Louie da fly

This is looking very good, Phil. I'm glad you're going to be checking a more reliable source than Osprey. I'm loving your research process. This is becoming a very interesting project indeed. Nice that you're allowing yourself the time for it while you're finishing your Victory. It means there's no real rush and you can take the time to dot all the I's and cross all the T's before you actually start building. Steven

You can get anything you want . . . 'ceptin' Alice . . . Steven

I know this is a very old thread, but I just came across this, which I found very interesting. Quite a different build technique from a Waka, and using modern tools of course, but nonetheless fascinating. https://www.facebook.com/DIYCraftsTV/videos/970100217184642/ Steven

Well, fun and games. I've added the decoration to the aftercastle. Took a long time and some patience, but I think it was worth it. There are three quatrefoils (four-petalled flowers) along each side plus a rather complex pointed arch beneath. So I had to figure out how to make them. These decorations were usually inset rather than standing proud of the background, so after a bit of thought a series of cusped triangles in the "negative space" seemed to be the best way to go. So we go from this to this The decoration would probably extend around the front, so I extrapolated the pattern to take this into account. And then onto the arch. Using my trusty soldering iron as a heat source, I bent strips of wood in a circle to make the arcs for the main body of the arch. That's a 32mm (1.25 inch) diameter circle. That soldering iron is amazing. Here's the beginning of the arch. And in place: I had to do a little adjusting where the arch met the uprights to get it to sit more smoothly (not photographed). And then the really fiddly bit. There is a complex secondary arch shown on the Winchelsea town seal: So I had to get thinner strips of wood and curve and cut them to shape. Quite a lot of trial and error involved to get it all to fit and look right. And le voila! The castle dry fitted in place. I have yet to choose a colour scheme. The only coloured pictures from the time show these castles as often being brightly coloured, but with a base of white. Next we get onto the forecastle. I had been merrily just making a duplicate of the aftercastle till I took a good look at the Winchelsea seal again. It appears that though they both come up to the same height, the fore "castle" is deeper than the aftercastle. Landström obviously noticed this discrepancy and thought about it. His solution was to make the fore "castle" the same depth as the after "castle", but to keep the proportions right, he increased the number of decorative arches on the "walls" from three to four. That's certainly a possible solution and I did consider it, but though most ships with two castles depicted on seals have them the same depth, the ship on the far left of the three coloured pictures above has castles of uneven heights. The height under the aftercastle is "fixed" by having to allow headroom for the helmsman, but this isn't the case with the forecastle. And I checked the height of the castle "walls" if its floor was lower. Allowing for a 1.65 metre (5'6") crewman, the top of the merlons ("battlements") was high enough to hide behind, while the embrasures (openings) were deep enough for someone to look out and shoot a weapon. Which is the whole point of battlements, isn't it? So with tears in my eyes (to misquote Arlo Guthrie) I took out the deck substructure I'd put in with such care and attention and moved it downward. And I discarded the walls I'd made for the forecastle and made new ones. Here's a sample just starting out. Will the walls work out? Can Steven make beautiful decorations for the forecastle to match the ones aft? Will tall thin Jones be able to rescue Sweet Sue from Salty Sam? Tune in for our next exciting instalment. Steven

I have found Osprey books to be unreliable. If you can get a better source it would be good. Steven

Online, of course . . . Steven

Thanks very much for this. The most comprehensive information I've seen so far. Very useful for us carrack freaks. There have been several threads which mention the Gribshunden, mostly in passing. I found them by typing in the word "Gribshunden" into the search function. Steven

Just add my vote to the hope that you'll be able to pick up tools again soon. It's a very interesting build, with the family connection making it even more fascinating. Steven

Thanks everybody, and thanks Druxey, though I sort of feel they're more a triumph of patience over lack of planning . . . But I think the structure is much closer to what would have been done back in the day than the ones I did on the dromon, which were very heavily influenced by my experience as a building designer in modern light timber (stud) framing. Once the castles themselves are clad, I'll have to work out a means of doing the decorative woodwork, as seen in the second-last pic of my previous post. I've had a few ideas and I'll just have to see how well they work - or if they work at all. Steven

And now to work on the castles. This took a lot of trial and error - the foredeck and after deck are considerably angled to the horizontal, so the uprights supporting the castles are shorter at the outer end than the inner. I had to guess the difference and found I'd got it wrong - after I'd carved nice supporting columns into the inner uprights. The photo below shows the original uprights on the right and two of the new ones on the left. I had to do a lot of figuring how to build these things so they would work. The floor plan is a truncated triangle, and they had to be without a top crossbeam at the rear because most castles in contemporary pictures don't have a back wall. I think I ended up with something worthwhile, and better (and tidier) than the castles on my previous build, the dromon. The pictures below are of the original version, with the longer columns. And here is the original castle structure part assembled. And roughly in place to get an idea of what it would look like. And the new version, showing the old upright next to it. I also discovered I'd made the castles too long fore and aft, so I had to change that too. A lot of pulling apart and rebuilding, but mostly I just needed to cut various existing pieces shorter - it was only the uprights with the long columns that had to be re-made. Here's a column being carved into shape. More progress: Deck beams in place: And the walls under construction. Glued to the frame and again roughly positioned: the end wall is not yet made. I've started bending wood to make the decorative arches and other features. Oh, and here's the side rudder, ready to be put in position. Coming along . . . Steven

