Louie da fly

Welcome to MSW, Sean! You might like to have a look at this thread - it might help you decide what to make next. https://modelshipworld.com/topic/18657-new-to-ship-modelling-but-what-do-you-build-first/ On the other hand, as you've already completed one model, you might want to tackle something a little more advanced (though I believe these are still very worthwhile models to make). I just had a look at Euromodel's Royal William - I can see why you wouldn't want to tackle it straight away. Beautiful ship, though! And when you're ready for it, it'll be something to be really proud of. Whatever you do make next, make sure you start a build log. The instructions are here: It's a very valuable way to get feedback on your model, advice, help and encouragement. And we get to see your build! And don't be afraid to ask questions - there's no such thing as a stupid question - and you'll probably find any problem you encounter has already been faced and solved by someone on the forum who will be most happy to help. Steven

Welcome to MSW, CJS. Do you have a model under way, or a particular one planned? Either way, you should start a build log - it's a great way to get help and advice, and encouragement as well, and as an added benefit, we get to see your model under way (one of the pleasures of this club). And ask questions - if there's anything you need to know, chances are someone here will know the answer. Best wishes, Steven

There's certainly plenty of evidence that shipwrights used naturally curved timbers - in fact there's evidence that in Basque territory in the 15th and 16th century they went as far as to grow forests of trees trained to the shapes they wanted.

Thanks for the likes and for the positive comments. They're much appreciated. I'm still planking - not finished yet, but I've reached the last guiding piece of cotton on one side and half a plank away on the other - so I'm on the homeward run. It can be a bit shambolic at times. I had to re-make this plank three times - the first three snapped when I tried to bend them to shape - I finally decided it was the sheet of wood that was at fault and made the fourth plank from a different bit, which worked. And this is the third attempt at this plank - the first two turned out just that bit too short (like about 1/32" - just too much for me to decide "that's close enough - I can use a bit of filler there"). Third time lucky. I've just glued the forward end and when the glue is dry I bend it fully to shape and glue the rest. I usually just hold it in place with my fingers till the glue is dry. More in due course . . .

Sounds really interesting. I've never used this but I'd be interested to know how it behaves.

Beautiful work. I love the fact that you're taking the extra trouble to explore the options with something as simple as a set of blocks. It adds to the authenticity of the model, and also allows you to test the practicality of the various different layouts.

Yet another brilliant addition to a superb build. So impressive.

Congratulations on an impressive (and obviously rewarding) build. I know how you feel about finishing - I had the same with my own dromon. The igures are a nice addition - I like the fact that your grandsons will have that connection with it.

Brian, in itself this model is not worth a whole lot of money, but its true value lies in its connection with your father and the memories you have of him.

Yep, the idea of the curved deck is to let water run off to the sides and out the scuppers. But it also adds strength to the deck beams to have them slightly curved (any weight on the deck puts the beams in compression - rather like the bed of a truck, which bows upwards slightly lengthways, so when the load is added they end up straight - if the bed started out straight it'd bow downwards when the load was added). I'm surprised I've missed this build so far. I like what you're doing with it, and your "kit-bash" is going to lift it above the common run of plastic models. Good to see you've got Backer following your build. He's our resident expert on galleons - what he doesn't know about them isn't worth knowing. Steven

It's been a while since I visited this log. You've made very good progress. And you've dealt with the inevitable mistakes and other issues as you've gone along in a very workmanlike way - and not let them stop you. Every model is a learning process, and I think you're learning a lot of lessons in this build - often the hard way! I'm not sure whether you were uncertain of the likelihood of single-masted vessels of this type when you wrote or whether it just reads that way. But they are certainly represented in contemporary pictures - just as often as multi-masted ones - see https://www.pinterest.com.au/lowe1847/proto-carracks/ And for more contemporary representations of true carracks of this period (i.e. with more than one mast), see https://www.pinterest.com.au/lowe1847/carracks/ Looking good. Steven

Your build has always looked good, but your most recent efforts have raised it a further notch in quality. A very enjoyable build to watch. Steven

Welcome to MSW, Jose! I'd highly recommend you start a build log for your next model. It's a very good way to get help, advice and encouragement from the members here. A lot of the time a problem you're faced with in your build has already been encountered and solved by somebody else. And ask lots of questions. There's no such thing as a stupid question. Here are the instructions on how to start your log: You'll probably make mistakes as you go - we all do. Don't worry about them too much - they're an opportunity to learn, and you won't repeat that mistake in your next builds (if you're anything like me you'll find new and more interesting mistakes to make!). Every new build is likely to be better than the last. Keep your old models - they're a great way of measuring your increased skills and mastery. And have fun with it! That's why we're all doing this.

