Chuck Seiler

From one cog-man to another, well done!!! and good luck with your new build. 
 
    WOOD:  I have used cherry for internal framing in the past.  It is strong and works well.
 
    FRAMES:  Attached is a link to the building of the Viking longship HARRALD FAIRHAIR.  You may have already seen it.  While the longship and cog are not the same, construction appears to be similar.   Perhaps it will give you some ideas.  Reminder: on a cog the first three strakes (garboard plus 2) are NOT clinker, they are caravel.
 
    I look forward to your progress.

I agree that "looks right" isn't always the same as "accurate". Regarding the shiny locomotive, two points. One is the obvious one - we don't often see bright shiny locos - they're usually a bit weathered. But also the "accurate"paintwork on the model doesn't take into account the light and shade that plays on the real loco. Look at the difference between a Napoleonic model figure painted in perfectly correct colours, and the amazing ones in (for example) Old Collingwood's "Attack on La Haye Sainte Farm" in MSW's non ship/categorised builds section. I'm nowhere near up to his standard, but I do try to do a bit of that with my figures. I think I'm probably a bit overcautious in case I waste all that carving work by doing a crap paint job  .
 
 
I don't have any written evidence, but I do have contemporary pictures to work from. For example this one shows shoes

 
But this one shows a sailor climbing the rigging not only with no shoes, but no clothes either! Though I note that the guys helping him are stripped down to their braies (underpants), as is the fellow stoking the fire. Maybe it's a hot day.
 

 
Town seals, which are my major source, unfortunately don't show enough detail to tell whether they crewmen are wearing shoes or not.
 
Other contemporary pictures I've been able to get hold of are a bit equivocal - for example, are the guys in these pictures wearing shoes or not?
 

 

 
So, as I've got at least one clear reference showing someone climbing the rigging wearing shoes, I'm going with that.  Not to say I reject the possibility that sailors could have been barefoot - they probably were on occasion - or perhaps often. But no proof either way.
 
Steven
 
 
 

So here are the two crewmen cut apart.
 

 
And their legs trimmed to shape.
       
 
You wouldn't credit it - after all the time and effort I'd spent to get the windlassman's hands lined up with the windlass bar, when I checked it against the ship his hands were far too high. The only way I could fix it was to cut a wedge into him and lean him over further - well, that was the plan, but  he split apart.
 

 
Then glued him back together and painted both him and the anchorman (not Will Ferrell).
 
      
 
    
 
 
      
 
And now I've glued the removable deck planks on, and the crewman putting them back in place.
 

 

 

 
Steven

I found the plans in the book to be adequate to build the hull,but I would recommend getting the plans for Model Shipways ARMED VIRGINIA SLOOP for your rigging and sail plan. 

I second that.  I like doing ships in a bottle, but I usually only get to the part where I empty the bottle. 

I second that.  I like doing ships in a bottle, but I usually only get to the part where I empty the bottle. 

I second that.  I like doing ships in a bottle, but I usually only get to the part where I empty the bottle. 

I second that.  I like doing ships in a bottle, but I usually only get to the part where I empty the bottle. 

I second that.  I like doing ships in a bottle, but I usually only get to the part where I empty the bottle. 

A question about the wood grain in your wedges.
 
In your image it appears that the wood grain runs from the perimeter of the wheel toward it's center. For strength, wouldn't it be better (closer to the prototype as well) if the grain ran parallel to the circumference of the wheel?
 
Jim

Finish the project?
I am aware of that concept, just not familiar with it!
 

What you see is what there was.  As Elijah states, it was flat bottomed with no keel.  With 2 x 9 pounde guns and 1 x 12 pounder...plus all the other supplies it had an extremely low center of gravity.  Even so, it only drew about 6 inches when fully loaded (if I recall correctly).
 

 
Here is how Philly currently appears.
 
 

 
Here is Philly in her heyday(as photographed from one of the British gunboats during the battle.

Here's some idea of what she's going to look like with mast and castles in place.
 

 
The forecastle was complete except for the arches below the platform, so here they are. I curved wooden strip with the soldering iron, as before, but the curve is quite mild.
 

 
And here is the forecastle with the arches in place.
 

 
Next - the ladders for access to the castles. First I tried them with square section strips of wood for both side-beams and rungs:
 

 

 
But I discovered that not only were the ladders too narrow, but the rungs were too heavy and too close together. I went out the back of the house and measured all the ladders. Distance between rungs seems always to be approximately a foot (300 mm), and the ladders themselves wider than I'd made them.
 
