Chuck Seiler

While definitely NOT an expert in planking (I struggle on a regular basis) I see some areas that might be helpful.  

    I believe your garboard strake does not go far enough forward and bends down.  I always have problems with the garbord, but getting it right is one key to proper planking.  Continuing it as indicated gives a better angle for the next plank and sets up a better distance for follow-on planks.  This allows the follow-on planks to be tapered to fit the hull, whether spiled or edge-bent.

While definitely NOT an expert in planking (I struggle on a regular basis) I see some areas that might be helpful.  

    I believe your garboard strake does not go far enough forward and bends down.  I always have problems with the garbord, but getting it right is one key to proper planking.  Continuing it as indicated gives a better angle for the next plank and sets up a better distance for follow-on planks.  This allows the follow-on planks to be tapered to fit the hull, whether spiled or edge-bent.

While definitely NOT an expert in planking (I struggle on a regular basis) I see some areas that might be helpful.  

    I believe your garboard strake does not go far enough forward and bends down.  I always have problems with the garbord, but getting it right is one key to proper planking.  Continuing it as indicated gives a better angle for the next plank and sets up a better distance for follow-on planks.  This allows the follow-on planks to be tapered to fit the hull, whether spiled or edge-bent.

While definitely NOT an expert in planking (I struggle on a regular basis) I see some areas that might be helpful.  

    I believe your garboard strake does not go far enough forward and bends down.  I always have problems with the garbord, but getting it right is one key to proper planking.  Continuing it as indicated gives a better angle for the next plank and sets up a better distance for follow-on planks.  This allows the follow-on planks to be tapered to fit the hull, whether spiled or edge-bent.

While definitely NOT an expert in planking (I struggle on a regular basis) I see some areas that might be helpful.  

    I believe your garboard strake does not go far enough forward and bends down.  I always have problems with the garbord, but getting it right is one key to proper planking.  Continuing it as indicated gives a better angle for the next plank and sets up a better distance for follow-on planks.  This allows the follow-on planks to be tapered to fit the hull, whether spiled or edge-bent.

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2022/11/14th-century-shipwrecks-discovered-in-sweden/145395?fbclid=IwAR1dVHRYf1SbuQf6XKTnsh5NDJNWBEyYD7sEJvaXjNkaBcN7dMYJtZwGdAE

Good luck Dick.  I will drop in from time to time and take a look see.  You and Louis da Fly keep drawing me back here. 

Good luck Dick.  I will drop in from time to time and take a look see.  You and Louis da Fly keep drawing me back here. 

Dave,
 
    A lesson in and of itself.  You will find many discussions here regarding glues.  IMHO superglue has its place but wood glue is best.  Others disagree.  Not sure ANYBODY likes foaming gorilla glue.

White glue, yellow glue, epoxy, CA
They all have their place when used in the correct application.  But never Gorilla Glue.
 
At least for me.

Dave,
 
    A lesson in and of itself.  You will find many discussions here regarding glues.  IMHO superglue has its place but wood glue is best.  Others disagree.  Not sure ANYBODY likes foaming gorilla glue.

Hi Dave!  Welcome aboard. 
 
    Before getting philosophical, a suggestion.  You mentioned "Careful cutting with an exacto blade separated the three keel pieces. ".  If the parts were glued with wood glue these can easily be separated by soaking the joints in rubbing alcohol (cotton balls or Q tips work for me) for a bit, then separating with  the exacto.
 
    Drinking from a firehose, indeed.  A big newbie problem is coming aboard wanting to build a scratch built, fully framed HMS VICTORY or USS CONSTITUTION.   They are quickly overwhelmed.  It looks like you have chosen the more reasonable path of starting small and learning the 'trade'.  I have found that even experienced wood workers learn new things when dealing with bendy-curvey hulls and compound curved planking. 
 
    Read build logs of ships you are working on and ones you may work on...and ones that interest you.  I have found valuable info from logs having nothing to do with the model I am working on.  Use the archives and ask questions.  That 'stupid question' you might be afraid to ask...we probably all asked it at some point.  You don't learn if you don't ask.
 
    Don't be afraid to pull apart things that are not right.  Errors compound.  Wood is forgiving and easy to come by.
 
    Have fun!!  There will be times of frustration when things don't work out (at least for me there were) but think it through and it will work out (usually). 
 
    And remember, you can never have too many clamps.
 

Good luck Dick.  I will drop in from time to time and take a look see.  You and Louis da Fly keep drawing me back here. 

Hi Dave!  Welcome aboard. 
 
    Before getting philosophical, a suggestion.  You mentioned "Careful cutting with an exacto blade separated the three keel pieces. ".  If the parts were glued with wood glue these can easily be separated by soaking the joints in rubbing alcohol (cotton balls or Q tips work for me) for a bit, then separating with  the exacto.
 
