Ab Hoving

The question is how the Brits and the Spanish did it. Were their methods comparable? I don't know. We know of two different methods in Holland and they do not seem to be connected. Conventional is a strange term in this respect...

The ships for foreign countries were usually built on private shipyards, for instance in Amsterdam, but Dutch shipbuilders also went abroad to build ships there. I don't know what you call a conventional method, but the Dutch used shell-first up to the end of the 19th century. Only the Admiralty yards were more progressive up from 1725. The Vasa was certainly built shell first.

Beterschap. Ab

The latter. I use Magic Sculpt, but there are other two-component products.

And apart from that: a ship can reach an age of over 50 years or more. During its existence it is adapted, changed, damaged, repaired, rebuild even, and still I get questions from people who urge me to declare that the drawing they use are absolutely trustworthy and correct. Come on, we build models for fun and hope to learn something from it. That's all. Some are better, some are worse. So what? Enjoy your hobby. It's the only thing of which you can decide everything upon in your life.... 🙂

Hear, hear. Well spoken!

If I understand you well you can win a prize in a competition by doing something totally wrong. Nice qualification for the jury... No offense to the organizers of competitions, but maybe one should not join a competition at all. It seems to me that the items the jury reviews have little to do with knowledge of ships and a lot with 'thumb-nail-polishing' and 'rivet-counting'. In Holland we have a word for it which absolutely will be banned from this forum when I write it down, but it has to do with an unnatural sexual relationship with ants 🙂. Personally I prefer a rather sloppy, but true model with the right atmosphere over a perfectly build wrong one. It must be my personal handicap that I refuse to compare one ship model with another on the basis on how totally random details have been applied. How nails and wooden pins are used may be in a drawing looking great, but I have made enough plans to know that more than half of what we draw is pure guess work, of which we hope it may be somewhere in the direction of a perfect depiction. Plans are not sacred. In my 60 years career as a model builder I never used a plan without changing all kinds of things in them. Just have fun building and let juries judge their own models....

Ondra, you are a gifted modeler. The maker of the plans must have had a great imagination, but wether his design is truthful or not, you are doing a magnificent job. And you have one mighty excuse: The shape of the model may be wrong, but up to now we don’t have any written or archaelogical clue how it really must have looked, so who are we to reject? No problem so far with your build. But just promise me to throw that horrible German book in the dustbin after you finished your model. It is no good as far as Dutch ships are concerned and there are four of them there, I believe. For all four we can say that any resemblance with existing Dutch shiptypes is entirely incidental. Good luck.

Hi Petr, Thank you for your kind words. If you need any help for your next project I will gladly assist, for as far as I am capabel. 🙂

Thank you Pete, and you are welcome. It is quite an honor to be an inspiration for somebody. You almost make me blush. Tools are necessary, but with some inventiveness you can come a long way. Before I had a lathe I made my guns with the aid of an electric drill in a vice. I cannot say they were really top, but for me at that moment they were satisfying. And that is the key. Why are we making models? What do we want to achieve? Finding out the answer to that question can save you a lot of money and head-aches. All my life I used to build models mainly to get answers to my questions about construction, building methods and design. Now that most of these questions have been answered I can work on how realistic a model can look. It is my conviction that making models realistic does not require details up the micron. If you look at a model, you are actually looking a the full size ship, just smaller because of the distance. That means that a lot of details are simply not necessary, as long as the overall impression of the model is correct. Who can see a nail at a distance of 100 yards? But that is just my opinion at the moment. In the past I did add parts that would never be visible unless the model was broken down. There are dozens of reasons to build ship models and they are all valid. The choice of material is absolutely of no importance, as long as you like what you make. In the end we do this for fun, don't we?

Beautifully executed!

Hi Marcus, The archives are treasure rooms for ship modelers. Thousands of specification contracts can be found. Not all of them useful, but many add a lot to what we (do not) know. I have been building models on the basis of contracts for years. Nowadays, with the help of my super Belgian co-operator Rene Hendrickx, that usually produces lines plans that form the basis of my models. Here are the ones we made of this 1680 warship. Of course they are basic and a lot has to be decided while building, which causes adaptations which are not in the 3D plans. Compare for instance the length of the decks in the aft part of the ship. Also details are not drawn in the plans. They have been made just to have a basic hull form to work on. Cannons made out of card is a quick and simple way to do it, but you have to be sure that they fit with the model you are making them for. I can imagine that for a wooden model they don't stand the test of looking real, but perhaps that is not true. You have to decide that yourself. If I look at the quality of many posts here on this forum I think for many of the builders here the solution is too simple.