So then I thought of making them as though they were from rough branches. Here are birch twigs from the back garden.
 

 
Still too thick and I couldn't strip off the bark without cutting into the wood. So back across the road to get some more weeds.
 
   
 
Trimmed down: 
 

 
The original idea, since the stems of these weeds taper quite a bit, was to use the thicker ends for the side-beams and the thinner bits for rungs. But I decided I didn't like the "rough" motif as well as I originally had, so I kept the side-beams I already had. However the thin bits made excellent rungs
 

 

 
and now with both the side beams and the rungs further apart it all looks to scale.
 

 
Next, experimenting with the location of the side-rudder.
 
I discovered I'd made the helmsman's arms wrong - his left arm was held too high up. So I cut it off and glued it another piece of wood in its place. And the skirt of his tunic was too short, so I extended it with some "plastic wood" using PVA glue and sawdust.
 
            
 
 
 
 
 
New arm and tunic extension carved to shape and the whole thing painted.
 
      
 
 
Here he is with the other crew members I've done so far ;
 

 
Castle, helmsman and rudder dry fitted, using a pin to temporarily locate the rudder.
 

 
There's still a horizontal beam that has to be attached to the hull as the rudder support, and I have to figure out its shape exactly where and how to attach it..
 

 
 
Then I started painting the castles. As the main colour in contemporary pictures seems to be white, I started out with that, using watered down acrylic.
 

 
And then some red for the decorative bits.
 

 
Unfortunately, no matter how many layers I added, it still looked washed-out, and the red was too bright for the pigments available at the time. So I'm moving over to the old standby - Humbrol enamel. 
 
And I changed the colour layout. I'd always intended to add green around the quatrefoils, but I found that with a white substructure (legs) it all looked too pale. So I changed it to red below the castles themselves. Looks a lot better. 
 

 
And now I'm starting to think about carving the rest of the crew. I took photocopies of the Winchelsea town seal, scaled down so the people on board were at approximately 1:75, and cut and pasted onto a couple of pieces of pear wood. I had to draw in where the picture didn't show them. Got my work cut out for me (sorry!)
 
 
 
 
Steven
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I have purchased cherry and maple from Ocooch.  Good quality.  Great service.  Custom thickness as well.

Thanks for the likes and comments.
 
I've been working on the new forecastle - Here you can see the height difference between it and the earlier iteration.
 

 
Apart from that, the technique was the same as on the aftercastle, so I haven't included photos. However, the decoration is different -  pointed arches instead of quatrefoils.
 

 
I used the same technique I'd used to make the earlier arches, but as the arches were smaller I had to bend the wood in an even tighter curve. I made each arch a bit too long so I could trim it to fit exactly in situ before I glued it down.
 

 
Here are the uprights:
 

 

 
And the first and second  arches
 

 

 
The bottom of the right hand arc of the second arch is a little out of place in the photo, but I was able to gently push it into place at the top of the upright.
 
Third arch complete
 

 
 
I'd been thinking about access to the castles. Sure, use a ladder, but if the top of the ladder is at the edge of the castle, the base is right at the edge of the raised deck and would make access a little difficult. Landström has the ladder coming up right in the middle of the castle, but that seems a bit wrong to me - you'd always be worried about falling through the hole. So I did what I thought solved both problems - put the hole right at the inboard edge. This is the aftercastle - the forecastle isn't decked yet.
 

 
I worked out that a 600 mm (2 feet) gap would be wide enough - it's the size of a small doorway, at least here in Oz. At 1:75 scale, that's 8 mm. You can see there's a deckbeam supporting the inner edge of the decking, and the distance between it and the next deckbeam is enough for someone to get through without too much difficulty.
 

 
So here she is with both castles dry fitted.
 

 

 
I still have to add the deck of the forecastle and also the arch between the legs on each side (though they're simpler than on the aftercastle).
 
Note the rope around the windlass. I'm just checking it out against how they did it on the Harald Fairhair replica ( see 0:32 at
 
 
And I discovered the drum of my windlass was too close to the deck so the rope got stuck underneath  . I've had to take the whole assembly off and glue a spacer under each of the side brackets to raise the drum. Just waiting for the glue to dry then I'll trim it all to shape and glue the windlass back in place.
 
