Louie da fly

Thanks, Druxey. I'll have to check this stuff out. Never heard of it before.

Thank you George. It's always been an area of uncertainty for me. I normally bypass the problem by writing dromons, but there's always that niggling doubt that I'm doing the right thing with it . . .
 
I learnt Ancient Greek for a year about 20 years ago, with the idea of using it to read Byzantine manuscripts. I enjoyed it very much and I wish I'd been able to go on but life got in the way, so I never had a chance to get back to it. I got to use it only once - I was in Athens at the base of the acropolis. There was a tiny church there made of bits of marble and discarded stone. I asked a workman "What church is that?" (τις εκκλησίας? - Ancient Greek, remember) and he answered Άγιος Γεώργιος (Saint George). Big triumph for me - actually got to have a conversation (no matter how short) in Greek!
 
There's been movement at the station. I've attached the sails with robands and furled them - the after sail completely furled and the foresail in the process of being unfurled. Topmen dry fitted.
 

 
And here they are in place. The fore halyard is pretty much done and the truss which holds the yard to the mast is in place. (I tried this out a couple of months ago to see if I could do it and had a lot of trouble -it all seemed so complicated. But I must have absorbed the information because this time it was quite easy.)  I still need to do more work on the after yard.
 
 
    
 
Here's the fore yard, with the topmen undoing the gaskets. It's occurred to me that it would probably be good policy to undo the central gaskets first, to get access to the sheet - so it didn't fly around out of control when the whole sail was unfurled. 
 

 
 
 

 
 
And the after yard in the process of being hoisted. When the model is displayed that's how it will be, with the yard halfway up the mast and the other guys I carved hauling on the halyard.
 

 
 
 
Still quite a lot to do. I have to work out the belaying for the tacks - it looks like they need to pass through an "open" fairlead a fair way in front of the mast (to control the front end of the yard in normal sailing conditions) and lead to a ringbolt or something aft of the mast, so the yard can be pulled back far enough to pass behind the mast when tacking. I also have to do the vangs at the other end of the yard and work out where to belay them.
 
I know standing rigging usually goes up first, but I'm leaving the shrouds till after all this is done - I think that will make the work easier, so they don't get in the way while I'm working on the rigging for the yards.
 
And I've started making the new (cloth) banner to replace the metal foil one that self-destructed a few months ago. After my experience with cutting out the sails, this time I taped the fabric to a bit of board before I started. I'll cut it to shape after I've finished painting. I'm using acrylics, which worked well when I made the awning for the poop. I first painted the whole thing with white acrylic so it wouldn't "bleed", and I was pleasantly surprised to find the pencil marks still showed up,
 
 
 

 

 

 
I've done two coats of pink and one of blue and of white. I'll add another blue coat and go over the white border and cross again. Then I'll do the red for the other "tails". I'm hoping after all that it won't be too stiff to put a "wave" in it so it looks like it's fluttering.
 
 

True, but obviously not impossible, as the black and white photo above shows.
 
Anchor cables, yes. Nippers? I doubt it, but how they did raise the anchor I don't really know. I've put a windlass on the foredeck just aft of the forecastle (pseudopation), but I've no idea how that would all work. Anchors of the time were not very heavy - the ones recovered from the approximately contemporary Serce Limani wreck weighed between 47 and 67 kg. The Serce Limani ship was  a merchantman about 15metres long - about half the length of the dromon, but perhaps approaching its overall weight as a dromon had to be very lightly built so the oarsmen could actually get it to move.
 
You could be right, though my guys don't really fit that description . . . Still, it gives me an excuse not to empty those oarbenches.
 
(Dromai, I think, but I'm not sure. The second "o" of the word dromon is the long "o" -  omega, not the short "o" -  omicron, which indicates the word is "running" rather than "runner". So the usual rules for making plural nouns, (where the plural would be dromoi) presumably don't apply. Perhaps more information than you needed.). No information on brailing.
 
