Louie da fly

And now it can be told.
 
I was planning to change the final configuration of the ship -  rather than have her under full sail I decided that it would look really cool to do a bit of "living history" - to leave maybe four pairs of oarbenches empty and carve new figures to take the place of those oarsmen I'd already done, but assign them to "other duties". I'd have the foresail hoisted but still furled, with two or three guys up on the yard unfurling it:
 
    
 
and a bunch of others in the process of hoisting the after sail like this:
 
  
or perhaps this:
 

 
I even carved four guys based on the picture above:
 
     
 
Then I changed my mind. Good though this might be, I really think it wouldn't look as good as an overall display as my original idea, to have both sails fully set and drawing (the wind directly aft - the only circumstancs the sails would be set in a dromon because of its low freeboard) and "goosewinged" as in the pictures below.
 
  
 
So there you go. I'm happier with this idea - I think it will look a lot better.
 
Perhaps I could feel that my making these new guys had gone to waste, but in fact it was fun - a welcome relief from doing so many figures all the same. I don't really care if they never get used. If I'm not stuck on a "sausage machine" production line, I really do enjoy carving.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Working on the very final pair of oarsmen. Arms carved and glued on, and holes drilled at the shoulders for bamboo pivots, to fix the arms firmly to the body and allow me to swivel the arms for best fit to the oarhandle without them breaking off:
 
     
 
 
Filler added - rather than try to get each pair of arms exactly right (an almost possible task fitting and re-fitting to both rower and angled oar-handle) I carved them so the hands fitted on the handle as close as I could make it, and allowed a bit of extra at the shoulder, and added filler to close up any discrepancies.
 
  
 
And trimmed to shape and sanded smooth
 
     
 
And finally, painted. 
 

 
And, at last, all the oarsmen in place! (breathes great sigh of relief).

    
 
  
 

 
 

 
If I never carve any oarsmen again, it will be too soon!
 
Another thing.  I discovered the halyard knights were really too small - they were only about half a metre (18 inches) tall at 1:50 scale - this is the knight for the after mast, but the foremast one is pretty much identical. 
 

 
so I made new ones about waist height.
 

 
Then I thought about it some more and decided they might be tall enough now, but probably a bit flimsy to take the forces imposed on them by the halyards. So I made heftier ones.
 

 
Pretty happy with these now. A real milestone achieved.
 
 
 

Thanks everybody for the likes and the comments. And Cathead and Jamie, that made my day! I love the parrot sketch. "The only reason he's on his perch is that he's nailed there!" "WAKE UP POLLY!"
 
Chuck, apparently the main difference between oars and sweeps (I had to look it up) is that a sweep is single, held with both hands (so you need your rowers to be in pairs, one for each side of the vessel) whereas an "oar" is used in pairs by the one oarsman. So yes, technically these should probably be referred to as sweeps.
 
And you're right, the size of the oarblades determines the width of the holes, not the other way around. But with this model there are no surviving oars, and contemporary illustrations aren't reliable, so I'm reverse engineering - the dromon's oarports are copied from a surviving oarport in a strake from one of the Yenikapi galleys, and I've based the width of the oar blades on that.

Nice work on the painting. Pretty difficult at that scale.
 
However,may I suggest you replace the purple with another colour? In the Middle Ages there were sumptuary laws which laid down who could wear what clothes, so the best stuff was reserved to the upper classes, and jumped-up merchants couldn't swan around in the clothing of their "betters". And though these laws had to keep on being re-issued because they were so sadly neglected and often ignored (like Finland), the one thing that was totally forbidden was purple - it was reserved for royalty and only royalty. Anyone wearing that would have been in very deep trouble.

Getting better and better all the time. 
 
So you have a carpet monster, too? Mine is very voracious, but it's not always the thing at fault. I dropped a piece off the workbench, looked and looked for it for a long time with no success. Swept the carpet and sorted through what I'd swept up. Looked under all the furniture - nothing. Went off and did something else to get my mind off it, hoping the aliens who'd pinched it would have returned it when I came back. Nope. Then it occurred to me - it's cold where I live and I usually wear ugg boots when I'm modelling. Yep - the piece had fallen down my boot. Fortunately it wasn't anything fragile, so it hadn't broken.

Nice work on the painting. Pretty difficult at that scale.
 
However,may I suggest you replace the purple with another colour? In the Middle Ages there were sumptuary laws which laid down who could wear what clothes, so the best stuff was reserved to the upper classes, and jumped-up merchants couldn't swan around in the clothing of their "betters". And though these laws had to keep on being re-issued because they were so sadly neglected and often ignored (like Finland), the one thing that was totally forbidden was purple - it was reserved for royalty and only royalty. Anyone wearing that would have been in very deep trouble.

Getting better and better all the time. 
 
So you have a carpet monster, too? Mine is very voracious, but it's not always the thing at fault. I dropped a piece off the workbench, looked and looked for it for a long time with no success. Swept the carpet and sorted through what I'd swept up. Looked under all the furniture - nothing. Went off and did something else to get my mind off it, hoping the aliens who'd pinched it would have returned it when I came back. Nope. Then it occurred to me - it's cold where I live and I usually wear ugg boots when I'm modelling. Yep - the piece had fallen down my boot. Fortunately it wasn't anything fragile, so it hadn't broken.

And now it can be told.
 
I was planning to change the final configuration of the ship -  rather than have her under full sail I decided that it would look really cool to do a bit of "living history" - to leave maybe four pairs of oarbenches empty and carve new figures to take the place of those oarsmen I'd already done, but assign them to "other duties". I'd have the foresail hoisted but still furled, with two or three guys up on the yard unfurling it:
 
    
 
and a bunch of others in the process of hoisting the after sail like this:
 
  
or perhaps this:
 

 
I even carved four guys based on the picture above:
 
     
 
Then I changed my mind. Good though this might be, I really think it wouldn't look as good as an overall display as my original idea, to have both sails fully set and drawing (the wind directly aft - the only circumstancs the sails would be set in a dromon because of its low freeboard) and "goosewinged" as in the pictures below.
 
  
 
So there you go. I'm happier with this idea - I think it will look a lot better.
 
Perhaps I could feel that my making these new guys had gone to waste, but in fact it was fun - a welcome relief from doing so many figures all the same. I don't really care if they never get used. If I'm not stuck on a "sausage machine" production line, I really do enjoy carving.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Working on the very final pair of oarsmen. Arms carved and glued on, and holes drilled at the shoulders for bamboo pivots, to fix the arms firmly to the body and allow me to swivel the arms for best fit to the oarhandle without them breaking off:
 
     
 
 
Filler added - rather than try to get each pair of arms exactly right (an almost possible task fitting and re-fitting to both rower and angled oar-handle) I carved them so the hands fitted on the handle as close as I could make it, and allowed a bit of extra at the shoulder, and added filler to close up any discrepancies.
 
  
 
And trimmed to shape and sanded smooth
 
     
 
And finally, painted. 
 

 
And, at last, all the oarsmen in place! (breathes great sigh of relief).

    
 
  
 

 
 

 
If I never carve any oarsmen again, it will be too soon!
 
Another thing.  I discovered the halyard knights were really too small - they were only about half a metre (18 inches) tall at 1:50 scale - this is the knight for the after mast, but the foremast one is pretty much identical. 
 

 
so I made new ones about waist height.
 

 
Then I thought about it some more and decided they might be tall enough now, but probably a bit flimsy to take the forces imposed on them by the halyards. So I made heftier ones.
 

 
Pretty happy with these now. A real milestone achieved.
 
 
 

Nice work on the painting. Pretty difficult at that scale.
 
However,may I suggest you replace the purple with another colour? In the Middle Ages there were sumptuary laws which laid down who could wear what clothes, so the best stuff was reserved to the upper classes, and jumped-up merchants couldn't swan around in the clothing of their "betters". And though these laws had to keep on being re-issued because they were so sadly neglected and often ignored (like Finland), the one thing that was totally forbidden was purple - it was reserved for royalty and only royalty. Anyone wearing that would have been in very deep trouble.

And now it can be told.
 
I was planning to change the final configuration of the ship -  rather than have her under full sail I decided that it would look really cool to do a bit of "living history" - to leave maybe four pairs of oarbenches empty and carve new figures to take the place of those oarsmen I'd already done, but assign them to "other duties". I'd have the foresail hoisted but still furled, with two or three guys up on the yard unfurling it:
 
    
 
and a bunch of others in the process of hoisting the after sail like this:
 
  
or perhaps this:
 

 
I even carved four guys based on the picture above:
 
     
 
Then I changed my mind. Good though this might be, I really think it wouldn't look as good as an overall display as my original idea, to have both sails fully set and drawing (the wind directly aft - the only circumstancs the sails would be set in a dromon because of its low freeboard) and "goosewinged" as in the pictures below.
 
  
 
So there you go. I'm happier with this idea - I think it will look a lot better.
 
Perhaps I could feel that my making these new guys had gone to waste, but in fact it was fun - a welcome relief from doing so many figures all the same. I don't really care if they never get used. If I'm not stuck on a "sausage machine" production line, I really do enjoy carving.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Working on the very final pair of oarsmen. Arms carved and glued on, and holes drilled at the shoulders for bamboo pivots, to fix the arms firmly to the body and allow me to swivel the arms for best fit to the oarhandle without them breaking off:
 
     
 
 
Filler added - rather than try to get each pair of arms exactly right (an almost possible task fitting and re-fitting to both rower and angled oar-handle) I carved them so the hands fitted on the handle as close as I could make it, and allowed a bit of extra at the shoulder, and added filler to close up any discrepancies.
 
  
 
And trimmed to shape and sanded smooth
 
     
 
And finally, painted. 
 

 
And, at last, all the oarsmen in place! (breathes great sigh of relief).

    
 
  
 

 
 

 
If I never carve any oarsmen again, it will be too soon!
 
Another thing.  I discovered the halyard knights were really too small - they were only about half a metre (18 inches) tall at 1:50 scale - this is the knight for the after mast, but the foremast one is pretty much identical. 
 

 
so I made new ones about waist height.
 

 
Then I thought about it some more and decided they might be tall enough now, but probably a bit flimsy to take the forces imposed on them by the halyards. So I made heftier ones.
 

 
Pretty happy with these now. A real milestone achieved.
 
 
 

And now it can be told.
 
I was planning to change the final configuration of the ship -  rather than have her under full sail I decided that it would look really cool to do a bit of "living history" - to leave maybe four pairs of oarbenches empty and carve new figures to take the place of those oarsmen I'd already done, but assign them to "other duties". I'd have the foresail hoisted but still furled, with two or three guys up on the yard unfurling it:
 
    
 
and a bunch of others in the process of hoisting the after sail like this:
 
  
or perhaps this:
 

 
I even carved four guys based on the picture above:
 
     
 
Then I changed my mind. Good though this might be, I really think it wouldn't look as good as an overall display as my original idea, to have both sails fully set and drawing (the wind directly aft - the only circumstancs the sails would be set in a dromon because of its low freeboard) and "goosewinged" as in the pictures below.
 
  
 
So there you go. I'm happier with this idea - I think it will look a lot better.
 
Perhaps I could feel that my making these new guys had gone to waste, but in fact it was fun - a welcome relief from doing so many figures all the same. I don't really care if they never get used. If I'm not stuck on a "sausage machine" production line, I really do enjoy carving.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Amazing work on the oarsmen! They really make the model pop. We'll see if you in a week's time decide that you also need men for the lower deck 😉

Working on the very final pair of oarsmen. Arms carved and glued on, and holes drilled at the shoulders for bamboo pivots, to fix the arms firmly to the body and allow me to swivel the arms for best fit to the oarhandle without them breaking off:
 
     
 
 
Filler added - rather than try to get each pair of arms exactly right (an almost possible task fitting and re-fitting to both rower and angled oar-handle) I carved them so the hands fitted on the handle as close as I could make it, and allowed a bit of extra at the shoulder, and added filler to close up any discrepancies.
 