I know this thread is about a 42-feet long pleasure vessel. But in a number of pictures I showed here a war ship popped up, which was the result of a project I did with a historian, Wilma Gijsbers, who discovered a specification contract in the Amsterdam Archive of a group of men-of-war for the Spanish king built on private shipyards. In itself a remarkable fact, but the fun for us started when the commissioner and the shipbuilder developed a disagreement about the way the work was done. Some of the frame parts were not sufficiently squared and according to the sources the work should have been stopped until everything was corrected as the commissioner wanted. A few weeks later, at the next inspection, the shipbuilder appeared to have continued the build without correcting anything. So **** hit the fan. The case went to court and after exhausting discussions consensus was reached. The interesting part of all this for us was, that the ship had to be measured after completion with the result that we were able to compare the data in the specification contract with the real ship as delivered. This showed us the limits of the freedom for the shipbuilder to interpret the data in the contract. The ship appeared to be 3 inches longer than the planned 143 feet, an inch deeper than the required 16 feet 2 inches and 6 inches wider than the ordered 28 feet. The keel was about 2 ½ feet shorter than planned and the transom was 1 ½ feet longer. This was normal business, the shipbuilder had to work with available wood and sometimes he had to deviate a little from the data given in the contract. I decided to build the hull, just to compare the dimensions to an earlier war ship I did, the Alkmaar of 160 feet long. I was not really after another model, but one way or the other it appeared to be interesting enough to keep building. Also the fact that the promised drawings for the pleasure vessel were not finished yet helped to decide to make this detour. It created the possibility to show some aspects of the build. In the beginning I simply forgot to take pictures, but the system can be seen as well explained on several occasions. The build is in a state now that it almost looks like a kit. All separate parts are ready, but not glued yet and the final finish is at hand. So far it took only about 6 weeks. The upper deck is shown with the bulkhead for the captain's cabin. Here the quarterdeck is added with the bulwarks for the officers quarters, and another bulkhead in front of the steering galley with free sight at the sails. This is where the helmsman stands at the whipstaff. Finally the poop deck with the bulkheads for sub officers quarters. All in dry fit. The method of painting can be shown here. I ‘plank’ my ships with strips of self-adhesive white plastic foil with a wood imprint. After applying a layer of primer the hull is painted with a yellow ochre oil paint above the waterline and a dirty white below. After half a week of drying the ochre is smeared with a dark brown oil paint called van Dijks brown. Once the paint is on, it is wiped off with a soft cloth, leaving enough dark color in the imprint to suggest wood. It also adds the right tone to the under layer. Here the hull executed in card. Here the hull is planked with plastic strips of self-adhesive foil. Three stages in the final painting: left the yellow ochre, in the middle smeared with Van Dijk's brown, right after wiping it off. Another point of interest for some of you might be the construction of the barrels for the guns. The carriages are simple enough, but for the barrels I tried to find something just as simple. Here you see the ingredients for 24 18-pounders in a scale of 1/44. 160 grams paper is used for the barrel, with a thin paper re-enforcement for the aft part. The muzzle is done with a narrow strip of the same paper as the barrel and the narrow strips for the decorative bands around the gun are from normal 80 grams printing paper. The backside with the pommelion is made from several sizes of card, done with a variety of punches. The axel has to have the same diameter as the hole in the barrel and the cheeks and bottom of the carriage, 1.5 mm in this case. Matt black paint finishes the job in this case, as these guns are cast iron ones. In case of bronze guns the diameters are different and there were dolphins mounted on top of the center part of the guns. But that might be material for another thread. Maybe you find this information useful and if not, just forget it. It’s just paper.....

Ah, that's clear. You will probably succeed.

A model of a model? But the Utrecht is an actual sailing ship. It can even be chartered. It sails on the IJsselmeer, mostly from Muiden, but lately I spotted her in Volendam. She was fun to build.

