Louie da fly

Welcome to MSW! With that number of builds under your belt, you must have amassed quite an impressive skill base. Make sure you start a build log so we can all enjoy following your progress (and offer help and encouragement as needed).

That's looking very good, Greg. Welcome to MSW. I'm another one looking forward to seeing the build log

Nice looking model, and the idea of giving it new yards and fabric sails is a good one - I think it would add significantly to the presentation. This model is almost certainly based on the ship which appears repeatedly (in different sizes) in the painting below - and that is generally thought to be the Santa Caterina do Monto Sinai (launched in 1520, and da Gama's flagship on his third voyage to India). If that's the case the kit seems to have taken a few liberties with the colour scheme - more appropriate to the end of the 16th century than the beginning (but much more colourful!). I've always loved this ship and it's been a long term goal of mine to build a model of it. I didn't know there was a plastic kit available and though I no longer build in plastic, I'm looking forward to following your build. Carracks are a particular interest of mine and I've amassed a whole lot of information on them. If there's any way I can help with references, contemporary pictures etc I'd be glad to do so. I've put together a Pinterest page on larger, later carracks (which I like to call Great Carracks) at https://www.pinterest.com.au/lowe1847/great-carracksnaos/ which you might find of use.

The wooldings for the after mast wedges in progress, and complete: Foremast - as mentioned above the halyard knight needed to be moved aft so the mast didn't foul its operation. Here is the deck with the knight removed, then with the slot in the deck extended aft and a new length of plank inserted to close up the gap, all the way to the mast. Then I trimmed the gap so the tenon of the knight fitted exactly into it and relocated the knight to allow enough room for its lanyards to run freely. I started making the lateen sails. As they are going to be furled I made them narrower than full size so they wouldn't be too bulky when furled. Unfortunately the first method I used didn't work - I cut the fabric out, then taped it down and glued the bolt rope to the top of the sail (the bit that goes against the yard). But as the fabric was cut on the bias - i.e. at 45 degrees to the weave - the sails mutated. You can see below that the straight line I'd cut along the horizontal had stretched downward, pulling the ends inward - I trimmed the cloth against the bolt rope, but when I measured the sails against the yards they were quite a bit too short. So I started again. This time I didn't cut the fabric until the bolt ropes were glued in place, which kept it from deforming. And when the glue was dry I cut the sails out. Now, because I'd allowed extra fabric in case they shrank the sails were too long, so I cut them to length and everything worked very nicely. Now I'm in the process of fixing the first sail to the yard with robands - a lot more fiddly and difficult than I'd expected - and very frustrating; I have great difficulty tying a reef knot in cotton thread - fingers too clumsy, tweezers keep on slipping at the last moment - I've finally taken to tying a thumb knot and adding a dab of glue, allowing it to dry and coming back to finish the knot. Very time consuming. I took the third photo from a funny angle, so it looks like the sail starts a fair way down the yard. In fact it comes all the way up to the blocks - the end part is just flipped on its edge so you can't see it. While I'm waiting for the glue to dry I've been getting the halyards themselves sorted out and attached to the yards: That's all for now. More to follow as I get more done.

Another question. The robands were tied up with reef (square) knots - what was done with the free ends? The diagrams above show the roband barely long enough to make the reef knot, but that seems impractical to me. Were they really that short, or were the free ends longer, and if so were they just left to flap around as in the picture below? Note that my question specifically relates to lateeners, but I'd assume the technique would be the same whatever the rig.

A very nice result. Hard to believe it's your first model. Plank length varied, presumably according to the length of timber availablel, but for example the Sutton Hoo ship'splanks were 18 feet long (see . By the way, I think the shifts in your planks are likely to become less obvious when you put the deck furniture on.

