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Louie da fly

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  1. Louie da fly
    Starting to take shape, Dick. With these speculative models of ships about which so little is known, there's a huge amount of research and development needed before any chance of actually making sawdust. I'm following with great interest. Keep up the good work! Steven PS: Is that Beaker from the Muppets standing amidships? Sure looks like him . . .
  2. Louie da fly
    Yep. Good idea. Looking forward to it, Steven
  3. Louie da fly
    Just looked up the history of the Mercury. Unfortunately it doesn't give enough details to get a full idea of the battle, but WOW! A 20-gun brig against two ships of the line, one of 100 guns, the other of 74. And she got away with it! Steven
  4. Louie da fly
    Welcome to MSW, Jose!. I just googled La Candelaria - she's a bomb vessel - fantastic! Start a build log so we can see your progress on the ship. It's also a very good way to get help and advice from the experienced modellers here. Steven
  5. Louie da fly
    Very nice. I've enjoyed following this build. So, what's next? Steven
  6. Louie da fly
    Yes, mine dates to c. 1150. Steven
  7. Louie da fly
    Dick, the ship will have proportions are about 7.4 : 1 - It's so long ago now I can't remember whether I based that on the Contarina ship or not - I have a feeling I made it somewhat wider in proportion to length, but I may just be having a senior moment there. I took the Mezza Lune method of calculating the narrowing of the floor timbers that you outlined in your Round Ship build and copied it. I may not use your wonderful jig to do so, but that's the general idea. Jaager - fascinating information. There's very little information on what exactly constituted a balinger - according to Wikipedia the Source Of All Knowledge; "A balinger, or ballinger was a type of small, seagoing vessel. It was swift and performed well under both sail and oars. It was probably developed in Bayonne for hunting whales. The ships were used in the conquest of Anglesey in 1282. They were also in use in the 15th and 16th centuries. They were distinguished by their lack of a forecastle, and by carrying either a square sail, or a sail extended on a sprit on a single mast. They were generally less than 100 tons, with a shallow draught, and the earlier vessels at least carried 30 or more oars for use in sheltered areas or for close fighting. They were mainly used for coastal trade, but could also be used as transports, carrying around forty soldiers. A number were employed in the early Royal Navy for this purpose . . . Despite their long history there are no confirmed illustrations of a balinger in contemporary medieval sources while a confirmed archaeological example has yet to be discovered. Speculation suggests that it may have resembled a modern Thames barge in overall size but with a square rig." It puts me in mind of the small vessels used by the Dutch against the Spanish in the 16th century; their crews were known as something like "sea children", or possibly "sea orphans" but that's obviously the wrong terms because a Google search didn't turn them up. But I've see illustrations in the past of the vessels in action, and accounts of the battles between these tiny vessels and full-size Spanish ships. If only I could find them again. But as far as making a model of one - fascinating idea, but well, I don't think so. Too little information and not even a single picture. I'd be better doing one of Henry VIII's roo-barges (rowing barges) or one of his so-called galleasses (not a true galleass, but apparently a sort of precursor to the galleon). Both those are very tempting to me. But I've probably got enough proposed vessels already lined up for the future to keep me going for several lifetimes . . . Steven
  8. Louie da fly
    I've been gluing outlines for the shapes of the futtocks for the frames onto 2mm walnut sheet from the dead tree next door which I got from the neighbour and cut up by the bloke across the road who has a bench saw. He was apologetic that there were holes in the sheets where some pest had eaten into the wood, but for my purposes it's still fine. These are the bilge futtocks. But I made a mistake with the floor timbers - they should stretch the full width of the hull from bilge to bilge, but I printed off only half widths. Fortunately I caught it before I cut the wood. So I'll be re-doing those. I'm going to simplify them, though. At this scale it's just too difficult to make a floor timber with an upward curve at each end with a precise enough width, so I'm just going to make them straight and cut off at the overlap with the bilge futtocks. Not quite historically accurate but close enough for the job at hand Steven
  9. Louie da fly
    At last I have my workspace back. We've had visitors for the past 4 months (staying in my workroom) and I haven't been able to do any modelling. First step in actually making sawdust. Here's the keel layout and the pieces ready to be cut. Not sure when I'll be able to get it happening but it's nice to be on the way again. Steven
  10. Louie da fly
    Beautiful work, and a historic and noble vessel. Good to hear she will be on display in a place worthy of her. Is this to be a permanent exhibition or only short-term? I'm going to have to make sure to get down there and see her. Steven
  11. Louie da fly
    You're making very good progress with this, and the lateen rigging looks very fine. Just be careful with that singeing process. Try it with thread that you don't care about first, so you can make all your mistakes on stuff that doesn't matter. I can't vouch for the technique myself because I haven't tried it - I've just read that it's one method to use (so don't blame me if it's a disaster ). Steven
  12. Louie da fly
    Yep. Been there, done that.
