Ab Hoving

It has been a while since we had the short conversation about the material to choose for natural looking sails. I jumped into several experiments after wefalcks suggestion of using paper for sails and I managed to get all the paper I needed. However, I never succeeded in creating the result I was looking for. So I went on searching for the right kind of textile. Thanks to one of my former collegues at the museum I managed to get some stuff called 'voile cotton' that answered my needs. Since the hull of the man-of-war I referred to earlier in the thread was finished, I decided to try my hand on an experiment with almost windless conditions like on this Van de Velde painting in the Rijksmuseum: Because I don't want to hurt my back too much I prepare my masts, including blocks, sails and lines on the table. In this picture sails and blocks are in position, lines still have to be added. Here the sails are sprayed with starch and dried with a hair-dryer, while modeling them in the shape I want. Purpose is of course to get natural shapes, expressing the weight of the sails together with the little wind that furls them. Hard to explain I'm afraid. All the lines are temporarily belayed at the mast-foot, they will be attached at the right locations later. And this is how it will all look after completion. The main mast still has to be done. The shrouds and stays of the foremast can be fixed now, after which braces, bowlines and tacks follow. Sorry for my lousy photography techniques. By the way, my pleasure vessel experiment, the subject of this (a bit confused) thread, has led to a kit, produced by Kolderstok (http://kolderstok.nl/speel-jaght.html). Kits are not my cup-of-tea, but this one is unusual in the sense that the traditional egg-box system with its terrible straight-planks-method has been replaced by a sort of shell-first technique. Because Rene Hendrickx, my super-Belgian partner-in-crime, created the shapes of all the planking for the boat, the kit is built by using a pdf-mold, used to temporarily support the laser-cut planking. Thus an empty shell is created after lifting from the mold, which can be finished like a real hull. A new development in kits in my (limited) vision for a very reasonable price. Sorry if I overlooked kits which followed the same method, as I said, kits are not really a point of interest for me. Here a page from Kolderstock's three language manual, showing what I mean.

Don't you think it would be wise to mark the lines of the bottom, the bilges and the lower wale on the hull before applying any strakes? That way you can monitor the various widths of the planking to avoid nasty corrections higher up the hull. The bottom is roughly 2/3 of the total width, the top of the bilges were mostly reached with three (sometimes 4) strakes. The position of the lower wale is there already, but has to be fine-tuned to ensure a fluent line. This is essential!

For the time being you get the benefit of the doubt. If this really works it would be a fantastic system. But how to deal with ending planks in the bow and extra planks in the stern? Like here: You really got my attention, Marcus.

Very smart idea, but I have some doubts. In real life not a single plank in a ship is straight. How will you follow the lines with straight planks?

Not really complicated. The ship is 120 feet. Over that distance 4 1/2 planks are needed to go from fore to aft (of course you get away with shorter planks because you don't have to cover the entire 120 feet, but that is all marginal). So 120 divided bij 4 1/2 is 26, 6 feet, which equals 7,75 meters. Of course these are not specific measurements, just estimations with a wide margin. Clear?

If your planks are going to be 7,5 meters in a scale of 1/37,5 you have to divide 750 cm by 37,5, which is 20 cm. The butts should be a littler bit over 2,5 cm long. It's elementary, my dear Watson...:-) By the way, the list of ship's parts I was referring to is only in the Dutch version of my book (page 296), not in the English one.

Here is a picture of the butts. It is from a 90 feet long wreck (E81) from 1660.

Excellent question Marcus, In Witsen's book there is list of parts needed to build a 120 feet long fluit. He specifies the planking needed as 4 1/2 for every strake for this length. That means that every plank is about 27 feet, which is roughly 7,50 m. I don't see any reason why that should be different for deck planks. Don't forget that the butts of the planks overlap each other for the width of three frames, which is more than a meter.

Seems to me that the operation was a success. Maybe you should try to get the opening a bit rounder, so that it can be finished with carvings. Not really complicated. Well done, Marcus.

Yes? And the end result?

