Louie da fly
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Everything posted by Louie da fly
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I wouldn't do a diorama for this model. I was thinking of doing one of something like the picture of Antwerp roads from 1515, but only a section of it, not the whole thing. And of course to a smaller scale than 1:50 . . . Two steersmen on a dromon, but sometimes they lifted one rudder from the water and just used one, depending on the conditions. "Raspberry stain"? That's Imperial Purple, I'll have you know - from the murex shellfish! (Actually, for something that size they wouldn't use murex to make purple - too expensive - just madder for red and overdye it with woad for blue.)
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OK, now we hit the part I've been dreading -the rigging. I'm happy with the shrouds and halyards, but the rest of the running rigging has me a bit bamboozled. Unfortunately I really have trouble understanding all them ropes, and as this is a lateener, not a square rigger, there's no easily available information on how it all works. However, I've been studying a lot of mediaeval pictures (many of which are so oversimplified as to be completely useless and others quite informative), photos of modern lateeners (most of which are too small to have the problems and forces involved in something as large as a dromon), and some have bowsprits which hadn't been invented yet - though in several of them it doesn't affect the lateen sail anyway. and photos of dhows (when the sail is a lateen rather than a setee), many of which are big enough, but often the photos don't show the details I need to know about. Also models of lateen-rigged xebecs from MSW and elsewhere. There seems to be quite a bit of variation - some have no vangs, some have only one, some have two. Others have no brails, some have a single sheet (as far as I can see), some have two - and the same goes for tacks - some with one on each side, some (at least in the mediaeval pictures) have only a single tack. My two main questions are - have I covered all the ropes used in the running rigging? and - where are the belaying points? I've decided to use the tacking technique outlined in Landstrom's book The Ship, with the lee shrouds loosened and the lower end of the yard pulled back to the mast and pushed over to the other side, so the sail isn't fouled by the mast on the new tack. As far as I can make out, that would mean that the tacks would have to run back to belaying points quite a distance astern of the mast, so you could pull the fore end of the yard far enough back to pass around the mast. I've put together an annotated photo of my dromon with what I think is an acceptable layout (sorry for the messy background) . The white curved lines represent the sails, and the red lines are the ropes, with red ovals to represent blocks. The idea is to have a ringbolt as the fixed end of each rope and a cleat to belay the free end. Not sure if brails had been developed in the 11th century. Other than that, i hink I've got it as close as I can to the real thing. I'd appreciate comments and suggestions. I'm rather out of my depth in all this.
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That sounds like a very worthwhile thing to do. A pity my Greek isn't good enough to appreciate it (actually, not even good enough to wade through it slowly and painfully). This could be a valuable addition to the knowledge of ships of this time - combining the clues from Homer with those from the vases.
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Fascinating and illuminating discussion. This is a very worthwhile build to follow, as well as very enjoyable.
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Nice work on the stern. I was wondering how you were going to do that. What's the problem with the deckhouses?
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Looking good! As far as I know, nail polish remover dissolves CA. Might be worth a try (but probably best to test it on scrap first!)
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Sounds to me like you've chosen the correct option. The difference between your finished product and the real thing is probably going to be so minor that you would have to point it out before anybody (except perhaps the absolute top experts in Viking ships) noticed. This is going to be an impressive model when complete - hell, it's already impressive!
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Oh, I know, I know. I have toyed with the idea of doing a diorama - but first I want to finish what I'm making.
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To be expected. Viking shields were much thinner in reality than most people think. 8-10mm thick at the centre, reducing to 5-6mm at the edge. At 1:72 scale, that's somewhere about a tenth of a millimetre! Obviously impossible to have them that thin, but it is possible to make shields much thinner than the ones supplied in the kit. Wood's no good because if it's that thin it warps or splits. I used multiple layes of facial tissue glued together for mine and after a bit of experimentation it worked - but my shields were bowl-shaped - Viking shields are flat. You might just try card, or perhaps because card is also prone to warping) thin metal - brass or aluminium.
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Pat, I had a look at the documentary - thanks for that. I'd seen most of those dromon pics before, except for the one with the red square sails. There's been a lot of speculation on the true form of dromons - these ones are of course modern reconstructions (as is my own model), and there are an infinite number of ways to interpret the evidence that's come down to us about them. These are quite valid interpretations, but I do prefer Prof Pryor's ideas (with some additions and alterations from my own study and observation). I appreciate your alerting me to this.
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Good plan. There's enough good about this model to make it worth retrieving. And what you're doing so far is very good - you'll end up with a far better model than you would have, had you completed it way back then. Which, after all, is what it's all about.
