The Ship Model Forum

After my model of the Popofka Novgorod was finished, the hull of my Masséna-project has not yet decided whether a laser or a Polish Formmaker would take care of her (after all it was a handsaw but that's another story) and I didn’t fancy the idea of a major project such as the Dulio or Redoutable before the Massena was finished, I decided to take on the HMVS Cerberus as a second project to my current Arrogante-project in which the paper model from David Hathaway (www.papershipwright.co.uk) (sized up on a photocopier) should serve as a blueprint.

The hull was built with 1 mm balsa wood on plywood frames, on which a 1 mm thick layer of epoxy-resin impregnated fiberglass mat has been laminated. In the frames I also included holes for the propeller-shafts and the rudder.


The frame skeleton


The balsa-wood planking


The fibreglass coat

After this there was the usual hell of filling and sanding until the hull was smooth enough.





Unfortunatly the mounting of the rudder’s base broke several times and as the Cerberus should be a RC-model, I decided to replace the wooden one with one of pertinax



After that I went for the propellers. As you can’t buy the right propellers anywhere, I had to scratchbuild them. The propellers were simply trapezoidal blades made from 0,5 mm sheet-styrene glued on a styrene cube with little addings in styrene and brass. This master was cast in a silicone-rubber-form, then removed, the blades were cut off, turned 90 degrees and glued on. Voila: The master for the other propeller. Again a silicone-rubber-form was made, so both propellers can be easily replaced if one gets lost in a lake or a blade breaks off. Then both propellers were then cast in resin. To get a thread in the propellers I used a customary plastic ship-propeller with a M2 (2 mm) thread and cut of the plastic corpus from the little brass thread. Then a hole was drilled in my resin-propellers and the brass thread was glued in the hole (again with resin). Finally the propellers (which were originally cast in bronze) got a galvanic copper plating.


Original


Finished model propellers with the styrene casting pattern

The next thing I had to do was to get the plating on the hull. Unfortunately I know no drawings of the Cerberus that show the whole plating of the ship. There were only a contemporary drawing of a section from about the middle of the ship and some fotos and drawings of the back of the ship in drydock. The latter show, that spaces between adjoined plates were filled, so you can’t see single plates but only stripes from close-fitting and off-lying plates. To show this on the model I copied the position of the close-fitting plates from the midship section’s drawing and the drydock-fotos on the model’s hull (there were only off-lying plates below the waterline), cut stripes in the width of those plates from a rather stiff masking-tape and fixed these stripes aligning the points on the hull. So the rest of the positioning results through the stripes naturally following the hulls shape. With the stripes taped to the hull I took a can of spray-filler (I used OBI (a german DIY-store branch) CLASSIC spray filler) and sprayed the whole hull four times and – before the filler was completely set – removed the masking tape, so the off-lying plates stand off the hull.


Plates in the back-part of the underwater-ship with brass rudder

The rudder was cut from 0,5 mm brass after a pattern from a contemporary drawing.and soldered to a shaft of 3 mm brass tube with a cut along. Later the rudder was filled with a facing from 1 mm sheet-styrene, the shaft put in the housing and a rudder-arm of 0,5 mm brass soldered on the top of the shaft.

As the ship should be radio-controlled I decided to install the components before the deck was glued to the hull. The servo got a little wooden case and was linked to the rudder arm. The motors (two 6 V Faulhaber motors) got bases from balsa wood a were linked to the propeller-shafts and a 6 V/4,5 Ah lead accumulator was installed in the middle of the ship.


Installed servo

Then the Deck from 1 mm sheet-styrene was glued to the deck with an opening just 0,5 mm narrower than the breastwork-deck. This opening was framed with a 1 cm wide strip of 0,5 mm sheet-styrene, to prevent overcoming water to get inside the ship.


Deck with framed opening and installed accumulator

The breastwork-deck was again made from 1 mm and the walls of 0,5 mm sheet-styrene with the walls fitting tight around the frame of teh deck-opening.

After this the ship was ready for the first test-trip out on the lake and ... it swum.


The proud owner with the candidate

Well it did even more. The Cerberus is a very fine ship. Although not a racing-boat she is fast enough to have reserves for emergencies, lies flat in the water even in a stiff breeze and has a very good maneuvrebility.



