Louie da fly

Nearly complete! Just a few things to organise and she's done! First, adding the forestay. It seemed to me that it would be sensible to fix its lower end through a hole in the stempost, but the contemporary representations, when they show anything at all, show it wrapped around the stempost, clumsy though that appears. So that's how I did it. Holding the "eye-splice" together at the top of the forestay with a small peg until the glue dried. I had already worked out that I would have to cut a hole in the front "wall" of the forecastle for the stay to pass through, so that was already done. Putting in lanyards between the pairs of hearts at the bottom of the shrouds to replace the wire spacers. I used a needle to get the thread through the holes. Shrouds and stays (including backstays) in place and lanyards loosely tied. Adding the yard (sorry about the quality of some of these photos!). Tightening lanyards. In retrospect I would have made the wire spacers longer so I could pull the shrouds tighter while keeping the upper and lower hearts far enough apart. The shrouds and stays aren't really as tight as I'd like them to be, and I'm a bit worried that they'll start to sag after a while. Note the halyard wound around the windlass. Making the parrel. The halyard passes through a sheave in the mast (not sure if a rotating sheave is correct for this time and place, despite being in common use in the Mediterranean at the same time - it might have been just a hole in the mast, back in the day). The ropes are a bit furry - it looks worse in the photos than in real life. I tried the beeswax trick too late - I should have done it before I put everything in place. Flagpole for the forecastle - in the shape of a spear. As Winchelsea is one of the Cinque Ports, I'll be using their banner. Here it is on the seal of Dover, and in full colour (but note this is a modern flag - with a stern rudder instead of a side rudder). Adding the crew (at last!) Buisiniers Working the windlass - also note the pumps have now been added. Climbing the backstay to unfurl the sail. A little more to do, but getting very close to complete. Steven

Hi Nicholas. Any progress on the Bireme? Steven

Hi Emmet. You're doing well on the learning process. You might be interested in the pictures of carracks/naos (same type of ship as Santa Maria) at https://www.pinterest.com.au/lowe1847/carracks/ - I put together all the contemporary pics I could find of them on the one page. I've tried to put dates on all of them I could, so you could look for pics from about the time of Santa Maria - though I think she wasn't a new ship in 1492, she wouldn't have been more than maybe 20 years old, probably less. Note for example that there don't seem to be any of these with a sail on the bowsprit. You might be able to work out the correct rigging for it from these - it seems to have been used to help support the mainmast, rather than as somewhere to put a sail. With the shrouds being a bit slack, you could try tightening up the lanyards (the ropes joining the upper to the lower deadeyes), but it might be just too much, and you've probably already finalised these to the point that you'd have to undo them completely and re-do - hardly worth it. Keep up the good work. Steven

Welcome from sunny Ballarat - only a bit over an hour up the road! Where in Melbourne do you live? There are several Victorians doing this fascinating hobby (including at least 2 in Ballarat) - you might find you're close to one of us. Though I concentrate on Mediaeval and Renaissance ships, it's always good to have another 20th century battleship under way. Have a look at the "20th century" in the kits section in the build logs - you should be able to pick up some valuable tips for your own build. And be sure to start a build log of your own. Great way to get acquainted and get help and advice. Steven

Maybe try "tops" or "fighting tops". What is it you want to know, and from what period? Steven

Trouble is most of them seem to be wearing armour (surprise, surprise!). Good for wargaming, not so good for ship modelling. Steven

Ah, there's your problem right there - "logical/factual" - this is the Middle Ages, mate; not only that, but the people who did the picture are artistic types. You're quite right, however. Artistic types are less interested in perfect accuracy than in an overall impression. There's a story that Babbage, the inventor of the "difference engine", the first computer, worked by cogwheels, wrote to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, picking him up on a line in a poem he'd written "Every Minute dies a Man, Every minute one is born" pointing out that if that was the case, the world population would stay static, and suggesting that he should amend the second line to "And one and a third is born" (close enough within the limits of accuracy, and still sticking to the metre of the poem). Surprisingly, Tennyson didn't follow his advice, but he did change the lines to "Every moment dies a Man, Every moment one is born" Much better as poetry than Babbage's idea, and sufficiently vague to overcome Babbage's objection. After all, how long is a moment? Tennyson was a poet, Babbage was an engineer. They just didn't think the same way. Steven PS: The Winchelsea seal shows four shrouds on one side as you'd expect in a proper side elevation (as the ones on the other side are of course hidden), but it also shows two backstays, with a sailor climbing up one of them.

Hey! Picasso did it first!

