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Louie da fly

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Everything posted by Louie da fly

  1. Louie da fly
    No I haven't. Sounds worth trying -if I can get a gentle current. Steven
  2. Louie da fly
    I've been fiddling with the sail of the 'mast of the middle' to get it to 'belly' correctly. The silkspan is impregnated with acrylic paint, so by laying the ship over, wetting the sail, judiciously adding weights, and letting it dry it should retain the shape I've given it. I've only done it to the middle sail so far, and you can see the result here. Not perfect, but not too shabby, either. and then I've been working to get the right configuration of the sheet, which should be a straight line because of the pressure of the wind, but is difficult to do because there isn't any wind. I finally worked out that if I belayed the sheet at one end and then pulled it tight at the block, I could fake the wind pressure by impregnating the sheet with CA and letting it dry. Seems to have worked so far. Steven
  3. Louie da fly
    Johnny, It's generally thought the original 15th century model this model is based upon was made far too short and tubby compared with the real thing. It's a votive model - given to a church, usually by a seaman grateful for being saved at sea. Steven
  4. Louie da fly
    Nice. I used to do model railways in a small way when I was a teenager - got partway through building a local West Australian tank locomotive out of tinplate (it would have been OO scale but HO gauge, corresponding approximately to the 3 foot 6 inch gauge that West Australia had at the time. But my skills weren't up to the job, unfortunately. And I had no idea how to make the chassis, add the wheels, motor etc. A pity. I enjoyed the process, though. Yes, I think it would be good for you to put those things up in "Non-Ship categorised builds" - I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one interested. Best wishes, Steven
  5. Louie da fly
    And I changed my mind about the sheets. Originally I'd had them just tied directly to the clew of each sail,with a sheet going off to each side. I decided that threw away mechanical advantage and that there should be a couple of blocks at each clew. But how to attach them? After a lot of thought I went back to the traditional Mediterranean method - a toggle through a loop. So I made two blocks for each sail, each with a loop at the end, and passed the two loops through the cringle at the clew with a toggle to hold them in place. The pictures show all - in the last one (for the mizzen) the toggle hasn't yet been cut to length And I've been adjusting the balance of forces acting on the yards, to get the sails in the configuration I want (for example, the fore end of the central yard was too low, so I had to cut off one of the tacks which I'd already cut to length, and replace it with another longer one so there was enough rope free so the fore end could be pulled up higher by pulling down on the brace/vang at the upper end of the yard (not sure that this explains it very well, but I know what I mean). So here she is in her current manifestation. A bit more fiddle needed - tying off ropes and adding the truss for the fore-yard, things like that. And I'd like maybe to have another go at smoothing out the sails - they're a bit too wrinkled for my liking. Then to finish off the anchors, add the steering oars, re-position one of the crew - and I do believe that will mean I've finished! (unless I've forgotten something!) Steven
  6. Louie da fly
    It's been a while since I've posted in this build. I've been recovering from shock. Everything was going swimmingly until I glued the "verandah" to the lower hull, then - DISASTER! I hadn't lined the two pieces up properly and they were out of alignment - not just a little, but enough to stuff everything upcompletely. And as I'd done such a good workmanlike job with the gluing and clamping, I couldn't get them apart without brutalising them. Which I then proceeded to do. As those who've been following this build are aware, it had taken months to plank the verandah, and all that had apparently gone completely to waste. I prised the two pieces apart with an old chisel, breaking off bits from