Hi Phil. Could you give a side view? That would help visualise better the way the castles fit with the hull. I think there should probably be a bit more inward taper on the castles, and maybe the forecastle (that's still its name, even today!) should be narrower to give it more balance, both visually and mechanically. Not sure about the sterncastle - there's a contemporary Danish picture of a ship with a similarly long castle at the stern, but it's lower than yours and fits into the hull better. It also goes all the way to the mast. By the way, you probably don't need the stempost and sternpost to stick right up above the castles - they seem to get cut off at the castle in most pics I've seen. And overhanging castles would normally be supported by brackets from the hull. I'm not sure of the right name for that mast fish thing - they seem to have only been used on Viking ships. The thing that usually carries out that function is called a mast step, and most of them aren't as pretty as the Viking ones - just rectangular. I make it Sigillum (seal of) Communo . . ronus de Dovoric[um](?). The flag is that of the Cinque Ports - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinque_Ports - of which Dover was one.

Magnificent work, Hellmuht! That's a wonderful model.

Hi Christos, Are you asking this question about dromons? In other words was there a systematic way of naming Byzantine oared ships to show how many oars they had? There seems to be nothing of that sort relating to Byzantium. There are various names given to the war galleys of Byzantium - the single-banked scout ships were called galeai, and the larger ships went by several names - dromon, khelandion, pamphilion and others, but there was never any description of what each word actually meant, so the academics have been arguing about it for a long time now. Whether khelandion or pamphilion were just other names for a dromon is uncertain, and we'll probably never know. Apparently the word bireis was used, but more poetically than accurately, not necessarily to denote that the ship had two banks of oars. Anna Komnene refers to triremes, but there's no evidence the Byzantines had three-banked vessels - she's just showing off her classical knowledge (as was common at the time), not trying to accurately describe the ships. And regarding the number oars, there's unfortunately nothing in the names of the vessels to say how many they had but modern estimates of the number of oars for a dromon range from 100 to 150. Again academics can't agree, but I've taken Prof Pryor's figure of 100 as the basis for my model.

Good decision. I wouldn't get too worried about the model's fragility. In my experience ship models, no matter how frail they seem to be, are surprisingly robust. So long as you don't tread on it or run over it with a steamroller you should be ok. You can probably do well enough, at least to start out, with the tools supplied. But as you go along you'll probably discover the need for others. One thing you may not think of, but which is vital, is a wide range of different types and sizes of clamps. You can never have toomany clamps! But many modellers produce excellent results with a surprisingly small and basic collection of tools. And yes, a build log is a very good idea indeed. Let us know on this page when you start yours, with a link to the log. I for one will be following it. And have fun with it! That's what it's all about.

Liteflight, I'm sure you regret the digression to the full extent it deserves (seriously, it would get terribly boring if all we discussed was modelling). Not the Ionian Sea - the Sea of Marmara, which washes the southern coast of Constantinople. It's connected to the Aegean Sea in the south by the straits of Gallipoli and to the Black Sea in the north by the Bosphorus strait. Unfortunately the only information on the size of the wedges is pictorial, which immediately introduces uncertainty - were the artists portraying them accurately? And the only pictures that show them are from somewhere else and another time - hundreds of kilometres and hundreds of years. And thirdly, the great majority of mediaeval representations of ships don't show them at all. Is this because most of them were smaller than the ones in the pictures above, so don't show above the gunwale? Or have the artists just neglected to show them (which they certainly often do with other shipboard equipment which must have been there, such as blocks). There's a lot of 'best guess' involved in reconstructing something from that long ago, and often one simply has to go with what seems right. So yes, I'm increasing the size of the wedges to something I think looks sensible - about the size shown in the last picture in my previous post. Here they are under way - for the after mast, and for the fore mast. Wooldings are under way at the moment - photos later. Now that the wedges are in place I've discovered that the halyard knight for the fore yard is too close behind the mast - it gets fouled by the wedge assembly - so I'm going to have to move it back a bit. On another note, I've finished connecting the sets of blocks together with their tackle for all the shrouds (12 of them). A rather fiddly job, and I'm glad it's finished. Here's one set partially installed, just to see how it all works. I'm holding off doing any more on these till I finish another couple of things that have to be done first.

