The African Queen - With Live Steam - Billings - 1:12 - by Wayne

Hi Todd, and thanks for your message here, great to have friends that write you.
I'm Home Alone, no one visits, and 2 kids , ha ha rarely ring me, and just recently my very good neighbor over the road seems to have dumped me.
And one younger brother, we ring occasionally, but I have to be careful with him, he can get very abusive very easily.
Yes I will have to see how the boat sits in the water .............
And Wow, you have been to Melbourne, and went to an Anzac Day Footy Match at the MCG.
I bet you found our Australian Football a bit different, and seeing a game for the first it can be a little confusing as you probably don't know the rules.
Cheers for now
Wayne
 
a49kid said:
I added a reinforcing board on for the tiller / rudder tubing, but I slightly mucked up.
I should have added the hull planking before I glued on the board. But much too hard to redo it all now re the tube locating at the bottom and at the top, where I have added a half round piece.
So I have just added a bit more timber either side of the tubing, it will all look good after a little filler and it is painted
And another builder was thinking like me and has done the same thing.
And he is very much into realism with his weathering……………

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Good morning. Quality work. If you did not point out the “Oops” I would never have noticed. Wow that weathering on the other model is brilliant. Cheers Grant
 
a49kid said:
ROTF Ha guys, where is the key for the Ranking system / Stripes, what am I.
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Good question- I have no idea
tossedman said:
It was the for and aft balance that I was kind of wondering about. Looking forward to seeing your African Queen on the water. I'm really quite curious about the steam engine and how it works.
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ditto.
Cheers Grant. From another once upon a time British colony.
 
BernhardBB said:
Hi great work..here is one I build years ago..
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Hi Bernhard, your Queen is Fantastic.
Love the weathering and all the little 'bits and pieces', around the boat.
I will look into that.
And love that it is RC, I'm planning to do the steering, but probably not the engine control.
And love your figures, I'm working on mine at the moment, but yours look better.
Have you got a video of it on the water?
Yes your Queen is Total Package ...................:)
 
Hi Bernhard & Wayne, what a coinsidence. I have just started the build of the African Queen in 1:12 scale using the plans bought from Selway Fisher ( https://www.selway-fisher.com/Motorcruisers.htm ). I decided to use their Ijssel 30 to build the hull in the common way with wooden planks on bulkheads, but instead of using the wooden hull, my idea is to use that as a mold and laminate the final hull of glassfibre and epoxy on it. Because the original boat was far from a smooth and tidy one, small faults on glassfibre surface do not make any harm.
The reason for building the hull by myself and not using Billing Boats kit, is that I would use only the kit's hull and leave all other parts unused, so why pay a considerably amount of money for parts you do not use.

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As an engine, I have thought to use electric gearmotor hiding under boat's construction and installed on the common axle with steam engine which will be a fake one made of plastic & metal parts only and just rotating freely. The reason for this is simpler construction and easier control of engine speed with RC. To get more realism my intention is to hide a smoke generator inside the boiler and blow smoke through the funnel.

The project is just in the beginning, I am planking the hull with 2x6 mm strips, which work will take a while. After that the glassfibre work etc, so this is a slow project.
If I knew your project with possibility to buy CAD drawing for bulkheads and have laser cut them, I would definitely have used it, but now I have to follow the selected method of hull building, which in fact gives me a lot of pleasure anyway.
 
Moxis said:
Just to show how I have installed an electric gearmotor on the common axle with steam engine at my previous open sloop project:

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And how it looks together with a false boiler:

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Hello Moxis, Love what you have done here, but I'm a little confused.
Does your steam boiler actually work and supply steam to drive the steam engine ?

OK, just read, between the pics, that it is a false boiler, but it looks so real.
And do you prefer spring shaft joiners over universal joints.
Love your lantern, I have been searching for one, mostly on the 1:12 Doll House sited, but not found anything, where did you get that one from.?
Have you got a pic of the finished boat .............
 
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Hello Wayne, as you have read, the boiler is a fake one made of wood. It includes the gearmotor together with the 7,2 V battery and RC equipment. At the top of funnel is a small smoke generator which can also be operated with RC. All steam pipes & valves are made of styrene.