The trip out

But I had to notice, that even with the heavy accumulator and considering that there will be some additional weight from the rest of the superstructure I had to add some lead-weights to get it deeper in the water (these weights were later put under the accumulator).

After that I decided to work on the turrets. The master was made from two circular pieces from 1 mm styrene plastic with frames glued between them and a 0,3 mm styrene strip wrapped around them. The holes for the guns were cut in the strip but were closed from behind to prevent the silicone to get into the turret. The plates on the upper side were made from 0,3 mm styrene.


Master for the turrets

The master was then put in a box (from Lego-stones) and silicone molding rubber poured over it. The turrets were then cast in resin.

The rest of the superstructure was made from 0,5 mm styrene, the funnel, the conning tower and the vent were made like the master of the turrets: two slices in the form of the piece (all around 0,3 mm narrower than needed) and a strip of 0,3 styrene wrapped around it. I am sorry to say that the papermodel I used as blueprint was in many parts simply wrong what I unfortunately realized some time later with the result that I had to do most of the parts again.




After that I had to paint the hull. I used „Revell Airbrush Colour and was quite pleased with it. Before I could paint the upper hull I had to add the bulwark at boe and stern. I made it from 0,5 mm sheet styrene and added a strutting from halfround 0,5 X 1 mm sheet styrene profiles. On the original ship according from pictures this strutting was later plated resulting in a much thicker bulwark than in it early times.

On the outside of the bulwark was a thick frame around the hawseholes on each side. I made a master from 1 mm thick sheet styrene and pressed it four times in a lump of childrens clay than casting the frames in resin. The frames were than glued to the bulwark and the hawseholes drilled out.

The upper hull was than painted black, the superstructure white and the funnel buff (don’t ask me how much I had to try to get the right colour mixed).

As her maiden voyage showed I still needed some weight to get the ship to the right draught so I made some ballst from lead. As the next trial showed she now lies perfect in the water.




(unfortunately the funnel was only fixed with duct tape resulting in a slanting funnel)

To be continued ...

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A nice looking ship, you have there. Let´s see some more photos, shall we ???

.

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I will try. But first there will be Achim for me, I think.

Dirk

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Hi Dirk and welcome . Super job on your Cerbrus looking forward to more photos.
Dave Wooley

The next step was the planking of the decks. But before I could start I had to figure out how the planks really looked. Until than I was quite versed with the planking of ships of the Kaiserliche Marine in the late 80s, but had no idea of planking in the RN. With help of pictures of the Cerberus and some folks in the RN-yahoo-group (esp. Rick Fryer) I came to think that the planks should have been about 10,4 m (34 feet) long and 15 cm wide laid down in a three-butts-pattern. So I cut hundreds of 10,4 cm long and 1,5 mm wide planks from cherry verneer and glued it on the deck. Interesting was that although the Kaiserliche Marine framed every part of the superstructure with margin planks the RN used margin planks only the outer edge of the wooden deck and (although this was controversial even in the RN-group) the breastwork.


The main and breastwork deck planked

On the breastwork deck I drilled holes in the planking for the coal-hatches and the main vent. The latter was made from auminium tube and modelling putty. The coal hatches were brass etched parts I ordered from M.Z. Modellbau (http://www.mz-modellbau.net).

Before I could start with the planking of the flying-bridge I had to finish the substructure, especially the perforated double-T-profile that framed the deck. As I thought it would be quite hard to drill al the holes in a brass profile and sand them to oval shape I decided to go another way. M.Z. Modellbau had brass etched stripes with oval holes that are used for the framing of decks on german torpedo-boats and were half the width of the needed double-T-profile (about 1 mm). As the holes were only in the lower half of the profile and the whole substructere had an original height of app. 30 cm I made the flying-bridge from 1 mm sheet styrene and glued the brass etched stripes right along the edges. Then I sanded it so that the edges of the bridge and the brass stripes form a smooth surface. When this was done I glued a 1,5 mm wide and 0,3 mm thick strip of styrene in a right angle under the brass strips and a second „deck“ from 0,3 mm sheet styrene on the 1 mm deck leaving the edges of this fake-deck protruding the real deck about 0,5 mm giving the thing the look of a double-T-profile.



