Matle

Thank you everybody for the smart and "silent" support!
Thank you JesseLee!
 
In these days I am very busy with work and the progress on the model is proceeding very slowly (well, just like observing a glacier movement!! )
I almost completed the standing rigging of the mizzen mast.
After many afterthoughts, I finally decided to don't use the deadeyes for the mizzen top-mast shrouds.
After checking contemporary models, paintings, drawings I decided that they were not used on these small ships, in that position of the mast and in that part of the Mediterranean basin. I used instead the heart type ones.
Since I added the mizzen top-mast stay, now I can add the blocks to it, too.
I finally decided to not add the rope ladder that almost reach the top of the main mast.
The presence of the ladder will add more mess in an already messy deck...
In addition, it must be considered that I am too lazy to make it, too...

Here's the only picture I have found from before Amundsen bought her. It was taken during the expedition of the geologist Axel Hamberg who intended to study the icesheets/glaciers of the Arctic sea and Svalbard. That expedition was quite of a failure however as the skipper had no intention of keeping his deal with Hamberg, refusing even to close on the ice (Hamberg's money he kept though I suppose). 
 
Anyhow, some differences, except the propeller: five boats rather than three and different bobstay arrangement:
 
 
More pictures from that journey: http://www.axelhamberg.se/Default.aspx?pageid=212

Here's the only picture I have found from before Amundsen bought her. It was taken during the expedition of the geologist Axel Hamberg who intended to study the icesheets/glaciers of the Arctic sea and Svalbard. That expedition was quite of a failure however as the skipper had no intention of keeping his deal with Hamberg, refusing even to close on the ice (Hamberg's money he kept though I suppose). 
 
Anyhow, some differences, except the propeller: five boats rather than three and different bobstay arrangement:
 
 
More pictures from that journey: http://www.axelhamberg.se/Default.aspx?pageid=212

I decided to paint her as she appears now with red below the waterline, black up to the third strake below the deck, two natural strakes and green upperworks and wale. Looking at old pictures I suspect the natural wood strakes were painted white, but I like having some wood shine through and as long as I'm not sure I can convince myself that I can always paint it white later - but hardly the other way around. I also wanted to keep the rather 'used' look, and to accomplish this I will airbrush using much thinner and not using any primer.

So far I've painted the red and the black and like the results to far:






Last picture shows how long my home-made propeller made it... Not sure how to solve that.



The bulwarks have been built up and is only missing the outer planking and caprails. The latter will be green so I plan to dry-fit them, remove and paint off the model rather than mask. The belaying pin rail was reinforced with brass rods through the false frame extensions. The picture below shows the construction after filling and sanding the outside and ready for the planking.

I decided to paint her as she appears now with red below the waterline, black up to the third strake below the deck, two natural strakes and green upperworks and wale. Looking at old pictures I suspect the natural wood strakes were painted white, but I like having some wood shine through and as long as I'm not sure I can convince myself that I can always paint it white later - but hardly the other way around. I also wanted to keep the rather 'used' look, and to accomplish this I will airbrush using much thinner and not using any primer.

So far I've painted the red and the black and like the results to far:






Last picture shows how long my home-made propeller made it... Not sure how to solve that.



The bulwarks have been built up and is only missing the outer planking and caprails. The latter will be green so I plan to dry-fit them, remove and paint off the model rather than mask. The belaying pin rail was reinforced with brass rods through the false frame extensions. The picture below shows the construction after filling and sanding the outside and ready for the planking.

I decided to paint her as she appears now with red below the waterline, black up to the third strake below the deck, two natural strakes and green upperworks and wale. Looking at old pictures I suspect the natural wood strakes were painted white, but I like having some wood shine through and as long as I'm not sure I can convince myself that I can always paint it white later - but hardly the other way around. I also wanted to keep the rather 'used' look, and to accomplish this I will airbrush using much thinner and not using any primer.

So far I've painted the red and the black and like the results to far:






Last picture shows how long my home-made propeller made it... Not sure how to solve that.



