowel pins at the moment.

Looking good so far.               

Thanks Damien
 I am going out to see the good folk at Surrey Park Model boat club tomorrow, hopefully the weather holds up. I don't get up that way much but if I do then I will pop in for that cupper for sure.  I got the engine plumbed on Thursday but I am not happy with a part of it, they put a rubber hose from the engine to the oiler, I will try and get some copper tube solder on the fitting and bend it to suit and just use a piece of the rubber tube about 30mm long to join it to the tank, it should look a lot better.

Hi Guys
It's been awhile since I updated this post, so here goes. I have completed the new stern apart from the final filling and shaping installed the rudders and started on the lower decks and also started cutting the planking into the decks and paddle wheel covers, this has been a slow process but it is starting to come together. 




New stern with 2 rudders  

 


Start of planking on deck and paddle housing.




I have also invested in a new plaything to keep the other couple of minutes a week that I can make free.
Not a steam boat but I got it cheap on ebay and it also goes on water. 

Here is a video of the first firing of my engine and boiler.  I need to change the gearing system as the paddles are going way to fast,  I could probably get the boat up on airfoils at the rate they are turning. I originally thought that I would have to change it but I had all of these pulleys in stock so I thought I would have a play with them first.
https://youtu.be/-d8sth51cuE

Looking good        
The test will be in the water I imagine the paddles will slow considerably once put to work hauling the model.

You could be right Damien.  Someone else on another forum suggested a Steam regulator but they seem very hard to find, so I will have to do some more browsing. a Steam regulator would probably be better as then I could keep the gearing I have got and just adjust the steam flow

Hi folks, I am finally back on deck again after a year and a half away. I haven't actually done much on the boat since I have been absent as there was a lot of other things to get through, I have hardly been in the shed apart from getting tools and things out of it.  I am retiring in December and a lot of things needed to be done before that came around. So most of these things are done now so I can get back to the boat a bit.  I actually started on the Spiral staircase and top cabins today. 1 other development over this past little while is that I have bought a 3D printer for making bits and pieces for the boat 180 Windows of differing designs, doors, stairs handrail and finials ECT. I am not in production at the moment as I am waiting on a part for it, and I am still coming to grips with the software.  My thought was to get the items up and running while I am building the boat.

that looks very interesting jaydee. will look forward to seeing it in operation.......couldn't imagine turning all the spindles on a lathe..........what a godsend these printers seem to be............come too late in my modelling life sadly, but it will revolutionise scratch building.
neil.

Progress is slow at the moment, I retired last Friday and haven't had a moment in the shed since I last posted. I have had to get some brackets 3d printed for the stop switches on my 3d printer and hope to have it up and running early in the new year. I have made a new machine plate for all the mechanicals out of 1mm aluminium  and am in the process of reworking the mount for the paddles along with some work on the wheel houses I have taken some photos but my tablet is locked up in the shed with a flat battery at the moment so it will have to wait until tomorrow night.

Hooray I was able to get back in my shed today. hope everyone had a great x-mas. mine was fairy quiet but I have some update photos.  I have to get myself organized again I find myself chopping and changing to different parts of the boat every time I get into the shed which means I have about 10 parts on the go at any 1 time. at the moment I am a full time nurse to my wife so I only get out there when we have someone else in the house and the time varies.
Progress from last previous posts
I started assembly of the three life boats as I thought I may be able to do small parts like these in the house.





As I said last time I am redoing the machine tray in aluminium.

I have also done a little bit more work on the paddle housings.


And a little work on the Feathers for the chimney pots.

I received the Smoke machine the other day and will try it when I know the correct centres for the chimneys.

It's nice to see it's coming along with you back on it again.

Managed a little work on the boat over the weekend.  Started working on the 1st deck, everything attached under and above this deck will need to lift off so that I can get access to the motor and boiler, so I have managed to incorporate some locating pipes in the funnel arrangement to align everything up, the funnels are a 3 piece pipe attached 1 piece to the lower deck and another piece attached to the underside of the 1st deck to set up alignment then the funnels attach into this pipe. the smoke machine is inserted into the lower pipe arrangement.  I am pleased to say that the smoke machine works better than I had hoped see attached photos.

Very good

Interesting view through the window, I spy a truck I think or a camper perhaps, do you live in the woods as it looks like ferns growing out there in front of the window?

Those aren't woods out the window troutrunner, that is my back yard outside my shed.




This is one of the reasons this boat is taking so long,  Other things to do.  I have just finished building my pond but unfortunately it is not big enough for the boat. The lilies would stop it in it's tracks anyway.

 

Ah! I see   you've made a nice job of the pond, it's nice to see other folks achievements on subjects other than boats, thanks for the explanation. 

I will be working on the next deck over the next couple of weeks and leave all of the finishing off, railings stairs ect. until the decks are all finished I have a pretty solid frame work holding all of the cabin parts together.  The whole cabin section from the deck to the top deck lifts off in 2 sections.

(Post clean up to remove disfunctioning photo links... Admin.)

He's looking mighty fine mate. 

Very nice work, it's coming along beautifully

  Marvellous. 

