Louie da fly

Very nice, Dick. I'm looking forward to the next instalment. It's a fascinating subject. Steven

Yep, just a shame that no nefs have been found, so we have to extrapolate from Viking finds. Ah well. If they'd found a nef I probably wouldn't want to make one. I like the speculation. Steven

One thing that occurs to me is that a merchant ship is subject to forces that don't apply with a Viking longship, because of the weight of the cargo. I remember reading somewhere that unlike conventional vessels, it was found from practical experience with a replica that a longship is so flexibly built that rather than smashing through waves it flexes to accommodate them. A longship is effectively built like an open boat, with no upper crossbeams to reinforce it sideways. But with a merchant vessel the extra weight of the cargo subjects the ship to forces a longship doesn't have to deal with - forces that push her downwards, and coupled with the pressure of the water outside, tend to squeeze the sides inwards. Looking at the two knarrs and the Karby ship we can see that most of the frames are fairly light in construction but there are three frames which are structurally very solid indeed (circled in blue on this pic of Hedeby/Haithabu 3 - BTW, the reason for the two names is that Hedeby is the Danish name for the town and Haithabu is the German name - it has variously been part of Germany and Denmark at various times in history) - almost built like a roof truss - one amidships and one each end of the open hold - and these provide the stiffness that keeps the sides apart. A couple of other interesting things about the knarrs is their framing. I seem to have been correct in thinking it was made up very differently from what we would consider conventional framing practice. First, at the bottom are floor timbers made rather like a boomerang - a single piece of wood with two arms angled to follow the line of the hull each side of the keel (green circle). The following photos are of the knarr Skuldelev 1. Above these is a horizontal beam, forming a triangle with the floor timbers (white circle) Above them again is something called a bite - a sort of cross between a futtock and a knee (red circles), which carries the framing right up to the top of the planking. Between them these three items make up the main frames. Then between them are intermediate frames which seem to run between the top of the planking and the turn of the bilge. This doesn't tie in with Zimmerman's reconstruction, which seems to be based more on the Gokstad ship. But that's ok - there's more than one way to skin a cat (or as my maths teacher in high school used to say "There's more ways of drowning a cat than strangling it, you know!"). The Karby ship also shows two stringers within the hull and a wale outside to further reinforce the shape (see post #133 above). It seems to me the through-beams of a nef are a different means of providing structural reinforcement of the same type as the "roof trusses" of the Hedeby ship, in an area where there really isn't anything else to prevent the sides from being forced inwards, but with the advantage that they provide access to the area below the decks. Maybe that's the whole point. So, I've been doing a bit of experimenting - with balsa, which I can afford to waste, because I have a very limited supply of walnut the right thickness. So far I haven't duplicated the knarr construction because I've only just finally figured out how it works. But it looks like a good way to go - unless I come up with something better. So here are some ideas for the frames for the open hold (top) and the decked area (bottom - at the point where the through-beam is situated) And here's a bite made of walnut, to see if I can make one without breaking it because of the problems with the grain (I couldn't - it broke and I had to glue it back together). Also rather wasteful of wood. Of course in the real world, timbers would have been carefully selected from forks in trees with grain which parallelled the shape of the floor timber. So I decided to experiment with heat-bending a straight strip of walnut to form a futtock/frame piece. I used a little soldering iron clamped in a modelling vise. A bit clumsy, but it worked. And here's the result. Seems to work pretty well. Still thinking it through . . . . Steven

Thus speaks a man who knows what he's talking about. Steven

I hope not, and indeed I don't believe so. It's true that one needs to learn to walk before trying to run, but I certainly haven't found any "looking down" on people who are just starting out, or who choose to build simpler models - at least not on this forum. MSW covers the whole gamut of skills, and in my time here I've found that despite my own ignorance of many aspects of ships and ship-modelling, people have invariably been polite and helpful. Steven

