Louie da fly

PVA (otherwise known as "white glue") - I use Aquadhere. BTW, isopropyl alcohol or isopropanol is also known as rubbing alcohol and can be bought at Coles of Woolies under the name of Isocol in 75 ml green plastic bottles - and 75 ml lasts for months. Steven

The only caveat would be that if the wood is old enough it might have dried out, warped, cracked or whatever. Might be a problem if buying online where you can't inspect the kit first. Otherwise I know of no problems (except perhaps availability of replacement parts if the model is no longer in production or the company has gone out of business - but then wood is a very forgiving medium, and it's quite possible that you could make your own replacement part if needed). Steven

Clever. Steven

Great work. She's already looking beautiful. Steven

Yes, despite my earlier comment, we must have more of this - it certainly enlivens the build log. And your progress on the hull is coming along nicely. Nice idea with the painter's tape. I'll have to remember that one for future reference. Steven

Looks good. Steven

Seems to me that this is just another excuse to procrastinate. Don't ask me how I know . . . Steven PS: Loved it!

Not at all. Look at the time-frame on my dromon and restoring the Great Harry. I can be very slow indeed, but sometimes things move faster, for which I'm very grateful. On the other hand, I'm gobsmacked by your RC quadrireme. I'd love to do something like that, but RC and moving parts are a complete mystery to me. Regarding soldering irons, yes, I'm sure you're right, but I don't want to spend a lot of money if I can do it on a shoestring, and now I've found a workable method I'm prepared to live with the extra "fiddle" to achieve the result cheaply. I don't actually use the soldering iron for soldering anyway. Glen, yes I apply it to joints where the glue has already set and I want to alter it - either completely undo the joint or just give it a tweak. The isopropanol makes the glue go gooey so you can adjust the joint a bit (or take it apart completely), and it dries solid again (usually, though I often back it up with a bit more glue, just in case). It usually takes a couple of applications to get it to work properly, but I find a drop or two at a time is enough. By the way, thanks to everybody for all the likes and comments. It's encouraging to get them. Steven

The deck beams are complete now, and the planking is finished on the aftercastle (poop) deck. The mizzen mast lines up nicely, too. The aftercastle is still dry fitted, until I have finalised some of the things that need to be done before it's glued in place. I solved the problem with burning the wooden 'rings' that are to make up the tops. I realised that if I turned off the soldering iron once it got too hot, I'd be able to make the rings without burning. And turn back on, then off etc to keep the temperature below burning. Turned out pretty well. I cut the rings to size, allowing a bit of overlap for gluing and glued and clamped. Here are the tops under way. Three tops, each with three rings per top - each one has two in place at this stage. Unfortunately, when it came to finalising the tops I discovered that having sized them 'by eye', I'd made the circles too big and I had to go back to the drawing board. So I made a bunch of new ones and disassembled the tops I'd made and cut down the rings I already had. This time I got the idea to keep them all to the same diameter by wrapping them around a paintbrush handle that was just the right size. There's still some adjustment to be done - in particular getting the frames straight and square. Again, I can use the paintbrush as a "jig" to get the rings parallel and in the right place, and to get all the uprights square. I find that isopropyl alcohol is my friend - it enables me to soften the glue of a single joint so I can slide the piece one way or another till it's all exactly right. Still in progress, but looking good. Planking for the "captain's/owner's cabin" below the poop. There's a bit of sheer in these planks, as I'd inadvertently put some sheer in the clamps, which then got transferred to the deck beams. Still, a nice problem to be solved, and it's turned out well. The large bit of wood crossing the planking is an impromptu wedge, as there's no room for a clamp, to hold the plank down on the deck beams so the glue would hold it in place properly. I trimmed the edges of the hatch in the poop deck. There's going to be a ladder/staircase down from here to the cabin. The poop and cabin decks have now been sanded smooth. I had intended to have a wall at the forrard end of the cabin, with a door leading to stairs down to the hold. But when it all came together I realised that there wouldn't be enough headroom for the door or the stairs - the beams of the main deck were in the way. I'll still have the wall at the front, but the access to the hold will be through an opening in the deck of the cabin (in a place that reduces the available deck space as little as possible). Next step - STEPS! Steven