In front and behnd each turret there were supports that were also made from a sort of double-T- profile. For them a master was made from 0,5 mm sheet styrene framed with 1,5 mm X 0,3 mm styrene strips. From this master a form was moulded in silicone rubber and cast in resin.



In my opinion the most remarkable things of the Cerberus were the „arts-and-crafts“ like skylights. Because of the complex form of their upper parts, they were quite tricky to make. The oval shaped lower part was made like the coning tower. A 1 cm wide strip of 0,3 mm sheet styrene was glued on two oval frames. For the faceted upper part I sized the part from the paper model up, cut it out, glued it together and painted it with resin (for more stability) and (after the resin got hard) sanded it. The upper part was then glued to the lower one, the frames for the windows (from 0,3 mm sheet styrene) were added and the whole thing moulded in silicone rubber. I plan to cast it in a clear resin but by now didn’t manage to find some that doesn’t stay sticky. If someone knows such a product, let me know.
The first trials were made with normal resin, the windows painted in a glossy bluish green.

The rest of the decks fittings (bollards, capstan, and mushroom vents) were turned from resin cast bars and completed with parts from styrene. From most of these parts I moulded forms from silicone rubber and cast them in resin.

For the two big deck vents I used old vents from my model of the Novgorod, added a new shaft from brass rod sanded and sculptured a little bit, moulded the wole thing in silicone rubber and cast it in resin.

For the turret-vents I moulded also forms. The guns on their bases were made turnable together with the turret, so I still have the option to make the turrets functional.



To be continued ...

Egberth, Do you know what the length of the deck boards were on the original Cerberus? Thank you for your answer, Hank45

Great work. I'm really impressed with the finish of the hull.

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We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley

Your model is looking very good! The planked deck looks great. Looks like it runs well, too - the low freeboard must make this a tricky subject for a working model, but since you've already built a working Novgorod you must have plenty of experience with this!

Do you know the website http:/www.cerberus.com.au ? This has a large number of articles + photos relating to the ship, including some useful close-up detail photos. The site appears to be down at the moment, but I think (hope!) this is just a temporary problem.

I'll be watching this build with great interest, as HMVS Cerberus was the first ship I scratchbuilt in 1/96, a couple of years ago - like you, I used the Paper Shipwright kit as a blueprint, with contemporary photos from the aforementioned website. Although it's not up to my current standards (mainly because I didn't use any commercial fittings such as railing stanchions, ladders and vent cowls) I'm still pleased with the finished result. I built my model to represent the ship in its late 19th century appearance, with a shortened flying deck, single mast, and light anti-torpedo boat armament (including Nordenfelt guns). Here's a link to the build thread (thanks to Timmy C for finding the link): http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=10932

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Model Ship Kit Reviews

Is this the thread you're looking for? viewtopic.php?f=13&t=10932

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De quoi s'agit-il?

Hi Egberth ,

nice to see you and your models over here !

See you in Wüppertal in july

Regards ,

Laurent

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Scared of Nothing , Always Thirsty

Just call me the "Cereals Box Killer" , I guess

Thanks for finding it! I did a search for "Cerberus" on the scratchbuild forum but only found this thread, not my own; not sure what I was doing wrong.

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Model Ship Kit Reviews

Next to do were the lifeboats. According to the original specifications of the ship the Cerberus carried one 28 ft. Cutter Life Boat, one 25 ft. Cutter, two 23 ft. Cutters, one 22 ft. Gig and one 14 ft. Dinghy but photos show that the cutter were all the same size (this matches also with the Webb-plan), so I decided to build three 25 ft. Cutters.

To build them I used the „sewing-thread-method“ I always use to built lifeboats. First I cut a piece of balsa-wood to the outline (minus a little bit for the planking) of the boat and sand it to the correct shape. To get a clean shaped gunwale this form ended this level and not on a level with the top plank. Then small furrows were cut in this core where the frames and the keel were. The core was then wrapped closely into cling film and sprayed it well with release agent. After this a sewing thread was drawn through the furrows (first the keel-furrow, then the frame furrows) and fixed at the top of the core. The core was then planked with 0,3 mm thick and 2 mm wide styrene strips.


