Louie da fly

Unfortunately, nothing in the Vikings TV show bears any relationship to what Vikings ate/wore/did/carried/used. And most of the "Viking Shield Designs" that can be found on-line use a fair bit of imagination (i.e. they're made up) or extrapolate from Viking decorations in other contexts (i.e. they're made up).
 
What is known about patterns on Viking shields appears here: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisandpeter/shield/shield.html
 
The ones you're making look good, but as there seems to be no evidence of standardization in shield decoration, you could mix and match patterns and colour combinations as much as you like within the colours available at the time - https://sciencenordic.com/denmark-history-society--culture/how-to-decorate-like-a-viking/1455997 .
 
Steven

This is looking very good. You've made good progress and obviously mastered the clinker planking.
 
Here are some more (genuine) Viking dragon heads (none of them from ships - none have ever been found) -  but all from real Viking artefacts:
 

 
   
 
 

 
Looking forward to the next progress.
 
Steven

Very nice, Bolin.

To be honest, Druxey, so am I. I keep thinking "Did I really do this when I was that young?"
 
Maybe I don't give my younger self enough credit, but I seem to remember I was a bit of a twerp back then.
 
Or is it that if I could do that when I was that young, why haven't I progressed any further in all this time? 
 
Interestingly, I did carve three figures for the ship out of bamboo back in the day, but they got lost sometime in the interim. It would be instructive to be able to compare them. But I do remember they didn't have the level of detail the current ones do.
 
Steven

Making a third figure - this time a common sailor - probably to stand on a yard holding onto a rope. Or possibly it's John Travolta . . .
 
    
 
    
 

 
And finally doing the railings for the main deck, one of which broke off short, and the other got lost.
 
Here I'm adding extra length at both ends to the broken one, using scarph joints.
 

 
      
 
And in place - just glued at both ends so far. Once that's dry I'll glue down the intermediate bits.
 
 

 
 
Steven
 

Thanks @druxey.
 
I have continued with the frames, and have added at least one pair of tree nails to each of them to make sure that they stay in place.

Making a third figure - this time a common sailor - probably to stand on a yard holding onto a rope. Or possibly it's John Travolta . . .
 
    
 
    
 

 
And finally doing the railings for the main deck, one of which broke off short, and the other got lost.
 
Here I'm adding extra length at both ends to the broken one, using scarph joints.
 

 
      
 
And in place - just glued at both ends so far. Once that's dry I'll glue down the intermediate bits.
 
 

 
 
Steven
 

Thanks Eric! I'm thinking it will look OK too. Maybe I'll experiment with some additional lighting on photos, but I won't sweat that one.
 
BTW, I did experiment on some scrap pieces with actually weathering the deck with various secondary colors, that was my original plan. But my experiments led to the conclusion that It's best to leave well enough alone. I may revisit.

Looking good. 
 
Steven

Progress Continues...
 

    Stern hull supports and false frames for aft strakes are in place.  Aft strakes in place.
 
    Vertical knee and support added to port side above-deck deck beam.  Blackened bamboo peg/trunnel is test fitted into knee.  This will serve to strengthen the knee and act as 'bolt'.
 

    Mast support in place.  I decided to add a little color by staining it "Sedona Red"  Whadya think?

And the mast steps in the Yenikapi Byzantine wrecks seem to have been rudimentary at best - some not even attached to the hull!
 
 
Probably fair enough. Even the hockey stick may not have had a sheave, but just a groove along the top to guide the halyard, as I seem to recall your theorising in an earlier discussion. The amount of chafing from this arrangement may have been small enough to ignore in practical terms.
 
Steven

That's beautiful work, Bolin. Your patient work is really paying off!
 
Steven

To be honest, Druxey, so am I. I keep thinking "Did I really do this when I was that young?"
 
Maybe I don't give my younger self enough credit, but I seem to remember I was a bit of a twerp back then.
 
Or is it that if I could do that when I was that young, why haven't I progressed any further in all this time? 
 
Interestingly, I did carve three figures for the ship out of bamboo back in the day, but they got lost sometime in the interim. It would be instructive to be able to compare them. But I do remember they didn't have the level of detail the current ones do.
 
Steven

Making a third figure - this time a common sailor - probably to stand on a yard holding onto a rope. Or possibly it's John Travolta . . .
 
    
 
    
 

 
And finally doing the railings for the main deck, one of which broke off short, and the other got lost.
 
Here I'm adding extra length at both ends to the broken one, using scarph joints.
 

 
      
 
And in place - just glued at both ends so far. Once that's dry I'll glue down the intermediate bits.
 
 

 
 
Steven
 

Added some uprights to support  a crossbeam for belaying points.
 
     
 
Capstan complete
 

 
and dry fitted, along with the three-sheave knight (funny, why does that phrase make me think . . . Momma told me not to come?)
 

 
Steven

I've stained the hull below the waterline, using a mix of black and dark tan boot polish. Worked quite well.
 

 
This is how it was before - just too light in colour:
 

 
and finished the breechings on the cannons - a bit of a problem with glue spread everywhere - I'll have to remove the surplus.
 

 
And working on the knight and the capstan for the main halyard. The capstan needs the rest of the cleats put on it before it's complete. It's based on the one from the Lomellina wreck of 1516 - nearest we have to the right time and place. I have an e-book which purports to show the Mary Rose capstan, but as far as I'm aware it was never recovered, so the e-book one must be based on speculation, so it's no more reliable than my own.
 

 
And here's the knight dry fitted. I won't glue it in place until after I've threaded the lanyards through it. Otherwise I'm just making my life difficult.
 
