Ab Hoving

Which one would you like Brian? I can send you the file, take it to the print shop and have it printed. 150 100 cm is possible. You can even have it printed on perspex. Ab

Hello Hollowneck and Shipman, Thank you for your generous advice. As a matter of facts we did order a few dozens of hard copies of the booklet, just to serve as presents for family and friends. People order such one time books at companies to see their holiday pictures in print. Does that mean we will put it on the market after all? No, the printing costs are relatively high and will at least be doubled by postage and packing. Even if there is no fee for the makers, it still is too expensive for an occasional purchase and it will bring a lot of work for us. We can spend our time in a more useful way. So we publish it online and hope people enjoy it as much as we did making it. We even go further than that. We have sent people the digital file of the picture of their choice and many have printed them on perspex to hang on their walls. Here is one in my own house: Thank you all for your positive feedback!

On behalf of my son and myself: thank you all for your kind words and the likes. It keeps a man alife. Perhaps we should have published it after all. 🙂

This is not a book that is officially on the market. My son and I made it just for fun. We hope you like it too. Cut_and_paste_ENG.pdf

Hello Meriadoc, Reading your report I noticed that you built a combination of the two pinks on Chapman's page. The railing from the second design is a nice addition, works very well, but I wonder if the inward curve would have been as much as you have made. Such curves only seldom add to the nice sheer of the ship. You also seem to miss the connection between the railing and the decorated stern. I suppose the two squares in the stern were gunports? (Edit: no of course they are windows. Sorry for that.) No idea how to translate that into a useful setting so close to the helm. The color of the wood is nice. A suggestion: you write that you used paper handkerchiefs to wipe off the brown paint. Better try soft cloth, which is much softer than paper, leaving more paint on the model. You might also do some weathering near the scuppers (if you model them) and the hawse holes. I would be very hesitating to use the blue color you applied. Unless you will give it a wash in a later stage I would bring the deep color a bit down, probably by mixing it with a bit of white. I sound like Bob Ross’s ‘Happy little trees’, don't you think?:-) Making models from draughts, even as good as Chapman made then, always raises a lot of questions, which makes scratch building so interesting. This has been a very good learning project. I have high expectations of your next model. I did not finish the re-rig of my junk, due to having had Covid lately and to the heat-wave we are suffering here. Temperatures of more than 30 degrees are not the best circumstances for building models. I enjoy my days sitting on our jetty and watching the people on and in the water. Our house is at a big pond or a small lake, whatever you want to call it, and with these hot days it's a blessing. Good luck with this and your next paper project. Any progress with the 'wadconvooier'? Ab

I missed this post up to now. (I really should visit this site more often) Well done Meriadoc, you make me proud. For a first effort this is great. You will see that the next model in line will be twice as good. It is a steep learning process, but it pays off and it much more satisfying than building a kit (don't get me wrong, there is nothing against building kits, but without doubt you will have found out that doing it all by your self gives a deeper satisfaction). Chapeau monsieur! And a nice dog as well.... 🙂

Beautiful image of this gun. Were the wheels not built up in two layers of wood?

They were, but just on the front side. I asked the IT man who transformed the Delftship files in something useful for the internet. I'll keep you posted on his answer. Ab

Ah, now I understand. The colors on the inside are a regrettable result of working with 3D programs: each part gets its color right from the start and it gets it all around. In reality the inside of the hull was simply tarred brown to protect the wood. The colors were only applied to the outside. Sorry for the confusion.

Hello Petr, Good to see you are making progress with the pinas again. I didn't know there was a deviation in the plans. Originally there was. I made the drawings after working hours on the kitchen table on tracing paper, and it appeared that the paper had stretched after over a year having been rolled up and back. But to tell you the truth, when making the models, I never noticed any problems with them, because I work more 'by sight' than looking at plans. I admire your desire for perfection. I don't think I understand your problems: painted on the inside?. Anyway, you seem to have found a solution and the hull looks nice and sturdy, although I am not really a fan of plywood frames, but that's just a personal opinion. I suppose you will add a second layer of planking. Look out, the start is crucial. Try to find the correct position of the wales and fill in the rest of the planking. And yes, the ship is deeper at the stern. There even was a formula for that: For every 50 feet of length the stern was 1 foot deeper in the water. For the pinas that was about 2 1/2 feet (ca 70 cm). When I made my 1/50 scale wooden model I tested that in the bath tub: the difference between for and aft was spot on: about 1,5 cm! Indeed the keel was made out of three parts. It was all depending of the available wood. If there were trunks of sufficient length available they used two, in rare cases four were necessary, for smaller ship usually one piece was enough. Apparantly Witsen witnessed the building of this pinas and saw three pieces were used. Good luck, you are off to a great start.

😉

You are right, they look red. My guess would be rust, but who am I?

Yes, the ship remembers in many ways the Vasa, but also has characteristics of its own. I understand your priorities very well, I was surprised to see the progress you made in a relatively short time. It took Rene Hendrickx and me almost four years to work out every part of Witsen's pinas, so you are very fast indeed. Your bow shape is not very blunt, compared to the fluits I've seen. Looks good for a man-of-war. Your question about anchors is a tough one. I never read anything about painting anchors, but I would not be surprised if they were tarred. And of course (as wood tar is not completely waterproof) rust grabs its chance. For all safety I usually make my anchors black (or actually very dark brown- Van Dijk's Brown) and clutter them with red to mark unprotected rusty spots. But nothing is really sure. Are you certain about this observation that they were red on paintings? If they were, they certainly were not painted that way, we should have found amounts of red paints in inventory lists. Good luck with this Beautiful project.

Wonderful! No carlings underneath the ledges of the lower decks? Ab

Oh, and indeed such yachts were used for pleasure only. And in that case, shouldn't there be music on board as well?

Sorry, I have not been paying attention for a long time. Actually, I did nothing, but I asked my friend Rene Hendrickx to work van de Velde's sketch out in 3D with Delftship and he came out with this: For anyone interested to build the model, here is the Delftship file: VANDEVELDE 008.fbm Be my (our) guest. Ab

A beautiful job! Chapeau.

Beautiful!

Nice project GrandpaPhil. Impressive. I see it for the first time. I should visit this site more often. Best, Ab

I really like your research. Ab

No, thank you Heredia Bill. Your reaction is exactly why I wrote this tutorial. Have fun. Ab

Hi Meriadoc, Making pins is something you can do in detail, but you can also think it enough to cut pieces of wire and glue them in a strip of card. Once the rope is belayed on the pin, any detail is hidden, so why bothering making detailed pins? Except of course if you like making these details. In my experience the eye forgives a lot of shortcuts, as long as the overall look and the lines of the model are OK. If using card for the pinrail, the best to do is soak it with CA glue once all the pins are in. They can be filed or cut at even lengths after glueing. A support strip, invisbly glued underneath the rail will prevent the whole thing to be ripped off if the tense of all the lines becomes too much. I never experienced that actually, but better safe than sorry.

That would at least be a lot cheaper, but alas, the fabric of my shirts is a lot cruder than Navarra Fine Lawn White. I'm just a simple man....

In itself the idea of picking a sort-like ship as the one you are trying to replicate is not a bad idea. But according to my sources the Mayflower was an English ship and was built on a shipyard belonging to 'the legendary Darley family' (source: Wikipedia). That means the ship was definitely not a fluit. It must have been a simple English freighter. Perhaps you can find an example of such a vessel somewhere? As jaager suggested Mayflower kits have very little to do with the actual ship. They just (educated) guesses. If you consider building a fluit, there are better ways to get draughts. Kits are only seldom the starting point for a good model... Ab