Louie da fly

Nicely organised shipyard, and that model is really starting to look good. Regarding mistakes; we all make them, but fortunately wood is a very forgiving medium, so a lot of the time you can repair your mistakes. And if not, a lot of the time the mistakes are only visible to you, not to anybody else. And every time you make a mistake you learn something for next time. Keep up the good work, mate. Steven

It's looking very good, Lapinas. Steven

I've put together a Pinterest page with all the contemporary pictures of caravels I've collected over the years - it's at https://www.pinterest.com.au/lowe1847/caravels/ - I hope that helps. Steven

I'm loving the research on this one. It's great to have this information available. In particular I like the information on the conversion of the guns by adding reinforcing rings. A clever and elegant (and economical) solution to updating old guns to serve new needs. Overall, fascinating stuff! Steven

I don't know if you already have this, but there's some wonderful contemporary photos of Charles Martel here - https://military.wikireading.ru/35533 Steven

Thanks, Hal. Steven

Thanks, Mark. Perhaps more about my pickiness. Maybe I should have been wearing mediaeval clothes (I do have them, you know!) Steven

Aligning the side-rudder. I had to get the locations of the horizontal rudder support, the pivot, the tiller, the aftercastle and the steersman (and his hands) all to line up with each other. Took quite a bit of experimentation. All temporarily fitted. I used a couple of spots of glue to keep the castle and the steersman in place while I worked everything out, and later used isopropanol to free them. For the final set-up I'll have to move the steersman over a bit toward the side of the ship so his hands line up with the tiller exactly right. Here are the pumps. I'll probably put them between the windlass and the aftercastle. Starting on the sail. I've made it shorter than the real thing, as it'll be furled and I don't want it too bulky. I may yet need to cut more off it to get the bulk right - we'll see. Adding the boltropes (I glued them on rather than sewing, which would be too large to get to look right at 1:75 scale). Beginning on the robands. Two more figures under way. One replacing the removeable planks over the hold as the ship gets under way, the other working the windlass to raise the sail. (The guy below will be climbing a halyard to unfurl the sail, but I'll get onto him later) More on the guy replacing the planks: At which point I asked my beloved wife to take some photos of me doing it so I could get the positions and angles right. As it turned out, most of it was pretty close to right. But I wanted to get such things as the angles and positions of the knees and feet correct. The only thing is that he's not really leaning over far enough to be sliding a plank across the deck. I'll have to have him holding one end of it up in the air a bit. And the guy on the windlass. Unfortunately, this figure is also not leaning over far enough. You can see he won't be able to reach the windlass bar. I thought of cutting him across the middle and changing the angle of his torso so he could reach the bar, but I think instead I'll re-do his arms so he's reaching out further. More to come in a while. Steven

TWEEZERS - a tool to hold a tiny intricate item it's taken you hours to make, and flick it into another dimension, from which it returns just as you finish making its replacement. SANDPAPER - A substance for abrading holes in planking. SCROLL SAW - a device for sawing the wrong side of a line. COPING SAW - a tool for cutting a wavy track both sides of a line.

scalpel - A tool designed to exert uneven torque as you're carving something delicate so the blade will snap in half at the most inopportune moment and slice off large portions of finger/thumb. craft knife - a tool designed to unwind just as you're carving something delicate so the blade will fall out and slice off large portions of finger/thumb. Angle grinder - A tool designed to cut through its own power cord. Sharpening stone - a tool designed to make a blunt tool into a very blunt tool. Lathe - a tool designed to fling chisels across the workshop. Steven

No way. Put it in the water and it would sink . . . Steven

More power to you, Antony. I wouldn't have the patience. You're doing a brilliant job. And I thought I was an Old Man of re-enactment having started in 1987! Steven

Aah, memories. What year(s) was that? Steven

Yep. They seem to have been very brave (or foolhardy). But then it's probably the old story, till footropes were invented, nobody felt the lack . . . You may be right about dropping the yard to attach the sail to it, but it seems pretty obvious that to unfurl it once it was up, they climbed up and sat astride the yard. I don't know if they would have done the same to furl the sail - somehow it doesn't seem all that likely. Maybe they dropped the yard, sail and all, to furl it. When footropes came in - certainly not before 1545 - the second painting above is from that date. It would need a search through contemporary pictures of galleons to see if they had them - just did that, and no clear evidence of footropes in use, but this Dutch pic from as late as 1629 (It's not very clear, I'm afraid) still seems to show someone straddling the mainyard. [Edit] According the R.C. Anderson in The Rigging of Ships in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast, "It is impossible to say when they did first appear, but I believe it to be a fact that the first evidence for them is in Bond's The Boatswain's Art" of 1642. Certainly they are not mentioned in the English books of 1620-40, such as Manwayring and Boteler." [/Edit] Steven

