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Louie da fly

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  1. Louie da fly
    Hmmm, difficult question. I suppose you could try thinning the thick support? I think opening up the keel slot might make t too weak. Cutting the decorative piece in two might be better - the sternpost seem to cover all the way to the top of the decorative face. It would have to be pretty precise cutting, though. Assuming the frames fit in the slots there doesn't seem to be any good reason for thinning them further. You'd just giver yourself extra work for no extra benefit, particularly as - if the photo on the box is to be believed - the frames are hidden anyway. Steven
  2. Louie da fly
    Nice to see the planking complete. Looking forward to further progress! Steven
  3. Louie da fly
    Hmm, good point. Different drawings in different scales, but could be reduced to lowest common denominator. As Young Frankenstein said - IT --- COULD --- WORK!
  4. Louie da fly
    Oops. Further perusal of the plans has made it clear to me that I still hadn't fully understood them. In fact the superstructure is only a little too low, but the structures between need to be looked at more carefully. Which I'll do tomorrow.
  5. Louie da fly
    Beautiful precise work, Silverman! Yes, the knees look really good now. And your baling solution is very well thought out. Steven
  6. Louie da fly
    The title says it all. For the first time someone has asked me to make a model ship and is willing to pay cash money. Only a pittance, pin money, really - $200. But no worries, I'm not doing it for the money but for the experience and challenge. Second "modern" ship - the first was HMVS Cerberus - see build log This time it's the Titanic This is also a Men's Shed project, but this time I'll be paying only a percentage of the price to them (for use of facilities and materials), the rest for pin money, as I was directly commissioned to build it. A young guy I met has a girlfriend who's a total Titanic freak and he had the idea that a model of the ship would be a nice Chrissy present for her. And I'm happy to oblige. However, it has meant the Couta boat has had to go on the back burner for a while. It's nearly finished - the sails are cut out, but I have to sew (or get someone far more experienced to sew) them, add them to the gaff and boom and add the rigging. I'll get around to it whenever. There are plans and photos on the Net of the original ship - not terribly good, but adequate for a $200 model, which will be 380mm (1'3") long. The first thing I hadn't realised until I downloaded these was how long and narrow the ship was! Took me totally by surprise. Here are the plans I'm working from. So, off I went cutting out wood and layering the decks - only to find that in my main source of info - the two sets of deck plans - two of the deck layouts showed not only the deck itself, but the superstructure between it and the deck above. So I'd missed out two entire decks - the superstructure was two decks too low. Annoying, as I'd put a lot of work getting that beautiful stern right. But as I'd glued it all together very securely before I realised my mistake, there was no way of pulling it apart and adding the extra structures. So I had to start all over again, but at least this meant I could correct a couple of other errors I'd become aware of caused by the inaccuracy and imprecision of the plans. So here we go again, this time with the extra outlines. Watch this space. Steven PS: If anybody can let me know the maximum and minimum diameters of the (oval section) funnels, I'd be very grateful.
  7. Louie da fly
    She was terrible in Rivers, and perhaps even worse in The Man From Snowy River - very much a matter of "Show us your other facial expression, dear!" But by Sea Change - in which she starred with David Wenham (alias Faramir) - she had developed quite a sharp comedic gift. Steven
  8. Louie da fly
    Beautiful work, Richard. I remember All the Rivers Run very well. Fortunately Sigrid Thornton's acting improved with experience.