    Drinking from a firehose, indeed.  A big newbie problem is coming aboard wanting to build a scratch built, fully framed HMS VICTORY or USS CONSTITUTION.   They are quickly overwhelmed.  It looks like you have chosen the more reasonable path of starting small and learning the 'trade'.  I have found that even experienced wood workers learn new things when dealing with bendy-curvey hulls and compound curved planking. 
 
    Read build logs of ships you are working on and ones you may work on...and ones that interest you.  I have found valuable info from logs having nothing to do with the model I am working on.  Use the archives and ask questions.  That 'stupid question' you might be afraid to ask...we probably all asked it at some point.  You don't learn if you don't ask.
 
    Don't be afraid to pull apart things that are not right.  Errors compound.  Wood is forgiving and easy to come by.
 
    Have fun!!  There will be times of frustration when things don't work out (at least for me there were) but think it through and it will work out (usually). 
 
    And remember, you can never have too many clamps.
 

Perhaps the most important event to shape the Middle Bronze Age was the demise of the so-called minoan civilization of Crete. Minoan is a term pulled from the rather creative brain of Sir Arthur Evans, the excavator and popularizer of the Palace of Knossos which he, on the basis of no evidence, called the Palace of Minos. The people he named the minoans were an expert sea people who were known to have traded extensively, especially with Egypt (who record the cretans as the keftiu). The demise of the minoan palace-based civilisation is poorly understood and probably was not sudden. The eruption of the volcanic island of Thera in about 1600 bce may have played a part in this. Certainly, the palaces of Crete were not destroyed by a monster tsunami, as is popularly depicted, but it may have destroyed the minoan war fleet and left the palace-based civilization open to opportunistic takeover by their erstwhile trading friends the mycenaeans. The Late Bronze Age (Late Helladic when applied to Greece) is regarded as that period between the fall of the minoans (1600 bce) and the catastrophic collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations in the early 12th century bce. 
 
 
The mycenaeans, also known as achaeans (and likely corresponding to the ahhiyawa of the Hittite records), traded extensively throughout the Aegean Sea and the Levant. They were also likely involved in piracy and freebooting including the famous siege of Troy which may have occurred in the Late Bronze Age and was later celebrated in oral performance by whoever Homer was (or were). In any case, the mycenaeans were based in the Peloponnese and what later became Greece during the Iron Age. By fair means or foul, they became the heirs to the palace civilization of Crete and together with the syro-canaanites of the Levant took over the minoan trade networks. The mycenaeans were known as deep-sea traders but they also were more war-like.  It is likely to the mycenaeans that the next revolution in sea-warfare is owed, namely the large, rowed war-galley which became the raiding longship of the age. This is not to say that the mycenaeans invented the concept but they certainly popularized it and brought it to a level of prominence and sophistication which led to its evolution into what became the most feared weapon of war of the Age of Bronze. These in turn were to further evolve during the Iron Age into the battleships of the Geometric and later Attic periods of Greece, the biremes and triremes.
 
 
It is my intention to build as convincing a reconstruction model of a Late Helladic war-galley as I can with the very limited and confusing contemporary evidence available from paintings on pottery, graffiti, carvings on seals and small clay or lead ship models which have survived the ages.
It is not my intention to use other reconstructions or modern artistic representations of these vessels but to sail unescorted into uncharted waters.
I will, of course, be greatly guided by the archaeologists and historians whose knowledge of the period is vast but all the while recognizing the controversies which abound in their literature.
 
Where possible I will try to use construction methods which were known to be extant at the period we are discussing. I may come up with the occasional idea of my own When I carried out my “reconstruction” of the mediaeval hulc vessel, I found that the method of construction greatly influenced the final shape of the hull and it is likely that the same will occur with this build.
I have no academic axe to grind and really it is immaterial to me whether this model meets with academic approval. I claim all my mistakes as my own but welcome them being pointed out.
 
 
No wrecks of any of these war-galleys or similar vessels from the period have survived. The only wrecks of relevance are a couple of trading vessels such as the Uluburun ship found off the coast of Turkey which give some clues to keel and plank configuration. But all the rest relies on the surviving imagery on fragments of pottery and crude models.
I hope you will bear with me as I blunder through this putative reconstruction and, of course, I would like to encourage any MSW members to contribute. There is a vast body of knowledge in MSW which I hope will protect me from the more egregious errors. So, please help me if you can.
 
 
 
Dick

Chuck, I wish that Constitution keel had been glued with simple wood glue. It was more than likely done with foaming gorilla glue, which expanded the joints and caused huge gaps. But, those gaps made it easy to slip a blade in without hitting wood. Then I took a sharp chisel and carefully pared away the remaining foamed glue. But you’re definitely right about it not being the first build. I’ll be going way more modest than that and then working up to it. 
 
thanks all for the welcome. Been spending a whole lot of time reading all the articles in the library. 

