Louie da fly

Thanks, Pat.

I'll try Bunnings (when I'm allowed to go there). 

Steven

Wonderful to see this restoration completed. You guys have done a wonderful job of returning "Harry" to his original glory, but preserving the patina of age. It's beautiful.

Any chance of more photos from other angles?

Steven

Wow! I mean, just wow!

The sides don't need to be rounded, mate - just the corners. 

What kind of plastic are you using for your 3d printing?

I'd need probably 24 x 2mm deadeyes - but is it possible to make them 1mm as well, or is that asking too much of the technology? If it's possible, I'm going to need lots - probably more than 70(!)

At the moment I'm having problems getting the glue to hold the strops to the deadeyes - I've tried CA and it just doesn't work. I've tried Tarzan's Grip, but it's too gooey. I'm going to try polystyrene cement when I can get some (i.e. after lockdown stops), and even PVA -even though it doesn't stick plastic it might hold the two sides of the strop together.

Thanks so much for what you've been doing, Henry. Very much appreciated.

Beautiful work, Lyle.

Steven

Beautiful work, Eric, from beginning to end.

Steven

Not so much perspective (though it's true that they didn't use it - the secret had been lost after Roman times and wasn't re-discovered till the Renaissance) but generally if something was important, you made it big.

Steven

11 minutes ago, Chuck Seiler said:

We know the Bremen cog had thru beams and that was only about 100 years later.

And according to Landström the 13th century Kalmar boat had them as well (p. 191).

Steven

3 hours ago, druxey said:

Why then, I wonder, were bonnets in use until so much later?

A very good question, Druxey. Somehow the technology for reef points got lost or forgotten. Like chain pumps, which the Romans had (and perhaps the Byzantines), but which got forgotten/lost until the 16th century. And it's interesting, because it seems to me that reefing is a far more efficient method of adjusting sail area than bonnets.

3 hours ago, Chuck Seiler said:

Landström shows those 'bumps' as well, on both SANDWICH and WINCHELSEA.  With SANDWICH you can see the deck.  The beams appear to be at deck level and the higher up beam do appear to support raised foredeck and poopdeck.

Yes, though these in themselves are theoretical reconstructions, I find Landström's stuff to be very believable - his vessels always look seaworthy, unlike many other reconstructions I've seen of various ships over the years (some in museums!).

Steven

Henry, if you're able to use a guitar pick as a model, would it also be possible to put the holes in?(the hardest part for me!)

Steven

Thank you very much, Christian and Chuck. All these reconstructions are very similar (as one would expect, given that they are based on the same originals). The differences are relatively minor, within the expected variation - no more than the differences between various of the originals. 

Zimmerman's reconstruction looks most like the ships on the seals of Hythe and Haverford West

                                        Hythe                                                                                      Haverford West

(though the Hythe seal doesn't show a bowsprit) - apart from the missing fighting top it also looks like the ship on the seal of Sandwich. Fircks reconstruction seems to be based on the Winchelsea ship (see the horizontal line behind the middle of the the steering oar, not shown on any other seal) but the superstructure is simplified. The trapezoidal shape of the castles seen from above in both reconstructions is pretty much how I intend to make mine. Zimmerman's model (though not the plans) shows oarports, though I can't see anything in any of the contemporary illustrations to support that.

There are "bumps" on the Winchelsea ship which are higher than the main through-beams. They also appear on the San Sebastian seal. Are these beams for a foredeck and poop?

Chuck, there's certainly quite a bit of difference in the level of the through-beams between various seals. The Winchelsea one seems to give a good height for the deck and the bulwark is a decent height above that. It's up to you how you interpret these beam heights. Certainly, without a time machine  no-one can tell you that you're wrong!

Druxey, surprising as it seems, reef points appear to have been invented  as early as the 13th century as shown in the seal of Hastings

Seal of Dover - 13th ventury

Mural in the Skamstrup church in Denmark - probably early 14th century.

And they were still in use in the early 15th century:

1405-09 Belles Heures de Jean de France St Nicholas saving the ship in the storm

And somewhere between then and the 16th century they seem to have vanished to be replaced by bonnets, only coming back into use in the 17th. Who knew?

Steven

That's only 230 km away as the crow flies. You're right - just down the road! 

Steven

That'd be great, mate. With your use of the word arvo, I assume you're in Oz?

Steven

1 hour ago, henrythestaffy said:

If you want the round deadeyes i could try and print some for you

Thanks, mate. Unfortunately I'm stuck with triangular deadeyes. That's what they had in the 16th century. But I appreciate the offer.

Steven

Nice one, Chuck. I look forward to following the build.

Steven

Doing a test piece to see if I can make deadeyes small enough for the foretopmast shrouds. I found card just wasn't structurally capable of dealing with this size, even when impregnated with glue, so I've moved to plastic - the lid of a container of "Nature's Cuppa" - a coffee replacement drink with no caffeine (don't get me wrong; I still drink coffee, but only now and then as a treat.)

Here's one of the deadeyes:

Or in metric:

and the two deadeyes with lanyards:

and if you speak metric . . .

and in my fingers (note Landström's The Ship as the background):

I think I've pretty much hit the limit for small deadeyes, at least with the technology available to me. Fairly labour-intensive, too 

Steven 

Just checking the plug against the midships template.

And marking out the line of the gunwale.

Steven

11 minutes ago, BANYAN said:

Any room left in the front row?

Soitinly!

Steven

1 hour ago, liteflight said:

Hull carving using buttocks:  this has been my preferred way of carving hulls for racing yachts.   To help with precise fairing of the hull I colour the wood glue with acrylic paint so that there is a good visual marker of your progress in fairing the hull or plug.

