Jump to content
NRG Photographic Model Ship Competition - All eligible to enter - Reduced memberhsip fee - JULY 31 ENTRY DEADLINE ×

Louie da fly

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    7,973

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Louie da fly

  1. 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
  2. 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).
  3. Louie da fly
    Nice work. You can certainly be happy that your build is considerably better than Revell ever had in mind. Steven
  4. 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
  5. Louie da fly
    Those boats are beautiful!
  6. Louie da fly
    That's very good. Keep up the good work. Steven
  7. Louie da fly
    Fascinating stuff, Dick. Real reconstructive archaeology at work. Steven
  8. 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
  9. 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
  10. 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
  11. 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
  12. 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
  13. Louie da fly
    Nice work, Dick. That would have to be very precisely shaped and the mortises and tenons exactly placed for it all to work. Nicely done. Steven
  14. Louie da fly
    You've done a nice job on this, Grant. Steven
  15. Louie da fly
    Interesting rigging details. Do you have The Rigging of Ships in the Age of the Spritsail Topmast by R. C. Anderson? Though some decades later it's the nearest in time to your period of any reliable book I know of. Steven
  16. Louie da fly
    Perhaps this? Not advertising here, I just stumbled upon it on-line, but if you really want to get it, here's the link . . . https://www.freakcraft.store/products/kraken-rum-limited-edition-ceramic-bottle
  17. Louie da fly
    Nice work, mate! Welcome to MSW and yes, start a build log - it's a great way to meet the folks here and get help and advice from those who've been there before. Steven
  18. Louie da fly
    Yes! Best commercially available ginger beer on the market. Unlike most of them which taste like fizzy water with a bit of ginger added, this stuff actually tastes like the real thing, home-made ginger beer (at least to me!). I think it must actually be brewed the traditional way. They have quite a range of drinks, but the straight ginger beer is the original and best. Steven PS: Bundaberg is a town in Queensland.
  19. Louie da fly
    It was my privilege to go on board 'Duyfken' while she was being built in Fremantle. She's so beautiful and she's part of our history as Australians. Have fun with it. Steven
  20. Louie da fly
    Me too, when I was a kid. It actually worked, but I lost it somewhere along the way. It was a clipper, with just sails, no rigging. Steven
  21. Louie da fly
    After watching your video I've decided I'm NEVER going to build a ship in a bottle! It was actually painful to watch - I was sure it was going to be a disaster. I takes me hat off to you sir! PS: Bundy is rum, not beer. A suitable drink for a shipbuilder, I feel. Steven
  22. Louie da fly
    Judging by the language of the index, and the fact that apart from that of the Czar the first several flags are Dutch, this volume of flags appears to have been compiled in the Netherlands, or at least by somebody from the Netherlands, but presumably to be presented to the Czar (or commissioned by him?) Which makes me wonder if they have the word "Protestans" correctly spelled, or just taken straight from the Dutch (not that I have any idea if that's the Dutch version of the word). Certainly all the rest is English (I'm prepared to accept that "Liberte" might have been a current spelling of "Liberty") If it was prepared for Peter the Great, the Cromwellian Commonwealth was long gone, and Martes is probably right that it had to do with William III. Steven
  23. Louie da fly
    It was probably the same price compared with earning capacity of the time . . . On the other hand, my generation were being sent to Vietnam without any choice in the matter, and we were just waiting for World War III which would wipe out all life on Earth . . . In some ways life is better now. But they didn't have auto-tune . . . we actually relied on people singing in tune . . . Steven
  24. Louie da fly
    73, mate. I remember the Beatles first becoming famous (I bought all their records as they came out), saw Bob Dylan live just as he was going 'electric', the moon landings, the sixties (old joke - if you can remember the sixties you weren't there). But I was making ship models from about the age of 10, so I don't know whether it's really an old man's hobby. Steven
  25. Louie da fly
    Just checked your profile - WOW! Born in 2004! Make the most of the hobby while you can. You've probably got more available time now than you'll ever have again. Steven

About us

Modelshipworld - Advancing Ship Modeling through Research

SSL Secured

Your security is important for us so this Website is SSL-Secured

NRG Mailing Address

Nautical Research Guild
237 South Lincoln Street
Westmont IL, 60559-1917

Model Ship World ® and the MSW logo are Registered Trademarks, and belong to the Nautical Research Guild (United States Patent and Trademark Office: No. 6,929,264 & No. 6,929,274, registered Dec. 20, 2022)

Helpful Links

About the NRG

If you enjoy building ship models that are historically accurate as well as beautiful, then The Nautical Research Guild (NRG) is just right for you.

The Guild is a non-profit educational organization whose mission is to “Advance Ship Modeling Through Research”. We provide support to our members in their efforts to raise the quality of their model ships.

The Nautical Research Guild has published our world-renowned quarterly magazine, The Nautical Research Journal, since 1955. The pages of the Journal are full of articles by accomplished ship modelers who show you how they create those exquisite details on their models, and by maritime historians who show you the correct details to build. The Journal is available in both print and digital editions. Go to the NRG web site (www.thenrg.org) to download a complimentary digital copy of the Journal. The NRG also publishes plan sets, books and compilations of back issues of the Journal and the former Ships in Scale and Model Ship Builder magazines.

Our Emblem ®

Modelshipworld - Advancing Ship Modeling through Research

Nautical Research Guild ® and the NRG logo are Registered Trademarks, and belong to the Nautical Research Guild (United States Patent and Trademark Office: No. 6,999,236 & No. 6,999,237, registered March 14, 2023)

×
×
  • Create New...