There are very few contemporary representations of dromai under sail and they are so oversimplified that I'm pathetically grateful they even show shrouds - they don't show tacks, vangs or sheets so it's probably asking a bit much to expect them to show brails  . . . 

Thanks everybody for the likes and particularly to mrcc for the nice comment.
 
More progress. I've been working on the robands - fixing the sails to the yards:
 

 
 

 
 

 
Note: in the picture above what looks like a break in the yard is actually just a bit of darker grain.
 
I got about half way then happened to compare what I'd done with a photo of an actual lateen rigged vessel of about the same size as the dromon in real life and realised I had the robands about twice as close together as they should have been.
 

 
So I removed every second one. As I was about halfway through, for the same amount of work if I'd had the spacing correct I would have had all the robands done. (sigh)
 

 
And all complete! And I've started furling one of the sails, the only way I know how, by clamping everything and gradually adding the gaskets.
 

 
The other thing I've been working on is carving three figures to go up on the fore yard, unfurling the sail so the oarsmen can have a break. (there's a nice breeze coming from aft)
 

 
      
 
       
 
 
      
 
 

 
   
 
Unfortunately there was a really nasty knot right in line with the left leg of the last guy, and his foot broke off, with a section more like gunge than wood at his ankle. I had to do a lot of bodging to get it to work halfway decently.
 
      
 
More to follow as I get more done . . .
 
 

Yep, guesswork. I started out with a 90-45-45 degree triangle, with the long side running along the yard. Then I made the distance between the side that runs along the yard, and the vertex oposite it, half what it would otherwise have been. No idea if it's going to work, but if not I'll just have to cut some more off I suppose.

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.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Ahh, there's nothing like positive thinking. And that's certainly nothing like positive thinking . . .

Planking journey has started, first plank in place, fits perfectly:

 
Here are planks in two stages of making proces. Laminated templates and cut out planks. Planks are laminated to desired thickness in a way that ends are roughly two times thinner than the middle part, same as the original planks. Also not every plank has the same thickness. In this scale differences are few tenths od millimeter, so I hope it will be at least felt if not seen.😀

I thank friends for their appreciation,
finished the frames that will be inserted into the openings on the keel, I started to create the external details of the keel, also in walnut

 
I end with the bas-relief of Lenormant, found by the archaeologist, numismatist and Assyrologist in 1852, the transalpine, François Lenormant,
on the Acropolis of Athens a bas-relief destined to go down in history for those involved in the classic maritime sector. It is a fragmentary slab, now kept in the Acropolis Museum, dating back to around 410 BC, which reproduces the central part of a ship with three rows of oars.
The Lenormant bas-relief has been for over a century at the center of a vast literature and discussions on the rowing system of ancient polyremes, in which archaeologists, naval engineers and admirals have intervened.
 

 
Scholars claim that the ship depicted in the fragment is an Athenian triere from the end of the fifth century, it shows a section of the ship that includes 9 thranites on the "parexeiresia" (equivalent to the "posticcio * o buttafuori " of the galleys.), 8 zygiti and 8 thalamites
* posticcio,  scaffolding which, in galleys, protruded from the edge of the hull and ran from stern to bow; it served as a support for the oarlocks;
 
I report the design of the rowing system on the triere, which will be deepened by Morrison, the position on the three levels of the rowers will be the central and fundamental element of a discussion that lasted years, and which ended with the practical demonstration of the correct interpretation made by Morrison, but for now it is too early to "deepen" the subject
 

 
see you next time
black Wolf
 
 

I thought of that, Phil. Unfortunately there's nowhere to put one without it getting in the way.
 
Druxey, that was terrible (but in a good way) . Yes, whatever else, if I install a windlass in a future build I'll have a better idea of how it all works in relation to everything else. I have to say I'm learning a lot. They reckon that the best way to avoid Oldtimer's disease is to create lots of new neural pathways by doing and learning new things. At this rate, I'll never get it.

Ahh, there's nothing like positive thinking. And that's certainly nothing like positive thinking . . .

