Hi y’all. So, my Antje conversion, Lily, has maidened about a month ago, so a few weeks ago I decided to warm up my bench again with a Deans Marine Wacht Am Rhein. This is another kit started by someone probably 20 years ago. The rudder shoe, aft deck, mid deck, and stuffing box was installed. Motor mount wasnt. Also, most of the kits timber was missing. And, to make things MORE fun, the fittings were placed in a plastic container so there’s no way to match them with the notes in the instructions. So here we go.
I’ve had this kit for at least 5 years if not longer, the original plans were so faded they were almost unrecognizable. I order a new set of plans from Deans and put the kit away, it’s been on and off the bench several times, but it’s getting built now.
The first thing I did was procure a motor. I was going to use my favorite, a Zippkits 650 out runner, but where the motor is supposed to mount would have been problematic. Deans uses a different setup on their tubes, instead of a common 4mm oilite bushing at each end, they use a brass tube bushing at each end, the tube is made so the inner tube can’t go deeper into the tube after it’s seated flush with the ends. However, a normal 4mm shaft won’t work, as their shafts are machined a little smaller after the threads. The inner tubes will clear the threads bat that’s as far as they go. So, I was stuck using the factory shaft and the planned motor location.
So, to that end I used the supplied motor mount, but did not use rubber bands to hold the motor in place. I used hardwood on both sides of the mount, places the motor in its cradle, in this case I’m using a 550 45 turn crawler motor. I used a Dumas clamp mount and seated it with socket head servo screws, then aligned the motor and tacked in place with ca, installed a universal coupler, test rabbit and epoxied the mount in permanently.
After that I boxed in the fwd holes for the anchor chains, this way I can glue the chains in place without worrying about water gettin in, then fitted and installed the front deck, the deck to upper deck bulkhead, and used 1/16 plastic strip to make the bulwark supports . Did not feel up to manually cutting and fitting about 30 from sheet. Looks good to me.
After that I installed the rudder servo and changed the tiller from the supplied part to one I like better, and installed the linkage.
After that, it was time to add the mahogany bulwark rails and the mid upper deck planking. You know, the wood that’s missing from the kit. After some panicked searching thru my wood box I found several strips of mahogany that were the right width but a bit thinner, plus some sheet remnants from earlier builds. The bulwarks were sanded flush with the plastic strip I installed for the railing support and then the mahogany installed. The upper deck was another matter entirely. I ended up using balsa. It actually turned out pretty good, so after sanding I stained it with a gunstock color. Bad choice as it turned out too red. So, once my paints came in I painted it with several coats of Tamiya deck tan. Much better!!
I had already painted the lower decks and inner bulwark light gray before I installed the wood, so I taped everything off and painted the upper hull British Racing Green and the lower hull Pure Red, once that dried I used white pinstripe for the waterline. After touching up a couple of spots I shot the whole hull with semi gloss clear.
After that I built up the boiler and stack assembly. The original owner had this partially done, so I finished the job the best way I could, I had to improvise a few things as there’s a few parts missing, but it looks pretty good. Still details to be added, but that was my stopping point for now.
Cash

Hi y’all. I got a bit more done these past 2 weeks. I started the wheel platform first. I had to use some plastic I had in stock to make the base as that part of the printed plastic was MIA. I used thin plywood sheet for the floor, and thin plasticard for the bulwarks. There were remnants of very thin mahogany with a paper backing in the kit, I used that for the outer bulwarks sheeting.
The support underneath and the aft skylight house I had to build from scratch also, I used some premade portholes for the aft house. I tried to use the white metal chain supports supplied in the kit, but they bent at the lightest touch so I made some out of thin brass wire. I had to scrounge the chain too.
I used the vacformed canopy and painted it olive drab, then used 2mm brass for the supports. I had to modify the supplied ladders for the platform as they were a bit too tall, painted then glued on.
That’s where sh stands now, I need to build up the fwd bunker and finish detailing the boiler, then install that and the rest of the fittings on the center deck, then I’ll move aft.
Cash