  
 
And trimmed to shape and sanded smooth
 
     
 
And finally, painted. 
 

 
And, at last, all the oarsmen in place! (breathes great sigh of relief).

    
 
  
 

 
 

 
If I never carve any oarsmen again, it will be too soon!
 
Another thing.  I discovered the halyard knights were really too small - they were only about half a metre (18 inches) tall at 1:50 scale - this is the knight for the after mast, but the foremast one is pretty much identical. 
 

 
so I made new ones about waist height.
 

 
Then I thought about it some more and decided they might be tall enough now, but probably a bit flimsy to take the forces imposed on them by the halyards. So I made heftier ones.
 

 
Pretty happy with these now. A real milestone achieved.
 
 
 

Nice work on the painting. Pretty difficult at that scale.
 
However,may I suggest you replace the purple with another colour? In the Middle Ages there were sumptuary laws which laid down who could wear what clothes, so the best stuff was reserved to the upper classes, and jumped-up merchants couldn't swan around in the clothing of their "betters". And though these laws had to keep on being re-issued because they were so sadly neglected and often ignored (like Finland), the one thing that was totally forbidden was purple - it was reserved for royalty and only royalty. Anyone wearing that would have been in very deep trouble.

Thanks everybody for the likes and the comments. And Cathead and Jamie, that made my day! I love the parrot sketch. "The only reason he's on his perch is that he's nailed there!" "WAKE UP POLLY!"
 
Chuck, apparently the main difference between oars and sweeps (I had to look it up) is that a sweep is single, held with both hands (so you need your rowers to be in pairs, one for each side of the vessel) whereas an "oar" is used in pairs by the one oarsman. So yes, technically these should probably be referred to as sweeps.
 
And you're right, the size of the oarblades determines the width of the holes, not the other way around. But with this model there are no surviving oars, and contemporary illustrations aren't reliable, so I'm reverse engineering - the dromon's oarports are copied from a surviving oarport in a strake from one of the Yenikapi galleys, and I've based the width of the oar blades on that.

Nice work on the painting. Pretty difficult at that scale.
 
However,may I suggest you replace the purple with another colour? In the Middle Ages there were sumptuary laws which laid down who could wear what clothes, so the best stuff was reserved to the upper classes, and jumped-up merchants couldn't swan around in the clothing of their "betters". And though these laws had to keep on being re-issued because they were so sadly neglected and often ignored (like Finland), the one thing that was totally forbidden was purple - it was reserved for royalty and only royalty. Anyone wearing that would have been in very deep trouble.

Thanks everybody for the likes and the comments. And Cathead and Jamie, that made my day! I love the parrot sketch. "The only reason he's on his perch is that he's nailed there!" "WAKE UP POLLY!"
 
Chuck, apparently the main difference between oars and sweeps (I had to look it up) is that a sweep is single, held with both hands (so you need your rowers to be in pairs, one for each side of the vessel) whereas an "oar" is used in pairs by the one oarsman. So yes, technically these should probably be referred to as sweeps.
 
And you're right, the size of the oarblades determines the width of the holes, not the other way around. But with this model there are no surviving oars, and contemporary illustrations aren't reliable, so I'm reverse engineering - the dromon's oarports are copied from a surviving oarport in a strake from one of the Yenikapi galleys, and I've based the width of the oar blades on that.

That's all a bit wierd, Cathead. You'd think the manufacturers hadn't tried out making the kit themselves to see if it all worked, before they put it on the market.
 
I have no answers to the length of the planks or to the width of the deck insert. But I think what you're doing is the right answer. In the long run you have to deal with what's in front of you rather than what is theoretically the right thing to do (when it doesn't work!).
 
The problem with the deck interfering with clamping the planks was always to be expected. To be honest, based on your previous record, I'm looking forward to seeing what ingenious solution you come up with to solve it!
 