  9. Louie da fly
    It certainly beats trying to make the ram out of sheet metal (of course, you could try actually casting the thing in bronze! ) Steven
  10. Louie da fly
    Ah. Maybe you need to be a bit more specific, mate. Steven
  11. Louie da fly
    There's a reasonably good video of the building of the reconstruction of Jason's "Argo" in Greece at There was a better one on Youtube, but I can't find it. The good stuff begins abut 8:20. This is a Roman merchant ship of the First century C.E. The Sea People were active 800-1100 years prior. There's a contemporary Egyptian bas-relief showing their vessels, and a a good line drawing copy of that can be seen at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples#/media/File:Medinet_Habu_Ramses_III._Tempel_Nordostwand_Abzeichnung_01.jpg Dick, I seem to recall reading some years ago that amphorae were stored in ships' holds in a layer of sand. That makes sense - shoving the pointy ends into the sand would keep them upright. After the bottom layer of amphorae, I suppose it would have been a bit like playing Tetris - an experienced supercargo should have been able to do that efficiently. But that's beside the point when we're talking about the effect of all that weight in distorting the hull of the wrecked ship. Steven
  12. Louie da fly
    Exactly. The speculation is at least half the fun.
  13. Louie da fly
    Neither have I. But allowing for the vagaries of contemporary artists, that doesn't surprise me. There's a very good paper by Shelley Wachsmann of Texas A&M University "On the Interpretation of Watercraft in Ancient Art", which among other things deals with the failings of art, even with the best of intentions, to properly and accurately show vessels in full detail, which has made me very wary of trusting contemporary illustrations too much. Unfortunately, often they're all we have to work from. And of course reconstructions aren't "Primary source" either. They're always modern interpretations from the available information, including extrapolations when the information is not available. Steven
  14. Louie da fly
    No, I'm not sure. I'd be interested in seeing that information. On the other hand, I'd also like to see what evidence that assertion is based upon. Unless there's something contemporary written down like "wonderful new invention - drop planks make it so much easier to plank the bow and stern", or some archaeologcal evidence that ships before that time didn't have drop planks, and after that time they did - but most shipwrecks I've seen are missing the bow and stern strakes, either completely or partially, so hard evidence is likely to be a bit thin on the ground (or the seabed, as the case may be), so it might be a moot point. In the meantime I'm getting valuable practice at making and installing drop strakes, and in any case the hull will be painted black, so they won't be visible. I'm doing this for myself more than for the model. One thing I can tell you from experience, though, is that clinker built ships wouldn't have had them. It's just not feasible, as I found out when I tried it. Steven
  15. Louie da fly
    Planking - that and rigging are my two biggest bugbears - and with a lateener, the rigging is a lot simpler, allowing the planking on this model to be the hardest part - at least for me! Bilge planking - up to the wale at the turn of the bilge The same view with different lighting - shows the amount of sanding I'm going to need to do. Around the turn of the bilge After bending the strakes to shape, I use treenails to hold them tight to the frames. Drop planks at bow and stern I'm still not terribly confident I've got my head around drop planks, despite having used them on previous models. Basically just muddling through and hoping I've got it right. Fortunately it'll all be painted black anyway, so though this is a learning experience, any mistakes I make won't be glaringly obvious. This last one is a double dropped plank, and I'm probably doing it wrong. Any comments or suggestions welcome, but I'll only use them for future builds - I've already committed myself on this one and I'm not prepared to remove this and do it again. Not this time, anyway. Steven
  16. Louie da fly
    Very nice work, Patrick. The improvements you've made in the line of the wale and elsewhere are bearing fruit. And the lettering is looking very good. Steven
  17. Louie da fly
    Oh, yes! Looking forward to Woodrat's magic on yet another amazing build. Steven
  18. Louie da fly
    Your persistence and attention to detail (and re-doing when you're not satisfied) are a credit to ship modellers everywhere. And far from the tubby stereotype people have of ships of this period, this hull is elegant and shapely. She's beautiful! Steven
  19. Louie da fly