It's been a while since I visited this build. You've really powered ahead with it - it's looking amazingly good.

Looking good. Lots of fun. Yep, they're called (surprise, surprise!) ridge tiles because they go on the ridge of the roof. But your alternative solution looks good.

Happy birthday, Eric. Nice present. Those figures look very good, too. A bit hard to see detail, but from what I can see they look very historically accurate.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear - it juste keeps getting worse . . . Getting back on subject (remember the build log?) if the ship was under sail I would indeed have the lee shrouds slackened off. As she's only just hoisting the sails that won't be an issue. But the idea I have is that a favourable wind has just sprung up and they are going to take advantage of it . . . alternatively, she's just left the harbour of Theodosius on the southern coast of the City under oars (better manoeuvrability) and is now out in the Sea of Marmara in a nice breeze and is hoisting the sails to allow the oarsmen to husband their strength for when it's needed. If on the other hand they'd been leaving from the grand harbour of the Golden Horn they would have stayed under oars, as the currents in the Bosphorus Strait are fierce - the whole of the Black Sea to the north empties into the Sea of Marmara through a strait that is less than a kilometre wide. Before I install the shrouds I need to re-make the mast wedges which I now realise are far too small. Unfortunately there is no direct evidence of the form these took - the nearest pictorial representations are from Spain at the other end of the Mediterranean in the middle of the 13th century 100-200 years later than the model (the first two pics) or even later - the 1st quarter of the 14th century (the third) and from Italy from the 14th century (though the artistic style of this one looks very Byzantine we can't rely on the ship being anything other than Italian) Given that all the rest of the ship pictures I've been ableto get hold of don't show the mast wedges at all, perhaps they weren't as huge in most ships as shown in the first three pictures, and I'm more willing to base my representation on the last one, where the wedges come up a certain distance from the deck and then are tied down with wooldings. Which nonetheless means I have to re-make all my wedges. Still I think it's worth it to get the impression as accurate as I can manage under the circumstances. And the other thing I have to do is make some sails (furled) to put on the yards so these guys have something to hoist . . .

Yes, well . . . it's wonderful how people volunteer me for extra work . . .

I'm a bit of a latecomer to this build. Looking good. I like your corrections to the kit in line with the illustration, and it's such an interesting shape of vessel!

My lovely wife suggested cutting the planks at the nearest frame to the offending point and swivelling the cut-off bit around that spot till it fits in place. The two cut edges would be at somewhat different angles and you would then cut one edge to line up with the other. And do the same with the other strakes if needed. Might not work, but worth thinking about, anyway. If it did you wouldn't have to find more timber for the strakes . . .

Sounds good. Apart from anything else, you'll be the only one who knows (apart from all of us, of course) that you've deviated from an exact copy of the original. In my view, they probably didn't get too fussed with exact placement (unless there really is some reason for the frames to be off-square) - all they wanted was something to keep the sides from being squoze inwards by the pressure of the seawater. I doubt that a Viking would get upset with you for doing it this way. On the other hand . . .

This really is terrible, and you deserve better for all the work you've done. The only thing I can think of is to cut yourself some new planking from matching timber - if you can get hold of any in the current global situation. However, firstly it looks like most of plank 24 is ok. So maybe you could cut it back to the nearest frame to where it goes wrong and keep the bit that fits. If 25 and 26 are so far off that the remaining gap (between them and 23) is far wider than a plank should be, then perhaps cut them back as well and replace their ends with something that has a curve which allows 24 to fit properly. But that all depends on being able to get timber that matches the existing strakes. That's all I've been able to think of. I hope it's of some help to you.