Hi Dave!  Welcome aboard. 
 
    Before getting philosophical, a suggestion.  You mentioned "Careful cutting with an exacto blade separated the three keel pieces. ".  If the parts were glued with wood glue these can easily be separated by soaking the joints in rubbing alcohol (cotton balls or Q tips work for me) for a bit, then separating with  the exacto.
 
    Drinking from a firehose, indeed.  A big newbie problem is coming aboard wanting to build a scratch built, fully framed HMS VICTORY or USS CONSTITUTION.   They are quickly overwhelmed.  It looks like you have chosen the more reasonable path of starting small and learning the 'trade'.  I have found that even experienced wood workers learn new things when dealing with bendy-curvey hulls and compound curved planking. 
 
    Read build logs of ships you are working on and ones you may work on...and ones that interest you.  I have found valuable info from logs having nothing to do with the model I am working on.  Use the archives and ask questions.  That 'stupid question' you might be afraid to ask...we probably all asked it at some point.  You don't learn if you don't ask.
 
    Don't be afraid to pull apart things that are not right.  Errors compound.  Wood is forgiving and easy to come by.
 
    Have fun!!  There will be times of frustration when things don't work out (at least for me there were) but think it through and it will work out (usually). 
 
    And remember, you can never have too many clamps.
 

Hi Dave!  Welcome aboard. 
 
    Before getting philosophical, a suggestion.  You mentioned "Careful cutting with an exacto blade separated the three keel pieces. ".  If the parts were glued with wood glue these can easily be separated by soaking the joints in rubbing alcohol (cotton balls or Q tips work for me) for a bit, then separating with  the exacto.
 
    Drinking from a firehose, indeed.  A big newbie problem is coming aboard wanting to build a scratch built, fully framed HMS VICTORY or USS CONSTITUTION.   They are quickly overwhelmed.  It looks like you have chosen the more reasonable path of starting small and learning the 'trade'.  I have found that even experienced wood workers learn new things when dealing with bendy-curvey hulls and compound curved planking. 
 
    Read build logs of ships you are working on and ones you may work on...and ones that interest you.  I have found valuable info from logs having nothing to do with the model I am working on.  Use the archives and ask questions.  That 'stupid question' you might be afraid to ask...we probably all asked it at some point.  You don't learn if you don't ask.
 
    Don't be afraid to pull apart things that are not right.  Errors compound.  Wood is forgiving and easy to come by.
 
    Have fun!!  There will be times of frustration when things don't work out (at least for me there were) but think it through and it will work out (usually). 
 
    And remember, you can never have too many clamps.
 

Hi Dave!  Welcome aboard. 
 
    Before getting philosophical, a suggestion.  You mentioned "Careful cutting with an exacto blade separated the three keel pieces. ".  If the parts were glued with wood glue these can easily be separated by soaking the joints in rubbing alcohol (cotton balls or Q tips work for me) for a bit, then separating with  the exacto.
 
    Drinking from a firehose, indeed.  A big newbie problem is coming aboard wanting to build a scratch built, fully framed HMS VICTORY or USS CONSTITUTION.   They are quickly overwhelmed.  It looks like you have chosen the more reasonable path of starting small and learning the 'trade'.  I have found that even experienced wood workers learn new things when dealing with bendy-curvey hulls and compound curved planking. 
 
    Read build logs of ships you are working on and ones you may work on...and ones that interest you.  I have found valuable info from logs having nothing to do with the model I am working on.  Use the archives and ask questions.  That 'stupid question' you might be afraid to ask...we probably all asked it at some point.  You don't learn if you don't ask.
 
    Don't be afraid to pull apart things that are not right.  Errors compound.  Wood is forgiving and easy to come by.
 
    Have fun!!  There will be times of frustration when things don't work out (at least for me there were) but think it through and it will work out (usually). 
 
    And remember, you can never have too many clamps.
 

I love the 'picnic tables' but I am not sure how useful they would be on a ship in heavy seas.  Been there.  Done that with bolted down tables.  I guess those pirates are a hardier breed than I. 

Keep up the great work.

I'll bet I'm not alone in my modeling process.  If I build something and the joints look magnificent, I'll leave it as natural wood.  If what I've built needs filler or is sub-par, it gets painted in order to hide my sins. 😊
 
Alan

I love the 'picnic tables' but I am not sure how useful they would be on a ship in heavy seas.  Been there.  Done that with bolted down tables.  I guess those pirates are a hardier breed than I. 

Keep up the great work.

I love the 'picnic tables' but I am not sure how useful they would be on a ship in heavy seas.  Been there.  Done that with bolted down tables.  I guess those pirates are a hardier breed than I. 

Keep up the great work.

second attempt. Getting closer. The center window needs redoing, and some other tweeking. It occurs to me that putting in the lights first (mica in this case) might make it easier. These won't be up to Greg Herbert's standards, but the best I can do: