Ab Hoving

I'm sure this will work Marcus. For battens, use what is available, but don't make them too thin. They have to support your moulds for the top timbers and are not supposed to give way. Ab

Helo Marcus, I don't think this method will lead you to the desired result. The lines don't end in a sharp angle. May I suggest a different approach? Screw a firm batten to the back of the sternpost and attach a taffrail-shaped temporary mould to its front side. You can pick the shape from the draught. Then work with flexible battens of 4 x 4 mm following the sheer of the hull. Start them at least from the midship area and attach them to the taffrail mould. Make sure they follow a natural curve. If necessary help them a bit by shaping the battens. If all is set in a satisfactory way take the shape of your top timbers from the inside of the battens. Maybe this clumbsy sketch makes things a bit clearer.

And a happy new year to you. Excellent question. How stupid if me. Website Seahorse: https://seahorse.pl/en/ Good luck

I like kits, but I am basically a scratch builder and I especially distrust kits of Dutch old ships. This is caused by the fact that the Dutch never made as much good material available to model builders, like for instance the English did, mostly because the Dutch never made plans of their vessels. This results in kitmakers producing fundamentally wrong models. Making a card kit of a replica of an old Dutch ship is a smart solution. The research for the Duyfken was mostly done in the end of the 90s by Nick Birmingham in Fremantle, Western Australia, where the replica was built. I had the honor to be invited to visit the project as an advisor. I spent a wonderful week there. Eight days after my order the package with the kit was delivered from Poland, which is remarkably shorter than some years ago :-). It consisted of a 14 page booklet with 8 pages of parts and 6 of explanations, both in text (Polish and English) and very clear diagrams. Apart from the basic kit you can also order blocks, gun barrels and lasercut sheets (3). The whole package is very well produced with good printing and fine colors. I was especially interested in the inventive way Tomek Weremko, the driving force behind his new kit company Seahorse, does his planking. (see his threads her under 0Seahorse, like this one amongst others:) Paper kits usually have problems with producing fair lines, often caused by the ribs showing through the planking. We know from his postings, also at Papermodels.com that Tomek has a method of making beautifully fair hulls without any use of filler. He is demonstrating this technique in this kit, which will be an eye-opener for many of us. The scale is 1/100, which is very small and the builder ends up with a 31 centimeters long model, although the hull is only 25 centimeter. A real challenge for the miniature lovers to build this humble ship, which was the first vessel ever to map parts of North Western Australia early in the 17th century. I can strongly recommend it! Ab

I glue my glass containers with white spirit for cleaning my brushes to square pieces of old cutting mats. Safe and cheap...

Not very much. Of course there are vertical timbers connecting the planks and other timbers to which the planking of the taffrail is nailed. There must also have been small knees to connect side and stern and there were a few decks with their clamps and beams. All together they kept each other in place. I don't know if you have seen the pictures of the 'Ghost ship' in the Baltics. The one with the upwards staring knight heads. When the ship hit the seabed at 120 meters the mizzen mast fell backwards, destroying the whole after structure....except the sides. They still stand straight.

Patrick, do yourself a favor and throw that book into the dustbin. There is nothing in it that has any relationship with real Dutch ships. It was published way back in 1969 by a group of German people who had not the faintest idea what Dutch shipbuilding was all about. In those days it might have been worthwhile, but nowadays the best thing I can say about it is that it is hopelessly obsolete. And I am withholding myself. 🙂

Try a plane by Halinski, for instance the Hurricane. Good chance that you get hooked.

Seems to me that you are a real convert when it comes to paper modeling.:-)

No, I would not call it a structural member in a way that it supports or connects other parts, but it sure has more functions than a decorative one only. It covers the cross-cut ends of the planking, and it adds to a more structural look of the situation there. We see that in other places too, for instance in the elaborate stern and quarter gallery decoration of the big ships of the era. Here the large horizontal deviders are being supported by many carved figurines, giving much strength to the whole structure. But without all these decorations the ships are absolutely capable of doing what they were built for. Does that answer your question?

That's the spirit Marcus, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Ron, as to your remark about the chainwales of the model at different heights, I think I know what the reason for that is. I was Park Canada's guest in the nineties in Ottawa, when this project was in its early stages. Robert Grenier and Brad Loewen studied this Basque whaling ship, which was found in Red Bay in a very inventive way: all the parts that were found at the seabed were meticulously measured and executed in wood at a 1/10 scale, inclusive all holes for trunnels and nails. The original wood was put back into the water for better preservation. In the lab all the separate parts were put together again, thus trying to unveil the method of building. I am sure that the chainwales that were found, only fitted where they were placed on the model. I agree it is unusual, but I know these researchers did a thorough job. That still does not explain the nasty rail on top in the back of the ship...

Remember Marcus: many people ran into the same problems with - as you do here. It is a very tricky shape to make. Many gave up. To tell you the truth, I discarded a small fluit-like model myself a month ago. (Edit: I just discovered that I told this story earlier. Sorry for that. It's the age, you know 🙂 ) I was trying my hand at a rather unknown type of ship, a 'wadconvooier', a small armed vessel to convoy merchants on the Zuiderzee between Amsterdam and the inlets between the islands up north the country. All I have as a source are some contemporary pictures, showing different vessels with the same function. On some pictures the type looks like a Statenjacht with an additional mizzen mast, on others it resounds the shape of a fluit. Nevertheless I (also) tried my hand at the fluit-like type and tried to get the widest point of the hull at the hight of the upper wale. I seriously failed because I used a design for another fluit, which was incorrect in this context. The model disappeared into the dustbin and I started anew. This is the Statenjacht-like type of the wadconvooier. To the left another 'watte convoyer' of unsure type. Probably fluit-like. Here an obvious fluit-like type. Mind the widest point at the second wale, where the man in the boat points at, as if he wants to warn me.... And here my first try, with a shape I did not like. As you can see the widest point is way too low. So it ended in the dustbin. And here the second try. The shape of the 'hips' comes closer to the one on the painting, but I'm still not completely convinced. This one might end up in the dustbin too... All I want to say Marcus, is that there is nothing to be ashamed of if you remove parts of your model, or even if you start all over again. Because remember, a mistake made in the beginning of the building process is like a pregnancy: it will only get more and more visible. 🙂 Now you still have the chance to improve your build. Take it. Ab

Not yet. But the good news is that the Rijksdienst voor Cultureel Erfgoed (Governmental Service for Cultural Inheritance) is almost finished with the preparations for bringing the 3D construction of Witsen's pinas online and there are plans to do the same with the fluit. There are still some barriers to overcome, but work, executed by a small firm called Tijdlab, is progressing fast and we hope to present the first online version in spring. I started pushing the project of the 3D presentation of the pinas (which is the only Dutch seventeenth century vessel we have all the data of) in 2006, but actually the reconstruction of the ship after contemporary data goes back to 1980, when I laid my hands on Witsen's book for the first time. The plans can be found here: https://nautarch.tamu.edu/shiplab/AbHoving.htm. The 3D work started in 2013, after the first initiatives stranded because of the financial crisis in 2008. I have good hope that we will be online early 2020. So be patient. Here an image of a walk on deck of the pinas:

Hi Marcus, Drastic, indeed. First: do you have a symmetry problem? Maybe it's the picture, but it looks like one side is closer to the middle than the other. Now your problem: you are making the hole for the helm much too big. Your planking ends way too early. You have to stretch the end of the planking as far as you can. Maybe things get clearer with a view on the unplanked stern of the fluit: This 3D representation was made with the help of my great 'partner in crime', Rene Hendrickx. As you can see the tops of the frame parts rise above the highest wale, so your planking should continue there as well. That will close the gap for a big part. Then you will end up with something like this: I hope this helps. Ab

Judged from the picture of your paper model you surely didn't bad. And you are right, the smell of wood is one of the secret treasures of life. But paper is faster to build with and once you get the hang of it, the result shows little difference with wood. I especially like the beautiful sheer of your model. Something I cannot say about the replica of the San Joan. Why is the top rail in the aft part of the ship visually dropping? I doubt if any shipbuilder of the past would accept such a horrible line. And for no obvious reason...

Hello Ron, Thank you, I am totally convinced. Still it is peculiar that the hight was as much as that. We've seen it in the Wasa in Stockholm. Incredibly high decks, and we all know how that ended.🙂 It seems useless to give a ship so much hight where is was neither necessary for the length of the people, nor for the hight of the guns, which was very low. And added to the number of decks fore and aft, which are sometimes visible on pictures, once should be inclined to have some doubts. No, no, although the way you worked your way through the available material is worth a paper in any case. No, what I meant was, that this hull shape could be a very nice template for a model built in paper. Perhaps you have seen my tutorial on building with paper (although in Eastern Europe you can find model builders on every street corner who are much more capable in the execution of the build). There are people out there who make beautiful paper kits of ships like this one...

Good! Perhaps you might consider to do the measuring from the waterline to the wales as well. It might prevent a bad curve...

Hello Ron, I am surprised to hear that I even have fans in Moskou :-). Your build is inspirational, especially because of the thorough research you have done. I remember I looked at the material for a long time because it is interesting to reach beyond the borders of the written data but never succeeded in making good plans from what was available, but you did it. You succeeded in getting a fine line in your design. Chapeau! I do have some positive criticism though. As you know the average number of frames for vessels of this era is 60-70. As the tops of your frames show on the inside of your bulwarks it might be an idea to add extra frames, quite simple as separate frame tops. They don't have to be worked into the top rail or the waterway but I'm sure they will improve the looks of the model. I also have some doubts about the hight of the model. As you have showed the cannons of those days were very low, compared to guns on carriages of a century later. That implies that the hight between the decks could be made significantly lower. The fact that people could not stand straight was of no importance to the builders, 1.50 m must have been no exception. I think your decks have a more than comfortable hight. Don't start ripping your model to pieces, what I say is just an educated guess. Furthermore I have no remarks, except that this seems to be a beautiful project to execute in paper. It will take away much of the costs that come with wooden kits. Just a suggestion...

Brilliant ideas often miss their aim in daily practice. When I joined the museum in 1989 it was practice to show restorations in shipmodels, for instance by not painting the newly added parts or using different colors for rope, so any modern changes were visible at once. The backdraw of that system is, that the viewer is still not looking at an object in a state in which it originally was. In fact the only parts of an object he keeps on looking at are the restorer’s corrections. We deliberately abandoned that method and kept precise reports of what was done to the objects instead. The object is for the public, the problems with keeping it in a presentable state is for the scientists. Total replacement of a rigging might be a no-no, but what if the complete rigging drops on the floor the moment it is touched? Tests to chemically repair the broken fibres in rope show that the result hardly looks like the same rope in better days. In theory some ideas seem so appropriate...untill the harsh reality shows its face. By the way, it is a remarkable fact that the idea of showing the restorations on the historical objects was never applied in the painting department, the museum’s most prominent workshop. One must be a genius to see what has been restored on our Rembrandts and Vermeers. Still, for technical objects like ship models the method of showing restorations seemed appropriate? In some cases yes, perhaps, in other cases no, rather not. Every objects asks for its own theoretic and practical solutions.

A great thread. Extremely well done, both in research and in build. I tip my hat for you sir!

Thank you for the undeserved praise, Justin. I doubt that there is a consensus on this side of the ocean for what I have done. What I think is interesting in your answer is that you mention curators who want things to be like new. Over here it is most important that the age of the object shows, being restored or not. A restorer is much more criticized for working too clean than for delivering a product that shows its age. Especially with metal objects it is hard not to make them too shiny. I remember a large brass quarter of a dry-dock which had to be restored and was therefore placed a few days in a reservoir with water with a mild cleaning agent. It came out shining like gold and that caused something like a panic under curators. As an experiment we once treated one of the pewter candlestick holders found on Nova Zembla, where they were left by discoverer Willem Barentsz in 1597 when he stranded there on his way to China through the North, with a very mild electric current in a basic bath (we call it electrolyse, but I can't remember the English term for it). It came out quite nice and clean, but panic again... I agree that for students it is important to know that every step they take should be considered over and over again, so you are doing your teachers job perfectly. The proces is to be reconsidered in every phase. Dogma's are good als long as one can deviate from them. I sometimes was jealous at my collegues of the painting restoration workshop one floor below my attic. They have the choice to select a method from a limited number of regular treatments, all tested and scientifically researched. In my field of work every restoration was a new experiment. Every object asked for its own treatment and there were a lot of methods to choose from. Many restorations were pure inventions, which made the work challenging every single day. Never a dull moment. Thanks also for the clips of the painting restorers. To many people the treatments seem extremely rude and messy, but as could be seen, there was no harm done (although I doubt I would have delivered the object as new as these ones. But fortunately I was not a painting restorer ). It is a beautiful profession and I enjoyed my existence in the museum every single day. As for the figurehead: we deliberately did not fill all the cracks and kept the guilding a bit 'damaged', as you can see here: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/zoeken/objecten?q=boegbeeld&p=3&ps=12&st=Objects&ii=5#/NG-NM-11549,29

I was afraid this was going to happen when I first saw this thread and I must say I am rather unwilling to jump in, because I cannot find my way through all these well-educated opinions and propositions. But as there seems to be no escape: here is my 50cents opinion. If I learned one golden rule about restoration/restoring, it must be that there is no golden rule. Hundreds of historical objects passed my hands in the 23 years of my active career in the Rijksmuseum and even looking back at all the processes of recovering or maintaining original objects I still cannot find a general line in the treatment of all of them. It is an unflinching law that everything that exists will disappear over the years and we can only try to stall that proces. Of course I must have 'repaired' some ship models in a way some of you would call a crime. But hey, what is the point in finding a beautiful but dismantled 17th century hull of a very rare 40-gun man-of-war and leaving it in that state, if such a model is needed in the museum's presentation. Is it allowed to take off the 20th century paint with which it was mistreated and rig it in the way how it to my best knowledge should be done? Of course I did all that and I'm proud I did. On the other hand I saw many ship models pass my workbench of which the running rigging was deteriorated beyond repair, but which still had a perfect standing rigging. I would be mad if I replaced both parts of the rigging. Whatever is still intact, I keep it that way. Fortunately I am a lazy person and nothing is better for a historical object than falling into the hands of a lazy restorer. But anything that is literally falling to dust has to be replaced. We had models in the depot which we passed on tiptoes because any shock would cause rigging parts to fall off. There is something I have to add here. Being a conservator in a museum mainly presenting art objects I always tried to fight for my own place between my respected collegues. A ship model in my opinion is not a work of art, although out of admiration we are most willing to judge it so if the build was done in exquisite way. But in reality it is a depiction of something technical. It shows for instance how the rigging was done, which allowed the vessel to sail the oceans. If such parts turn into dust (and I have seen many examples of that, carefully rubbing it between my fingers and ending with nothing but dust) and you want to maintain the intention of the maker, showing a working rigging, what harm have you done replacing the missing part with material as close as you can get? (The Victory in Portsmouth seems to be 'renewed' for over 90 % so I was told. Should all the rotten pieces have been still there, sooner or later we would have ended up with a pile of debris.) What is always interesting to see is the attitude of the curators. If we lived in a perfect world the curator was to be the one to say yes or no to a restoration or a technique. In practice dealing with objects is something completely different from what an average curator has studied. Doing archives was his training, not dealing with objects. So what happens is that the conservator (or restorer if you like) makes the decisions and carries them out. Next the curator ceremonially cries out about the mistreatment of the object, immediately followed by its placement in the showcase to show it to the public. I experienced this literally with an old figurehead of a knight in armor which was in a terrible state. Me and my co-operator closed the many cracks, re-applied the guilding and paint (after intensive research), added missing wooden bolts and repaired the not-original stand, at the same time suggesting a better solution to present the object. For a short time we were the talk the town and the next thing that happened was the installation of the object as it was in the hall as an eye-catcher. It is still there.... The bottom line? There is no golden rule. I applaud every researcher trying to find solutions to maintain old objects that show their age and I am most willing to apply any solution to solve problems without intervening in the object, but I am not a chemist, I only know a lot about ships and their ins and outs and I would be lying if I denied that every object I had in my hands has taught me something. The museum allowed me to have an extensive library both on technical ship-matters and on conservation techniques and I have always loved to find a happy marriage between the two. If you want one unavoidable rule in this matter it must be a deep love and respect for the object, but I'm sure every participant in this discussion feels that too, with apparently totally different outcomes.

I usually start with the waterline. You can simply do that by placing the model on an improvised stand and scribe the waterline with a pencil on a block. Then you can take the hight of the decks on several locations from the draught and mark them on the outside of the hull.

Thank you Toni for this wonderful tutorial. I hope everyone who still thinks long straight strips will do to plank a hull has understood that it is totally impossible. Maybe some of your readers are withhold from buying worthless kits for outrageous prices. You did a great job.