Another masterpiece in the making, Greg. 

Oh yes. I certainly know that feeling.

They look good to me, Christos. I found I had the same problem when I made my oars - I concentrated too hard on the (tiny) faults in each individual oar. But when the oars are seen all together, those things become almost invisible. What you are aware of is the overall picture - a whole lot of oars all together. And if there are individual differences between the oars you really don't see them.
 
Dan, both methods of fixing the oars to the pivots are and have been used, but one is certainly better than the other. Why doesn't everybody use the more efficient method? "Because we've always done it that way, and what was good enough for grandad is good enough for me . . ."

I like the protruding eye, and it is similar to other "figureheads".
 

 
The colour scheme sounds good - I'm sure they would have made it nice and colorful just to show off. If anything, you might be being a bit too conservative!

What's wrong with these photos?
 
                    
 
For those who answered "the anchor cable is at the wrong angle to the windlass" go to the top of the class. And there's no way I can move the windlass to change the angle - there's no room. Looks like I won't be using the windlass for the anchors after all (sigh). Oh, well -the crew will just have to rely on brute force to raise the anchors.

While I'm thinking about the anchors, I'm also working on the side-rudders (steering oars if you prefer) .
 
I'd originally intended to attach the rudders to the lower through-beam on each side, but I realised it wouldn't be able to pivot upwards if I did, so I used the upper beam instead. So I had to cut a hole in the planking on top of the support structure,  for the rope that fixes the rudder to the beam.
 

 
The rope allows the rudder to pivot around its vertical axis (for steering), and with a bit of luck it will also allow it to swing upwards out of the way when only one rudder is in use. The kind of lashing or whatever that was used is (of course) unknown, so I'm going with the theoretical one from the TAMU paper "The Development of the Rudder, 100-1600 A.D.: A Technological Tale"  by Lawrence V. Mott ( https://nautarch.tamu.edu/academic/alum.htm) to see if it works.
 
I drilled a hole in each rudder and inserted a brass pin.
 

 
and a corresponding hole in the upper beam on each side of the ship
 

 
Here are the rudders dry fitted
 
 
        
 
 
There is only one Byzantine picture that shows a tiller on a side rudder:
 

 
I'm probably going to copy that for my own. To get the tillers at the right height I put the steersman in place next to one rudder and marked where the hole for the tiller would have to be.
 
        
 

 
Note that I haven't yet finished the steersman's arms - I'm holding off till the tillers are in place. I wasn't sure if I wanted one tiller to be swung up out of the way, but I think it'll look better with them both in operation. Which means I have to carve another steersman. 

Very nice work on the counterweights.
 
Unless I miss my guess, that is the stone called soapstone in English, or steatite. Sceatha used it for his ship, too.

I like your new configuration for the bowsprit. It makes sense. and . . .
 
 
Sounds good to me . . . 

Hmm, interesting point. There's another ship in the same fresco - quite a different type. And there's no rudder shown at all! Go figure.
 

Yes, I would have thought that from looking at the cross-sections. It has a very low freeboard - looks like it would get swamped easily.
 
By the way, here is a picture of a longship with a stern rudder, from about 1300 AD.
 

 
It's from Skamstrup Church, near Kalundborg, Denmark. Note that the tiller is curved, to go around the sternpost.

That's a difficult bit of carving. It'll need a lot of care to avoid it breaking - they're quite thin. How many do you have to do? Ah, just checked the diagrams - looks like you'll need four.
 
I can't answer your first question but for the second, the piece carries out the same function as a deadeye, so in the absence of an official name that's probably as good as anything else. I suppose you could put quotes around it and call it a "deadeye" to indicate that it really isn't one.

Ahh, there's nothing like positive thinking. And that's certainly nothing like positive thinking . . .

Another masterpiece in the making, Greg. 

Yes, it appears to be a similar rig to a Maltese Luzzu, though your photo shows only one diagonal sprit per mast. (Apparently these vessels no longer exist - a pity, they're really cool).