both pieces and ripping up the lower layer of the plywood deck. I thought I'd ruined both pieces, and it took me awhile to recover and regroup. First I cleaned up the lower hull, removing fragments of the upper part that had stuck to it, and bogging up the breaks where I'd wrenched it with the chisel. I still thought I'd have toi make a new upper deck, with all the extra work entailed in re-planking. But after awhile I realised that if I removed the worst bits and made sure it was smooth all around the outside of the area it joined the lower hull, the central section didn't matter, so long as it was clear of the join. I did that last week, and VERY carefully lined it all up and (heart in mouth) glued it up again. And it worked! (sigh) So with a restored hull and deck, I was able to move ahead and start adding the deck equipment and the seats. I added the wheel (see an earlier post) to its housing and stuck down the paddlewheel covers and other deck equipment, as well as quite a few of the seats. So here it is in its current manifestation. The forrard seats aren't yet glued in place, just put there. I have to work out their exact placement before I can stick them down. You can see the holes for the posts that support the awning roof around the outer edge of the deck. She's looking pretty good, I think. I've now cut the posts for the awning. And I've also come up with a solution to a problem I had with the smaller version - location of the posts so they'd line up top and bottom and the awning would stay at the same height throughout. I realised there are three places where there are three posts going across the breadth of the vessel, and if I make three strips of wood to go across the tops of these with holes to locate the tops of the posts, I can get them all the same height and just place the awning on top and glue it down. I haven't done it yet - watch this space! Steven
  7. Louie da fly
    Thanks for the information, Rodolfo. Valuable for us who are interested in carracks, and making models of them. What scale is your railway? You might like to post photos of it in the "Non-Ship categorised builds" section of MSW> I'm sure there would be quite a few people interested in seeing them! Steven
  8. Louie da fly
    You're doing very well, mate. And speed is not an issue in this hobby. Particularly not at the expense of care and precision, which is much more important, and is what you are achieving. Beautiful work. Steven
  9. Louie da fly
    This is coming along very nicely. Your skills are improving from one model to the next. Nice work, mate! Steven
  10. Louie da fly
    You've done a beautiful job of this, mate. Congratulations on a superb model! Steven
  11. Louie da fly
    Thanks everyone for the likes and comments - Ian, much obliged (blush). More progress. Starting to run out of tan thread for the tackle, so I dyed some more white thread (soaking it overnight in a mix of green, light brown and dark tan fabric dyes. Works well). As the shrouds on the lee side are loosened off, I needed to give them a nice catenary curve, showing the effect of gravity on a long rope. Not all that easy, because it's not a long rope, it's a short piece of heavy thread, and retains its 'bounce' against gravity. So first I tilted the model to get gravity happening, then used a watercolour paintbrush with a mix of water and PVA (white) glue to soak the shrouds - per advice from a MSW member in n earlier post. This made them hang in a natural-looking curve. Once dry they kept the curve. Next the lanyards for the blocks had to be given a catenary curve as well. Same problem, same solution. Tilted the model sideways, soaked the thread in a water/glue solution and used a tiny clamp (a gold plastic clothes-peg - the one on the left in the photo) to hold the sides of the lanyard to the block so it wouldn't bow out unnaturally, and used another peg (the right-hand one) as a weight to force the lanyard to take a catenary curve. It's just the right amount of weight and did the job nicely. And here it is from the other side - you can just see the jaws of the golden peg around the right-hand block, just below the foot of the sail. This is the first time I've tried using dilute glue to force a catenary curve on ropes. I was very happy with the result.
