Richard Braithwaite
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Trireme Olympias by Richard Braithwaite
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The Gokstad Ship 900 AD by Siggi52 - 1:50
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Im creating quite a lot of sawdust at the moment... So, improved dust protection of model required (it took a lot of time to hoover out all the accumulated dust and clean before I varnished last year...). I also wanted any cover to be transparent so that any darkening of the model (now its varnished) will be even. Found these 0.19mm Acetate Mylar sheets (300x600mm), which folded quite neatly over the deck (extending over the sides and covering all the oar ports).
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The Gokstad Ship 900 AD by Siggi52 - 1:50
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The Gokstad Ship 900 AD by Siggi52 - 1:50
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Your ship is looking fantastic. I built the hull of my "Olympias" model is a similar way (planking first and then frames made to fit). My log starts after I had done this, but I think ive included some description somewhere... Interested to know if you made those frames to fit your planking or made them from patterns and then pulled the planking to fit them? I remember working on an old steel ship, which we were rebuilding to make a different sort of ship... I had designed a substantial, cambered frame to fit under a thin, lightly stiffened deck. Our shipwrights tried to fit it on a hot day. They made the frame with some extra material ("green"), craned it into place, marked it off to fit the undulations of the (old battered) deck and then took it back to the dockside to cut it to their marked shape. When they craned it back on board they found that the deck had changed shape (the sun was now shining on it from a different direction...). So they marked it off again and repeated the process. After repeating this a few times they had cut off all the "green" and then some. They called me to come down to the ship and asked it I minded that the frame was now quite a bit smaller than I had intended... The next day we tried again. We cut a new frame to the design shape (no "green") and pulled the deck down to fit it. Your hull planking is very light, have you had any difficulties with distortion as you fit your frames?
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The Gokstad Ship 900 AD by Siggi52 - 1:50
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Viking longboat by toms10 - FINISHED - scale 1:64 - late 9th century
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Apologies if ive missed it in your log, but what have you used as fastenings for the planking? It looks very effective.
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The Gokstad Ship 900 AD by Siggi52 - 1:50
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Trireme Olympias by Richard Braithwaite
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Trireme Olympias by Richard Braithwaite
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Next stage of making oars: 1. Mill the slot for the blade using a 0.5mm cutter: 2. Cut off end of oar (leaving a small part beyond the end of the oar slot to aid stability during shaping) and sand the shaft down to finished square section dimensions, including the transition from inboard oar loom to outboard shaft. 3. Mark up with "indicator" pensil lines along the shaft to assist with "octagonalising". 4. File/sand off corners to make an octagonal section (including the transition from the square section loom to the outboard shaft. I find the "indicator" lines helpful with getting the faces of the octagon even, aiming to get the resulting "dashed line" around the staft even. 5. Round the shaft until the indicator lines just dissapear (indicating the final dimensions all round have been achieved). 6. square off the end of the loom to the final dimension to accept the oar handle (this will still require finishing to transition to the round handle, once the handles are fitted). Total time for all this approximately 45 mins/shaft (Total cummulative time/oar, so far, 1.75 hours)
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I wont be overcoating the white enamel paint with varnish this time. Just trying to decide what to do underneath it. Have heard that a shellac primer might help prevent pigments coming through.
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The upper image in the picture below shows some wood (Ash) that I painted 40 years ago. All the planking was coated with about 5 coats of polyurethane varnish and a couple of coats of black/white Humbrol Enamel was applied directly on top with a further coat of polyurethane varnish on top to proect it. As you can see the white paint has discoloured slightly , Im not sure whether this is due to the yellowing of the polyurethane on top or pigments comening through from underneath... The lower image shows part of the full size Trireme reconstruction "Olympias". I am building a model of this vessel (Trireme Olympias by Richard Braithwaite - - Subjects built Up to and including 1500 AD - Model Ship World™) . The model is finished with polyurethane varnish and I need to decide how to finish the oars (varnished shaft, white painted blades) So far Im thinking of two alternatives: 1. Coat the entire oar (blade and shaft) with polyurethane and then coat the bade with primer and overcoat with white enamel. 2. coat the shaft with polyurethane up to the boundary with the blade. Apply primer to the bare wood of the blade and overcoat with enamel. The second option would make most sense in terms of keeping the different paint systems separate, but I suspect i could do a neater job with the boundary with the first option. What experience do you have with this sort of paint scheme?