Looking good

Hi Guys
It's been a long time from my last post, I see Photobucket has kicked some of my old photos to the wall but I will try to eventually catch up. A lot has happened to me since my last post in August 2016 I had just been diagnosed with Stage 4 Non Hodgkin Lymphoma so was on Chemo for 6 months and during that time I lost My wife of 46 years. I have now had over a year in remission so all is not lost. In the last year I have remarried sold 2 properties and moved to Mornington not much has been done on the boat since my diagnosis but I will eventually bring you up to date. I am still not working on it as it is still in storage I have my permit for my new shed and it should be up within the next month then a few extra weeks to get it lined and finished inside I have all of my tools and machines in storage too so need to get all of that stuff out, It's costing a bloody fortune.
Anyhow it's good to be back.

Can anyone tell me if I can delete the earlier posts that photobucket has stuffed up? If so I can just repost the photos directly to this site.

Jaydee in the top right hand corner of each post you have the option to edit or the X means delete.

You can edit each page and delete the now dead photos or delete sections of your posts.

My Josie Olsen thread has had all the dud photobucket picks removed leaving the comments inplace.

Cheers Damien.

Members don’t have the ability to delete posts off the forum nor go back and edit them after a set period of time ( I’ve done this as some disgruntled members on other forums tend to delete their work due to arguments and such, we don’t have that issue here... )

However I will take the the time to clean up your blog and remove the non functioning photos and condense the txt, feel free to reupload photos. ( if you want txt from your posts just leave me a note and I’ll edit the blog accordingly.

On a side note feel free to use the forums photo host, it’s simple to use ( it also creates you an account to log into externally) there are no limits on photos sizes nor bandwidth usage.

Instructions on its use can be found in the forums help section!

RR

Thanks Roadrunner & Damian, I still have all of the photos on my computer so I will have to see where I am up to on this blog now the duds are removed and just re post them. There are a lot of photos to add to this blog but I can catch up while I am waiting for my shed is made.

If you don’t have time to upload photos to the forum you can email me the folder and I’ll take the time to upload and post on your behalf no problem.

Just send me a pm and I’ll sort you out from there.

Thanks Road Runner. But a lot of things have changed on the boat too since the last post,and there is only 1 post that I have lost the photo on so I will just continue the build with new posts and photos after this post

I
Hi Guy's In my last post before the interruptions in my life I had been working on the second deck of the boat, so I will just continue from there.
I have completed the spiral staircase and wheel housings, the planking has been done on both decks as can be seen in the next 4 photos

Looking Great nice to see you have a cooling fan for heat dissipation, is it an ex-computer fan ?

Good to see you're back at it, I look forward to more updates as it moves along

Thanks Road Runner no the fan is on the smoke maker to force the smoke up the tall stacks it works well as seen in previous photos.
The next few photos are of the finishing off of the wheel houses. I tried to use cutout lettering on them but was not happy with the result,
so now i have made some transfer lettering, not bad for first attempt, I am happy with them now, I have also installed the windows and lights.
I find I will have to install the lights as I go on each deck because of the way it is made and lack of access later.
There are a lot of changes that I have had to make on this boat as I get further into the build but I will explain them as I get to them.
Her are the wheel houses.
Wheel houses with cutout letters  

Wheel houses with Tranfer letters  

Wheel houses in place over paddle wheels.

Things are starting to move with my new shed, floor is finished and the shed arrives tomorrow

New shed is up and now I am working on the inside lining

Lining is 16mm MDF to reduce noise plain on the bottom patterned on the top still a couple of ceiling panels to go up yet but I had
to stop to seal the floor.

Looks impressive!

can’t wait to see the finished shop

Superb looking shed, I have never seen any thing like this in the UK, how easy/hard was it to put together ?

Hi troutrunner it took about 1 week to build with no lining it is 6 x 4.5 metres. I bought all of the lining on Ebay cheap used for crating and it has taken me longer to do the lining and painting than it did to build it in the first place 2 coats of prep primer and 2 coats of colour and the floor has had 3 coats of sealer starting to look good, window frames are going to take a bit of time. Power is connected to the home solar system with battery backup so it's cheap to run. Need the heater this weather though.

Sounds very good

Hi Guys,
           Gee, it has been nearly a year since my last post.  Time fly’s when you are having fun. The shed is finished and I have retrieved all of my stuff from storage the boat is looking a bit the worst for ware with
a lot of dust on it that is hard to get off. I am in a bit of a quandary as to what to do with it. There are a lot of bad memories attached to it as it was built at a very traumatic period in my life and I find it hard
even to look at it now. I am thinking of cleaning it off covering it over and put it in the rack until I feel better about it at the moment I have just lost the will to work on it. There were a couple of model shows
on around here last month and I was going to try and finish it and put a for sale sign on it. But it didn’t happen so I am stuck with it, as is. The last time I did any work on it, I entered it in the
Queenscliffe model show nearly 3 years ago, this is how it looked then.

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And now





That’s how she looks at the moment some parts like the ramps on the front were removed for storage.
I would love to hear some of your views on my dilemma

Hi Guys. I have finally decided to get rid of this boat so it has been sold to a guy in Mt Martha. I do not know if he is interested in continuing with this thread or not, I have showed him this site so he may present it in the future as he gets up to speed with the finish of it. I have now decided to set my shed up with a HO scale train layout instead of boats. Thanks guy's for your interest over the years, I am sorry you didn't get to see the finished boat on the water.

Shame but understandable, I do a few other hobbies too to beat the boredom
And repeatability of boat building, one includes 00 gauge railways! Good luck in your future projects and don’t be a stranger!

Admin

I do hope from time to time you post progress of your railways on here under other interests Jaydee……..would love to see them. 

neil