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Louie da fly

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Everything posted by Louie da fly

  1. Louie da fly
    Antony, I really regret never having taken photos of Great Harry (Henry Grace a Dieu) when she was in her original glory. I had all the masts in, all the sails, all the planking, the decks, almost everything except the rigging. It would be nice to compare that with the way she is now. Your photos are pretty amazing. It'll be interesting to see how the new one turns out and following on as she progresses. There is certainly some amazing work on MSW, but it caters for everybody from the rawest newbie to the demi-gods of ship modelling, who write text books on the subject. You'll find the people here very supportive and helpful no matter what level a person is. In my view this is the best forum on the Net. Steven
  2. Louie da fly
    Welcome to MSW, John. That Armed Virginia Sloop is a beautiful model. You've done a lovely job. You're not alone in making mistakes - we all do it - but as you say they are very often a learning opportunity, and fortunately wood is a very forgiving medium. Good to hear you'll be making a build Log for your Rattlesnake, but in the meantime if you want to start one your Fair American - particularly if you have photos to enable you to do a retrospective log - I'm sure we'd all be very interested. Good to have you aboard, mate! Steven
  3. Louie da fly
    Hi Antony, and welcome to MSW! So sorry to hear about your model being destroyed - it was a beautiful vessel. I'm in a similar situation, in a way. Back when I was 17 I built a scratch model of the Henry Grace a Dieu (Henry VIII's biggest ship) , then pulled it apart because I wasn't happy with the shape of the stern. Then life got in the way - I moved to the other side of Australia, so the model got neglected and steadily deteriorated in its cardboard box. Quite a few of its original pieces - the figurehead, the longboat, the shields along the sides - got lost along the way. About 50 years later I started restoring her and I'm still in the process of doing so. At least in my case it was only neglect, not destruction, so I was able to work on the same model to get it back up to scratch. Looking forward to seeing your new model taking shape. Mediaeval ships are a particular favourite of mine. Good to have you aboard. Steven
  4. Louie da fly
    Bienvenue! I am not certain whether you want modelling or maritime terminology. There are several online translation resources for maritime terms. I particularly like this one - https://archive.org/details/dictionnairedes00tiregoog/page/n12/mode/2up - it contains very many terms useful in modelling. However, it translates only in one direction - from French to English. But I hope this is helpful. Are you planning to realise a ship model yourself? Steven
  5. Louie da fly
    Ancient vessels were built "shell-first" - either without frames or with frames added after the planking was completed, and the planks were held together with tenons in mortises within adjoining planks, pinned in place with dowels. (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_joints ) According to Prof John Pryor's book Age of the Dromon the waterline ram was designed to break the tenons so the planks separated, letting the water in. Later (mediaeval) ships were built frame-first, and it is believed this structure was too strong for the waterline ram to have the same effect, and the "ram" moved upward to become a "spur", which it is proposed was intended either to capsize the enemy vessel or break its oars (or perhaps both). I suppose the test model(s) will be constructed the first way. Steven
  6. Louie da fly
    Thanks, Mark. Now I need to sit down and try to absorb the pictures and get my head around them. Steven
  7. Louie da fly
    Firstly, thanks everybody for the likes and comments. Druxey, your comments are very welcome, not a pain at all. They do make me think about things that would otherwise not occur to me. Unfortunately, I couldn't open your attachments - they seem to be in Photoshop, which I don't have. I'm not really sure what I'm doing and whether it fits with either of the methods you advise, but somehow it now seems to be working (!) - see the two most recent planks at the bow. And I have to say, I'm really liking the look of this clinker planking. Steven
  8. Louie da fly
    I found this on the Roman Army Talk forum on Facebook: "Latest news from the maritime archaeologists working at the site of the Egadi Islands (Aegates Insulae) naval battle fought in 241 BC between the fleets of Carthage and Rome during the First Punic War. Two new naval rams were recovered from the seabed at the Egadi Islands by the Soprintendenza del Mare, RPM Nautical Foundation, and The Society for Documentation of Submerged Sites divers. The total number of rams at the site is now 25. The raising of these rams highlights a successful, collaborative field season. Egadi rams 21 and 22 will be conserved and housed at the Ex Stabilimento Florio delle Tonnare di Favignana e Formica." A post from another contributor - "Polybius (1.20.1-16) states that the Roman navy in the First Punic Wars consisted of quinqueremes abd triremes. The Carthaginian navy, which was far more experienced consisted of quadriremes and quinqueremes (though possibly with some triremes)." These rams were hollow, as can be seen from the following two photos: This would make sense - apart from the amount of bronze you'd need and the effect of all that weight up at the bow, otherwise how could you fix the ram to the ship so it wouldn't come off? For more information on this archaeological "dig" see https://rpmnautical.org/projects/ancient-naval-warfare/?fbclid=IwAR3Em5kxk-2N9LcSGrCN7_--ZCOVRgGKtDbmZmft7llhRYi79AkTOx3hWN8 Steven
  9. Louie da fly
    This is such beautiful work, Rodolfo. Steven
  10. Louie da fly
