Louie da fly

Pure masochism. I just like suffering . . .
 
Steven

Thanks Pat and Radek. And thanks everybody for the likes.
 
Radek, the idea for the deadeyes is very good, but I'm really wanting to make all my deadeyes myself, masochism notwithstanding.
 
 
 
I'm not quite sure what else I can add - I've pretty much posted everything as I went. Is there anything in particular you'd like to see? Such as the hull shape from different angles? If there are photos I can provide I'm happy to do so.
 
Steven

As far as I know nobody really knows how the rigging on Viking ships worked. There have been rigging elements (such as L-shaped pieces) found but as far as I know the ropes had long since perished. I think there's a lot of educated guesswork in any modern reconstructions.
 
Others might know more, but perhaps if you get in touch with the Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde they'd be able to give you what information is available and what they based their reconstructions on. I'd be more likely to trust their information than what the kit manufacturer says - they have access to all the best evidence.
 
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
 

Oh dear, oh dear. I won't say I haven't been tempted. But that way lies madness . . .
 
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
 

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
 

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

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
 

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
 

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
 

Oh dear, oh dear. I won't say I haven't been tempted. But that way lies madness . . .
 
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
 

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 Steven
 
yes I know the place and even more I am subscribed to their news letter. Jejeje
 
I am amazed with that ship. In the meantime.... fighting with my Quanzhou

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

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

Thanks, Siggi. That's beautiful work. Now I have two different media to try when I next want to have invisible gluing. 
 
I've changed my mind about the knight for the main halyard. The Lomellina was considerably smaller than the Great Harry, and for her a two-sheave knight was enough for the main halyard. But I think for a ship the size of the Great Harry, a three-sheave knight would be more appropriate.
 

 
The capstan may have had a bigger diameter to allow for more bars, but with the design I'm working from that would have needed three through-holes in the drum, which would have  made for problems with the height of the bars above the deck. So I've kept it at the same size.
 

 
It just needs the cleats to be trimmed and it's complete. 
 
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

What a wonderful idea. I'm not sure if you already know about the Sutton Hoo Ship's Company, who are building a full-sized replica in the UK? https://www.facebook.com/saxonship
 
Steven

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