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Nikiforos

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  1. Nikiforos
    Quick update Now, about something that I pointed to earlier that sort of stood out from Sahure's ship imagery after staring at them for an age of man. In the second image below, if you look closely, the multiple 'eyes of wadjet' oculi posts overlap from front to back, very clearly. Its obvious in the first image. I believe them to represent either a parallel-ordered or v-shaped 'forecastle'. In the images of Unas' tripods, we are not looking at one single stem/sternpost but two planks -in a v-shaped construct. The kit and every other representation out there has a single plank for stem/sternpost. This how I'm going to bash my Byblos-ship -- three masts and v-shaped sternposts, the stem slot already taken by the heron. The centre mast leg sits behind the bottom most mast support whereas the other two sit in front -a real tripod structure. No major modification needed to the kit here -perhaps larger stones is all that is required along with a brace that conjoins at the bottom of the mast structure. More soon, Hercules Poirot, discoverer of ancient things. Eh bien. Note the incense burner? and oil-jug? at the prow. In the kit some of these structures are belaying ties, if that's the right word. Amati's interpretation, from their website. Extrapolating all this detail from side profiles in Sahure's tomb is bound to be full of errors, as mine will be. We are talking 4,500 years ago since this thing pottered down the red sea in excruciating heat to collect ebony from Ethiopia.
  2. Nikiforos
    Really looking forward to observe how you overcome the challenges I endured trying to get this going. I named it the SS Purgatory after days of fighting with it. AL's big problem with these kits were a lack of scale plans, but as they're bust, no hope of salvation on that front. Best wishes,
  3. Nikiforos
    Down with pancreatitis, which has meant a short hiatus. But two pics. The first is VERY interesting. Any ideas as to why? And a terrible joke. I make no apologies for it. More when there's something concrete to show, at present a lot of cedar is going on as second planking but sloooow lyyy. How to demarcate between irregular shaped hull planking? Why, my secret weapon... Expensive pencils each costing more than they should. I use light and darker wood tones, ivory and verdegris as base. Black is too harsh at 1:50 scale. Keep them sharp with sandpaper at all times. More soon.
  4. Nikiforos
    Looking forward to seeing them, Phil. You can sneak 'em in here if you'd like. Also, does anyone know whether this model is mass market ... somewhere, or a one-off museum made-to-measure? It's Late Kingdom (unsure), I think Queen Hatshepsut's Punt ships despite the blurb behind it. Thanks! Note the hogging truss essentially the same deal as if 1000 years before although this beautiful ship has a proper keel. The decoration at the stern is a painted lotus flower of cedarwood. As for paint, it is thought medium green painted hulls were widely seen on the Nile and on the seas. Time to grab some very thinned green wood dye and do some tests, then. It might look smart on Byblos-ship. Marie Celeste, Hatshepsut style.
  5. Nikiforos
    Phil -- your advanced skill level could enable you to crank out these charming boats easily enough. I think Landstrom's amazing work would give you 100% of everything you'd need; it's an outstanding tome, either for painting or for modelling. Do you have a link to your paintings? Ron -- thank you for that. I'm scanning amazons .de, .fr, .co.uk regularly as I can't borrow this copy forever. .Com might be a little steep in postage from our US friends. Some small update. This is the cutout section with roughly how a tripodal mast will operate within. The kit correctly advises placing 0.25mm halfa grass (lol - not really) around each longitudinal half-round, on all four inner sections. It's also correct to add the roping in between as illustrated. Might as well make them whilst we're working in this section. The darker working pic is a genuine photo of the procedure as it was in Unas' day. It has aged well : ) Fun Factoid Unas (our tripod Pharaoh) may have received popular veneration as a local god of Saqqara until as late as the Late Period (664–332 BC), nearly 2000 years after his death. --wikipedia. All cedar interior. Posh! Image for discussion purposes only. Note the kataphrakta style walkway.
  6. Nikiforos
    John. Curiously, this is the ship I was reading about when you posted. It's not terribly different structurally to the Byblos ship, i.e. it is keel-less or flat bottomed and was paddled. Being a river vessel there's no intricate mast and related mechanisms but otherwise you yourself could build this using Landstrom's book and some perfectly flat pieces of wood (and tons of string). The original built of cedar (except the plank pegs, of sycamore) could be a good idea! Looks like a really worthwhile addition to extant kits (at £150). Thank you for the link. GrandpaPhil and Edward, my previous post shows my next build. The little 'canoe' image therein and below is pre-Dynastic, pre-Thinite and looks to be perfect for an initial foray to the Dark Side. It is literally 5 or 7 straight sections of cedar with a solidly lashed thwart (framed) section to prize these sections outward forming the canoe shape, as per the original. The rest is making paddles and a deckhouses made from sections of sculpting material. And a mini palm tree. Scale? 48th, maybe. Not too big, not too small. We're talking roughly 5,000 years ago (hard to be sure like all things of this long-ago age) this vessel was thought to be seen on the Nile. Perfectly simple for someone who is routinely defeated by Lego brick models. (Composed with vim 8.0 under NetBSD) : P :wq! Haifa grass is thought to have been used alongside flax for general planking and papyrus binding work. It's still being used today where synthetic fibre will not suffice.