I concur about having a 'wave' at the front to support the bottle. Otherwise you'd be placing an unreasonable amount of strain on the epoxy at the back and it would almost certainly sag, which would be a terrible shame for such a clever model. That's an interesting question. I should think it would be - running up as far as possible into the shallows to allow the walls to be attacked. I know there were structures designed to allow attackers to get up higher than the walls, (this is a Byzantine picture from about the 11th century AD, but I'm pretty sure they were in use far earlier.)* But as you haven't included such a structure, perhaps the ship wouldn't be doing that. OTOH, how would a Roman ship attack the walls effectively? It'd surely have to get close enough for the crew to erect scaling ladders (see Ferrus Mannus's post #68 in his Holy Ghost build), and depending on the depth of the water, might have to run in at full speed to reach them. And of course the claw is a short-range weapon., so it would only work if the ship was close up against the walls. Steven * Don't ask me what that giant head is for. I have no idea.

A nice piece of research and kit-bashing, mate. Looks good. Steven

Some more painting - that's pretty much complete now. The main problem I have is that in the Men's shed there's usually a thin layer of fine sawdust on everything, and though this doesn't really affect the painting, it does mean I have to be careful not to transfer the stuff from the benchtop or my fingers etc to the dry paintwork - especially the lovely royal blue - almost impossible to get it off if I do. But she's looking very pretty. I chose blue and white as it's such a popular colour among boat owners (who presumably don't care that it makes them invisible against the sea to search and rescue people if there's an emergency). From now on, the main jobs will be making fixtures and fittings - pintles and gudgeons, blocks etc and putting them in place so I can assemble the model into its final form. I've cut out the sails, but I'll have to do some extra work there - not totally happy with how they turned out. Steven

No, I work on the ship most days - but the Men's shed is full other days of the week, so Monday and Friday are the only times I get to use the wonderful boys' toys (machine tools) they have there. And I'm leaving the couta boat there to work on when I'm in the mood or between working on the San Marco ship. (Or other things - I replaced the broken plastic handle of my handsaw with a beautiful new hardwood one I'd made from scratch a couple of weeks ago, and there are still the model railway buildings on the back burner.) Steven

Thank you, Mark. I agree; they are lovely boats. We go down to Geelong every now and then (a mere hour's drive) and as we go past the bay we often see couta boats moored there. It always lifts my heart to see them - they are so beautiful, and a relic of a past, more elegant era. At the moment I don't think I need any more information, but thanks for the offer. It was never intended to be a 100% accurate model, more just something simple that could be made easily to raise funds for the Men's shed. Turned out not to be that simple. I'm putting the majority of my efforts at the moment into the San Marco mediaeval ship, but a couple of days ago I did some painting on the couta boat - white on the "upper deck". Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the latest configuration, but here she is with the blue on the lower hull (the holes are for the stand). That was a couple of weeks ago. I'll have to add more photos as I get them, but I only go to the Men's shed Mondays and Fridays. Steven

I'm pretty sure other builders of this particular model have encountered the same issue. You're doing a very nice job on this build. It occurs to me that the real ship would probably have had the carvings painted (perhaps in bright colours which highlighted the different gripping beasts) in contrast with the rest of the ship. It was a royal vessel, after all. Yellow and red ochre were available, and a sort bluish grey from wood ash, as well as a black from lamp black. It might have been really colourful. The shields of the Gokstad ship were painted - every second one was black and the alternating ones were yellow. Steven

I'd say it depends - some of these ships were owned by very wealthy people, and others represented the Cinque Ports, tasked with the defense of the realm (and the prestige of their home port). Look at the ornateness of royal ships in the 17th and 18th centuries. So I think the general run of the mill nefs weren't all that ornate, but some would have been. Regarding the battlements, just make sure you check the heights against the scale - how tall is a normal person in relation to the walls? If they only come up to his knees, they're not going to be much use in protecting him. If he can't see over them, not much use either. Unfortunately, at this time artists didn't show people to scale against the ships they were in. The more important you were, the bigger you were shown. Even the Winchelsea seal shows them too big, though a lot closer to reality than some of the others. Steven