Yes, this is only the second time I've carved a hull this way, but it seems to work well.

8 hours ago, Chuck Seiler said:

8 if you include the helmsman and the 2 guys with the horns.

Damn! I miscounted!

1 hour ago, Cathead said:

Oh cool, this looks fascinating. I speak some German but probably not enough to be useful in translating maritime history.

I learnt German for two years in high school - all gone - too long ago. And I never got any good at it, anyway.

1 hour ago, Cathead said:

You've been a great influence in dragging my interests from obscure American riverboats to even more obscure ancient ships.

Why, thank you - I think . . .

1 hour ago, liteflight said:

I prefer the emu drumsticks you have elegantly offered.

Have you ever eaten emu? Tastes like petrol!

1 hour ago, Chuck Seiler said:

the pictures are in English.  They must be...I understand them. 😄

Steven

Thanks very much, Ian. Very interesting.

Steven

Does that mean I have to carve 7 crew members, including one half-way up the mast?

4 hours ago, AnobiumPunctatum said:

If I remember right, Zimmermann shows an other castle. In the weekend I will have a look if I can scan you two fotos from the model Zimmermann has built.

That would be very good, Christian. I'd like to see what Zimmerman's conclusions were, (and how they compare to my own).

In the meantime, here is some more progress on the plug:

I'm pretty happy that I've got both sides the same (at least as much the same as I'm able to do!) Next I need to put in the groove to take the keel and the stem and sternposts.

And here's Landström's take on the Winchelsea and Sandwich ships. He does do very seaworthy-looking reconstructions, unlike some I've seen. It looks like he has the idea of removeable panels of planking for access to the hold. And you can see his idea of the "bowsprit", which he is calling a beitass as in Viking ships, though with rather a different application.

Should I be adding a boat? I think that just because the Winchelsea seal doesn't show it doesn't mean the ship was without one . . . 

Steven

2 hours ago, Chuck Seiler said:

Will you be following the lines you posted in your post #1?  (See below)

Yes, as closely as possible. I chose the Winchelsea nef because the castles are so beautifully decorated compared with other examples. Note where the deck level is (as estimated from the ends of the through-beams shown on the city seal) and the little man standing on the deck. This would give the ship a fairly good amount of depth for the hold.

2 hours ago, Chuck Seiler said:

You mentioned you would not be including a bowsprit, but a bowsprit is in the plan. 

Correct. But the Winchelsea seal doesn't show one, though most seals do (as can be seen on 4 out of the 5 other seals in my first post). Now I have to decide whether the seal-maker just forgot to put it in, or whether the ship actually didn't have one.

I've just been through my pics and of the nefs with one or more castles shown, (I haven't included in the list pictures of nef-type ships that don't have castles).

The following have bowsprits:

The seals of Poole, San Sebastian, Sandwich, Dover, Yarmouth, Melcombe Regis, Faversham, and Haversham West. Two illustrations from the Bodley Bestiary, two illustrations from BL Egerton MS 3028, plus another manuscript illustration of a sea battle which has what might be interpreted as a bowsprit. [Nope: looking back again, it's a spear held by someone on the opposing ship, stabbing someone on this ship]. A small number of representations show a green leafy branch at the end of the bowsprit or on the top of the stem and/or sternpost. 

Without bowsprits:

The seals of Hythe, Hastings, New Shoreham, Dunwich, and of course Winchelsea, plus five illustrations from  BL Egerton MS 3028 (though in some the bowsprit may be obscured rather than missing).

It appears that the bowsprit may have been a development that was fairly new and not used by all vessels. Landström interprets them as light booms to take the bowlines, and his reconstruction shows one on each side of the stempost. I'm not sure I agree about there being two - there is no firm evidence to back this up, and it could simply be a single spar running alongside the stempost, rather like the offset bowsprit in early carracks. 

Anyway, after looking at the evidence above, I think rather than cobble several nefs together I'll stay faithful to the Winchelsea one. Which means no fighting top on the mast, either.

The crossbeams on Hedeby/Haithabu 3 could be used as a sort of deckbeam to support removable panels of decking, to allow access to belowdecks for cargo storage. That's perhaps the way I'll approach things. If not, I'll make them proper deckbeams, but with one removeable deck panel for the hatch.

Steven

5 minutes ago, BANYAN said:

perhaps put some clear 'contact' over the template which will stop the glue sticking to the paper?

Yep, I already did that part way through the process, but it brought in its own problems - the glue "blobs" against the contact (well, actually I used sticky tape, but the effect is the same).

Steven

12 hours ago, AnobiumPunctatum said:

Suldelev I and III were found in the beginning of the sixtieth and the drawings of these ships were available.

Yes, I found that out after I'd posted. And if I recall correctly,  Haithabu 3 (which is what I'm mainly working from) was found in the 1970's.

12 hours ago, AnobiumPunctatum said:

Also if you can not read the book, the drawings are very well researched.

Yes, but assuming the model above is built from those drawings, based on my own investigations I already disagree with two details - the triangular castles (where the shape of the castles can be determined in contemporary pictures they are never shown triangular - that shape didn't come into use until the rise of the carrack in the 15th century) -  and the through-beams above deck (I agree with Druxey about them being an obstacle course if they're done that way - I believe they are in fact deck-beams).

As I can't read the German to check what Zimmerman based his conclusions on, I find going back to the original evidence (contemporary representations, plus whatever archaeological evidence exists) works well for me.

Steven

19 minutes ago, Tony Hunt said:

Verisimilitude is such a good word, and it's not often one gets such a valid opportunity to use it.

One of my favourite words, ever since I saw a quote containing it in a book 

Steven