  7. Nikiforos
    Your work is beautifully organic, if that's the right word. The woood flows like it is of liquid. Most excellent.
  8. Nikiforos
    Very atmospheric. Lots of care going into your figurines so take a bow...
  9. Nikiforos
    I really must start using my NetBSD (yea, UNIX is wonderful still) desktop to post to fora. Twice now this stupid tablet being so skittish in physical design erased my long reply because an ant moved 2mm 1 mile away. Android O with split view is a monster pain in the rear and compounds the pain. Allow me to reply using my desktop, later. Thank you, gentlemen.
  10. Nikiforos
    Nothing to show, until the beginning of next week but was thinking; "What on earth will I do with all that cedar, once Byblos is complete? I seem to have run out of 'ancient' ship kits too". It's true. Dusek's trieres I think is too boxy or square and the deck support stanchions lack the distinctive curvature of Olympias (yea, Olympias needn't be Gospel). Mantua's 'Caesar' and Amati's lolokontor are not worth the money one being a balsa and putty nightmare ...thing and the other a half-hearted copy of the out of scale Heller/Academy/Zvezda plastic .. thing. Nothing else out there to enjoy in the ancient boat genre. Viking vessels are really a bit too modern for me. Seems a shame. Well, taking Stephen's advice, something simple over at the Dark Side... 🤨 Thanks to all you stalwarts who offer advice, likes and the time spent reading this chaos...
  11. Nikiforos
    Flawless, and has its own unique stylised look too. Thumbs up!
  12. Nikiforos
    I'm a flag nut but rather new to boats and ships, clearly. The Holy League device triggered something off, like Pavlov's dogs. Wrong century, o my... That's embarrassing. So far more than £500 -but museum pieces can be built from them, so it's not an unreasonable base cost. I really do appreciate the correction, GrandpaPhil. Silly errors like this must be called out when they occur. Nika the Contrite.
  13. Nikiforos
    La Really? Or (instead) Hull Lotta Love! It doesn't specifically mention it (it's drawn in the oar drilling plan) but (of course) bevel the bulkheads to the flow of the deck so the layers of hull planking adhere as best as they possibly can to maximum surface area. If you skimp this the planking will run too short on either side. Very important obviously. Now the boring bit which you'll note that I have deliberately ignored until now. I loathe planking hulls, it makes making photo-etch belt buckles an example of utter, unabandonedly delerious, eternal epiphanies by comparison. The question here is either to pre-shape some cedar exactly the same sizes as the supplied tilia and join both at the same time. Or. Make the hull as normal and afterwards add the cedar strips roughly corespondent. In no way should the kit's supersoft lime strip be left as final. By the way, veneer can be surprisingly brittle so either way, extreme care is required. Here a section of the bottom of the somewhat boxy hull is wrapped around an orange lid to give the correct curves on which the remaining planks will sit, after soaking for 1 hour. A hairdrier will set it all. The inner bulkheads all roped up and please note the stanchions. Landstrom has them rounded off like crutches, so these will need shaping. Finally, the stem post (ankh post) was carved from beechwood to replace the walnut kit part. It looks more tonally correct. Also I'm wondering whether to carve a new heron, make him a bit more ferocious. Or a dog's head. Don't know yet. Fun Factoid. During the Middle Kingdom and onwards, carved hedgehog heads were used as stem decorations. Your guess is as good as mine. Below, is its donor model, my Thracian pentekontor half-built. It was replaced with a standard Argo-like sternpost. More later this week, La Real fans. : ( Just noticed how the thick grapevine support is merged with the hypozomata. I stared long enough at this image and didn't notice until today. Hedgehog-face.
  14. Nikiforos
    Oho. Good Lord.... Mindless Newb reporting in. Thank you for the correction -it's really appreciated and apologies for the error, OP. How much would both kits cost? Has to be £500 if it's a penny. Nika the Genius.
  15. Nikiforos
    Greetings to you. Please disregard this post, it's only the wrong ship. *cough* See GrandpaPhil's explanation below. I am sure Dusek has this 'flag' set in his Real. Fourth image from his website. Mr Dusek is one of the nicest fellows out there so perhaps a nice email? Otherwise here's some images that could be scaled down. I'll try to relocate some more museum images like the original for you today. 1st image ... *sigh* money, money, money... Of course, I could be wrong but the Osmanoglu navy flew red pennants, solid red in some cases (like Morroco, Oman etc), so red for the holy League might have been a bit confusing at a distance. However, there's nothing to contradict those colours being incorrect away from the Lepanto fight.