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The Gokstad Ship 900 AD by Siggi52 - 1:50
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The Gokstad Ship 900 AD by Siggi52 - 1:50
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Trireme Olympias by Richard Braithwaite
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Very neat. Rather more elegant than the graph paper plot followed by tricky manal dial turning i have used for complex machined shapes! I did think of making this jig from brass/ aluminium. But, so far, my quick wooden effort seems to be stiff and durable enough... Have you had any success turning tapers on long slender wooden shafts such as oars and spars? If i could make that work it would be much better than what im doing ( machining to a square taper and then manually " octagonalising" and rounding). However, whenever ive tried turning this sort of thing it fails due to vibration/ flexing.
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First stage of oar production. The jig bolts onto the milling table of my Unimat and allows for different tapers to be milled by fitting a spaced under the bolted on top piece. 4 setups required per oar shaft to taper each side (so the jig has to last for 4 x 170= 680 setups and clampings - hence protective strips of wood under clamps!). Each oar shaft takes about 1 hour to machine to a square taper (including marking up) with the milling cutter making 5 x 0.2mm cuts per side. The cutter could certainly manage deeper cuts on this soft wood but 0.2 mm seems the most I can safely do without too much vibration and sideways deflection of the oar shaft (particularly the last few cuts when it is at its most slender). A wedge is fitted underneath the tapered part of the shaft for alternate sides to prevent vertical deflection. (wedge machined to the same taper - using the same jig.) The image below shows the setup after each of the 4 sides have been machined. The supporting taper can be seen fitted under the shaft on the images on the right (2nd and 4th setup)
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Spent the day milling timber for the Thranite oars using my Byrnes Table Saw , starting with a nice close grained, 30mm thick plank of lime that Ive been using for the spars and intend to use for the oar shafts. Here is one of my Athenian marines posing by the stack of timber that I now need to convert into 62 oars for the top level of my ship. After Ive done that there is only another 108 to do for the other two levels... - quite a daunting prospect... I must say, building this model has increased my respect for the Anthenians and the way in which they managed to build such large fleets of ships so quickly (and all those oars!!)
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Ive been working on a pre-production prototype Thranite oar alongside developing jigs for making copies. The shaft is made of lime (like the bulk of the model) with a blade from 0.5mm birch plywood (from Home & Distant Models https://homeanddistant.com/ ). The handle is removable with a brass pin fixed to the loom of the oar which I am planning to use to connect to a longitudinal brass strip to hold the oars in place: The blades on the oars of Olympias are painted white and Im planning to do the same, so the missmatching colour of the birch ply will be concealed! Ill post pictures of the production process with the jigs in use as I go making the 62 Thranite oars required...
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Now starting to think about the oars. I have the following numbers to make: 62 Thranite oars (upper level) 54 Zygian oars (mid level) 54 Thalmian oars (lower level) Im planning to build them according to the original design (they were changed for a lighter design for the last trials). Plan No 15 gives the dimensions for the Thalmian oars (which were made from a single piece of wood. There is an unnamed sketch showing all three levels which I have annotated with these dimensions as shown below ( ‘© Estate of John F. Coates, reproduced with permission.) Its a lot of oars, so now thinking of jigging arrangements for making them as consistent as possible and reducing the labour involved...
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All 8 blocks completed and varnished. Rather confusing double reflection in the glass in this photo... Ive tried the blocks with Ben's 0.8mm poly rope and the lignum vitae sheaves run satisfyingly smoothly on their lignum vitae pins!
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A block making interlude...(Another displacement activity as an excuse for not starting on the major project of tackling 170 oars...). The blocks on olympias dont try to reflect 600BC practice and are based on 19th century rigging. I only need 8 blocks (for the main and boat yards) and following table gives the relevant dimensions for the rope size specified: Reading Steel I noticed that the sheaves and sheave pins were made of Lignum Vitae. A google search showed that this could easily be purchased as "fountain pen blanks" so decided to give it a try. When it arived I could see why. Its a hard dense oily wood. Good material for bearings. Feels a bit like the tufnol material that is used in some sailing yacht blcock sheaves. The blocks themselves are made from Holly. The images below show the approach used. Just about doable at a scale of 1:24. Not something I would want to try for a model of HMS Victory at 1:48...
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