28 ft life boat cutter wrapped in cling film and thread with the first planks on each side glued to it and the core form of the 25 ft cutter


Planking of the life boat cutter completed

While planking one shoudn’t use to much superglue as this will settle inside the hull of the boat and ruin the structure of the planks. When the planking reached the level of the gunwale Icut the threads and took the hull from the core form. Some little spots of superglue on the inside were sanded away and a gunwale was added from 0,5 mm X 0,5 mm styrene strips. The gaps between the frames and the gunwale were filled with modelling putty and smoothed. Then the last plank was added and the outer keel from 0,5 mm sheet styrene was fitted.


Finished life boat cutter and gig

The interior was made from vermeer


Finished interior of the 28 ft. Life boat cutter

It seems that the early RN lifeboats had no notches in the top plank but tholes on a metal pin that reached over the top plank, so I etched the tholes in brass and glued them to the gunwale. The chain crosses used to hang the boats to the davits were made of 1,2 X 1,7 mm chain.

A little bit special was the 14 ft. Dinghy. As this boat is very small it would have looked clumsy even with 0,3 mm thick planks so I used paper for them, which I soaked with superglue. This worked fine and even better than with the styrene planks, as the paper soaked up excessive spilt superglue so the sanding of the hull’s inside was reduced to a minimum.





The result was a very fine, very light boat with a really thin yet sturdy hull.

To be continued ...

In the meantime I planked the hurricane-deck and framed it with styrene strips. I also made the steering-wheel. Contrary to my earlier models I decided to use brass wire and sheet styrene instead of my usual photo etched wheels to get a more three-dimensional look. In my search for the correct shape of the companionways Rick Fryer sent me a high resulution photo of the Cerberus which proofed that the paper model was horribly incorrect. In particular:

- the skylights in the paper model are really box shaped companionways with lids and doors in front of the stairs and the aft companionway is much smaller than on the paper model and shifted to starbord.


steering-wheel and bow companionway

- the cylindrical ventilator behind the coning tower had a housing that reaches to the coning tower and a spheric cap


aft companionway and housing of ventilator

- the big vent in front of the funnel has no round but an oval shaped head
- the base of the funnel was double the height of the one in the paper model and has ventilation slots in the upper part
- on the lower part of the companionway directly under the flying bridge there were vitrified


new oval shaped vent, funnel base and vitrified boxes

The companionways were made from sheet styrene with added brass etched parts as was the housing of the cylindrical ventilator. The cap of this ventilator was cut out of a ping-pong-ball.

Then I managed to get a photo-etching machine and a imagesetter für a cheap price on ebay. The first things I etched myself were the new base of the funnel, the vitrified boxes, the chart-house and some small parts (cutter’s rudder, tholes, doors etc.).


Layout for the brass etched sheets (front and back)


Etching machine


Etched sheet (vitrified boxex and thoules)

@ Hank45: If you mean the planks of the deck, I think they were about 34 ft. long (at least this matches the photos and the customs of the RN)

To be continued ...

This is looking extremely good! It certainly puts my model of Cerberus to shame.
As I mentioned before, I really like the deck planking, it looks very neat and realistic. I really need to practice more with this technique, currently I can't even make neat planking in 1/48 scale! - so currently I just use painted plank-textured styrene, which is at least neat and even-looking though it doesn't look quite like the real thing.

The differences you've spotted between the card kit and photos of the ship are interesting. I had to do some similar researching when building my model, due to the changes between the kit's "as-built" fit and the 1880s fit I was building.

One question, how did you make the styrene "rings" for the ship's wheel? Did you cut them out with a circle cutter, or bend a strip into shape?

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Model Ship Kit Reviews

It isn't that hard. It's just a little bit work. Just take the vermeer strips (they are usually sold 10 cm wide) of the chosen wood and cut up pieces of the length your planks should have. Then screw a piece of either aluminium or hard wood with a really straight edge in double the length of your longest plank to a base of hard wood or a kitchen cutting-board (the things made for cutting or hacking vegetables) and glue two little pieces of sheet styrene (thickness of the styrene = width of the planks) as spacers to the straight edge. After that take a steel-liner, a cutter or scalpel and much time, press the liner two the two spacers, pull the vermeer pieces under the steel liner, and cut hundreds of planks. When you got the needed number (depending on the ship that my be a loooong work - it may be easier if you are a zen-buddhist) draw some straight lines to the deck (so you can control the correct alighnment) and glue the planks to it (I use PVA glue).