  16. Nikiforos
    Beautiful. Take a bow.
  17. Nikiforos
    Sincere condolences, I am sorry to hear this news. Otherwise, very glad to have found this log. An exceptional work. One detail; the personal 'device' -- the red fabric 'flags' of the kit looks wrong to me. The ship was a private vessel that iirc flew the Holy League (distinctive blue with Jesus' crucufixion detail) colours like this: Best regards,
  18. Nikiforos
    Hectic weekend but back on topic for a tiny update. The internals of Byblos has plenty of 0.25mm rope re-inforcement, here being set with 50/50 aliphatic/water before some flat varnish goes on. The top yard assembled with 0.75mm rope and similarly set. The 0.25 is your actual golden hemp, courtesy of Mr Dusek's pentekontor. It looks really good though you can't really see it here to effect. All the locating holes for the hogging trusses are in. Exciting isn't it? Taking one's time always pays dividends, but not terribly rivetting to read. Naturally, all visible traces of plywood erased as you can see on the pebble section of the hull framing. It is the only way. More shortly. My friends, meet some Vallorbe files. I simply cannot fail with these trusty minions to hand. That's the script anyway. Just an addendum -- Landstrom's 'unknown' deck objects look obvious enough in this depiction. Note the religious gear at the prow, the weighty hogging truss(es) and some very curious hieroglyphs on the hull. 😟 Egyptians in de nial. Hm.. Note the oar lashes on this one. Some really easy-to-miss detail.
  19. Nikiforos
    Try Sapele, Sapelly veneer; cut your own strips. Search for your local 'wood veneer' supplier -Sapele is usually in the .lower price range (@£5 at least here in England) for a rough example of 250 cm x 15 mm x 0.6mm. Do refine your search to exclude adhesive backing - often your header will be 'decorative veneer'. Not everyone will enjoy working with great scads of veneer, but you want black or white ebony veneer? Paduak? Cedar? It's always avaiable in veneer. Plus, most offer small 10mm x 15mm -ish samples. Might be enough for that tiny piece of deck furniture... Nika
  20. Nikiforos
    Thanks, Binho, my friend. Very useful indeed! Although not specifically attracted to Old Kingdom or indeed Egyptian sea-going ships (Sasanian ship info is almost non-existent in the West), the Egyptians' ancient tech, when most of the world were scudding about in dug-out logs, was simply remarkable, as is backed up by sometimes millimetrically correct mastaba and/or pyramid's structural engineering. Some New Kingdom Royal ships must have been 'out of this world' to have witnessed much like the Roman 'sixes' and larger, millenia later. The Landstrom book is gold, by the way. And expensive. But excellently expensive. ==== Anyway, after nearly seven years of fighting ths good fight and having lost one whole kidney, two renal glands, one spleen, a bit of lung and a bit of the pancreas' tail, my latest six month scan for Stage 4 Renal Cell Carcinoma came good. I'm one of the tiny percentage who dodged enough bullets to be here, still typing away today. Stage 4 RCC. Soooo lucky. Building model ships has helped in the past year; it's become a real assist in clawing back my life. Not just the sawdust but the incredible and inspiring research others have prepared for us. Y'know? One thing: Don't be complacent, ladies and gentlemen. Get checked out. Phone your doc's receptionists for an appointment. My 2kg tumour snook up on me in 2013 -never even suspected it was there -don't let these evil things do the same to you! Get yourself checked out! Sermon over : }
  21. Nikiforos
    It is at this point that we must decide whether to open up another section of the hull in order to reveal a space to place those ebony logs. But there is supposition that all wares were simply carried on deck. But, too, there are drawings of a sort of katafrakta (centrally planked walkway) type hull, in Lindstrom's book - limited beneath-deck storage space a possibility? I think it doubtful as the guts of these ships could have been horribly fragile and expensive wares worth good money but clearly I haven't the expertise of Mr. Landstrom or his judgment. That noted, how projections like his are made from bas-relief side profiles with no other archeological material or model finds, are beyond me, frankly, but I'm just a poor boy from a poor family. Easy come, easy go. So to recap this stuff in the hope of streamlining the log, let's say there are three interpretations of the Byblos Ship we can base our model upon. 1. Dr. Sotas' rounder hull rendition. 2. Mr. Landstrom's extrapolations to include the lack of deck bracing, the sharper hull and even a deck-house or tent in one drawing. 3. Amati's version which is very close to Landstrom's. Well, it has to be 2 with a nod to 3 by default, obviously. Not to say 1 is wrong as variations must have existed in the day. So... 1. Rear deck planking present. 2. No oar upright supports. 3. Sharper hull shape (praise be) 4. Slightly different truss girdle fore and aft. 5. Bare deck. But see 7. 6. Anchor. 7. Deck-house? Tempted... See image below. 8. Lower yard included. 9. Remember Howard Carter. But primarily using the tripodal ship image as an overarching template. Phew. All clear now, hopefully. I'll put all my sources at the very end of this log for future Byblos-fanciers. More shortly. Not that it matters a great deal but the tripodals are from Pharaoh Unas' burial site. Still 5th Dynasty.