It happens in French as well. In fact French audiences don't yell "encore!", they yell "Bis!". And you occasionally get a couple of houses sharing the same street number (perhaps for historical reasons to do with subdividing the property, or a stuff-up when the street numbers were originally allocated) - where we might have No. 29 and No, 29A Veebelfetzer Street, they'd have 29 and 29 Bis Rue Veeblefetzer.

Thanks, Druxey. To be honest, I'm pretty amazed myself that I was able to do that back then. I really don't remember how I did it, but it certainly seems to have worked. Here's a photo which gives some idea of the remnants of the railing before I pulled it all to bits for the rebuild:

Yes, it would probably have to be coated in something that looked like pitch. Most ships in contemporary illustrations seem to be black (= pitch). Then there's always the "wear and tear" to be expected on a working ship. I can't remember his name, but one of our members in Turkey has done a couple of Turkish working boats with all the mess and neglect you'd expect in such a vessel - and they looked fantastic. Still perhaps it's better to have it pristine. It's be a real shame to mess it up with a bad weathering job after doing such a wonderful job of building it.

No, but somehow they just seem to keep turning up . . .

Well, I've done some more planking. It's a long process, and I sorry to say I find it rather tedious. Slowly getting there . . . I've done a few dropped planks here and there to follow the shape of the hull (e.g. there's one from frame 6 aft in the second row down.) I was getting more and more disillusioned with the look of the planking, and worrying that it wouldn't look any good when it was all finished. So I sanded the planks on the starboard side (except for the top two or three runs) to see how it would look. Turned out much better than I'd expected. So my confidence is restored. When I get bored with planking I've started making things that will come into use later. At various places the ship is to have shields with the cross of St George (England's patron Saint) lining the sides - the waist and the fighting tops. It used to have the full set, but many have got lost over the years. So I've had to make replacements. I rounded the edges of these lengths of wood a little, to suggest the curve in the shape of the shields. After the dromon, you'd think I wouldn't get involved in making shields ever again - must be a glutton for punishment. Also, the maintop and foretop are to have railings around them. Again, the ship used to have them but they've been broken over the years. So I've been making a replacement railing for the maintop (I won't do the foretop till later - as I can't remove it from the ship, adding a fragile railing would be a bad idea at this stage). I'm amazed that I was able to make something that fine and fiddly when I was 17 - a case of beginner's luck, I think - or perhaps ignorance is bliss; I didn't realise it was supposed to be difficult so I just barged ahead and did it. But how I got all those uprights to sit vertically when they were just butt-jointed to the edge of the top I really don't know. Perhaps the fact that they were sitting in a thick bath of PVC glue had something to do with it - I had to lift off all this thick layer of glue before I put in the new ones. Still butt-jointed, and getting them all to sit vertical and then attach the circular top rail to them and have it sit properly was a bit of a trial and error job. Here's the railing before bending, plus another piece to be cut into lengths for the balusters And the maintop with the balusters (roughly) in place. You can see that when I first built the model I got up to the point of adding the ratlines to one set of main shrouds but not the other. Same with the foremast. I even made a couple of deadeyes and fixed them to the shrouds - not the correct way at all, but I intend to do it the same way now as I did then. And the railing. It needed a fair bit of tweaking to get it to sit correctly, and there's still a bit of room for improvement, but I'm confident that in the end it will look ok. And here it is with the shields in place. So, more to come in due course. It would be nice to think I'd have all the planking finished by the time I'm ready to post again, but we'll see how that goes. Steven

Beautifully worked out and convincing, Dick. A real working vessel. Are you going to weather it when it's complete?