Thanks for all the likes and the comments. PhilB, glad to be of service - but be aware that my ship is lateen rigged, while yours would be square rigged, and the rigging plan is different. And I don't believe you need to have that kind of adjustment at the lower end of your shrouds. I've added some info regarding this to your build log. Making the blocks was rather difficult - at that scale (remembering that these are copies of real ones from archaeology) I couldn't get a drill bit the right size - the holes had to be drilled with a dressmaking pin with the head cut off. And they don't have real sheaves (pulleys) in slots - I just drilled two holes and carved a fake slot and "sheave" between them. Five sets done so far - another 7 to do; then I'll have enough to set up the shrouds. In the meantime I've also been working on the guys hoisting the after yard. I got a legth of wire to approximate a straight rope (rope's too flexible) so I could get them all in line. Not a perfect job - some of their feet don't touch the ground! -but when I glue them to the deck and replace the wire with a rope there should be enough flexibility to allow everything to work without the slight deviation from a straight line being noticeable. I don't know if you can see that the hands are based on the photos above of me hauling on the garden hose, but I put a lot of work into that and I'm pretty happy with the result.

I found some very interesting pictures for how the shrouds were attached to the hull before the advent of deadeyes: 1225-1250 MS. Bodley 764 Bestiary 1256 bibliotheque municipale de Lyon, MS 172 Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 764 f.74v 1226-1250 I also find it interesting that at least some of the castles are coloured. But the great majority of ships of this period don't show shrouds fixed to the outside of the hull - they seem to be fixed to the inside of the planking - so you can't see what the fixings actually are. But perhaps they were done the way the model below has them (though I don't agree with the castles coming to a point at bow and stern - there's enough evidence to show that though they may have tapered inward, they didn't come to a point - it's a pretty model, though). Yarmouth Saint Nicholas Town Seal Late 13th Century

That was the first thing I thought when I saw the photos (though I was calling them the stempost and sternpost). Yes, as it's balsa you shouldn't have too much trouble trimming them down. You might be best not trying to make them much thinner - too much hassle, though you could make them get gradually thinner and thinner as they rise from the planking and that would probably look good - in fact I think that's what Viking ships did. And I agree, the mast looks too thick. You're committed to the thickness at the base because of the hole the mast sits in, but you could "step" the mast inward at the top of the crossbeam supporting it, and make it thinner from there up, tapering it toward the top. The headroom on a sailing ship varied but yes, it was always a compromise between headroom on one hand and on the other hand economics (cost of materials) and stability of the ship (too high a ship becomes more likely to capsize) - the smaller the ship the less headroom. The Royal Navy traditionally allows the loyal toast (Gentlemen, the King/Queen, God bless him/her) to be drunk sitting down because of the danger of bashing heads on the deck beams above. I think having castles would add to the look of the ship, bearing in mind that as this is a fantasy game, historical considerations don't really matter too much and castles look cool - and anyway, there is a style of ship which I call a nef (because it doesn't really have a proper official name and nef meant ship in Mediaeval French), which was effectively a Viking ship with a castle at each end. The earlier type had the castles as pretty much completely separate structures just sort of bunged on, and sitting within the length of the hull - and had a steering oar. Unknown manuscript illustration of sea battle - source unknown. Seal of the city of Wichelsea, 1274 AD The later ones had the castles incorporated more into the hull (and sticking out at each end), and some (but not all) had a stern rudder. British Library Egerton MS 3028 f. 118 1338-1340 Seal of Dover 1305 In this case cardboard is your friend - I have used cereal box cardboard to work things out for my own build with great success, and I have several rice bubbles boxes flattened out waiting to be used for future models. If you add castles, I'd recommend you extend the deck to cover the midships section (unless you're unreasonably attached to that mast step you did so much work on) - which would also allow you to hide the place where the thickness of the mast changes - and have the castles high enough off the deck to give headroom for people to stand under them - which would probably mean the earlier style of nef which seemed to have higher castles. It's all coming together nicely. Keep up the good work.

The song was a hit in Oz as well. I didn't know what it was all about until years later - I thought it referred to some sailing ship or other, not a modern carrier (I never really listened to the words in detail - otherwise the "twenty-six thousand tons" line would have told me I was wrong).

I can't "like" that, but I do know the feeling. But it's retrievable, and it's a beautiful model. Maybe just take a break, have a coffee, come back to it later.