Above it - as far as I've seen the castles were open underneath. In fact quite a few of the contemporary portrayals (though not all, by any means) show the helmsman working underneath the aftercastle. Though the supports for the castles were sometimes quite decorative, most were very simple - just uprights -and I don't see there's any need to get complicated with them (unless of course you want to). Steven

That's a nice bit of work, mate. Keep it up. I'm looking forward t seeing what you do with the sides of the castles. Yes, come to The Dark Side - you know you want to . . . . Steven

After the previous posts I can't believe nobody picked up on this and started making puns about yokes, jokes, yolks etc. (BTW, great work, mate!) Steven

Thanks, Jason. We love it here. Beautiful historic city with wonderful buildings dating back to the gold rush. I'm trying to think where that quarry might have been. I can't bring it to mind, but I'm sure there must be quite a few quarries scattered around the place - and it could be at some distance from Ballarat itself, I suppose. MSM are till going strong according to their website, and yes, they're based in the Melbourne suburb of Montrose https://miniaturesteammodels.com/ Steven

Coming along nicely. Good to see you coming over to the Dark Side (scratch building) if only a little so far. Pumps go all the way back to Roman Times (they even had chain pumps, but they seem to have been lost in Western Europe at least, judging by a comment from a western commentator about them in (I think) the 15th century.) There's evidence suggesting there was a chain pump on the 11th century Serce Limani wreck, lost off the southern coast of modern Turkey, which was then part of the Byzantine Empire, but it's a bit equivocal. However, based on that I put chain pumps on my dromon. There are papers on all this. I can send a couple to you if you're interested. Steven

That's looking very elegant. Beautiful hull shape so far. And I note the bosun is making sure everything is shipshape. Steven

There's a bilge pump found on the Newport ship (2nd half 15th century) - see https://www.newportship.org/archaeology-conservation/artifacts And it works like this:

Coming together nicely. Steven

Yes, I found quite a number of them on-line, but I never knew the source. Thanks for enlightening me - and yes, they have often proved very useful. That's fascinating. I never knew about this, and it's really amazing how old proven technology sometimes re-surfaces in the strangest connections. Thanks for letting me know. And now for an update on progress. I think I mentioned that I'd planned to make a cabin below the aftercastle, for the captain/owners. First I needed to install clamps to support the ends of the cabin's deck beams. It was fairly complicated trying to get the curve and orientation just right, but I think I succeeded pretty well. Here's the stern with the aftercastle removed, and some of the deck beams in place. And an overall view from above. Finished all the masts and dry fitted them. The mast steps and mast partners line up quite well, with a little wriggle room to get the masts exactly vertical when looking from the bow/stern. They are all somewhat raked - the foremast (which is in fact the MAIN mast) has quite a pronounced rake forward, the other two slightly back. Lining up the mast partners in the two decks (aftercastle and cabin) to achieve this is an ongoing project, but I think it's going to be ok. Note that they all now have their calcets in place. I tried to get a good contrast in colour between mast and calcet, but I may have to do a bit more to emphasise it. And planking on the aftercastle deck. You can see the hole for the mizzen and the opening for the stairs down to the cabin. And on the main deck the mast partners and the beams that form the sides of the two hatches, waiting for more deck beams either side of them, to complete the deck structure. I'm planning to have a wall at the forward end of the cabin, with a door leading into the hold via a ladder, so the captain and owners can access the cargo without having to go up a ladder to the poop, down another to the main deck and down a third to get into the hold. I expect I'll have doors to close off the hatches and the companion, as in Woodrat's Venetian round ship. Here's the first "crowsnest" attached to the mizzen mast just below the calcet. It doesn't have a floor yet; I'm still working out how to keep the halyards/tyes from fouling this structure - I won't have a definite answer until I install the knights on the deck and run the halyards/tyes to them. Steven