The benefit of electric drive is the ability to control engine speed with a simple ESC. Reversing the engine is very easy too. I prefer the spring shaft joiners instead of universal joints because they are silent. I have not found any UJs which don't rattle when working, but spring joiners don't. And when you use them, alignment of shaft ends is not so critical, they will flex in all directions.

The scale of the boat is 1/6, so the captain and his girlfriend are this scale action figures together with wine bottles, lantern, etc. I don't remember any more where I bought the lantern, but it was from some vendor selling 1/6 scale items. Clothes for passengers were made by my wife.

Attached please find pictures of the entire boat. The hull is of wood, planked on plywood bulkheads.

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Moxis said:
Just to show how I have installed an electric gearmotor on the common axle with steam engine at my previous open sloop project:

View attachment 443035

And how it looks together with a false boiler:

View attachment 443036
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Hello again Moxis, that engine looks very real, will it operate with some steam input.
If so why haven't you you got a working boiler.
Or do you find the geared motor to be much easier to use, more convenient, no cleaning and maintenance, and has better control using RC.
OK, you beat me to it, and answered my questions. And it is 1:6
And yes I'm up on RC, ESC's and smoke units, also build / run Tanks and Cars etc
 
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a49kid said:
Hello again Moxis, that engine looks very real, will it operate with some steam input.
If so why haven't you you got a working boiler.
Or do you find the geared motor to be much easier to use, more convenient, no cleaning and maintenance, and has better control using RC.
OK, you beat me to it, and answered my questions. And it is 1:6
And yes I'm up on RC, ESC's and smoke units, also build / run Tanks and Cars etc
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Hi Wayne. The steam engine is a real one. It is a Stuart 10V which I got from one of my friends because he had no use for it. It came just as is, without reversing gear, and partly for this reason I didn't want to use it with steam.
Also, as you wrote the electric drive is so much simpler to control, has a reverse as standard and much easier to use, so for these reasons I selected electric drive.
 
G'day Wayne, I built the Krick Steam Launch Borkum 1/12 scale approx 7 years ago and used electric motors with false boiler, I believe I may have a spare lanthorn if you want it, I will have a look for it later today, your build is excellent and very detailed, I will go through it all today,
Best regards John,

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a49kid said:
Hi Todd, and thanks for your message here, great to have friends that write you.
I'm Home Alone, no one visits, and 2 kids , ha ha rarely ring me, and just recently my very good neighbor over the road seems to have dumped me.
And one younger brother, we ring occasionally, but I have to be careful with him, he can get very abusive very easily.
Yes I will have to see how the boat sits in the water .............
And Wow, you have been to Melbourne, and went to an Anzac Day Footy Match at the MCG.
I bet you found our Australian Football a bit different, and seeing a game for the first it can be a little confusing as you probably don't know the rules.
Cheers for now
Wayne
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Hi Wayne,

Good thing you've found some fellowship here online as no one wants to be Home Alone. Yeah, so this was in 2001 and we'd been in Melbourne for about 20 minutes not knowing where we were going when we stumbled upon the MCG and all of those Essendon and Collingwood fans streaming in. Not knowing what was happening, we parked, went to the ticket booth and asked what was happening and could we get tickets. They almost laughed at us and said it had been sold out for at least two weeks. Then a guy behind us asks where were we from, we said Canada, he said I'll get you into the members section for $25 each. Sold! So it was meant to be. Great game. Essendon won. We had a few beers and a pie and left happy. I more or less knew what was going on as we'd been to a few other footy matches in Adelaide and Sydney. Good times were had at all of them. I'd played rugby union for years but enjoy any type of footy.

Now, back to your African Queen. Will you have forward, reverse, and throttle control on your RC? Is that steam plant hard to control with servos? I'm guessing you'd have to be creative to hide those servos. Under some crates perhaps? Maybe some Bowden cables would work to control the steam engine? And some kind of pull-pull cables for the rudder?

Cheers mate,

Todd
 
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