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Louie da fly

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  1. Louie da fly
    Nice smooth lines. Is that going to be a double-planked hull? Steven
  2. Louie da fly
    The paper also mentions two other wrecks from about the same time - Magor Pills in Wales (archaeological report 1999) and Kalverev Syd (2022).Both are very fragmentary, as far as I've been able to make out, and both are smaller than this one. That being the case, they may be too small to be categorised as nefs - we just don't know,as we don't know for sure this one is a nef. Part of that is in the definition - does it have to have castles to be a nef, or are we just talking about a double-ended clinker-built ship? And of course we don't even know for sure that it's double-ended - though the stempost has been found, the sternpost hasn't. Steven
  3. Louie da fly
    I just came across this paper, about a merchant ship from about 1250 AD. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/mortar-wreck-a-midthirteenthcentury-ship-wrecked-off-studland-bay-dorset-carrying-a-cargo-of-purbeck-stone/3DCA5959D7C694C95EF788903A7BB383 Unfortunately, not much of it has survived, but they found the stempost and a floor timber and some clinker planking - enough to get a fair idea of its construction and its size and shape. On board it had a cargo of 'Purbeck stone' - which was very commonly used in church building at the time. Imagine trying to transport all that stone over the roads of the time - no wonder it was being carried on a ship. A nice bit of evidence of the maritime trade of the period, as well as some pleasing confirmation of several of my decisions in my Winchelsea nef build. Steven
  4. Louie da fly
    Just found this article - a wreck of a merchant ship in England from c.1250, only 24 years before my nef. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/mortar-wreck-a-midthirteenthcentury-ship-wrecked-off-studland-bay-dorset-carrying-a-cargo-of-purbeck-stone/3DCA5959D7C694C95EF788903A7BB383 The length and beam tie in with mine very closely, but the radius of the stempost is considerably wider than mine, indicating that the bow (and presumably the stern) was a different shape. But that's to be expected within the expected variation. Pretty cool. Steven
  5. Louie da fly
    Thanks for all the likes and the nice comments. I'm now rather regretting a decision I made early on in the design. Though the foremast is taller and heavier than the 'centre' mast, as is common with mediaeval Mediterranean lateeners, I made the yards and sails for the two masts the same size. And now the foresail looks a bit too small and too high above the hull. But I'm not prepared at this late stage to re-make the yard and sail all over again. Instead I'll be hoisting it somewhat lower than the centre yard - that looks ok and I'll treat it as a learning experience for the next mediaeval lateener (I do intend to make at least one more some time in the future). Steven
  6. Louie da fly
    Working on the lateens. Discovered I hadn't allowed for enough belaying points, so I had to add some eyebolts at the sides to take the standing ends of tacks and vangs/braces, and on the masts for the trusses. And belay the leading ends to the bitts. I haven't permanently belayed anything yet - first I have to make sure all the forces balance so the ropes are all taut where they need to be. Note that the point of balance for the foresail (and the central sail, if it comes to that) doesn't result in the sail hanging in the conventional "angled yard" configuration. That will be handled by judicious use of the controlling ropes - vangs/braces, tacks and sheets. But interestingly (as I discovered to my surprise) having the yard horizontal is totally ok for a lateener - quite a common configuration when running before the wind. There are currently some unwanted wrinkles in the sails. This is my first attempt at using silkspan and I'm learning as I go. I'm hoping that if I damp the sails down and let them dry again with a bit of help in shaping, the wrinkles will vanish, or at least lessen. My lovely and beloved wife, on the other hand, thinks they add to the verisimiltude of the model (it is, after all, supposed to be a somewhat shabby merchant ship, a mediaeval equivalent to a tramp steamer), so I'm a bit torn as to whether I should fix it at all. By the way, please excuse the messy table - that's just the way I work (and I'm certainly not going to tidy up just for a work-in-progress photo). Steven
  7. Louie da fly
    Looking very good, mate. I seem to have forgotten that this was at 1:200 - I'm even more impressed! Steven
  8. Louie da fly
    Looking good,mate. It's certainly hard to know how the caique could have been sailed with those oars aboard. It doesn't look like there'd be room for the crew - even if there were only six of them (a pair of oars each) plus the coxswain. And I can't see it being practical to slide them beneath the thwarts, either. Unless there was some form of 'holder' for them running down the centre of the boat, like unto the histodokai (crutches for the lowered masts) on a dromon - see post # 802 at https://modelshipworld.com/topic/10344-10th-11th-century-byzantine-dromon-by-louie-da-fly-finished-150/page/27/ but perhaps supported along the centre of the thwarts rather than overhead. Steven
  9. Louie da fly
    Quite right. There's absolutely no historical justification for these structures in the 15th or early 16th centuries - nothing like these came into use until the late 16th/early 17th. I pointed this out to Kikatinalong (g'day, mate!) when he was doing his own build and he agreed with me and got rid of them. Good thing, too. Dripaj, I'm not sure if you've seen my collection of carrack pics on Pinterest, but you might find them useful in your build - see https://au.pinterest.com/lowe1847/carracks/ . From contemporary pictures, I'd say the configuration you're adopting for your carrack would be be appropriate for a vessel from some time after 1510-1520. You might find those gun carriages are pretty close to right for that period - have a look at the ones I made for my Great Harry, based on carriages recovered in the 19th century from the Mary Rose (sank 1545) - post #97 at . Tartane has also done a very nice full-sized reproduction at And yes, the metal castings are pretty crappy. The figurehead looks like a mutant duck . . . Steven
  10. Louie da fly
    Thanks everybody for the likes. That's very interesting, Mark. What, our ancestors weren't all brutish ignorant barbarians? And a little progress - the mizzen lateen in place and tentatively belayed. Note that following Landström's book The Ship I've got the leeward shrouds loosened to allow the sail free play. I'm thinking about how to give them nice catenary curves. Steven
