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Louie da fly

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  1. Louie da fly
    Well, the aliens have visited again. Here's the main topsail yard - with the old sail on it and the new sail ready to be added: And here is the yard off the sail and being cleaned up. And fully cleaned up, ready to go (it's the upper one) And I got ready to put the new sail on the yard last night, and could I find the yard? Of course not! The aliens had taken it. I've turned the workshop over, taken everything off the desk and swept it down, searched under the desk with a flashlight, swept up everything that may have fallen underneath - NOTHING! I really don't want to make a new yard to replace the old one - one of my main goals in restoring the ship is to keep as much of the original as possible. But where is the rotten thing? The only other explanation I can think of is that I must have put it in a safe place. Which means it'll be found when they go through all my effects after I'm dead . . . In the meantime, every now and then I feel I have to take my hat off to my seventeen-year-old self. I'd thought I'd made the tiny (1mm) blocks by rolling up cotton thread into a ball and gluing it together and shoving a pin through it when it was dry to make the hole for the thread to go through. I did do that with a couple of them, but almost all turn out to have been made of wood, presumably the way I'm doing it now. And if anything, they're even finer than the ones I'm making today! (The circular thing on the left is a parrel truck I made back in the day just out of cotton thread - I have no idea how I did it.) Steven
  2. Louie da fly
    Bill, do you have any pics of these depictions? I've never seen anything prior to the above with anything resembling a lateen. Yep. That's fair enough - it appears that the frames do overlap each other after all - every frame overlaps the ones either side of it, so there's no "zone of weakness" where the joins are. The Byzantine ships found at Yenikapi have a similar layout, but the overlap between adjacent pairs of frames is more pronounced. Steven
  3. Louie da fly
    Looks great, Arjan Steven
  4. Louie da fly
    Nice. Are you intending to double up the frames so they overlap each other?
  5. Louie da fly
    I sue both scalpels and craft knives. The comments about scalpel blades breaking are true, but only if you force it a bit. My main problem with craft knives is that the handles keep undoing themselves so the blade keeps coming loose. I've come to terms with it to a certain degree, but I still prefer scalpels. Steven
  6. Louie da fly
    Aaargh!
  7. Louie da fly
    Thanks everybody for the likes and encouraging comments. In the process of gluing the ratlines onto the port side foreshrouds, I realised the technique I used has its drawbacks - the glue not only sticks the ratlines to the shrouds, but also the paper backing. I had to gently prize the backing off before I could go on. Then I stuck transparent sticky tape over the paper so the problem wouldn't recur. Learn something new every day . . . but making steady progress. I hope to have it all done by the next post. I was re-using the old fore yard - I only discovered had a break in it after I'd almost completely finished attaching the sail. I had to take the sail off, glue the yard back together (only took three attempts before I had success - ended up slopping CA on the join, as PVA didn't give the join enough firmness) and fix the sail back on. And the re-used Main topsail yard also had a break - the yardarm snapped off - also discovered late. Had to pull it apart three times to fix it - ended up fishing the yardarm to the yard with a sliver of bamboo (much stronger than mere wood). Seen from the front - you can see the broken arm with its fish at the right. And from behind And complete, seen from behind - sorry about the crappy photo. And from the front. A little frustrating but slow and steady progress. Steven
  8. Louie da fly
    That arrangement looks very workable, Cathead, and increases the "genuine" look of the model. Well done! Steven
  9. Louie da fly
    That's beautiful work Rodolfo. I have also seen quite a few toggles made of wood - as early as the 10th century, and even in modern use. Steven
  10. Louie da fly
    Hi Mike, and welcome to MSW. Do you have a particular model in mind? When you get started, make sure you begin a build log - it's a great way to get help and advice. Steven
  11. Louie da fly
    Nope - seeing the mistakes - and how you overcame them - may help someone else in a similar position. We've all been there at some point or another. The experienced modellers just make more interesting mistakes. And of course it's all a learning process - you'll do better with the next model , and better still with the one after it . . . You're right to take your time with the second planking. It's not a race. Good luck with the eye op. By the way, are you planning to plank over the plastic hull of the ship's boat down the track? I've seen it done on other models and it really lifts the look of the model. Steven
  12. Louie da fly
    There's a real sense of achievement in finishing the planking - particularly when it's this difficult. Well done, sir! I look forward to seeing it when the sanding is done. It can make a huge difference to the look of the model. Steven
  13. Louie da fly
    That's pretty darned good, Patrick. I can use AutoCad and Revit and Sketchup, but none of them seem to be terribly good for 3D modelling of ships. I've never tried Fusion, but it looks very good. Do you find it easy to learn/use? Steven
  14. Louie da fly
    Struth! That's certainly changed since I was there! Steven
  15. Louie da fly
    Another step in the progress of the build. Following with interest. Steven
  16. Louie da fly
