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Louie da fly

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  1. Louie da fly
    Maybe try "tops" or "fighting tops". What is it you want to know, and from what period? Steven
  2. Louie da fly
    Trouble is most of them seem to be wearing armour (surprise, surprise!). Good for wargaming, not so good for ship modelling. Steven
  3. Louie da fly
    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.
  4. Louie da fly
    Hey! Picasso did it first!
  5. Louie da fly
  6. Louie da fly
    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
  7. Louie da fly
    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
  8. Louie da fly
    That's beautiful work, Rodolfo, and a vast improvement on the Amati original. Steven
  9. Louie da fly
    My feelings exactly. Steven
  10. Louie da fly
    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
  11. Louie da fly
    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
  12. Louie da fly
    Nice idea for the sails. Who'd have thought it? She's looking very good.
  13. Louie da fly
    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
  14. Louie da fly
    Glad to hear you're doing better, mate. Steven
  15. Louie da fly
    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
  16. Louie da fly
    Not as problem - I have a HUGE store of beeswax. Great chunks of it. Steven
  17. Louie da fly
    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
  18. Louie da fly
    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
  19. Louie da fly
    Thank you. Steven
  20. Louie da fly
    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
  21. Louie da fly
    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
  22. Louie da fly
    By the way, how did you do the seams at the edges? They appear to be sewn down, but that's incredibly fine stitching. Steven
  23. Louie da fly
    That's a beautiful exposition of tying the robands. Steven
  24. Louie da fly
    That looks really good, mate! A nice result. Steven
  25. Louie da fly
    Thanks very much. I'm just trying to work out how to do my own rudder for the nef and yours seems to be very good. Steven

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