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Louie da fly

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Everything posted by Louie da fly

  1. Louie da fly
    My brain hurts. Steven
  2. Louie da fly
    I've temporarily (with a couple of small dabs of glue) fixed the aftercastle deck to the hull to adjust the position and verticality (is that a word?) of the mizzen mast, with quite pleasing results. There's still a little wriggle room in the mast partners which will allow me to get it exactly right. Additionally, I've removed the deck framing below the aftercastle, which was in line with the main deck. I intend to make everything below the aftercastle into cabin space, with a lower deck level. I'm not sure at the moment how much work I'll put into this cabin space, as it will be hidden anyway, but I'm thinking of having a crew member climbing up through the companionway onto the after deck to add a bit of interest. The masts haven't yet been cut to length - I'm still thinking about exactly how I'm going to configure the tops and calcets And after referring back to the paper by Lawrence V. Mott of Texas A&M University entitled The Development of the Rudder A.D. 100-1600: A Technological Tale, I've realised that I'd misinterpreted the rudder shape somewhat, as it was intruded on by other items in the picture I was working from (refer to the mosaic picture in my previous post), and that I'd missed the fact that both rudders were shown in the mosaic (though the artist seems to have got the nearer rudder facing backwards). And, following Mott, here is the aerofoil (or perhaps aquafoil?) cross-section of the rudders. That's all for now. Steven
  3. Louie da fly
    Mock-up in balsa for the side rudders, based on one in the mosaic pictures. And the roughed out rudders. I discovered too late that one of them was too thin at the handle end, so I glued another layer of wood to thicken it up. I'll post a pic of the completed ones when they're finished. The deck for the aftercastle under construction: And my first experiment in curving timber really tightly - to form the top. Worked fairly well, but the wood started to char - I can't lower the temperature of the soldering iron. But I have hopes of a vegetable steamer that I have permission to use outside the kitchen. Steven
  4. Louie da fly
    Oh, certainly. But I'm convinced that the artists were portraying what was there, and who am I to decide my concept of "rightness" trumps what was actually done at the time? Yes, I agree, on both the issues you raise. Yes, I'd already decided to do that. With a scroll saw it shouldn't be all that difficult to do identical ones, but in this case each pair of knees (starboard and port) will be of a different length from all the others as the hull tapers but the aftercastle remains the same width. I'm even looking at the possibility of radiating the knees out perpendicular to the curved line of the hull. (PS: I've sent you a PM regarding a facet of the rigging). Steven
  5. Louie da fly
    Thanks for the information. I use PVA (white) glue, not CA. But good to know packing tape works for CA. I might need that at some time. Steven
  6. Louie da fly
    It's good to see you finding solutions to the problems as they arise. You seem to be overcoming them well. Do you know what kind of wood that is? BTW, it's probably not important now, but I found wrapping clingwrap around the bit I didn't want to be glued to the hull worked quite well (though I was using a plug, not a strongback). Steven
  7. Louie da fly
    Bienvenu à MSW, Pierre! Are you working on a particular model at the moment? Steven
  8. Louie da fly
    I made a balsa mock-up of the aftercastle, to see how it all works. Here's the first version. This is why I make mock-ups - to see if it works the way it's drawn. It's rather too high - no way anybody can see over it, even though I intend to make the sides latticework. Also likely to make the ship top-heavy. I looked back at the mosaic I was using as my source and realised the aftercastle on this one actually started well below bulwark level, and the other mosaics showed the top of the aftercastle quite low. So here's the next iteration - I just cut the top off. I thought about lowering the whole castle but decided against it as most of the mosaics show its walls pretty much the same height. One other thing - it's perfectly rectangular rather than tapered to take into account the narrowing of the stern. But even though this looks somewhat weird, it follows many, many representations of ships of this period, so I'm going to continue with it, even though it offends my 21st century sensibilities. I think I've got the heights of the masts correct now, but I won't cut them to length just yet - I'm working on how they're going to be configured at the top, what with the calcet and all. Steven
  9. Louie da fly
    I want to be you when I grow up . . . Steven
  10. Louie da fly
    You've done a beautiful job, mate. Nice to see the flotilla all together, as well.