And I do like what you've done with the transition from clinker to carvel at the ends. Simple and elegant.

More problem-solving and warnings for future builders.
 
First, the planks are fitting less and less well as I progress up the hull. It's possible, even likely, that I'm not laying them out exactly as the kit designer intended, which is a problem with pre-spiled planks. But I think it's more than that. For example, on the fourth strake, if you line up the stern plank thus:
 

 
the bow plank ends up sticking out this far past the previous plank:
 

 
I think that's way beyond an error I could have made, and I'm sure I'm using the right planks. Though one improvement the kit could make is to lasercut or otherwise label the actual wood sheets with the plank numbers. You have to consult the plans to match the wood sheets, and it's pretty confusing when there are lots of very similar planks right next to each other.
 
In the last strake, I ended up needing to nibble a bit off the plank ends to keep the end correct, but this time it's ridiculous. So something needs to be cut. Oddly, if you match the actual end of the plank with the stem (so you'd be cutting off extra from the middle portion where it butts against the stern plank), the curve doesn't fit at all. But if you butt the orginal end (as shown in the photo), the curve fits nicely, just with a lot of extra. So I cut it off at the bow end. Strange but effective.
 
Next problem: The deck insert does not match the shape of the planking; it sticks out rather badly into the run of the planking and needs to be carved back quite a bit. For example, look closely at where the deck interacts with the frames in the photo below (especially between the two foreground frames), and envision how a plank set into the notch in the frame would interact with the deck:
 

 
It can't be done. Rather a lot of material needs to be taken off the edge of the deck to allow the planks to flow naturally within their precut notches in the frame. This is true at both ends. I initially tried to do this with a sharp knife, but the geometry is really difficult and tight and I came very close to either nicking the planks in place or christening the vessel with blood. The deck wood is pretty hard and the knife doesn't want to carve in that semi-cross-grain direction, plus the assembly is somewhat fragile. Then I hit on using a pair of nippers instead, which worked far better.
 

 
These take out nice chunks of wood at at time, are easy to align with the flow of the hull, and it doesn't matter that their cut is rough because this is a false deck that will be hidden by the planking and the real deck above it. So I just hacked away until I got close, then finished the edge with knife and file. I had to remove a LOT of material at bow and stern to get the planks to run cleanly. But it worked great.
 
Another problem this deck is about to cause, is that it interferes with using frame-based clamps to hold the planks on. The next few strakes are going to be especially tricky. This deck has been a problem from the beginning and I'm wishing I'd just never installed it at all. The frames are held solid by the braces on top, and I could have filled in a supporting deck later on once the hull was complete.
 
Anyway, here's what the deck edge looks like in the same view as above after it was carved back; can you see how the edge now allows the planks to lie in their notches?
 

 
One final note on laying planks, for future builders. At both stem and stern, the planks transition from clinker (overlapped) to carvel (edge to edge) as they flow into the stem/stern keel piece. There's an awkward short zone where each plank dips beneath the next and is following elements of both styles. In the photo below, it's between the two frames; left of that it's full carvel, right of that it's full clinker:
 

 
I've found the best way to do this is to sand/file a bevel onto the edge of the plank in just that area, like this:
 

 
It lets the plank start sliding under its neighbor without looking any different from the outside. Maybe this is obvious to others, but it took some careful testing for me to figure out just how I wanted to do this for each plank.
 
Thanks for reading along as I keep wrestling with this "relaxing" project.

I am thinking these are more "sweeps" than "oars".  Sweeps generally appear narrower, but that is probably when compared to what we think of as a smalll boat oar.  In reality, that is quite a bit of surface area that has to be pulled against.  ...and as Messis said, a greater number.
 
The "oar holes" were made to support the oars/sweeps, not vice versa.  It didn't matter how wide the sweeps were, the holes would have been made big enough to permit passthru.

That's very nice work, Chris. At 1:600 they must be tiny, but they really make the model.

That is one of the all time greatest skits, pure gold.

No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.
Look, matey, I know a dead rower when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable rower, the Byzantine Red, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!