Well, rocs do it too, but it's in a picture, so it's got to be true. Of course, the male gryphon has no wings, so it can only be the females that carry elephants . . . According to Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge: "In British heraldry, a male griffin is shown without wings, its body covered in tufts of formidable spikes, with a short tusk emerging from the forehead" I hadn't previously known about the tusk on its forehead, and this one seems to be without one - maybe it's an immature one, or perhaps it broke off in a fight? Tenniel is all very well, but he probably never saw a real gryphon (they were very scarce in Victorian England - probably the pollution from all those dark satanic mills). Which reminds me, I had a friend whose surname was Mills . . . Steven

Thanks, Dick. I've been sort of tending in the direction you've suggested, and your ideas confirm my own opinions. Rather than hatches, removable sections of deck with catwalks either side (but not as narrow as on the Hedeby knarr - those Vikings must have had very good balance). The Winchelsea seal seems to show a higher through-beam at each end, which I interpret as supporting a raised foredeck and afterdeck. And of course the gryphons are in case you want to do a bit of elephant hunting. (Is that a hulc I see in the background?) Steven

Thanks, Dick. It would have been totally ok to put your observations into this build log - they would have been very welcome - after all I'm currently at the "feasibility" stage. I agree with your interpretation regarding the decks. Makes a lot of sense. Which would presumably mean the removable parts of the deck, at the very least, wouldn't have any camber - and maybe none of the decks would. In the original Sandwich seal the three through-beams are a bit vague and blobby and it seems to me there may be as many as four, depending how you interpret the seal, though this doesn't alter the validity of the point you made. And there has to be (on the Winchelsea seal) some permanent deck for the windlass to sit on. Other seals show four (San Sebastian and Dunwich) and even as many as five (Hythe and Yarmouth) - and some show none at all. The Winchelsea one is even more interesting - it appears to me that it has two extra through-beams, one at each end, slightly higher than the others, which I believe are to support a raised foredeck and afterdeck. The San Sebastian seal is similar in having higher through-beams at the ends. Steven

Glad to hear it, mate. Have fun with it! Steven

What about grass growing in the roof gutters? It is a farm, after all . . .

OK. A couple of questions - 1. Is there any real reason the tops of the through beams should be in line with the top of the decking? The only reason I can think of is that the knees on top of the through beams would otherwise intrude on the decking. Though that shouldn't be all that much of a problem either - surely you could cut the decking around the knees. 2. Is there any real structural reason for the second beam below the through-beam? In my view, these and the rest of the proposed internal details are based purely on supposition and the example of Viking ships from 250 years earlier. So, whilst taking them into account, I'm at liberty to disagree with them. Need to do more thinking. Will I have the through-beams below the decking or in line? And following that argument, will I have continuous decking with hatches or have it removable in sections? And if so, how do you remove them? (Aha! With the windlass, I suppose). Steven

Hi O.C. I was very impressed by your patch of grass and it got me thinking - wouldn't there be weeds growing up here and there at the bases of walls and cracks in the pavement? Or am I just suggesting yet MORE work for you to do (not unlike certain people who shall remain nameless suggesting I carve all eight crew members for my nef ). Steven

