This is my tug, the Sanguine, built from a Midwest Products Seguin. It's 39" long, in 1:32 scale.

It's my first serious model boat, and I'm afraid it shows… not so bad, but I've seen museum quality work, and I've got a ways to go! She's also not quite done yet, needing some fenders and mast lights yet, and I want to do some more work on the sound system… more amps!

The Seguin was an 1880's steam powered wooden tug, long and slender compared to today's diesel tugs. The original was the last working steam tug in America, operating up to the sixties.

I chose to build mine as such a tug might have looked in the forties or fifties… masts shortened, darker colors, a bit rough around the edges. Some like to build their boats all shiny like new, I choose to put the seagull stuff all over and bang up the paint some.

If I did it again, I'd take more time laying out the power train, and allowing for more working options- lights and such… but even in the fifties, the Seguin didn't have much "animation" going on!

See the Midwest Seguin page.

Midwest now offers the Seguin with a fiber glass hull; mine is plank on frame, a true art (and I'm no artist).

bow shot

foredeck

Lettering is white Letraset dry transfer, worked fine on the black paint.

pilot house

life ring… more Letraset

fantail

The hawser is a big tow rope, and needs to be neatly coiled on the aft grating, to allow it to safely pay out. Hans is telling Heinz that it needs to be straightened out!

Hans and Heinz… figures are tough to come by in 1/32; these are 1/35 German soldiers, somewhat modified!

I opened up the gangway, and put railings around everything. These railings are steel wire and machined "2 ball" stanchions.

Aft on the "boat deck". New skylight, added the sand buckets, built the davits… the original kit had a sorry selection of fittings.

The much abused boat. Need to redo that tarp.

I gave up on proper pintles for the rudder, I have a 1/8" rod going the full length, piloted down below in a simple plate. Don't rely on epoxy here…as I found out one night before a meet. I then soldered brass strips to the rod, and used 00-90 bolts to secure the wooden rudder.

The hawser again

The hawser holds it shape due to being soaked in artist's matte, which is just water based polyurethane.

The aft grating comes off to expose the rudder control arm.

And a shorter line forward, hastily dumped on deck.

The forestay needs to come loose to remove the deckhouse… I built this spring loaded contraption, and later found a slight push on the foremast would allow the forestay to come unhooked!

Seagull's been here. And that paint is a bit worn.

More worn paint. That strake protects the railing as the hawser moves around… and the paint won't last there, or in the chock.

The recently added sound system. Box fits a 2" speaker with plastic cone, electronics are underneath. I use a real steam "chuff" recording on an ISD 1420 chip, and turn it on/off with a signal from a sensor on the prop shaft… so rate and duration are sensitive to shaft speed.

Speaker box out. I used separate batteries to avoid motor noise leaking through the wires… a bit more filtering, and I should be able to use just the main battery.

General arrangement. ESC is a kit from Action in the UK- nice fellow to work with!

Arrangement. I'd like more craftsmanship in here, too many wires tangled, and I hate having the ESC and Rx stuck on with velcro!

The servo tray comes out to expose the motor… Graupner Speed 600 with 3:1 gearbox. Even on 6v, this is too much, the boat almost gets up on plane! Also kind of noisy… I'd like to rubber mount the motor, as the hull is a good sounding board for gear noise.

Photo-interrupter on the shaft coupling. You can buy fancy universal joints, but the old Dumas nylon dogbone is cheap and works fine.

Shot would make nicer ballast than these bullets, but it's getting hard to find lead shot anymore.

The ESC sitting on the 10 Ah gelcell. Could probably cut back on the battery size, but hey, I needed the ballast anyway.

I have a nice mahogany display stand for the Sanguine. First time I drove down a bumpy Michigan freeway in my stiffly sprung SUV, I thought I stove in the hull! So I built a transport cradle, made from 2" sheet foam. Just did a 400 mile trip, no problems.

I started with a cheap 2 ch Futaba car radio, didn't like the controls. So I built it into a new box, with a stick from an old Tx for speed, and a geared drive pot for steering, even with rudder indicator!

Here's the gear drive, old "found" gears. The wheel has some inertia to it, so I can give the wheel a spin.

Radio controls are just potentiometers… lots of ways to hook'em up! I checked the FCC rules- a little fuzzy here, but there is a section on "remote operation" of Tx's than can be read to allow such operations (just don't mess with the transmitter section!). All in the same vein as numerous multifunction mods available commercially.