Yes, it's definitely water based, probably some methyl alcohol as well. At least it does not smell as sharply as the car fillers. Don't think you can use other fillers though. I tried a lot and this one works the best, but the others weren't too bad either. I read on the tube: mixture of 5 chloor-methyl-4-isothiazolin-3-on [EC no 247-500-7] and 2-methyl-2H-isothyasol-3-on [EC no 220-239-6](3:1). Now, if that is clear to you I would be surprised, it does not ring a bell for me. But it's great stuff! :-))

Hello Terry, My compliments for your research and vast report on your activities. You are doing great. I am afraid you estimate me higher than I am. As for Delftship I have never had the intention to work with the program, having already so much help from my talented and enthusiastic friend Rene Hendrickx. So in a technical way I am not the one who can add something to your considerable efforts. I will send this thread to Rene though, but don't expect too much of it. Not because Rene is unwilling, but because being Belgian his command of English is at a lower level than his Dutch (or Flemish) and French. Maybe he will pass some remarks about your work through to me and in that case I will certainly keep you posted. Keep up the good work, Ab

Hello Tony and Tony... Funny how a thread from a year ago suddenly appears to be alive.:-) The question about the right kind of filler is a very good one. It does make a difference which type is used. That is because some kinds are quick drying, but only at the surface and they shrink when at last the lower layers have dried too. I am afraid you have to test some brands yourself, because I wonder if the type I use is available in your country too. The stuff I like most, because it does not shrink, even if a layer of 2 mm is applied is: Houtplamuur (wood filler) Universal by Alabastine. It does not dry as quick as for instance the fillers that are used in car repair, does not smell at all and can be sanded after an hour, provided you did not smear too much and too thick. Use thin layers of filler and allow to dry as long as you can. You can get information at: info@alabastine.nl Hope this helps. Ab

OK Marcus, here you go... Remember that lousy sketch I drew you? Grab that batten you screwed to the sternpost and place it where you had it. Now you have the right position for the taffrail. Make it from card first to get a good fit and then glue your wooden version between the ship's sides, tight to the front side of the batten. Now you can remove the batten and the excess of the planks sticking out backwards. Then show me a picture again. Best of luck, man.

He sends you his best wishes and if there are any questions...shoot.

Show me a view from behind. We should be able to solve this.

It is really a pleasure seeing that Rene's lessons did lead to beautiful results. Well done!

You are really capable of creating a tremendous mess, Marcus.:-) Can't wait to see the rest... Ab

Just because you asked, Bob: Shellac seems to be a product we forgot. That's a pity because it is a most versatile means of protection for many materials. I once read somewhere that the characteristic 'helmets' of the English Bobbies were made of velt soaked in shellac. Don't know if it is true. My experience with it as a varnish is that it works fantastically on wood. Many late 18th and 19th century models in my depot were done with it and only in cases the models were exposed to a lot of water, for instance as a result of a leaking roof, the material flaked and showed up white. Mostly because the wood underneath worked. It was also easy to replace. Alcohol removed the old remains almost immediately. Bringing on new layers was another story. All remnants had to be removed completely or they would show up very nastily after drying. That indicated that it was hardly possible to touch up an existing layer with some damage. If it had to be repaired, all had to come off. Bringing on the first layer was never a problem. But a second layer could end up in a disaster if the first one was too thick and a third layer almost always was a no go, unless you worked very quickly and never touched areas for a second time with your brush, otherwise you most probably ended up with a nasty slippery looking result. It could be sprayed though, but the result was (in case you did not have a spraying box with air suction) that in a matter of seconds you were standing in a thick fog of dried floating particles of shellac. For french polishing it was great too, though very time consuming. I have used it occasionally for securing knots, but always from a container that was deliberately left open for a couple of days. The material became more condensed and spreading through the textile was limited much more than when using the freshly diluted stuff. To be honest, I don't use it any more after I retired, although I do have a few bottles of it standing on the shelf and sometimes I look at them with a vague feeling of home-sickness. I use anything I can lay my hands on, even CA, to force my materials to behave the way I want them to and I don't care much about the longevity of my products. We are not here to stay forever and the same is true for my models. I'm only interested in their looks, not in their age :-).

You Eastern European guys are so extremely neat in your work, which almost makes me jealous. You are years ahead of here in Western Europe.

This is probably a copy of an older image. The spritmast dissappeared after 1750.