The bulwarks have been built up and is only missing the outer planking and caprails. The latter will be green so I plan to dry-fit them, remove and paint off the model rather than mask. The belaying pin rail was reinforced with brass rods through the false frame extensions. The picture below shows the construction after filling and sanding the outside and ready for the planking.

Dick, you make a good point, and certainly renaissance galleys had their oars at "rest" angled upward but supported in their rowlocks. However, they were used in a very different kind of fighting where a galley's function was to sink other vessels with gunfire. They also had only a single bank of oars, which they kept in use during a battle.
 
Mediaeval galleys' crews relied on attrition of the enemy's crew with missile fire, followed by boarding, and after a lot of thought about this, I believe the upper bank oarsmen would have been most likely to put their oars in "storage" to give them the greatest freedom of action. But my proposal is that they are stored running fore and aft right next to the sides of the ship. In this way they shouldn't restrict mobility on board.
 
You're right, though - the approved tactic seems to have been to try to attack an enemy vessel from the quarter, preferably smashing up their oars with the bow-mounted spur, followed by boarding. I can only think the lower oarsmen must have pulled their own oars inboard (they were shorter than the upper ones)  just before impact, but the information available is so thin on the ground that we really know nothing for certain. Even the replacement of the ram with a spur is still not fully accepted by academics, let alone a lot of the other information we have on battle tactics. Much of the contemporary battle advice, such as the treatise of Emperor Leo VI, seems to have been written from the comfort of an armchair by someone who'd never been to sea.
 
The flare of the upper works is in fact what Prof Pryor believes is the only possible solution to the problem of clashing oars. He devotes a whole chapter of Age of the Dromon to this problem, but he acknowledges that it's still only theory till it's tested in the real world.
 
Kees, the oarsmen in galleys of antiquity and the middle ages were free men, and galley slaves don't seem to have been introduced until the renaissance, as a response to a shortage of skilled oarsmen and freemen willing to work at the oars. Rowing a galley was a skilled activity, and good oarsmen were valuable. The most valuable on a dromon were the upper oarsmen, as they doubled as fighting men, and Leo VI recommends that the less brave of the oarsmen be placed on the lower bank.
 
Steven

Hello,    
 
   
 
This is a log over my first build, the yacht 'Gjøa'. I didn't plan to make a log - having very little spare time I thought I'd spend it building rather than writing, but a few days ago I found myself banging my head with the question 'what was that stain I used on half a year ago?!' Then I realized the value of a log.. especially when the progress is slooow.  
 
   
 
   
 
I've always been fascinated with polar exploration, not only is it the last frontier (or at least latest, since new frontiers tend to be opened up) but I also admire the lunacy required to venture into these areas. Gjøa was the first vessel to pass the North-West passage, captained by the greatest polar explorer of them all, Roald Amundsen. Being a small one-masted vessel it's also appeared to be a good starter model. And I really like the look of the rig.  
 
   
 
   
 
Gjøa is a hardangerjakt, which I believe would translate as Hardanger yacht, a vessel typical for the Hardanger fjord area in the 19th century. They were used for fishing and trading and several originals are kept in sailing conditions.  
 
   
 
Here's a whole bunch of them:  
 
   
 
 
 
   
 
Gjøa was built in 1872 and when Amundsen bought her in 1901 she had already spent many years sailing in Arctic waters between Greenland, Svalbard and Norway. She was rebuilt with a 13 hp engine and iron reinforcements against ice pressure. Much readings about the expedition through the North-West passage can be found online; I'll just mention that after the three-year long journey Gjøa was left in San Francisco where she stayed on display until 1972, when she was returned to Norway. Recently she was further renovated and now rests in a museum in Oslo together with Nansen's Fram.  
 
   
 
There's plenty of pictures of her online, which is extremely helpful. But also frustrating: they show plenty of errors and simplifications in the kit, but more on that later.  
 
   
 
I've been taking pictures of the built, so I will make a recap in the following posts.  

The kit comes with quite detailed constructions with plenty of pictures accompanied with short notes on what do in half the languages of the continent. Woods of three very different colours are supplied - I can never remember the exotic names. One is light like pine, another dark like walnut and one red-brownish colour which I've taken a liking too.
 