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Thanks everybody for the likes and comments. Apparently so. I forget the reference, but apparently it was not all that unusual. However, once the wind is reliable, there's no good reason to wear your rowers out, so you'd probably stop rowing. But for example the Argo reconstruction that rowed and sailed from Greece to Southern Russia in the 1970s did it every now and then when they needed extra motive power IIRC. However, the wind has to be from directly astern and not too strong - if the ship heels more than 10 degrees it is in danger of capsizing, and any heel would interfere with the oars of one side. Maybe I'll use those guys. We'll see. Banyan, I started looking at that video and then the computer ran out of internet. I'll have another look later.
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And now it can be told. I was planning to change the final configuration of the ship - rather than have her under full sail I decided that it would look really cool to do a bit of "living history" - to leave maybe four pairs of oarbenches empty and carve new figures to take the place of those oarsmen I'd already done, but assign them to "other duties". I'd have the foresail hoisted but still furled, with two or three guys up on the yard unfurling it: and a bunch of others in the process of hoisting the after sail like this: or perhaps this: I even carved four guys based on the picture above: Then I changed my mind. Good though this might be, I really think it wouldn't look as good as an overall display as my original idea, to have both sails fully set and drawing (the wind directly aft - the only circumstancs the sails would be set in a dromon because of its low freeboard) and "goosewinged" as in the pictures below. So there you go. I'm happier with this idea - I think it will look a lot better. Perhaps I could feel that my making these new guys had gone to waste, but in fact it was fun - a welcome relief from doing so many figures all the same. I don't really care if they never get used. If I'm not stuck on a "sausage machine" production line, I really do enjoy carving.
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Working on the very final pair of oarsmen. Arms carved and glued on, and holes drilled at the shoulders for bamboo pivots, to fix the arms firmly to the body and allow me to swivel the arms for best fit to the oarhandle without them breaking off: Filler added - rather than try to get each pair of arms exactly right (an almost possible task fitting and re-fitting to both rower and angled oar-handle) I carved them so the hands fitted on the handle as close as I could make it, and allowed a bit of extra at the shoulder, and added filler to close up any discrepancies. And trimmed to shape and sanded smooth And finally, painted. And, at last, all the oarsmen in place! (breathes great sigh of relief). If I never carve any oarsmen again, it will be too soon! Another thing. I discovered the halyard knights were really too small - they were only about half a metre (18 inches) tall at 1:50 scale - this is the knight for the after mast, but the foremast one is pretty much identical. so I made new ones about waist height. Then I thought about it some more and decided they might be tall enough now, but probably a bit flimsy to take the forces imposed on them by the halyards. So I made heftier ones. Pretty happy with these now. A real milestone achieved.
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That is a windlass just under the break of the sterncastle, isn't it?
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Nice work on the painting. Pretty difficult at that scale. However,may I suggest you replace the purple with another colour? In the Middle Ages there were sumptuary laws which laid down who could wear what clothes, so the best stuff was reserved to the upper classes, and jumped-up merchants couldn't swan around in the clothing of their "betters". And though these laws had to keep on being re-issued because they were so sadly neglected and often ignored (like Finland), the one thing that was totally forbidden was purple - it was reserved for royalty and only royalty. Anyone wearing that would have been in very deep trouble.
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That's all a bit wierd, Cathead. You'd think the manufacturers hadn't tried out making the kit themselves to see if it all worked, before they put it on the market. I have no answers to the length of the planks or to the width of the deck insert. But I think what you're doing is the right answer. In the long run you have to deal with what's in front of you rather than what is theoretically the right thing to do (when it doesn't work!). The problem with the deck interfering with clamping the planks was always to be expected. To be honest, based on your previous record, I'm looking forward to seeing what ingenious solution you come up with to solve it! And I do like what you've done with the transition from clinker to carvel at the ends. Simple and elegant.
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Thanks everybody for the likes and the comments. And Cathead and Jamie, that made my day! I love the parrot sketch. "The only reason he's on his perch is that he's nailed there!" "WAKE UP POLLY!" Chuck, apparently the main difference between oars and sweeps (I had to look it up) is that a sweep is single, held with both hands (so you need your rowers to be in pairs, one for each side of the vessel) whereas an "oar" is used in pairs by the one oarsman. So yes, technically these should probably be referred to as sweeps. And you're right, the size of the oarblades determines the width of the holes, not the other way around. But with this model there are no surviving oars, and contemporary illustrations aren't reliable, so I'm reverse engineering - the dromon's oarports are copied from a surviving oarport in a strake from one of the Yenikapi galleys, and I've based the width of the oar blades on that.
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Very nice, Paul. Very crisp, clean work. She's looking really good.
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That's very good, Silverman. What timber are you using for the planking? It seems to have a very visible grain.
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That's very nice work, Chris. At 1:600 they must be tiny, but they really make the model.
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