I've finally got around to cutting the plug into transverse slices, one for each frame, and traced the outlines onto paper. A little rough and ready - I had to re-think the lines of the deck beams after I'd already drawn them, so you can see two deck-lines in several of these cross-sections. Now I have to start thinking about making the frames. And I've hit a quandary. Nobody knows what the frames or deck configuration of a nef really were. No help from archaeology - no nefs have been found. The only information is from Viking knarrs, from maybe 250 years earlier and a different part of Europe. And I discovered the Vikings didn't use full-height frames and futtocks as was used later. They were fairly complex, but basically you had the floor timbers and deck-beams up to deck level, and above that the higher strakes were attached with knees. The following two illustrations are from Björn Landström's book The Ship. Landström's nef reconstruction shows the same structure as was found on the Gokstad ship - naturally enough; he had nothing else to work with. But it's very likely that there were developments in the following 250 years, and anyway as I mentioned, it was a different part of Europe, with perhaps a different shipbuilding tradition and all kinds of influences - from France and even northern Spain (a seal from San Sebastian shows a nef identical with those from England). Seal of San Sebastian 1352 Since the book was written, there has been quite a bit more information available. The drawings for the Hedeby/Haithabu 3 and Skuldelev 1 knorrs are now widely available, as below No continuous deck; in fact the decks seem to almost be afterthoughts. And a great gaping opening amidships which I assume is where the cargo got put. How the crew got from one end of the ship to another is anybody's guess. There's a very narrow catwalk either side on the Hedeby ship, but it doesn't look very user-friendly. It seems to me sensible that a cargo ship (which is effectively what a nef is, with a fighting capability added) would have developed a continuous deck for ease of access. Landström's nef reconstruction above just has an uninterrupted deck - it doesn't have any cargo hold or hatches at all. I'm assuming he was thinking the cargo would be carried on the deck, but that ignores all that cargo-carrying capacity below decks - and also raises the centre of gravity of the laden ship, which would make it less stable. The pic below shows there's be plenty of room to crawl around below decks and stack cargo. Another good thing I've got from Landström's book, by the way, is the construction of the mid-13th century Kalmar ship, which was recovered almost completely intact. Note the way the through-beams are fixed - very interesting - straight through the planks with no "step" in the through-beam to hold it against the planks - held instead by knees, and a stringer behind the knees on the top beam. Oh, and something I had previously missed - the through-beams are locked into two planks at once - so they lock the planks themselves together. So, where do I go from here? Do I follow the viking construction methods? I don't think so. I believe other methods would have been developed by then (pure supposition on my part, I know), and I'm thinking of having floor timbers right across the full width of the ship and up past the turn of the bilge, paired with other frames which start at the gunwale and extend downwards past the turn of the bilge, so they overlap and there's no point of weakness where they "join". This was a common construction technique in the Mediterranean at this time (and for several centuries earlier). I don't believe they would have yet developed paired frames made up of a series of futtocks, as we see in much later vessels. [Edit] My current thought is to have a continuous deck with hatches for cargo. If that's the case I won't need to get into the extra complexity of the "doubled-up" frames, because they won't be visible anyway. [/Edit] Any comments or suggestions welcome. Steven

Johnny, I agree about the upper masts on carracks. It took quite a while before the topmast reached a respectable size, and by that time carracks were being superseded by galleons to a large degree. As you are aware, there are a large number of contemporary pictures of ships from the same time period as the Wasa which would help as a guide. I would also recommend Anderson's book for the Wasa's period. It's VERY thorough and VERY detailed, and covers just about every source of information available and every detail of masting and rigging, and even goes into the differences between the ships of different nations. Steven

Yep. Unfortunately, most of it is (informed) guesswork. The archaeological information just doesn't exist - masts and spars are the first things to go. A few notable exceptions - the Black Sea wrecks which have been preserved by an anoxic environment, and some in (I think) the Great Lakes from the War of 1812, similarly preserved. Which means we have to fall back onto contemporary pictures (and use our judgment - allowing for artistic licence. But it also means nobody can tell you you're wrong (unless they have a time machine, of course!) Steven

I've collected all the contemporary pictures I can find of "great carracks" (my name for them - the really big carracks, of which Mary Rose is a good example) and put them on a Pinterest page here: https://www.pinterest.com.au/lowe1847/great-carracksnaos/ I hope that helps. This is an area where there really isn't all that much information available - we are really just reduced to contemporary pictures. I'm restoring a model of the Great Harry, the Mary Rose's big sister, and I've been working from Wolfram Zu Mondfeld's book "Historic Ship Models" and R.C. Anderson's "The Rigging of Ships in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast 1600-1720". Neither is perfect - Mondfeld has only a little information, and with Anderson I have to extrapolate backwards up to 100 years and hope for the best. Some good news - they have found a fighting top and a parrel truck from the Mary Rose. Pics are available on a google image search. Steven