  12. Louie da fly
    Ghastly things. I learnt drafting using these and I have nightmare memories of a huge black blob of ink dropping onto an all-but-completed drawing . . . aargh! But maybe that's just me . . . Steven
  13. Louie da fly
    This discussion is such a worthwhile resource! So many good ideas! I have (of course) bookmarked it. Steven
  14. Louie da fly
    I wish I'd seen Tom Lauria's videos before I started working with silkspan. He solves a lot of problems I encountered in using it, and his technique is much more systematic than mine - I felt I was having to re-invent the wheel a lot of the time, and though I'm not too unhappy with my results I feel they would have been far better had I seen the videos first. And some of the tips on this thread have been real eye-openers for me as well. Thanks to everybody who's posted here. It's a great help and I'll be using what I've learned in future builds. Steven
  15. Louie da fly
    I haven't tried sculpting figures - the ones above are amazing. But I do carve them out of wood. Here are a couple I'm putting on my latest build, a mediaeval (c. 1150 AD) merchant ship at 1:75 scale. They are the owners of the ship, and IIRC are carved from pear wood. Steven
  16. Louie da fly
    I certainly hope so. It might finally resolve the uncertainty about the shape of her forecastle. Steven
  17. Louie da fly
    And I've added the owners - Rustico is pointing something out, and Buono is saying "I hear what you're saying, but . . . " Steven
  18. Louie da fly
    Thanks, Peter. Overall I'm happy with the build. There are a few things which on reflection I wish I'd done otherwise, but all ship modelling is a learning process, and I'm happy that my skills and knowledge are steadily improving with each build I do. The golden peg was a real find for me. I chanced across a packet of them in a junk shop in Ararat (about an hour's drive west of Ballarat) and snapped them up immediately. The problem with using clothespegs (and even miniature ones) as clamps is that they're made out of wood. So wood glue sticks them to the model if you're not careful. These pegs are plastic, so the problem doesn't arise. But I do have to scrape the gold paint off the bearing surfaces so it doesn't transfer to the model. Steven
  19. Louie da fly
    Still working on the rigging. The mizzen is all but complete - just have to add rope coils to the free ends where they're tied off. The fore and 'centre' masts have their rigging under way - halyards and trusses in place, preliminary work done on tacks, vangs/braces and sheets, to get all the yards and sails oriented the same way. Once I'm happy with it all, I'll tie them off, glue them in place and add the coils. Looking back on it, the shrouds for the mizzen should probably have been fixed to the hull itself rather than the rail of the aftercastle, as they're probably a bit too frail to take the forces involved. But I'm too far committed now to pull it all apart and start again. So I'll leave it as it is, and I won't tell if you don't . I've added the pole-arms on the aftercastle which seem to show up on most of the mosaics. But to keep me from carelessly breaking them off, I've put up a temporary barrier across the back of the aftercastle. And I've been working on the anchors. Carved out of walnut - I probably should have used a finer-grained timber, but I think they look pretty good. Not sure if I'm going to stop at two anchors or make more. With the blacksmithing technology of the time, it was impossible to make them very big and heavy, so most ships had quite a few anchors. On the other hand, the extra ones were probably kept below decks when not in use. Steven
  20. Louie da fly
    Interesting developments in this build. The canot looks very good. As far as where it should be stored, I really don't know, but I do have this picture that may or may not be relevant. This is from Conrad von Grunenburg's illustrated record of his 1487 pilgrimage to the Holy Land and judging by the flag, the ship belongs the the Kingdom of Jerusalem (which no longer really existed in fact, after the Crusaders were ousted from Jerusalem in the late 13th century but still maintained a Kingdom in Exile for a long time afterward, based, IIRC, in Cyprus. I don't know how much credence should be given this (sole) picture of a canot lashed to the starboard quarter of a galley - after all, it has some other details I find hard to believe, such as those swivel guns mounted above the oars (how would you use them? Wouldn't they get in the way?) and an anchor which appears to be fouling quite a number of oars. Your idea with the chains sounds good. I've hit a similar problem with my San Marco ship - basically didn't think of the forces involved until too late - but I'd already committed myself and I wasn't prepared to rip everything off and start again. Nobody but a ship modeller will spot the problem, and if you don't tell anyone, I won't either Steven
  21. Louie da fly
    Such beautiful work, Patrick. I take my hat off to you, sir! Steven
  22. Louie da fly
    Welcome to MSW. Make sure you start a build log for your Lady Nelson. Instructions for starting your log are here: It's the best way to get help and advice as you proceed with your build, and we get to see another ship model under construction! Steven
  23. Louie da fly
    Making good progress, mate! Steven
  24. Louie da fly
    Who knows? So little survives we only know it had a stempost, at least one floor timber and some clinker planking . . . But the stempost (assuming that's what it is) would do away with it being a hulc in the academically accepted sense. Steven
  25. Louie da fly
    Lee-boards in English. Used on Thames barges, Humber keels and other shallow-draft vessels. See #19.01 in the video below, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeboard (Many thanks to Liteflight for this video). Steven

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