USS Alarm, Walden Models 1:250 (Prototype)

[Oliver Weiss]

Hi folks.

This thread picks up the the Plank-on-Frame thread left off.


Subject is the experimental torpedo boat "ALARM", 1874-1898. Pictures and data for the original are available here.


Here's a spiffed-up rendering of my current Rhino drawing to give you an idea of the finished product:

[Oliver Weiss]

Here's the current state of affairs. Deck, skin and bulwark are on. Here I noticed an ugly mistake. I should have continued the lower hull planking upwards beyond the waterline. Now I have a nasty seam right at the waterline, making it really obvious how the hull was put together. I'm not sure what my options are. It's probably best left alone and corrected on a future build.

[Oliver Weiss]

The pit in the bow will receive the gun. I have no pictures of this area, and the plan drawings only indicate the position of the carriage and scuttles in the rear corners. I'm pretty confident there must have been a grating for the gun crew to walk on, so that's how I drew it.

[Zathros]

Kind've of reminds me of this necklace a girl I knew wore. It read, "If you can read this you are far too close". Looks great to me, so does the Rhino work up.

[Don Boose]

A fascinating craft, Oliver. The long ram prows of that era gave a very distinctive look to the ships and torpedo boats.

Don

[Golden Bear]

Good build, Oliver. Nice choice of model, too. I personally don't se the seam as being too bad. It seems as if most full hull models are also designed with a break at WL where the seam can be somewhat diguised by the color transition. You always are a neat builder.


Carl

[APA-168]

Very well done! Another great subject choice.

[Brooker]

Hi Oliver,
I'm new here, but I'm not new at collecting plans, lithographs but generally no information and I have massive resources from technical journals of the day, catalogued and available for many ships, warships, submarines and oddball, including Lividavia, Alarm, Bessemer, Bazin's Roller Ship, which I built some 20 years ago, all of the Winan's Cigar Yachts (which defeated me as I like to build detail scale for r/c out of card) and well, the list goes on and on - my specific interest area is the changeover from sail to steam say 1850 - 1920, although my collection is extensive and up to the 1990's generally.
I like to "trade information" as I put out for the stuff I collected, in this case years ago and my resources are generally complete, or sufficiently so to get the job done and out of copyright.
I cannot work out how I send you an e.mail - so this will have to do.
Richard

[Brooker]

Hi,
Off the cuff - when I build a card model, I don't use sandpaper. If I don't get the part I'm building right, I build it over and over again until I at last succeed, also I don't build "thin card models", because I live in Australia with high and low temperature ranges and humidity which bends card models like bananas - so I've developed a technique for strong card models for radio control, in the water, chugging around by electric power, although I don't have the interest to do this anymore.
Richard.

[Brooker]

Hi,
Say 7,000 plans sets plus ships, warships, submarines, oddball with in many cases detail lithographs of each ship from technical journals of the day and other resources and trades and 4,000 plus plans sets of aircraft and tanks from all of the ex Communist Block modellers magazines and coloured prints and much much else besides - for use as a resource, if needed.
I also have a large collection of original card kits to sell off and large scale detail aircraft drawings too - Plany Modelarskie's, more about them later, if anyone is interested.
Richard