  11. Louie da fly
    Looks like a very good project. I'll pull up a chair and watch progress, if I may. Steven
  12. Louie da fly
    By the way - note that in the drawing the parrel (the rope that holds the yard to the mast) has trucks (those balls that rotate to allow the yard to run more easily up and down the mast), but I didn't add them, as this ship is from about 1150 AD and parrel trucks don't appear in contemporary pictures till the early 1400's. Steven
  13. Louie da fly
    Moving right along, mate! After your last model I'm definitely following this one. Steven
  14. Louie da fly
    Working on making rope coils for the shroud blocks - a technique I pinched from Ulises Victoria of MSW (thanks, mate!). They're pretty small and fiddly, but I think they'll do the job. And now something I've been avoiding for months - just too chicken to start because I dreaded stuffing it up - the halyard/trozza (truss) assembly that holds the lateen yard at the correct height and ties it to the mast so it doesn't flop around. Yes, I'd previously done it on the dromon build, but (a) I'm not sure I got it right back then and (b) it's so fiddly. The thing is, on lateeners (now and back then) they seem to divide the rig up into modules connected by toggles, rather than make a whole assembly in one piece. This is very much more convenient when sailing in the real world, but rather more complicated when making a model. So here it goes, step by step: First, the tye around the yard itself ; A little loose in the loop, so I glued it together a bit tighter I'd started out with a doubled halyard, as the sheaves in the calcet at the top of the mast were always shown double, but apparently it's a single halyard that goes through the block and back down. So I got clever and faked a continuous loop of halyard through the block at the top of the assembly, by running the two ropes through the block from opposite sides,gluing and then cutting them short, so they looked like a single rope looped through the block. And then the really fiddly bit - making the truss and running it around the mast, wrapped around the tye and back down to its downhaul. Took me about a dozen attempts before I got it right.Sorry about the hairy rope, but it's not visible to the naked eye. And then the block attaching the truss to its downhaul via a toggle: And attached to the loop from the truss (VERY fiddly getting the toggle through the loop!) And all in place (I still have to figure out how to belay the lower end). Just have to do it two more times for the other two masts, and I'm right . . . Steven
  15. Louie da fly
    Welcome to MSW! You're sure to have a lot of fun. I like the name of the music group "cabestan" - en Anglais capstan! Steven
  16. Louie da fly
    Beautiful job, mate. She looks much more like a real wooden ship than most plastic models manage to. Steven
  17. Louie da fly
    A nice solution to the problem, Peter. I had a problem with the shrouds on my Great Harry build - though not the same as yours - mine had to do with when I added the deadeyes, as the shrouds had already been made and ratlines added - and I had to find a solution that I wouldn't recommend under normal circumstances, but in that specific case it worked. Horses for courses. Steven
  18. Louie da fly
    Great idea. There are some great contemporary illustrations to base one on. 1173-1196 Galley - Annals of Genoa f. 70r. Double-banked galley. 12th century: Museu Nacional d'Art de Cataluna from Cantigas de Santa Maria - late 12th century Spanish. Note - in accordance with the text, the first galley's mast is broken. from Peter of Eboli's Liber ad Honorem Augusti, Italian 1194-96 Steven
  19. Louie da fly
    Quite possibly. I was somewhat surprised to find that not all the oarbenches on a galley necessarily got used all the time. Sometimes only half the oarsmen were rowing while the other half had a rest - and I'm sure other configurations existed as well. After all, cooking only happened at certain times of day, and perhaps that pair of oars (one each side, for balance) were "retired" while that was happening. Steven
  20. Louie da fly
    Very nice! Steven
  21. Louie da fly
    You need to anneal the wire. Heating it up makes it softer and more ductile (able to bend stretch etc). Others are more knowledgeable than I am on this. But brass is a particularly difficult one, unfortunately - bending it 'work hardens' it again, so you need to anneal it again every so often. I should think there are tutorials on annealing on Youtube. Here's one. I can't vouch for how good it is. Steven
  22. Louie da fly
    Mainly just messing with you - If you look at the photo in your post #63, the écusson de flèche is the decorative medallion on the end of a red beam at the very top. The écussons du bandinet (actually it should be écussons des bandinets, to make it all agree as a plural) are the two decorative medallions at the ends of red beams just above each side of the big decorative thingy on the stern with the globe of the world on it. "Écusson" means something like "shield thing" - perhaps escutcheon would be a good translation. The usual meaning of flèche is "arrow", but by extension it would presumably be anything long and thin and arrow-like - such as the red beam at the top. Bandinet is perhaps "little band", presumably meaning the beams either side, supporting the escutcheons. Steven
  23. Louie da fly
    Ah, but the écusson de flèche and the écussons du bandinet turned out well . . . https://modelshipworld.com/topic/29846-help-with-terminology-écusson-de-flèche-and-écusson-de-bandinet/ Steven
  24. Louie da fly
    You've done a very nice job of this rigging, mate. Looking very good. Steven
  25. Louie da fly
    What a wonderful subject for a ship in bottle diorama! You've even shown Gulliver wearing his glasses to protect his eyes from the Blefuscan arrows! I've always loved Gulliver's Travels, and you're doing an amazing job of bringing this episode to life. (I just hope you don't do another one of him putting out the fire in the Lilliputian royal palace!) My only regret is that you didn't post all of this until you'd reached this point in the build. I would dearly have loved to follow your progress in the development of this project. But I'm so impressed at the imagination and creativity you've displayed, and the expertise with which you've made the models and put everything together. Congratulations on a wonderful build. I'll be following this avidly from now on! Steven

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