Yes, there's so little reliable information from this period. I certainly wasn't trying to criticise your choices - I've been on my own voyage of discovery regarding windlasses. I've got zu Mondfeld's book - unfortunately he doesn't say what he bases this statement on, but assuming he's got the right information, there's every reason to make a polygonal windlass for a ship of this period. And these hulcs were in use for quite a long time, as well. apparently - I'm sure you've already seen this - https://nautarch.tamu.edu/class/316/hulk/ which states that the Hulkesmouth/New Shoreham seal, which sparked off the whole "hulcs had upside-down clinker" theory, dates to about 1295. Steven

I've been fortunate enough to have received 3D printed anchors and deadeyes (TINY!!!) from HenrytheStaffy. Brilliant quality. Steven

Nah. It was all scripted. Foregone conclusion. Being an Anglo-Saxon freak, I was of course on the losing side (sigh). Steven

Ah, you never see these things these days - just another piece of lost technology due to the loss of traditional rivetting. This is what I made with mine . . . (the helmet) - Battle of Hastings re-enactment 2006.

Nice work, Mark. You're probably the only person who's aware of the problem with the location of the channels (well, yes, obviously, us now that you've told us). The planking's looking very good - both the carvel and the clinker. Nice and crisp. This is going to be a very attractive model. By the way, are you planning to make your forecastle the shape Caldercraft model shows? There's a lot of information to suggest the forecastle would have been different - as shown in the pics I put up in my post of August 23. I suggested this, with my reasoning at https://modelshipworld.com/topic/4031-mary-rose-forecastle-more-info-on-its-shape/?tab=comments#comment-114264 Beautiful work. Steven

Nicely done. Furled sails are always a problem - it's impossible to duplicate to scale the thinness of real sails, so a furled sail always looks too thick and stiff. Your solution is a good one. I'm just about to do a furled sail and I'll be using the same technique. Steven

That "pusher" is known in the trade as a rivet snap, used in rivetting metal sheets together. I've got one I inherited from my father which has several functions - it "pulls" the two sheets of metal together and is also used to dome the head of the rivet. Much too big and hefty for your purposes, but the technique is the same. Steven

Here's some idea of what she's going to look like with mast and castles in place. The forecastle was complete except for the arches below the platform, so here they are. I curved wooden strip with the soldering iron, as before, but the curve is quite mild. And here is the forecastle with the arches in place. Next - the ladders for access to the castles. First I tried them with square section strips of wood for both side-beams and rungs: But I discovered that not only were the ladders too narrow, but the rungs were too heavy and too close together. I went out the back of the house and measured all the ladders. Distance between rungs seems always to be approximately a foot (300 mm), and the ladders themselves wider than I'd made them. So then I thought of making them as though they were from rough branches. Here are birch twigs from the back garden. Still too thick and I couldn't strip off the bark without cutting into the wood. So back across the road to get some more weeds. Trimmed down: The original idea, since the stems of these weeds taper quite a bit, was to use the thicker ends for the side-beams and the thinner bits for rungs. But I decided I didn't like the "rough" motif as well as I originally had, so I kept the side-beams I already had. However the thin bits made excellent rungs and now with both the side beams and the rungs further apart it all looks to scale. Next, experimenting with the location of the side-rudder. I discovered I'd made the helmsman's arms wrong - his left arm was held too high up. So I cut it off and glued it another piece of wood in its place. And the skirt of his tunic was too short, so I extended it with some "plastic wood" using PVA glue and sawdust. New arm and tunic extension carved to shape and the whole thing painted. Here he is with the other crew members I've done so far ; Castle, helmsman and rudder dry fitted, using a pin to temporarily locate the rudder. There's still a horizontal beam that has to be attached to the hull as the rudder support, and I have to figure out its shape exactly where and how to attach it.. Then I started painting the castles. As the main colour in contemporary pictures seems to be white, I started out with that, using watered down acrylic. And then some red for the decorative bits. Unfortunately, no matter how many layers I added, it still looked washed-out, and the red was too bright for the pigments available at the time. So I'm moving over to the old standby - Humbrol enamel. And I changed the colour layout. I'd always intended to add green around the quatrefoils, but I found that with a white substructure (legs) it all looked too pale. So I changed it to red below the castles themselves. Looks a lot better. And now I'm starting to think about carving the rest of the crew. I took photocopies of the Winchelsea town seal, scaled down so the people on board were at approximately 1:75, and cut and pasted onto a couple of pieces of pear wood. I had to draw in where the picture didn't show them. Got my work cut out for me (sorry!) Steven

Up to you, mate - it's your model. The only near-contemporary windlasses I know of are from the Bremen cog (c. 1380), the Ijssel cog (mid 15th century) and the Kalmar ship (Swedish, mid 13th century). All have simple cylindrical windlasses. I'm not including any of the modern reconstructions, as I don't know what they based their windlasses on. I have a picture of the supposed windlass from the Mary Rose, (which is what I used on the dromon) but I'm not sure whether that's based on archaeology or speculation. Steven

Nice work, Dick. Sensible idea fixing the forestay to the "keel plank". Just a question - is there any particular reason for the facets on the windlass? The only ones from this period that I know of all seem to have been simple cylinders. Steven

Thanks, mate. Much appreciated. And thanks everybody for the likes. Steven