Steven
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Our men’s book club read Pillars of the Earth several years ago and we all enjoyed it.  I remarked that the author cleverly bookended two major events in English history.  Our resident English history expert, a retired English teacher, disputed my analysis, saying that the ending had nothing to do with historical fact.  As the debate raged on, he finally said, “Oh, I watched the movie!”
 
Roger

My research indicates the flag you have is the correct one.
 
Here is somebody's depiction.

 

My research indicates the flag you have is the correct one.
 
Here is somebody's depiction.

 

My research indicates the flag you have is the correct one.
 
Here is somebody's depiction.

 

My research indicates the flag you have is the correct one.
 
Here is somebody's depiction.

 

Here is what I got from  MSW post many years ago.  Don't know how accurate for the period, but to paraphrase Bruce, "Close enough for government work".
 

Everyone: Its been a while but I have managed to get the all of the square sails on the Agamemnon. While there is still some rigging to do on the square sails I am holding off on that until I can get the stay sails on her and then I will finally see the light in the end of the tunnel. 
 
Its been a slog in making any progress but its good to see it starting to come together... Especially with the Winchelsea waiting in the wings!

Well, fun and games.
 
I've added the decoration to the aftercastle. Took a long time and some patience, but I think it was worth it. There are three quatrefoils (four-petalled flowers) along each side plus a rather complex pointed arch beneath. So I had to figure out how to make them. These decorations were usually inset rather than standing proud of the background, so after a bit of thought a series of cusped triangles in the "negative space" seemed to be the best way to go.
 

 

 
So we go from this
 

 
to this
 

 
The decoration would probably extend around the front, so I extrapolated the pattern to take this into account.
 


 
 

 
And then onto the arch. Using my trusty soldering iron as a heat source, I bent strips of wood in a circle to make the arcs for the main body of the arch.
 

 
That's a 32mm (1.25 inch) diameter circle. That soldering iron is amazing. Here's the beginning of the arch.
 

 
And in place:
 

 
I had to do a little adjusting where the arch met the uprights to get it to sit more smoothly (not photographed).
 
And then the really fiddly bit. There is a complex secondary arch shown on the Winchelsea town seal:
 

 
So I had to get thinner strips of wood and curve and cut them to shape. Quite a lot of trial and error involved to get it all to fit and look right.
 

 

 

 

 
And le voila! The castle dry fitted in place.
 

 
I have yet to choose a colour scheme. The only coloured pictures from the time show these castles as often being brightly coloured, but with a base of white.
 
        
 
 
Next we get onto the forecastle. I had been merrily just making a duplicate of the aftercastle till I took a good look at the Winchelsea seal again. It appears that though they both come up to the same height, the fore "castle" is deeper than the aftercastle.
 

 
Landström obviously noticed this discrepancy and thought about it. His solution was to make the fore "castle" the same depth as the after "castle", but to keep the proportions right, he increased the number of decorative arches on the "walls" from three to four.
 

 
That's certainly a possible solution and I did consider it, but though most ships with two castles depicted on seals have them the same depth, the ship on the far left of the three coloured pictures above has castles of uneven heights.
 
The height under the aftercastle is "fixed" by having to allow headroom for the helmsman, but this isn't the case with the forecastle. And I checked the height of the castle "walls" if its floor was lower. Allowing for a 1.65 metre (5'6") crewman, the top of the merlons ("battlements") was high enough to hide behind, while the embrasures (openings) were deep enough for someone to look out and shoot a weapon. Which is the whole point of battlements, isn't it?
 
So with tears in my eyes (to misquote Arlo Guthrie) I took out the deck substructure I'd put in with such care and attention and moved it downward. And I discarded the walls I'd made for the forecastle and made new ones. Here's a sample just starting out.
 

 
Will the walls work out? Can Steven make beautiful decorations for the forecastle to match the ones aft? Will tall thin Jones be able to rescue Sweet Sue from Salty Sam? Tune in for our next exciting instalment.
 
Steven
 
 
 
 

Is that the origin of "Doing a half fast job"? 😁 (Think about it.)

Thanks everybody, and thanks Druxey, though I sort of feel they're more a triumph of patience over lack of planning . . .
 
But I think the structure is much closer to what would have been done back in the day than the ones I did on the dromon, which were very heavily influenced by my experience as a building designer in modern light timber (stud) framing.
 
Once the castles themselves are clad, I'll have to work out a means of doing the decorative woodwork, as seen in the second-last pic of my previous post. I've had a few ideas and I'll just have to see how well they work - or if they work at all.
 
Steven