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Old 11-14-2010, 08:55 AM
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Knife Knife is offline
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CSS Arkansas

If ever there was a plucky little ship, it was the CSS Arkansas. She was built in Memphis. Captain Isaac Brown was charged with outfitting her, but when he first arrived in Memphis he found all the iron casing was sunk and lying at the bottom of the Mississippi. He recovered the iron, made the ship watertight and towed her to Yazoo City and completed her construction in 5 weeks. Boiler plate was stuck on her stern to fool the Union forces by simulating thicker armor. In her first check-out voyage she single-handedly took on the whole Union navy attacking Vickburg. She disabled the Union ironclad USS Carondelet and proceeded to sail down the breadth of the wooden ships purposely sailing as close as possible to prevent being rammed and to prevent the large ships from firing down upon her. Prior to Pearl Harbor this was the single worst defeat suffered by the US Navy.

Sheltering under the heavy guns of Vicksburg, she was a constant threat to the Union forces attacking the city. Ironclads were like the nuclear weapons of their day. Their effectiveness was often based more upon their threatened use, rather than actual combat. Because the Arkansas could sail at anytime from Vicksburg, the Union forces were forced to keep their fleet ready to steam at anytime and be fully combat ready. Her threat was so great that after her first week in Vicksburg she was the target of a raid by three Union warships. The attack was repulsed, and with the Arkansas' constant threat the Union warships retreated to New Orleans and the Vicksburg campaign became primarily a ground battle.

In a classic case of "hey dad, can I borrow the keys" the CSS Arkansas was destroyed when Capt Brown took a week of leave, instructing his second in command to keep the vessel in port. Lt Henry Stevens disobeyed his orders, and took the vessel out to attack Baton Rouge. At exactly the worse time, when under attack by the USS Essex, both of Arkansas' engines broke down and she drifted helplessly to shore. The crew abandoned ship and set her afire. She eventually drifted down river and exploded.

During her short but illustratrus lifetime, no photos were taken of her. My model is based on illustrations found in the Osprey publishing book "Confederate Ironclad 1861-65". I've modified the design based on several illustrations and other modeler's attempts found off the internet. Designing and unfolding was accomplished per CT Ertz's tutorial. I'm currently working on the exported 2d images to add detail.
Attached Thumbnails
CSS Arkansas-css-arkansas.jpg   CSS Arkansas-narkansasptsm.jpg   CSS Arkansas-side-top-view.jpg   CSS Arkansas-css-arkansas-cut-away.jpg   CSS Arkansas-css-arkansas-joined.jpg  

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  #2  
Old 11-14-2010, 09:30 AM
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Kazziga Kazziga is offline
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Knife, please do not think that I am trying to make you feel miserable, but you have choosen the worst reference illustration for your model of the Arkansas. If you are willing to start over, I'll be more than happy to send you some good reference material that I have. Please, PM me if you're interested.
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Old 11-14-2010, 10:05 AM
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The more historically accurate the better. I'll take anything you have, thanks for the offer.
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Old 11-15-2010, 06:06 AM
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Thanks to Kazziga, I now have much better plans to work from, so I will be remodeling the model. I split the 3-view drawing into three pieces, and being careful to keep them in scale with each other imported the drawings into Sketchup. I then used sketchup's scaling feature to make the plans full size (1:1 scale) so measurements shown on the plan can be directly translated into sketchup's virtual environment.
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CSS Arkansas-blank-3-view.jpg   CSS Arkansas-blank-3-view-expanded-model.jpg  
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Old 11-15-2010, 04:40 PM
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After posting the three individual views, I made up a "spray shield" layer just slightly ahead of the drawings. These planes are there so any item I place on the model will stay off the drawings. When you import or create an item in Sketchup it will paste it on the first layer it finds. With the spray shield layers in place nothing will go on to the original drawings. Also, by color coding the planes, I can quickly determine which view I want to choose.

After establishing the shield layers, I made three separate planes on each of the deck levels. Then by using the hide feature and the x-ray option on the faces, I was able to get a good outline of the decks and the basic placement of the hatches and accessories. I then used the same technique to put a plane down the centerline oriented in a side view, and detailed placement of items in the side view. This may seem like a lot of work for a 1:250 scale paper model, but it is a lot easier to add details at this stage of design should I decide to make a larger model in the future. I ended up with the digital equivalent of cutting out the deck plans and gluing them together to form a 3d interior form.
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CSS Arkansas-drawing-planes.jpg   CSS Arkansas-drawing-planes-x-ray-vision.jpg   CSS Arkansas-decks.jpg   CSS Arkansas-center-view.jpg   CSS Arkansas-full-model.jpg  

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Old 11-16-2010, 12:33 PM
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I'm adding the bulkheads next. However, after importing the bulkhead lines and printing them all individually on my "splash shield", I found that I had imported the initial end view too small. The bulkheads I created don't match up with the height of the side views. I guess I'll have to go back and remake all the end view items and bulkheads.
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CSS Arkansas-bulkhead-model.jpg   CSS Arkansas-bulkheads.jpg   CSS Arkansas-bulkhead-1-place.jpg  
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  #7  
Old 11-16-2010, 12:58 PM
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ct ertz ct ertz is offline
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Can you use the scale button and adjust each bulkhead once you scale the drawing? That way you can scale each of the existing parts to the new sized drawing rather then redraw each piece.
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Old 11-16-2010, 05:07 PM
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Knife Knife is offline
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Nope, best to go back in fix it right to begin with. About 2 hours of work later:
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Old 11-16-2010, 06:34 PM
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Paperwarrior Paperwarrior is offline
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Knife,

Bad luck on the set back. But, if I may, this is really looking good thus far. I'm really looking forward to seeing more on this project.

I've been following yours and Corey's threads with great interest. I have high hopes that, when I get a free minute I too can take a crack at an ironclad.

Jeff
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Old 11-19-2010, 08:31 PM
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Sorry about no updates, I've spent the last few days drawing lines . . .

I have no idea how I'm going to draw the stern section of the ship. Way to many curvy lines going in way too many directions. Corey's technique of extending the deck surface down won't work because of the complex structure.
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CSS Arkansas-new-simple-model-e-qpr.jpg  
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