    Latest activity; I realised I was getting a bit ahead of myself - I should be dealing with the standing rigging before I put the spars, sails and running rigging on. So, first things first - add ratlines to the fore-shrouds on the port side of the model. Used the technique I learned on MSW for spacing the ratlines, though I'm gluing the ratlines on instead of using clove hitches (2 reasons - this is the way I did it back in the day, and the difficulties of tying clove hitches at 1:200 scale). More to come, and I'll tidy it all up when all the ratlines are in place. In the meantime I'm also getting on with fixing up the old yards. Here are the new blocks to be added to the fore-yard for the lifts. About to remove the old main topsail from its yard, with the new one ready to be added. The yard with the sail removed. Unfortunately the yard-arm broke off and had to be re-glued on. Seems to happen every time I remove a sail from a yard. And the fore-yard with the new blocks added. Note the loose ends from the strops. Unfortunately, when I trimmed these off, I also trimmed off one of the blocks and had to do it again. Fore-yard and main topsail yard all cleaned up and ready to go. I've also removed the "parrel truck" from the main topsail yard for future re-use. (When I first built the ship I had no idea how a parrel truck worked, so I made something out of sewing cotton that resembled the one in the picture I was working from.) Steven
  17. Louie da fly
    Yep. This is Perth seen from Kings Park, a native bushland park of over 4 square kilometres (about 1.7 square miles) set aside over a century ago on Mount Eliza, overlooking the city and the Swan River. Steven
  18. Louie da fly
    Or vice versa - and Perth has really great beaches (and weather - it only rains in winter) Steven
  19. Louie da fly
    Actually, I was being ironic. Just had several days of miserable weather, heavy wind and rain. It appears there's a permanent raincloud over Ballarat (you can see it as you approach) as over Duckula's castle. Steven
  20. Louie da fly
    Welcome from sunny Ballarat! I like your avatar - Father Jack, unless I much mistake. If you're just starting out, I'd recommend you start with something relatively simple so you can develop your skills and make something to be proud of without biting off far more than you can chew - such as HMS Victory or the Vasa. Yes, some people have managed it as a first build, but too many find it heart-breaking and fall by the wayside. See and I grew up in Perth (south of the river - Attadale - wouldn't be able to afford to live there now). Say hullo to the river for me, will you? Good to have you aboard! Steven
  21. Louie da fly
    David, I think everybody hits the doldrums at some point or another. The solution depends very much on what caused the doldrums. In my case I get easily bored with repetitive activities - making the same thing over and over again, all identical. Sometimes it's my own fault - did I really have to carve 48 wooden oarsmen for my dromon? Could I have just built the ship without a crew? Other times there's no escaping it - a ship has a lot of blocks, deadeyes etc etc and you have no option but to make lots of things all alike. But yes, it's easy to get stale, too. I once read that the way to avoid getting Alzheimer's is to continually develop new neural pathways, by doing new and different things. If you find yourself getting stale, it might be worth trying a scratch build. It's certainly a lot more challenging than doing a kit. And you could try moving from POB to POF - that will give you a whole lot of new problems to solve! But it sounds to me that you've found your own solution to the doldrums, which should keep you going for a long time into the future. Good luck with it. I wish you every success. Steven
  22. Louie da fly
    Welcome to MSW! I'd agree with mtaylor in recommending you start a build log for your Polaris. It's a great way to get help and advice from other members, and maybe avoid problems or mistakes that others can alert you to. And a good way to make friends in the forum. And we get to see your build under way! The instructions are here: If you have some photos of your model in its earlier stages, include them and give us a short intro. Best wishes, good to have you aboard! Steven
  23. Louie da fly
    Hi and welcome to MSW! The scale for 4.5 feet would be 1:28. You might like to play with that a bit - perhaps 1:30 (which is 2'6" to the inch) and would be a bit over 4'2". But I would agree with allanyed that it would be a lot easier to get this all to work if you built a simpler ship - perhaps a naval cutter like the Cheerful? Good to have you aboard Steven
  24. Louie da fly
    Here's the rest of how I make my wooden blocks. Adding the strop. Wrapping the strop around the block - I tried two ways of doing it - one with the block still attached to the main bit of wood; the other with it already separated. It turned out to be harder to carve the block with the strop attached than to do it the other way around. Then a thumb knot in the strop at the bottom of the block. And complete: Steven
  25. Louie da fly
    Well, that's given me a lesson in German - I'd been thinking gestalt meant "the whole" of something (like holistic). But of course, "whole" is ganze, isn't it? (as in the famous Richard Tauber song "Dein ist mein ganzen Herz" (Yours is my whole heart) or the even more famous "Diesem Kuss der ganzen Welt" (This kiss to the whole world) from Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Druxey, this way of doing the robands is much easier and quicker than doing it properly, and I have the excuse that I did it that way before. Here you can see it from the back. The "joining thread isn't really all that obvious unless you look at it close up. Steven

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