Nice work. You're taking it slow and carefully, and it shows in the result.

Exquisite!

You and me both. Though I suppose the Great Harry is really one of those. But at 1:200 scale it's pretty small!

If you compare it with the illustrations, it seems to me the ships in the pictures were beamier than the model. Granted that the transom on the model is taller than on the Catalan line drawing above, the picture still seems to have a wider stern than both the museum model and that of the Santa Maria, and I think this would follow right through for the full length of the hull. Regarding the details, there are of course any number of individual variations between different carracks, and it's very much a judgment call as to which you follow. I'd be following Iberian ships as exemplars as much as possible. However, even Catalonia, despite now being part of Spain, was (a) a separate kingdom at the time and (b) is on the northern Mediterranean coast, not the southern and Atlantic coast. And the Zumaia pictures though from the Atlantic side, are from the very north of Spain, almost into France, whereas the fleet left from Seville, in the far south.. I've just been re-looking at the contemporary pictorial record and a few things have occurred to me. First, though the Zumaia pictures celebrate a victory of 1475, that is not necessarily the date the picture was done - it might have been quite a bit later. Second, there is evidence that bigger ships than I'd been thinking of were in use earlier than I'd been aware of: This is from the view of Lisbon of 1500-1510 that @rybakov put up a link for on the previous page of this thread And this is variously dated 1475 (unlikely), or more probably between 1510 and 1514. It is from the Portuguese painting "S. Joao em Patmos" (St John in Patmos) by the master of Lourinha. If these dates are correct, then some of my statements about the Victoria may be wrong and she may have been bigger and more advanced than I'd thought. Which means the reconstructed ship in Patagonia could be very close to how she actually was (except for the flat stern). Unfortunately, these realisations are probably making your job more difficult rather than less (sorry!) The more I learn the more I realise I don't know . . . However, against this we need to set the fact that when they set out from Seville the Victoria's crew was numbered at 45 with a burthen of 85 tons and the flagship, the Trinidad, had a crew of 62 and a burthen of 110 tons (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellan's_circumnavigation ). This would give a fair idea of the size of the ship and indirectly of the complexity of its form. In comparison, the figures for the Duyfken (which is tiny! So tiny they launched her by hoisting her into the water in a yacht cradle - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIWE4ot672E - and check out the fishing boats nearby!) are: So Victoria was by no means a big ship. If my maths is correct, the comparative figures would be for a ship of 85 tons - Length: 62 feet, Beam: 18.66 feet Draft: 7.6 feet So probably not one of the "super-carracks" shown above. Back to the Catalan line drawing above after all, I think.

That's fascinating stuff, Binho. One thing that the link makes clear is that many, if not most weathervanes originally had short metal "streamers" coming out from them - there are still holes showing where they used to be. The "miniatures" show them as they must have been - The other thing is that the ones that had their decoration just engraved rather than "pierced" through the metal plate probably had different decorative motifs on the different sides.

Jonathan, that Museo Naval model has a lot going for it, and a lot of things I like, such as the clinker planking at the sides of the aftercastle. However there are a few points I don't agree with - not major, but I think they ought to be noted. As in this Catalonian picture from 1468 the planking at the break of the forecastle should follow the curve of the forecastle rather than be a flat plane (No. 1) and the hull planking immediately below the forecastle should also be curved (No. 2). And it might just be me, but it seems to me that the model is rather too narrow. Also most of the contemporary illustrations (where you can see it) show the forecastle coming to a sharp point rather than cut off as in the model. And this is the case with the Mataro ship model above, as well. This is Catalan, from 1494. In my opinion this picture is probably about as close as you can get to what Victoria really looked like, As I understand it you want plans already drawn rather than having to draft them for yourself (which is totally understandable - a whole extra level of difficulty there!) and they just don't exist to the level of accuracy you need if you want to do a nao as close to the historical Victoria as humanly possible. You might still be best getting a round-sterned Santa Maria kit (the Dusek kit has a round stern but no forecastle, but the hull seems a little narrow) and bashing it to follow the pictorial evidence. I hope this helps. Steven