By googling I had read rumours about Constructo's flimsy plywood, especially on this model, and wanted to proceed quickly after cutting out the keel and bulkheads. There was a small warp on the false keel already after cutting it free. I tried the method of wetting the concave side with hot water and put it into a jig. Most of the warp was gone the next day, but there was a small twist still on the aft section. This was removed by chopping away wood from only one side when removing wood to allow for the planking: the false keel will only have ½-1 mm of wood left to allow for the 1.5 mm planking on each side.
 

 
 
The bulkheads fitted neatly - only one needed some serious sanding
 
Here's a hint for future builders of this kit: if you use the kit-supplied bulkheads the lines will not be accurate for the last (or last two) bulkheads! I noticed this much much later, but I wish I'd known it here. The stern bulkhead sits too high/starts curving inwards too close to the deck, to that already the first strakes below the deck start twisting whereas on the original they don't. I'll put some pics on this later to show what I mean, I believe I don't explain it well.
 
 
The false deck is a piece of thinner ply, which is to be bent to shape and fastened. This was not problem, it was just the right thickness to bend easily but not be too flimsy:
 

 
 
 
The instructions had the deck planking as the next point, but I started planking the hull instead. Partly to make the structure more rigid, partly because I figured I would be rough with the deck while planking the hull. This is made with 1.5x5 mm strips from a the red-brown wood. The planking was a big pain somewhere below, with much forcing and twisting and bending the 1.5 thick planks in various unnatural directions they didn't want to bend. The instructions suggested using nails on every bulkhead to keep the planks in place, but I abandoned this after realizing that the thick nails would make the hull look like an inverted porcupine. CA was used at strategic locations to keep the wood in place until the casco-glue set. Here's pic of the first strake:
 
 

There are a lot of images of Gjøa in her current state here: http://www.pbase.com/maritimmodellklubb/gjoa_dekk&page=1     The deck was planked unevenly. I couldn't discern any apparent pattern from the pictures on the original, and went for a more or less random approach, but at trying to keep the butts where I thought it'd be deck beams. It's possible the deck's been repaired, but nevermind:     The original deck was probably pine, so the light look of the kit-supplied  wood should be ok.        The bulwarks are built up with a laser-cut plywood sheet and planked on the outside. Kit supplied frame extensions to support them are 1x5 mm strips which I replaced with 3x3 mm tapered towards the top, as from the images, see image below. I'm not very happy how the joinery of the deck planks with the marginal turned out: the errors get really apparent on photo...        

Recap continuation
 
The keel and stem are added one top of the finished planking. This was a bit messy as I had to either cut into the planking or sand it down to a form flat even surface to attach the keel on. In the future I'll try to do the "traditional" way - this is also the point where I stopped reading the instructions. No matter how nice the booklet looks, the actual building is not that accurate either and is representative rather than replicating. I'm following drawings and images found on the net.
 
Some filler was needed to close a gap between the garboard and keel, but this is ok as I will paint it over. The stem was way off from the original, with the propeller sitting far too close to the keel - I ended up re-building the thing from a sketch I took off the real ship (note the freudian slip =). The kit-supplied propeller is a three-bladed affair, so I remade it by cutting off two blades, reshaping the remaining to a much narrower design and soldered a scratch-made blade onto it, wondering how long that'd hold. 
 


 
The iron reinforcements and rudder hinges were modelled from brass sheet and rivets from .4 mm rods. 
 

 
Below is the finished planking, keel and stem.
 