Nice work, Dick. Looks good. Steven

You've done a beautiful job on those eyes. They turned out very well. Steven

Well, he's not really anything to do with the windlass - I've still got to carve the two guys who'll be working it. He's actually a buisinier (trumpeter), but I don't think he'll be playing it like this (genuine mediaeval drawing from a manuscript - they were a rather earthy crowd.) Steven

Here's the windlass - based on the ones from the Bremen cog, the Ijsselcog and the Kalmar ship. Making the two side pieces together so they're identical. I glued them together to put them in the vise and after finishing them I dissolved the glue with isopropanol. And the barrel. I figured it would be easiest to put the holes in while it was still square in section, and then round it off afterwards. I drilled tiny pilot holes halfway in from each side so they would line up and join into a single through-hole perpendicular to the barrel. Then enlarged the holes. Cutting the "axles" into the barrel. Firstly square section: Trimmed: Changing the barrel from square section to octagonal. Then axle rounded off: Barrel rounded off, assembled with side pieces and dry fitted. Note the holes for the bars have been squared off, in line with the ones found in archaeology. Round hole for the mast (dunno what it's called). Bars added. I had to unglue the barrel from the side pieces and rotate it, to get the bars in the right orientation to be reached by the crewmen. The windlass with a crewman for comparison. This made it clear that the bars were much too thick at the "handle" end, so I tapered them. Next - the castles! Steven

This is such a good build. I really enjoy the beautiful detail you put into it, and the extra touches, like the rust on the anchor. Wonderful work. Steven

Thanks, but after doing the crewmen for the dromon - - carving 8 figures is going to be a bit of a doddle! Steven

Thanks everybody for the likes and comments. The barrels? Yes I carved them, though I should probably have used my poor man's lathe (electric drill). Or do you mean the crewmen? Yes, I carved them too. Steven

Cargo finished - at least the bit that will be visible. Both large and small barrels. Cargo arranged in position. In the real world they'd have been wedged tightly together - with wedges. And a start on the main decking. Main deck planking complete. And starting to add the removable planks to go above the hold. All the removable planks glued in place except the ones left off to show the cargo, stacked off to one side. I think I'll make an extra crewman and show him putting the last of them in place. And the mast and yard dry fitted to give an idea of proportions. Next to make the windlass, then the steering oar and the castles for the bow and stern. Coming along nicely. Steven

Welcome from sunny Ballarat! Steven

That's right. Add to that the fact that in this period it was probably even less standardised - they probably made barrels "the right size", whatever that may have been at the time - see the pictures above - quite a wide variation. So I'm not going to get too fussed. But I do like the idea of two sizes of barrel on the ship. Steven

OK. I've done a bit of research. Certainly there is a wide range of barrel sizes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_wine_cask_units But if you look at mediaeval illustrations, particularly of wine barrels, they generally seem to have been pretty big - Maybe I'll go with the idea of different sized barrels. Thanks for the suggestion, Druxey and Mark. Steven

Thanks for the likes and comments. Chuck, I thought about the barrels for quite a while and even researched the size of a tun (though it only gave me the volume rather than height and diameter). However, barrels come in all kinds of sizes, so I went for something that could be handled relatively easily by one or two people. On the other hand, really big barrels do go back a fair way - see this excerpt from the late 11th century Bayeux Tapestry, of a barrel that's been carried across the English Channel in what is effectively a Viking ship, for the Norman soldiers invading England in 1066. Translation "These [men] carry arms to the ships, and here they haul the wagon with wine and arms" [Edit] Just roughed out a larger barrel - not a full tun - it would be too big to go in the low headroom of the hold - but quite a bit bigger. Here's the original size. And here it is with the new one, in the ship and against a person. Maybe I'll go with the bigger size after all - one advantage is that there would be fewer to make. Just as well I posted now, rather than after I'd made all the smaller ones . . . [/Edit] Steven

Thanks, Christian. That book sounds very interesting. I've just finished the mast - though the top of the mast of the ship on the Winchelsea town seal is a bit vague, Landström interprets it as having a cross at the top, in line with the seals of other towns such as Melcombe Regis and Hythe, as well as several manuscript illustrations. So here's the cross at the top - a halving joint for the crossbar. Here's the mast dry fitted - the cross seems always to be visible from the side rather than the front as I would have expected, though this might be artistic license to make sure it can be seen in a profile view of the ship. And now based upon the Ijssel cog, the planking for the bottom of the hold And "branches" - actually dry weeds from the street verge opposite the house - laid on top of the planking. and "brushwood" (also weeds) to bed down the barrels that are the ship's cargo. Barrels under way - twenty-one of them. Barrel hoops just begun More to come. Steven

I'm all but certain the mast was not recovered from the Bremen cog, or from the Ijsselcog. It seems to be one of the first things to go. It's only in cases like the wonderful ships of the Black Sea that masts survive. And the Bremen cog was apparently under construction when she was washed away by a flood and buried in silt, so she may never have had a mast at all. That being the case, I'm assuming that the mast of the replica as based on speculation and educated guesswork. Which is what I'm doing with my nef anyway, so no worse off, I suppose . Steven

I'm not sure there's much difference. As far as I know, though, no cog masts have been found either, so I suppose the question is moot - unless you're aware of some characteristic about cog masts that I don't know about? Steven