I think this is really the easiest way to get a good looking deck, though I think a good painted deck looks at least better than a deck drawn to wood or these laser-printed and cut decks they sell for plastic models these times, esp. when you do a little bit aging on the whole ship.



The problem is that the 1870s and 80s were a time of great and fast developments but only few experiences with the new sailless battleships, so every year when the ship goes to the winter-docking they will have done multiple changes either due to technical novelties or just experiences of the crew. On the other hand photography was still in ti's infancy, so photo are rare and mostly done by professionals, so there are hardly any detail-pictures or crew-snapshots the modelbuilder would need but almost only pictures of the ship on the whole (for postcards etc.). So there are plenty of photographs of the ship in different years (although it is still hard to determine which year exactly) which show next to nothing of use for the modelmaker. And if you have a suitable picture you have to interpret it, or you will still go wrong. F.e. there are many pictures showing the Cerberus in very light, almost white or light grey colour and on cerberus.com.au this is (together with an article in The Illustrated Australian News, 23 April 1872 is interpreted as a change in the colour scheme. Other pictures of the same docking show seamen painting black over the light grey hull. So the thing the reporter from The Illustrated Australian News saw and interpreted as a change of the colour scheme was just a complete refreshment of the paint including the grey undercoat.



Yes I used a circle cutter. The Wheels were made as a sandwich: I first cut pieces of 0,5 mm brass rod for the spokes, then the outer rings from 0,3 mm (2 X) and 0,5 mm (1 X) sheet styrene.. In one of the outer rings the cut off inner cirkle is rinserted again and the sponges are drawn on them. Then the brass rod pieces are glued on the drawn lines using glue only on the outer ring. When the inner circle was again removed the sponges were perfectly centered. The spaces between the sponges on the ring were filled with pieces cut from the 0,5 mm ring. When this was done, the second 0,3 mm ring was glued on, the middel get a cover from punched out styrene circles and on the outer ring a second ring from 0,3 mm styrene was glued that was slightly slimmer than the original ring.

( Herzlich willkomen!) at Modelwarship.com

Most inteersting subject-- Cerebrus is a great looking modelship!

Reference your Massena project...-I have quite a collection of useful photos and plans of Massena--I built mine in 1/700 scale

I would be happy to send you the images and scans

e-mail me at jbys1@tiscali.co.uk and I can send you anything you like.

you can have a look here at my tiny model



http://www.modelwarships.com/reviews/sh ... eview.html

I also have a few images of a fine Cerebrus model built by David Abbott-

further assorted images can be found in E Pinningers build thread -linked above.


Best wishes

Jim Baumann

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....I buy them at three times the speed I build 'em.... will I live long enough to empty my stash...?
http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... index.html

IPMS UK SIG (special interest group) www.finewaterline.com

The next things to do were the davits and the rails. The subject of the davits on the Cerberus is heavily discussed (just look at the thread about the Cerberus of Epinninger here: http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=10932). I think, that the working of the davits have been altered somewhat about the time the single fighting top was installed. After that they could definitly lowerd outbord as pictures show. In the earlier times the davits seem to be only turnable which results in the liveboats hanging somewhat over the main deck when rotated out, so there were some sort of bars installed to the davits on which the boats could slip to the water when lowerd without damaging the rails or the deck.


Davits with „slipping-bars“

For the davits I made two masters (one for the cutter-davits and one for the gig-/dinghy-davits) from a 2 mm brass rod, moulded them in silicone rubber and cast them in resin. My first concerns about the stability of the resin davits have proofed wrong the resin pieces are absolutly capable of holding the boats without bending over.

The spacers of the cutter’s davits are made from three pieces of 1 mm brass rod with a cover of 0,3 mm sheet styrene.


Cutter’s davits

After the davits were installed I could set the rail of the breastwork-deck and the flying-bridge. The supports are photo-etched pieces by M.Z. Modellbau. They are a good combromise between scale and sturdiness. The original ship had chains between the supports. As you can’t get such small chains needed, I took two pieces of 0,15 mm copper wire (from an old AC-adapter) and drilled them together with a drilling machine (it has to go slow otherwise the wire will rip). This fake-chain was then drawn through the supports with a little bit sagging to achieve a more chain-like appearance.



Davits and rails

To be continued ...