      
 
 
Steven

And here are the cannon in place. I not only had to sand down many of the wheels, I even had to whittle away at the tops of the gunports to get the barrels to fit through. Not a lot you can do about that - you only find out when everything's made, and all you can really do is adjust things a bit, unless you want to start again from scratch (which I'm not prepared to do!)
 

 
I'm going to put the breechings on the cannons, but I'm not so sure about adding the tackle for running them up. Gunports had only been in use for a relatively short time when the ship was built, and I'm not sure there'd been enough action with guns to get people thinking in turns of tackle - perhaps they were more likely to run the guns up by main force, as they did on land. They'd only just started using 4-wheeled carriages - most of them still had a pair of wheels at the front and a skid at the back. Granted the circumstances were different, particularly with a ship heeling over. I realise that's going out on a limb a bit and there's no real evidence to justify it (or to disprove it, for that matter) , but that's what I've decided to do.
 
Steven

Here are the cannons for the main (lower) deck, which is open to the sky so the carriages can be seen. They're based on those found on the Mary Rose, though I haven't been able to reproduce the shape of these rather unusual barrels with the equipment to hand (hell, at this scale, I haven't even given them trunnions!).
 
   
 
I made the barrels the same way as I have previously, with a piece of brass tube from a hobby shop in my "poor man's lathe" (electric drill), and shaped with a small hacksaw and files. And here's the cascabel, made from yet another "sequin pin" with the head filed down:
 
   
 
   
 
I glued it in place with CA.
 
And here's the construction of a gun carriage (note the giant matchstick):
 
     
 
The wheels were cut from a piece of pear wood I'd carved into a cylinder and drilled the holes for the axles with another sequin pin. And more sequin pins for the axles.
 
    
 
And all complete.
 
   
 
Some of them are a little too high to fit through the gunports, but I'll just sand the wheels down a bit and they should be fine.
 
 
Steven
    
 
 
 
 

I've made the chocks for the longboat and glued the chocks to the longboat and the hatch cover. I've dry fitted the assembly to the deck to give an idea of how it's going to work.
 
   
 
I've finally decided not to continue trying to make the deadeyes out of wood - I just get too many failures from splitting. So I'm goingahead with card impregnated with CA. It works much better. Here's a strip of card to cut them from, and the three holes drilled with a bit made of a brass "sequin pin" (very useful, these - about the diameter of a dressmaker's pin but with a point like a nail, so it acts as a drill bit - you can get them from art supply shops).
 
   
 
Trimmed to shape and the strop attached on one side: 
 
    
 
And carried around the other two sides. And a few deadeyes - some of wood and some of card.
 
    
 
At this scale there's really no point in making chains for the lower end of the deadeye assembly - much too fiddly - so I'm just going to fake it with thread. When I made the model way back in the day I had no idea that chains existed anyway.
 
I next went to work on the rudder. Here it is all cut out, with the tiller next to it.
 

   
 
I thunk and thunk about how to attach the rudder to the sternpost -  there's no way I'm going to make pintles and gudgeons at this scale. I went back to my tried and tested method of inserting pins. Those sequin pins are a Godsend. First photo shows them complete, the second one shows them trimmed to length.
 
      
 
For the rudder irons I went back to my trusty aluminium foil catfood containers. They're purely for decoration. When I tried blacking the aluminium previously, I found the paint scraped off really easily. So this time I tried roughening the surface with sandpaper. It seemed to work, though I think I should have brushed off the sandings better as I seem to have got some grit in with the paint. But I don't think this is really a serious issue.
 
       
 
      
 
I cut strips with a craft knife:
 
    
 
I wasn't happy with my first attempt:
 
    
 
 
So I did it a different way.
 
     
 
 
I used CA glue in this case - PVA (white glue) doesn't stick to metal.
 
     
 
 
   
 
And finally glued the rudder in place. 
 
    
 
Voila!
 
Steven

Thanks, guys!
 
Steven

Thanks, Druxey.
 
Of course I can see all the faults in the paintwork, but I doubt I'll be able to do it any better, so I'm leaving it at that.
 
Steven

I discovered some gaps between the planking, so I put filler in them.
 

 
Later on I sanded it down again so it all looks nice and smooth now.
 
Decided the paintwork on the top wale of the aftercastle was too rough so I sanded it down again.

 
Discovered that though the red and white zig-zags on the starboard side were correct,
 
 

 
those on the port side were facing the wrong way.
 

 
So I fixed them.
 

 
And now I've done all the painting I'm prepared to do. I've left some of the original paintwork unchanged, but most of it needed freshening up. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Steven
 

Oh, that's just one of the giant hands I keep for when I photograph model ships. I got them from Kenny Everett . . .
 

Thanks everybody for the likes; and thanks, Radek. I was hoping the photos would be what you wanted.
 
I've done some extra sanding and most of the CA is gone now - along with a bit of red paint that must have transferred from my thumb while I was painting.
 
I might be about to disappoint you, though. I intend to darken the underwater planking with shoe polish - it'll be sort of brownish-black in line with what they used to do back in the day (tar) - you can see an example a page or two back in this build on the bottom of the longboat. You'll still be able to see the planking, but it won't stand out so much like a sore thumb.
 
Unfortunately the old sails are way past redemption - the fabric is actually crumbling. And anyway I plan to give her a whole new suit of sails in fake cloth of gold as in the reconstruction picture on the first page of this log. That was the original plan when I built her back in the day, and I think she deserves to look as good as she can. As we (used to) say here in Oz - as flash as a rat with a gold tooth . . .
 
Steven

As requested . . .
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Note the remnants of a CA spill on the last one. I need to do more sanding to get rid of it, I think.
 
Steven