Steinhaus Tug

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completely revised 03/12/15

Steam Tug after Steinhaus (1870)

After his well-known books on wooden sailing ship construction, Carl-Friedrich Steinhaus published another book on iron ship-building, which saw its second edition in 1870. This book is a true textbook, as it provides a number of examples with stability calculations based on detailed construction material descriptions and inventories. The text is complemented by lines drawings, GAs and cross-sections as well as an lithographed artist's impression. This provides the model builder with a detailed account of steamships of the time. Exercise No. 5 concerns a steam tug of already somewhat old-fashioned appearance in 1870. It has a flush deck, no bridge and the boiler is housed in a dome. Some of the details were only sketchy, as they were not relevant to the exercise and would have been provided by the shipbuilding supply trade according to the 'fashion' of the day. These details were drawn on the basis of contemporary information, as was the rig and the dinghy. The length was 80 feet Hamburg measure, which gives a model length of about 41 cm in the chosen scale 1:60.


Drawing by author ©	Lithograph	Thanks to Photoshop©

A somewhat novel way of construction was chosen. The length profile as well as bulkhead-frames were cut from brass sheet of 0.5 mm and 0.25 mm thickness respectively. The frames included the stanchions for the bulwark. The spaces between the frames was filled with an acrylic foam (Rohacell^©) as used in architectural model building. A false deck of aluminium sheet was cemented on this hull, which then was faired in the usual way and smoothed with automotive putty. Onto this hull, strips of 0.1 mm copper sheet were glued to represent the plating. Rivets were embossed before. Otherwise the construction followed the usual shipmodelling practices.

A CD-ROM or file tranfer with copies of the original drawings from the book, the descriptive text as well as my detailed reconstruction drawings is available.
Cost is EUR 30 plus shipping. Please contact me at the email addess below.