  13. Louie da fly
    Well, almost . . . Steven
  14. Louie da fly
    Oh, yes. Very famous. There's even an Australian saying "Game [brave] as Ned Kelly". And a lot of rednecks have him as their role model - they have his last words before they hanged him - "Such is life" - on the back windows of their utes (pickups). And you can get Ned Kelly garden ornaments. Very tacky. There was even a movie about him with Mick Jagger playing Ned (pretty ridiculous - Ned was a big hairy Irish guy with a huge beard, not a weedy little Pommy rock star with big lips.). There's a lot of mythology about Ned, that he was a Robin Hood figure, and tacky theme park stuff at Glenrowan where he had his last stand, but for all his grievances (and yes, he was targeted and harassed by corrupt police) to me he was just a brutal crook and murderer. Steven
  15. Louie da fly
    I see you've already worked out that my current build is a restoration of my Great Harry from over 50 years ago - currently everything's on hold because my workspace is occupied by a relative who has moved down here from Queensland and is living with us till he moves into the new house. He's supposed to move out today (I hope!). Regarding the complexity of the rigging - crowsfeet on the leechlines etc - my only conclusion is that it must have been to distribute the forces more evenly or make it easier to pull the sail in when furling. It did last for quite a long time, so they must have seen some value in it. Shame about the dent in the sail, but if you're ok with it that's really all that matters. And yes, sails do flutter in the wind - though I think the botisman* might have got in trouble with the captain over it. And you might be interested in this link - nautical terminology in the sixteenth century from a contemporary source - Steven * (= boat man - the old word for boatswain).
  16. Louie da fly
    Nice work. You can certainly be happy that your build is considerably better than Revell ever had in mind. Steven
  17. Louie da fly
    Coming along nicely, mate. Broken spars are unfortunately part of life's rich tapestry when you make ship models. Fortunately, there's almost nothing that can go wrong that can't be remedied. Steven
  18. Louie da fly
    Those boats are beautiful!
  19. Louie da fly
    That's very good. Keep up the good work. Steven
  20. Louie da fly
    Fascinating stuff, Dick. Real reconstructive archaeology at work. Steven
  21. Louie da fly
    Yep. Very complex set-up. For some reason (presumably to distribute the strain) in the late 16th to mid 17th centuries they added loads of crowsfeet etc etc - only to progressively remove them again later. Nice work, mate. BTW, there are various methods to remove the "hairiness" of thread, including rubbing it with wax or (NOT and) holding it near (but not too near) a flame. Steven
  22. Louie da fly
    Anderson's book discusses leechlines and buntlines at length; the scarcity of contemporary information led him to decide that there wasn't a definitive answer, particularly for topsails and above. Steven
  23. Louie da fly
    You have to keep in mind that most of this stuff is tongue in cheek. You have to go to the tropics to see blue-ringed octopi, crocodiles, etc etc. OTOH hunstmen do live in suburbia, and brown and black snakes in some places. But we don't have grizzly bears. Dunno about the Peppa Pig thing. I've never heard of it. Sounds like a furphy (https://furphyfoundry.com.au/the-origins-of-telling-a-furphy/#:~:text=The Oxford Dictionary defines the,that is untrue or absurd ) Steven
  24. Louie da fly
    It's always spider season. Biggest spider? Probably a huntsman, but we have them in our houses and take them for granted (they eat flies and mozzies, so they're fairly welcome - some people give them names.) They're cute and cuddly and ready to please. My brother was bitten by one once, drew blood. But the poison's not all that serious. Dunno about biggest monstrosity, but the worst I've ever seen was a blue-ringed octopus. Tiny but deadly. One bite has enough venom to kill 26 people. "The venom can result in nausea, respiratory arrest, heart failure, severe and sometimes total paralysis, blindness, and can lead to death within minutes if not treated. Death, if it occurs, is usually from suffocation due to paralysis of the diaphragm." The vivid neon blue means it's p*ssed off. If it's calm and happy, the blue is paler, more like the colour of the sky. Yeah, nah. He thought it was pretty cool, named it New South Wales (perhaps because of the rock formations? I dunno.) But Sir Joseph Banks who was a naturalist and president of the Royal Society (and IIRC largely funded the voyage) was blown away by it and recommended that Britain settle it. The whole convict thing was because Britain had just lost the American colonies, which is where they'd sent the convicts previously. Steven
  25. Louie da fly
    Nicely done, mate. (NB "mate", though a nautical term, is also the normal greeting in Oz, as in "Owyergoin' mate?" The diagrams are very good, but suffer from being reduced when they published to modern paperback in a smaller format. I find that as the book was published in the 1920's the language is somewhat formal and the information is rather concentrated (LOTS of information in a very few sentences) so you really need to have your wits about you to navigate your way through the text. Having said that, I've found the book invaluable in my own Great Harry restoration, though it's even further out of my time period than it is of yours, it's by far the best thing I've been able to find, and I'd recommend it to anyone working on ships of this era. Steven

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