I don't think I'll be putting "nail dots" in - I doubt that they would be visible at this scale. I think a lot of people add these kinds of details unnecessarily, often far too big. On the other hand, the nails are a different colour from the wood, as in this pic, and so might be visible after all. I'll have to think about it a bit. Steven

A-A-A-A-N-D . . . PLANKING IS COMPLETE! Last steps . . . All planks in place - pushpins removed. And it came off the plug without damage! There was an initial problem - the clingwrap had got torn in a few places during the planking procedure, and a couple of planks had stuck lightly to the plug. I had to ease a blade between the planking and the plug to free them up. Fortunately it was only the very last layers of planking, so I could free them up. A bit of careful jiggling back and forth, and VOILA! (I tore the clingwrap to get the ship free - this is the bit left behind between the planking and the plug). And here she is free and clear. Rather a pretty shape, I think . Now, there's a possibility that the hull might squeeze inward without frames, so the next job is the cut the plug into crosswise slices - one for each frame - and then make frames based on those shapes. All good . Steven

Hi and welcome to MSW! If you haven't made any wooden ships before, I'd suggest you look at this thread, which should help you choose a suitable model to work on. Once you're ready to begin, make sure you start a build log - instructions are here: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/24705-before-you-post-your-build-log-please-read-this-starting-and-naming-your-build-log/ It's a great way to get help and advice, and getting your questions answered. And we get to see your progress. The people here are very supportive and helpful. Don't get too intimidated by the quality of some of the models on MSW - some of the people here have been doing this stuff for decades, but there are also plenty of people on their first model. And don't get too worried about making mistakes (you will make them - we all do - it's part of the learning process). Good to have you aboard! Steven

Hmm - there's a difference between a plural and a collective noun. The plural of nef should, I suppose, be nefs (using the French system of making plurals out of singular words). This of course doesn't take into account the fact that nef really isn't a specific term for this kind of ship - there wasn't one. In fact, I thought I'd made it up, in default of any correct name existing for them, then found others on the Internet had beaten me to it. But a collective noun for them - like a Pride of lions or a murder of crows, or a parliament of fowls, or a mob of kangaroos (yes, really - that's the name for a group of roos!), a sanctimony of bishops, a flourish of strumpets, or a flange of baboons, a smugness of young IT professionals - hmmm, perhaps a jabberwock of nefs? Oh, no, that would be for hulcs, wouldn't it? Maybe a bandersnatch of nefs? Steven

Current progress on the planking: I was just about to finish the second-last strake, when - AGHAST! I've been using a 1mm drill to make the holes for the push pins (after nasty painful experiences pushing them in when I was making the dromon), and I just broke my last drill bit. We're currently in lockdown, so I have to wait till I can get new ones click-and-collect from Bunnings . . . Interesting - I'm not exactly following the lines I drew on the plug for the planks - I think the planks are trying to tell me something - that my own lines weren't right. Certainly the planking looks better than what I'd drawn. So, pretty happy with it all. Steven

Those sails look very good, Patrick. And yes, "hem" is the correct term in English. Steven

From the wreck of the Gribshunden, Denmark 1495. A "griffin-hound" swallowing a screaming man. "Dragon head" figureheads were a common feature on large ships of this time. http://moocs.southampton.ac.uk/shipwrecks/2016/02/09/the-loss-of-the-gribshunden-1495-and-preliminary-archaeological-investigations/ Steven

Perhaps they are theoretical reconstructions. The only contemporary images of nefs I'm aware of are on city seals, plus three manuscript illustrations. Which is the problem faced by those of us who are interested in ships of this period. These images are about all we've got, as we lack any archaeological information on ships of this type. Steven

I'm sure I've read somewhere that the "ram" on renaissance galleys (which by this time was right up at upper deck level) was used as a boarding bridge. Steven