 

About the white bulwarks: I'm going to paint the model as I like the paintjob of these craft, often combinations of green, black, red and natural wood. Here's a few examples: 
 
Mathilde, http://www.hardangerogvossmuseum.no/hardanger-fartoeyvernsenter/norsk/fartoey-og-baatar/sj-mathilde.aspx
 
 
 
Svanhild, re-rigged as a galeas:

 
 
 
And Gjøa herself:
 

---

There are a lot of images of Gjøa in her current state here: http://www.pbase.com/maritimmodellklubb/gjoa_dekk&page=1     The deck was planked unevenly. I couldn't discern any apparent pattern from the pictures on the original, and went for a more or less random approach, but at trying to keep the butts where I thought it'd be deck beams. It's possible the deck's been repaired, but nevermind:     The original deck was probably pine, so the light look of the kit-supplied  wood should be ok.        The bulwarks are built up with a laser-cut plywood sheet and planked on the outside. Kit supplied frame extensions to support them are 1x5 mm strips which I replaced with 3x3 mm tapered towards the top, as from the images, see image below. I'm not very happy how the joinery of the deck planks with the marginal turned out: the errors get really apparent on photo...        

The kit comes with quite detailed constructions with plenty of pictures accompanied with short notes on what do in half the languages of the continent. Woods of three very different colours are supplied - I can never remember the exotic names. One is light like pine, another dark like walnut and one red-brownish colour which I've taken a liking too.
 
By googling I had read rumours about Constructo's flimsy plywood, especially on this model, and wanted to proceed quickly after cutting out the keel and bulkheads. There was a small warp on the false keel already after cutting it free. I tried the method of wetting the concave side with hot water and put it into a jig. Most of the warp was gone the next day, but there was a small twist still on the aft section. This was removed by chopping away wood from only one side when removing wood to allow for the planking: the false keel will only have ½-1 mm of wood left to allow for the 1.5 mm planking on each side.
 

 
 
The bulkheads fitted neatly - only one needed some serious sanding
 
Here's a hint for future builders of this kit: if you use the kit-supplied bulkheads the lines will not be accurate for the last (or last two) bulkheads! I noticed this much much later, but I wish I'd known it here. The stern bulkhead sits too high/starts curving inwards too close to the deck, to that already the first strakes below the deck start twisting whereas on the original they don't. I'll put some pics on this later to show what I mean, I believe I don't explain it well.
 
 
The false deck is a piece of thinner ply, which is to be bent to shape and fastened. This was not problem, it was just the right thickness to bend easily but not be too flimsy:
 

 
 
 
The instructions had the deck planking as the next point, but I started planking the hull instead. Partly to make the structure more rigid, partly because I figured I would be rough with the deck while planking the hull. This is made with 1.5x5 mm strips from a the red-brown wood. The planking was a big pain somewhere below, with much forcing and twisting and bending the 1.5 thick planks in various unnatural directions they didn't want to bend. The instructions suggested using nails on every bulkhead to keep the planks in place, but I abandoned this after realizing that the thick nails would make the hull look like an inverted porcupine. CA was used at strategic locations to keep the wood in place until the casco-glue set. Here's pic of the first strake:
 
 

Hello,    
 
   
 
This is a log over my first build, the yacht 'Gjøa'. I didn't plan to make a log - having very little spare time I thought I'd spend it building rather than writing, but a few days ago I found myself banging my head with the question 'what was that stain I used on half a year ago?!' Then I realized the value of a log.. especially when the progress is slooow.  
 
   
 
   
 
I've always been fascinated with polar exploration, not only is it the last frontier (or at least latest, since new frontiers tend to be opened up) but I also admire the lunacy required to venture into these areas. Gjøa was the first vessel to pass the North-West passage, captained by the greatest polar explorer of them all, Roald Amundsen. Being a small one-masted vessel it's also appeared to be a good starter model. And I really like the look of the rig.  
 
   
 
   
 
Gjøa is a hardangerjakt, which I believe would translate as Hardanger yacht, a vessel typical for the Hardanger fjord area in the 19th century. They were used for fishing and trading and several originals are kept in sailing conditions.  
 
   
 
Here's a whole bunch of them:  
 
   
 
 
 
   
 
Gjøa was built in 1872 and when Amundsen bought her in 1901 she had already spent many years sailing in Arctic waters between Greenland, Svalbard and Norway. She was rebuilt with a 13 hp engine and iron reinforcements against ice pressure. Much readings about the expedition through the North-West passage can be found online; I'll just mention that after the three-year long journey Gjøa was left in San Francisco where she stayed on display until 1972, when she was returned to Norway. Recently she was further renovated and now rests in a museum in Oslo together with Nansen's Fram.  
 