Cathead, I think it was different artists' attempts to show in 2 dimensions something that was in 3 dimensions. So some of them showed the shrouds exactly as you'd see them in a side view, with the "near" shrouds hiding the "far" shrouds, while others tried to show the presence of the hidden "far" shrouds by putting them before the mast, even though strictly speaking that's not where they were. That's my take on it, anyway, having seen quite a few attempts to show 3D before they worked out how to show perspective. Steven

I agree. Much though I enjoy carving them, it would be nice to have the option of just buying them ready-made. Unfortunately, nobody seems to make mediaeval civilians - at least not in 1:48 scale. Steven

That's beautiful work, Rodolfo, and a vast improvement on the Amati original. Steven

My feelings exactly. Steven

I've just (finally!) made a stand for the model. Should have done it a lot earlier. And now, co-ordinating the positions of the the rudder, the tiller, the steersman's hands and the castle over the steersman. Everything has to line up together - getting the hands to sit just on top of the tiller, and allow the steersman some headroom and "wriggle room" to manoeuvre the tiller without clashing with the arched supports for the castle etc. Adding the "leather" brace for the upper half of the rudder (actually a bit of cardboard from a cereal packet). And the ladders for access to the castles - Adding the hearts for the shrouds. Though there is some indication that deadeyes may have been invented by this time (the Husoy wreck dated somewhere between 1160 and 1284 AD had fragments of what might have been deadeyes) I decided to go simpler and just use hearts. Landström in his book The Ship interprets the Winchelsea seal as showing four shrouds only - two on each side, but I believe (given the difficulty of accurately showing 3 dimensions in a side view) that it shows four on the near side, so that there are another four on the other side. Looking at other seals that show shrouds "each side" of the mast, they always seem to have at least three each side. Temporary wire jigs to fix the distance between upper and lower hearts. First two shrouds in place And more And I've given the buisiniers their buisines: That's all for now. Next I'll be adding the forestay and a pair of backstays (one of which will have a crewman climbing up it to unfurl the sail). Steven

Hi Greg and welcome to MSW from sunny Ballarat. I used to live in Mildura on the Mighty Murray, and there were several paddlers there (though only one was steam powered). I've got a Murray River paddlesteamer on my wish list for some future model (but I may never make it - there are so many other amazing ships to build I may never get around to it). But I hope you start a build log for your model - I'd dearly like to see it taking shape. All the Rivers Run. Ah, memories - John Waters and Sigrid Thornton, eh? Steven

Nice idea for the sails. Who'd have thought it? She's looking very good.

Unfortunately I haven't found any evidence of what was used, and I think the main culprit is simply the fact that masts, spars, sails and rigging are among the first things to go when a ship is wrecked, so not available to archaeology. As far as I know, none of the Viking burial ships have more than morsels of ropes and rigging. In Backer's "Pelican" build he's just been putting his robands on and he includes a photo of a page from a book that states that early robands were just a single rope wound round in a spiral But I don't know where the author got this information, so I don't know how reliable it is. Steven

Glad to hear you're doing better, mate. Steven

Hi, John. I"m glad Matthew brought this back. I'd been wondering how you were doing, but haven't been in touch. I hope you're doing better. Steven

Not as problem - I have a HUGE store of beeswax. Great chunks of it. Steven

That looks like a good idea. Makes the furled sail narrower at the ends. Yes, I'd thought of it but never got around to it. I'll probably get some for the next build. But a sail can be trimmed in depth till it looks ok furled - and this stuff (an old pillow case) was free! Steven

And the final crewman carved. He's one of the two raising the anchor. And painted: I did a bit more shading this time. I think it's turned out pretty well. I'm not brave enough to go the whole hog with the shading like Old Collingwood (https://modelshipworld.com/topic/24995-battle-of-waterloo-attack-on-la-haye-sainte-farm/page/53/ - (nothing like a bit of cross-promotion) - but unlike him I have to carve each figure from scratch before I paint it, so if I stuff up I've wasted all that extra work. Still, I'm getting braver. . . I'd already tied the sail to the yard with robands, but they were too scruffy and there was too much shiny glue on them. And I then I saw Backer's example (see link below) to show how it could be done. Plus a little research into contemporary pictures convinced me that the robands should have been twice as far apart anyway. So I took them all off again and re-did them, shamelessly copying Backer's technique https://modelshipworld.com/topic/14188-pelican-later-renamed-as-golden-hind-by-backer-scale-145-galleon-late-16th-century/page/22/#comments First, sewing on the bolt-rope. Not as good a job as Backer does, but a lot better than I'm usually able to do. You may have noticed that the bolt-rope is only at the top of the sail, and that in fact it's pretty scruffy below there. That's because it's going to be furled, so any further fine work would simply be wasted because it won't be seen. Adding the robands: Gluing the free ends down with CA so they appear to be hanging due to gravity, and trimming them to length. I furled the sail and put the gaskets on. Not happy - too bulky, even though I'd intentionally made the sail shorter to avoid that problem. Still, it's really not possible to obtain, let alone work with, fabric 1/75th the thickness of real sailcloth. So I removed the gaskets, cut some more off the bottom of the sail and did it again. Better. Steven

Thank you. Steven

WOW! I doubt I'd ever be able to do anything that precise. I'm working on the sail for the nef at the moment (fortunately, it's only one sail!) but my own efforts have been nowhere near as good as your own. Am I right in thinking you used a sewing machine for everything except the bolt ropes? Steven

Well, yes, that's what I wanted to know about. But did you fold the edge of the cloth and sew it down to prevent the edge fraying? Or did you the cut the edge with scissors and sew your rope directly to the edge you'd just cut? I hope this is clear - I know how difficult it can be trying to communicate from one language to another. Steven