  11. Louie da fly
    Good luck with the insertion. You're a braver man than I am! Steven
  12. Louie da fly
    Portuguese rather than Spanish, and I don't know whether it contains info on masts, spars and rigging, but you might try the Livro de Traças de Carpintaria of 1616 - https://shiplib.org/index.php/collections/historical-sources/treatises-on-shipbuilding/livro-de-tracas-de-carpintaria-portugal/ - but it is in Portuguese . . .
  13. Louie da fly
    Unfortunately the entire document is only available (as far as I know) in black and white, but here is the reference - https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9076701x/f118.item - the rest of the manuscript is also well worth looking at - it's replete with all kinds of interesting pictures - quite a few more ships (all galleys IIRC except this one), but all kinds of other things. I agree, the picture certainly looks like a hockey stick calcet with a short vertical "topmast" above it, presumably connected to it, to which the "crow's nest" is attached. How exactly this was configured is something of a problem and I'm going to have to think about it a bit. On the other hand, regarding the San Marco ships, even if we assume the artists got the "all-around the mast" tops wrong (which I think is quite likely) and they should be only on the back of the mast, nonetheless there's this pointy black thing sticking out above the top itself. Could this be the top of a calcet? And if so, how was it configured? And though one set seem straight up and down, the others are looking suspiciously hockey-stickish . . . particularly the second-last one. Added to this I'm still trying to work out how a two-sheaved calcet worked (and they all seem to have had at least two) - I think we had this conversation before - why have two ties? My understanding is that the knight at deck level would have maybe as many as three sheaves, but that it would be paired with a block above it with perhaps two sheaves, and the block would be attached to a single tye that goes through the calcet, adjusted by the halyard running between the knight and the block. So how does a double sheaved calcet fit in with this configuration? It's breaking my brain at the moment. Steven
  14. Louie da fly
    Well, I've taken off that stringer behind the gunwale - I just wasn't happy with it. I'll find some other belaying method. In the meantime I've been doing some thinking about whether or not to have a calcet. The main problem is that pictures detailed enough to show whether or not a ship had calcets (or perhaps where the artist could be bothered to add that kind of detail) are usually 2 or more centuries after the ship I'm portraying. The pictures from which Woodrat got the calcets for his 14th century ship are admittedly only (only!) 150 years later, but that's still a long time for development to occur, and doesn't help with whether or not a ship from 1150 would have had them. But then I remembered the illustration from the Annals of Genoa (1173-1196) - perhaps only about 20 years after my own! It seems to me that there is something there at the top of the mast, of a different colour from the rest, and that the top is attached to the rear of it. It would have been nice to see what was happening with the foremast, but unfortunately this is all there is of the picture - the artist ran out of space at the edge of the page and left the rest off (fortunately, though, it shows a rope ladder, which the after mast doesn't). I think I'm going to take this as evidence for calcet, and act accordingly. Now it's a matter of working out a configuration for the calcet itself and how to attach the top to it. A bit of a diversion from building the hull, but I like to think things out in advance. I've now finished all the wales and the next step in the sequence should be either the deck beams or the planking. But I'm also thinking ahead to the configuration of the aftercastle/poop and also how the side rudders are going to work. Steven
  15. Louie da fly
    French person. Bienvenu, Thierry! It's totally ok to just sit on the sidelines and watch. There's a lot to be learnt from many of the build logs, as well as the discussions in the other parts of the forum. I'd particularly recommend the sub-section "Discussions for Ships plans and Project Research. General research on specific vessels and ship types.." Steven
  16. Louie da fly
    I'd agree. Unless you really want to be that precise (and give yourself problems), I think notches would be the way to go. The sheaves themselves would be all but invisible anyway, as they would be mostly hidden by the pendant. Nice to see you back on the build, by the way. Steven