    For a very explanatory explanation of the method of rudder attachment, see posts from # 124 onward at I don't think there is. I've been interesting myself in Viking ships for decades and I can't think of any evidence for them having reef points on their sails. There are other very interesting things about their sails - do a google image search for Viking ship stones and you'll see a lot of standing stones with ships on them, many under sail - but as far as I can recall, no reef points. The earliest representation I know of them is the town seals of La Rochelle (c. 1200) and of Hastings (13th century) After that they become common until at least the first half of the 15th century - see post #165 at for more discussion on this - and then - yes, they unaccountably vanish, to be replaced by bonnets, but then reappear in the 17th century. Don't ask me why, I don't know. The model is looking very good, and your inquisitive attitude to the historical details is laudable. Keep it up. Steven
  20. Louie da fly
    Me neither. I would be interested to see any archaeology of vessels which are definitely known to be Slavic, just out of interest and to see how they compare with definite Viking vessels, but so far I've never come across anything. Exactly. Ok. That makes sense. I do have a bit of an issue with the thickness of the shields that are usually provided with kits. The real ones were very thin; I do understand the practicalities with supplying anything that thin in a kit, but it just niggles me a bit. When I built my dromon model I put a lot of work into making the shields as thin as I could - I experimented with card, paper, tinfoil, all kinds of things. The other problem was I didn't want them just flat, but bowl-shaped, as was common among Byzantine round shields. I ended up casting them in "car-bog" (using a plaster mould) and it seems to work pretty well. The spiral pattern was very common during the Viking period - not only among the Vikings, but throughout Western Europe, so you wouldn't go far wrong doing that. Steven
  21. Louie da fly
    Wonderful work, mate! A thing of beauty and a joy forever. Steven
  22. Louie da fly
    Well, you've certainly learnt some of the most important lessons in the wonderful world of wooden ship modelling! Another lesson I find very valuable is that wood is a very forgiving medium. Even when something breaks you can often just make a replacement or perhaps glue a new bit on. For a beginner in wood modelling, you certainly picked one of the most difficult to plank. Have a look at some of the other longship build logs - they often have great trouble with alignment of the strakes. But in my humble opinion you're doing a pretty impressive job of it. Keep up the good work. Steven PS: I don't know where you got your mini-clothes pegs but I get mine (and I find them VERY useful) from craft or art supplies stores. Maybe you could look there for more. Steven
  23. Louie da fly
    The reason what looks like a standard Viking longship has been described as Slavic is perhaps a spin-off from a long-standing argument between Russian/Slavic and Western European historians and archaeologists - the Russians tend to assign Slavic origins to early mediaeval settlements in Russia such as Novgorod, Kiev etc. while those of Western European (and of course particularly Scandinavia) assign them to the Vikings. The answer is probably a mix of both. Certainly the Vikings, particularly the Swedes, traded down the rivers of Russia - to Constantinople, Great Bulgaria and even to Arab settlements. Personally I don't care who founded what, but perhaps this is why your model is described as Slavic. Unfortunately I'm not at all familiar with genuinely provable archaeological finds of Slavic ships, so I can't say for sure whether the Slavs also had ships that looked like this. It's certainly possible, but I just don't know. This looks like a nice model - I'll be interested to follow your build log when you start it. Am I right in thinking the shields are to be of card? Or have I misinterpreted the above sentence? The reason I ask is that card is probably about the right thickness for shields to the scale you're working with (they were usually quite thin - maybe 7mm (about 1/4") thick at the outside edge). Or perhaps it's the template that is heavy paper and the shields are of wood? I don't know what designs they've given you for shield decoration, but you might like to look at this site for more information before you start painting - https://www.scribd.com/document/497550805/Viking-Shields Yes, Alfred is the only English king who has ever been described as "The Great", and I think his epithet was well-earned. He not only defeated the Vikings under Guthrum and brought peace to his realm, he promoted learning and came up with a political solution that brought stability for quite a long time and gave the English inhabitants of Britain the chance to recover and rebuild. Quite a man. Best wishes with the build. Steven
  24. Louie da fly
    Makes a lot of sense. That stuff can be SHARP! Steven
  25. Louie da fly
    Mast wedges under way for the fore and middle masts And all three complete As the halyards have to go through the floors of the tops, I've put temporary halyards in so I can locate the supports (equivalent to crosstrees and trestle trees). Note that I've started putting them in on the mizentop. I've finally begun planking the hull. Because I couldn't clamp the strakes I had to pin them in place with treenails. Steven

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