Hello Eberhardt, Mr. Schmidt seems to have a great idea for sails during a windless moment. To capture such moments in hanging sails is one of the most difficult things to achieve. I wonder if it works for billowing sails as well. Anyway, I wil reactivate my contacts with my former collegues, hoping they can help me testing this new idea. Thanks for your reaction and also to all the people who 'liked' my contribution. I suppose we can safely close this thread now. Ab

I left this thread alone for a long time. Not because I lost interest, but there were so many more things on my table (an on my mind actually). First I should get back to the discussion about the materials used for sails. I always used a very fine linen cloth to bellow it with starch and a hair dryer, but the bottom of my stock becomes visible and wefalck suggested I might give paper a try. In itself that seemed logical, as I am using paper for the hulls as well, but I never found my way in 'building' sails. A former colleague at the museum directed me to a gentleman in Haarlem (also a restorer) who had stocks of all sorts of paper. Indeed he was kind enough to supply me with some various sizes of wonderful hand made Japanese paper. I tried to make sails with it, but never succeeded in producing a real natural shape with it. Another former colleague sent me new textile material. Not exactly what I used before, but very well suitable for my purposes. So I made new sails for the yacht with it. Originally the question of the material used arose because my sails always look too clean and tidy. I thought it was impossible to apply paint after I used starch to get a natural shaped sail. For reasons of practicing Seahorse's method of double planking paper hulls without the use of filler I needed draughts of a simple vessel. I chose a tartan from Chapman's wonderful collection of draughts Architectura Navalis Mercatoria because of its simple shape and I successfully applied Seahorse's method in the construction of the hull (thank you Tomek). Rigging a lateen sail ship is very quick compared with square rigged ships, so I thought I give painting its sails a try. If things went wrong it would not take much time and effort to replace them. Anyway, painting starched sails with Acrylic paint appeared to be possible indeed, although I need a lot of practice before the result will be really satisfying. I like this small vessel with its exiting lines very much and wonder why I always get back to Dutch vessels. Probably because foreign ones ask so many more questions I cannot answer than Dutch ones... A week later my son and I received a request to do a book sleeve for a book about a fluit ship that was taken by a North African corsair. Pure coincidence. Once the real pictures are taken and Emiel has done his graphic job I will show the results. In the mean time my miracle-Belgium friend Rene Hendrickx finished the 3D model of the pleasure vessel and since this little boat is still the subject of this thread (believe it or not) I can offer the draught to anyone who wants to build this lovely ship type and we even have the shape of the planks right now. If you have the free downloadable shipbuilding program DELFTShip on your 64-bits computer, I can even send you the file, so you can view this model in 3D inside and out. Just send me a PM in case you are interested. Back to the working table, where a Dutch 1600 galley waits for my attention. Another project I got lured into by my former boss at the museum, Peter Sigmond, who is about to publish a book about that stormy period in Dutch history. But that model is again part of a totally different story, maybe another time...

The interior and the decks and their naming are dependent of the sort of fluit. As you know the type was extremely versatile and the internal devision varies just as much. In the case of the Zeehaen, a VOC fluit, it is very much like the usual devision. A - Hold B - Cable tier C - Hell (small compartment used as detention space) D - Cheese and bread room E - Powder room F - Lower deck (in Dutch: overloop. comp.: orlop) G - Gun room (In Dutch: konstabelskamer) H - Upper deck (in Dutch: verdek) I - Forecastle (in Dutch: bak) covered by the 'bakdek'. J - Steering stand (in Dutch: schans or stuurplecht) covered by the 'halfdek' K - Captain's cabin (in Dutch: kajuit) L - Upper cabin (in Dutch: hut) covered by the 'campagnedek'. For the simple mostly smaller cargo variant the lower deck was called 'koebrug'. It was only used for storage of goods which have to be kept dry and was not accessible for the crew. The crew's quarters are behind the koebrug and behind that is the cabin, which was used by the whole crew. The skipper used the upper cabin above. On such ships discipline was much different from men-of-war or East-India-men. The crew was small (about 12 men), of which most of them were very familiar, originating from the same village or region. Food was better too and not rationed. I hope this explains it a bit.

Your project almost starts to resemble a restoration project. 🙂