   
 
There's plenty of pictures of her online, which is extremely helpful. But also frustrating: they show plenty of errors and simplifications in the kit, but more on that later.  
 
   
 
I've been taking pictures of the built, so I will make a recap in the following posts.  

Fascinating subject! Building well-researched models could help sheddibg some light on the construction of these vessels (and a lot cheaper than building full scale replicas, goes without saying). Best of luck!
 
 
Looks horribly unstable though, I have to admit. No wonder they didn't venture far or in bad weather.

There's Storkyrkoskeppet from the main church in Stockholm, a contemporary model of a late 16th century galleon presumably made around 1600. It's a votive ship, meaning that the hull is deliberately more slender than it should have been to enable view from below (it's been hanging in the church). The model is now stored at the museum and a new model is on display in the church.
 
Link to the register card at the musem:
http://www.marinmuseum.se/sv/Samlingar/MarketStore/Foremal1/?msobjid=0012441
 
The new model:

Source:https://www.flickr.com/photos/109551672@N02/15607968081/

Nice drawing
The one thing that strikes me is that the heavy guns of a warship would be located a bit lower, and the channels should probably be above the ports. I think it helps to consider the internal deck placement when deciding the exact position of the guns. I agree that about 7 guns per side on the main battery deck seems reasonable for the size of Gripen.

Gripen had a complement of 30 sailors according to the crew list of 1599 - from that it should be possible to guess her size to roughly 300 tonnes (in Glete's way of calculating).

Gripen had a complement of 30 sailors according to the crew list of 1599 - from that it should be possible to guess her size to roughly 300 tonnes (in Glete's way of calculating).

I haven't read his book but the answer is yes. Björn Landström describes it in The Ship as well. I don't know why hKirsch drew her as English as it is more likely that it's a Dutch construction. Generally speaking the shallow-draft Dutch style was common in Sweden in the end of the 16th century - not until the last half of the 17th century did English influences become dominant (and would remain so until Chapman).

There's Storkyrkoskeppet from the main church in Stockholm, a contemporary model of a late 16th century galleon presumably made around 1600. It's a votive ship, meaning that the hull is deliberately more slender than it should have been to enable view from below (it's been hanging in the church). The model is now stored at the museum and a new model is on display in the church.
 
Link to the register card at the musem:
http://www.marinmuseum.se/sv/Samlingar/MarketStore/Foremal1/?msobjid=0012441
 
The new model:

Source:https://www.flickr.com/photos/109551672@N02/15607968081/

I haven't read his book but the answer is yes. Björn Landström describes it in The Ship as well. I don't know why hKirsch drew her as English as it is more likely that it's a Dutch construction. Generally speaking the shallow-draft Dutch style was common in Sweden in the end of the 16th century - not until the last half of the 17th century did English influences become dominant (and would remain so until Chapman).

There's Storkyrkoskeppet from the main church in Stockholm, a contemporary model of a late 16th century galleon presumably made around 1600. It's a votive ship, meaning that the hull is deliberately more slender than it should have been to enable view from below (it's been hanging in the church). The model is now stored at the museum and a new model is on display in the church.
 
Link to the register card at the musem:
http://www.marinmuseum.se/sv/Samlingar/MarketStore/Foremal1/?msobjid=0012441
 
The new model:

Source:https://www.flickr.com/photos/109551672@N02/15607968081/

There's Storkyrkoskeppet from the main church in Stockholm, a contemporary model of a late 16th century galleon presumably made around 1600. It's a votive ship, meaning that the hull is deliberately more slender than it should have been to enable view from below (it's been hanging in the church). The model is now stored at the museum and a new model is on display in the church.
 
Link to the register card at the musem:
http://www.marinmuseum.se/sv/Samlingar/MarketStore/Foremal1/?msobjid=0012441
 
The new model:

Source:https://www.flickr.com/photos/109551672@N02/15607968081/