    I suddenly realised the planks at the bow didn't line up properly from port to starboard. The planks for the stern were ok (apart from a bit of a problem with them merging with the sternpost - which I'll get to later). It's the stempost (i.e. at the bow) where the planks were wrongly placed - the starboard and port planks didn't line up with each other (my bad - I should have checked before I got to gluing): This what the planks at the bow look like: And here is the planking at the stern - you can see the difference. I took the outer two planks off and glued the first one back in a better place. But this brought up another problem - never having done clinker planking before, I had considerable difficulty getting the ends of the planks to sit properly at the stem and sternpost. In fact with these planks I was removing I'd ended up bodging the ends - to the degree that I decided - "They're already stuffed - I might as well just make new ones". So I did. All three. I'm getting better at doing the plank ends - the last couple look ok - but you can see the difficulty with the earlier ones. I'll have to go back to them and fix them later - perhaps by gluing slivers of wood in the gaps and trimming them down to shape. And here are the bow planks lined up properly. Having sorted out this hiccup I've done some more planking, but I haven't taken any photos yet. So you'll just have to wait. Steven
  11. Louie da fly
    I agree - it does look like it needs something to make it stand out. I think this vessel dates from before they had cast-bronze rams, but maybe a different colour or something would make the ram stand out more? Good idea - if you do a google image search for Ancient Greek shields you'll be able to find a lot of examples. Not sure how reliable they are, but steer away from the Greek Letter "Lambda" - that was specific to Sparta only. As far as spears go, the pic below should give some idea of dimensions and length. This ship is from considerably before the enormous 4.0 to 6.5 metre Macedonian sarissas. Steven
  12. Louie da fly
    Welcome to MSW, Mart. Make sure you start a build log. Good to have you aboard. Steven
  13. Louie da fly
    Oh, I quite agree. In fact a lack of caulking would make a pitch coating much more necessary. The representations of ancient Greek vessels are usually on red/black pottery, so colours are probably not reliable, but Byzantine ships (which are much more up my alley) are almost always shown black, as are many Western European mediaeval ships. Steven
  14. Louie da fly
    Hi Chuck and welcome to MSW! Do you have a ship in mind yet? Steven
  15. Louie da fly
    If you google "glass spider" you get pictures of David Bowie. From Wikipedia - "The Glass Spider Tour was a 1987 worldwide concert tour by English musician David Bowie, launched in support of his album Never Let Me Down. " Steven
  16. Louie da fly
    The ancient Greek method of construction used a large number of tenons set into mortices in the edges of the planks to join them together (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_joints ) I doubt that that would have left enough room for caulking. The Byzantines certainly caulked their ships - there are several references to it in contemporary records (there was even an Emperor named Michael the Caulker, because that's what he'd been before the Empress adopted him) but that was many centuries later and ship construction techniques had changed enormously. Steven
  17. Louie da fly
    Looks amazing as usual, Pat. I can't see the error, but then I don't know what a spider band is. Is it like a glass spider? Sorry, being silly . . . Steven
  18. Louie da fly
    Honestly, I don't think this would be necessary. Though we have to make allowances for artistic licence, contemporary illustrations do seem to show the planking rising at the bow. The reconstruction drawing of the Mary Rose shows a less extreme rise, but it has to be kept in mind that this part of the hull was never recovered, so the reconstruction may be based on later practice. And of course this also applies to the RMG model. Steven
  19. Louie da fly
    Just spare a thought for people building triremes - 150 oars! Steven
  20. Louie da fly
    You're making good progress on this. It's looking great. Steven
  21. Louie da fly
    Planking in progress. Note the rubber spaces as recommended by Liteflite (though sometimes I use wooden spacers when stiffness is needed). And a sliver to close up a gap. And trimmed off. More planking: I've been thinking about Druxey's question regarding the layout of the planking butts - it makes sense that the further they are apart the stronger the structure. But only one of my books (Mondfeld) has a diagram showing how they are supposed to be done. And even then I misinterpreted the layout. So now that I've got this far, I've decided to change the layout in future strakes so the spacing is more equal (see the black marks) More to come. Steven
  22. Louie da fly
    Which one is which🤣 Hard to tell, sometimes . . . Oh, wait! Simple, the sharp end is the bow and the blunt end is the stern . . . Sorry Razorbill. I'll get back in my box now. Steven
  23. Louie da fly
    Me too. Steven
  24. Louie da fly
    Not that I know of. Contemporary representations just show a 2-shift, with the butts of one strake central to the length of the next, but I think that's likely to be artistic licence and that in the real world there would have been at least a 3-shift. I was trying to get a layout that allowed for the planks to be as near as possible to 20-24 feet, which Mondfeld recommends, while avoiding having the end planks too short, as they seemed to be with any other layout. BTW, to my shame, I got one of the plank shifts wrong, so the two sides other aren't mirror images of each other at one point. But I'm committed now, (planks are already glued in place) so I'll just have to put it down to experience. Steven
  25. Louie da fly
    Yep. Such a waste Steven

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