  22. Nikiforos
    Stephen, Do you usually use oils and/or enamel as (occasional) replacements for acrylic on larger structures, or are you perhaps one of these acrylic-only eccentrics? ♟️ Re-read your earlier posts. Good job! I loathe acrylic paint with a dedicated passion. Have an internet gold star or two and a Polish flag. 🇵🇱 ?
  23. Nikiforos
    So this book is considered to be the definitive work on all of this. It was written in 1970. Specifically for the Byblos ship it looks like Amati used it as Gospel; the above image and plan views for the rounder hull is incorrectly interpreted (inasmuch as everything flows from Aboukir's 'line-drawings'. Except: According to Landstrom, his drawings remove the planked 'grid' on deck AND the latitudinal stitched 'chords'. I could only read the book for a short time, at the owner's house, and the asking price for the title is way over my budget but one that was the obvious visual clarification. Furthermore -- There are no paddle 'supports' either; Amati got that one too. There IS planking for the 'helsmen' as per Amati. The hull shape is narrow because it fared better in open seas (not verbatim). Amati correct. There is a bottom yard for the sail. Yardless, per se, not seen until the Late Kingdom, it is suggested. Hypozomata used as a single hogging truss (he makes a case for an additional lower zig-zag one, but my time ran out and it wasn't apparent on his drawing). Edit: he means the zigzag girdle, as in 'hull's side stitching', not the truss. Amati omitted some 'inconclusive' deck objects that befuddled Landstrom. Fair enough. There appears at Aboukir religious paraphernalia beneath the sternpost. An urn or small altar or the like. As for my chosen tripodal masted ship, nothing much changes here despite the less detailed bas-relief. Stephen's suggestion of a simple strengthener is what I choose here for ma boat. The grapevine coils are to 'tie down' slaves and transported cargoes in addition; that's my theory, come what may! So today is tidying up the deck, drilling some holes there and not fitting that grid after all. Then the planking of the hull itself in lovely cedar wood. Nika Note anchor on foredeck of the leftmost Byblos Ship. Resurrected the rear planking. Everything in cedar, because frankly the lime sheet attracts pencil marks and fingerprints it is so porous; loose wet and dry sandpaper dust will ruin the visible hull's appearance as well. Top tip: DOUBLE PLANK THE HULL. 0.6 at most. It's my only severe criticism of this kit so far. Nika
  24. Nikiforos
    Bit of a small update. The inner supports, eventually trussed up, are of plywood, visible on completion of the model. Let's cover the obvious with cedar. They're then ready for 55 feet of rope. It's dark in here... Found a model of the original interpreted design. Note the immediate differences. Is covering the bottom of the ship and oars with a black resin, Greek style, something probable in circa 2500 BC (5th dynasty) ? Or mutton fat and vegetable oil smeared over as still is common with the dying breed of dhow craftsmen (white-ish colour)? Sheep are TIMELESS, I tell you. Lots to think about. Edit: First deck planking done. There's that overlay of thin 0.6mm grid to lay down on top, then the stitched 'chords'. I'm aware that the grain is overscale but nothing can be done about it other than start a grove of bonsai cedar. Overall, it has that genuine cedar 'warm' colouration and Dibetou wouldn't have been quite the same. In no way would I have used the kit's walnut, its just too dark a hue in the supplied wood. I'm happy with the appearance of the veneer, overscale or not. My ship will be mast down too. I believe the 'unknown' deck objects that perplex Mr. Landstrom merely keeps the unhooked sail secured. They have weight and handy rope loops, evidently.
  25. Nikiforos
    Getting the fully cedar deck done (I don't have any Acacia...) I'm using the guidance below which is not Amati's plan, to stay true to the original model of Byblos-ship -by one Dr. Sotas, apparently. As mentioned, some of the deck planks need diagonal stitching too, which Amati omits. Nika There appears not to be any planking at all beneath the 'helsmens' feet. I think this design is too rounded for a Bronze Age boat, so I choose to go with Amati's more linear pointier plan. Originally, we have a side profile only, in a tomb in Aboukir; so it's a 50/50 toss of a coin. Again, none of these images are part of the plans to Amati's kit. They are in the public domain.

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