  17. Louie da fly
    Looks very good with the lights on, but perhaps there's too much of a good thing? Having lived by candle-light at times, I'd say you should probably go for rather less, and perhaps put some yellow/orange cellophane over your leds. A good example of the colour and intensity you should be aiming for is provided in Stanley Kubrik's movie Barry Lyndon in which all the interior scenes were filmed using only candle-light (with special cameras designed to do so). The castle itself is looking really good, though I can see you still have a lot of work ahead of you. Best wishes, Steven
  18. Louie da fly
    It's quite possible that quinquiremes were relatively open at the sides, just like they built the trireme reconstruction Olympias - see post #126 here
  19. Louie da fly
    Agreed - it's not a wonderful idea to make your ship top-heavy, apart from the extra cost of the timber. But to me it just looks wrong. And there's no evidence either way from pictorial sources or archaeology as far as I know; most wrecks are found with their upper works missing - unless something has been found in the Black Sea that will clarify the issue. Steven
  20. Louie da fly
    Finalising the gunwale, which hadn't quite reached the stempost due to a miscalculation. I glued in a couple of thin bits of wood to fill the gap, then trimmed them down to follow the line of the wales. I also curved the middle wales further upward at the bow, as the line was wrong. Now they form an intermediate curve between the gunwale and the wale below. Putting on the bottom wales - here's the first pair, at the bow. I hadn't bent them quite enough for the curve of the bow, but gluing them to the stempost and the first few frames will secure them enough to allow me to curve them around the "bend" by hand once the glue is dry, and tie the rest of the wale down to follow the rest of the frames. Another issue. To allow somewhere to belay the vertical lines, I added a stringer inside the hull in line with the gunwale. But I'm not really happy with it, and I think I might replace it with cleats or something of the sort, to perform the same function. What do you all think? Steven
  21. Louie da fly
    That tail looks very good, and I think your decision was the right one. Regarding ventilation, I spent a lot of time pondering this issue during my dromon build. Without a time machine we'll never know the right answer, but the research suggests that adequate ventilation was vital for an oarsman to produce the effort required to row the ship. I never settled the problem fully to my satisfaction, as there was a contemporary account of it being "dark and gloomy" below decks in a dromon. I compromised by having gaps between every pair of deck planks for a large section of the decking. But a quinquireme is not a dromon, and would ahve a had a different layout. IIRC the Olympias was very open for air to enter. Steven
  22. Louie da fly
    I wouldn't worry to much about the "uniforms". Though there's pictorial evidence of a nobleman's followers wearing his colours as early as 1195, they weren't really a thing until the Renaissance. Judging by the figures and the bombard, I'd be putting them all in the 14th century (nearest timeline that includes both a bombard and the outfits of the warriors, though it's stretching it a little bit to do so - that's a very advanced bombard for those guys to be using). I think you've done a pretty fine job with such small figures. I think you're right putting mail rather than hair under the helmets, but I'd suggest the horseman (as a member of the wealthy class) should also have mail "stockings" (called chausses) on his legs. Steven
  23. Louie da fly
    Have you seen the castle being built at Guédelon in France, using only traditional techniques? They've been at it for 20 years now, and it looks amazing. My wife and I are hoping to visit one day, and even perhaps lend a hand as unskilled laborers (sigh).
  24. Louie da fly
    That was the way my own thoughts were going, Dick. Not jewels or pearls, but simply a colour that contrasted with the black hull. The only difference as far as I can see between the ones you've included above and the San Marco mosaics is that the ropes are looped over extended frames rather than randomly distributed, and I don't think there's any significance whatsoever in that difference. Steven
  25. Louie da fly
    See sentence No. 2 in post #1 above. I wish I knew, but they do look very good. Steven

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