You are absolutely right. Besides, you picked a real good kit, done by my friend Herbert Tomesen, owner of the Artitec company. There will be more goodies to come in the near future.

I lived in Amsterdam from 1989 to 2006. I love the old towns in the country. Like the one I was born, up North in Groningen. Is Paris an improvement?

I live there too. We could have met...

I missed this post, because it was way before I joined this forum, but it really is great. You succeeded in getting the atmosphere right. Chapeau! Ab

Piet, I hope the storm doesn't hit you too much over there. I envy your sharp eyes and steady hands that enable you to make such tiny models. Wefalck, Thank you very much for your elaborate reaction to my plea for help and information. As it seems there is a wealth of possible materials to make sails from. The point is what you aim to achieve. Through a former colleague at the museum I am in contact with a person who has an enormous collection of kinds of paper, all for restoration purposes. He gave me several sheets to practice. What seems most promising is a material that is called Japanese paper. It comes in several thicknesses and it is hand made. I will do some tests, but before I received the material I already had some sails ready from thin cotton and treated them in the usual way with starch and a hair dryer. The result is not too bad, but the whole discussion started because these sails are too neat. Staining them in an 'accidental' way is not what I am looking for. I will get deeper into this later, but for now I used the cotton, maybe to be replaced later by a better material. The best stuff in that aspect I ever obtained was a very fine linen, that was removed from the back of old maps. The paper was washed off and I never saw a finer cloth. It also beautifully bellowed when treated with hot air, as you can see on the pictures of the busses going home a few posts back. But my collection of it has come to an end, so another challenge awaits me. My main demand is that the sail should bellow in a natural way and I doubt it that can be done with paper. Your Japan silk might come more in the right direction of what I am looking for. For folded sails however I am sure paper is the right material. Your explanation for darker material for repairs of sails makes much sense. I can live with that. And in the end, the main purpose of modelbuilding is to have fun. If it all gets too complicated I'd better take a tour with my wife on our electric bikes :-). Here some pictures of the speeljacht. Not finished yet, but some things were in the way: a 143 feet long man-of-war, which suddenly crossed my path and had to be made for some reason (don't ask me why, I have very little with war ships. All dry fit on the shots, first a lot of gun carriages have to be made.), the hot weather lately (which has fortunately finished now) and the fact that I want to present the end result of the pleasure vessel together with the 3D drawings my friend Rene makes and which are almost, but not yet completely, finished. I also spent too much time on the crew, on which a lot of work still has to be done.

Absolutely top class.

Wonderful idea to make a paper Telecaster. But building a real one is not too difficult. I built this one for my grandson. In fact it is a cheap kit, with a new coat of paint, a corrected neck and improved hardware (better pick-ups and better tuners) I had still in stock from earlier days when I built electric guitars just as a hobby...

Thank you Max, this is a good tip. Perhaps I can find an address in Holland as well. But making a link to teabag paper is most useful. I contacted my old colleagues in the Rijksmuseum for a supplier and I'm sure they will come up with something.

Hi Jan, No, I don't have any plans for new books. Literally. The plans I use for my models are from various sources and are not so elaborated that anyone could build a model from them. There is a lot of guessing involved and I make a lot of mistakes. My 'speeljacht' for instance suffers from a floor that is laid too deep. In the case of this vessel real plans (with corrected hight of floor) will be the outcome, thanks to the cooperation with my magical Belgium partner, Rene Hendrickx. They are almost finished, anyone who wants to give it a try can ask me for a copy, I will gladly send it over. To write a book is not too much work. To fill it with plans, pictures, footnotes and tables of sources is killing. I don't know if I can or want to after the ten I did.

No Marcus, it's not a cat. It's a herring buss. A small three-masted vessel, built for herring fishing. There were thousands of them, fishing near the English coast, which is why they were often protected by war ships. You can find more information here: http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/ships-watercraft/36353-another-17th-century-dutch-workhorse-12.html I'm not really following the types in my book, it's just an ongoing process. Soon I will be out of small ship types and I will have to build the bigger ones. 🙂 I like to illustrate my posts because the founder of the Navy collection in the Rijksmuseum, Jochem Asmus, once stated that a model explains more than a thousand words. In my opinion a picture of a model explains at least more than a hundred words. Which keeps my postings short. 🙂