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Looking forward to see what you will do with this Frank! /Matti

What... I'm out a few days and you've gotten her this far?! Very nice Nigel! /Matti

Nice Karl! I'm not there yet... /Matti

Thanks Sherry! Yeah the sun is great for checking colours and get a nice light in images. /Matti

Cheers Lawrence and Ulisses for your nice comments! /Matti

Thanks fellas! Cheers Frank, you know I'm a fan of your painting style! Max, go for it, it's a great subject and to be able to look and learn about the real ship is a real treat. Consider Billings, it has some tweaks you need to do like the gunports, but it has a good shape and the sculptures are not bad. You will have to bend and reshape them alot to get a good fit so plastic sculptures are a real advantage. Nigel, thanks for your exorbitant comment! No, no swivels mate. They where never delivered for the real Vasa so I'm not adding them either. /Matti

Hey all! I´ve been busy the last week but I have done some work on the cannons and hatches. A lot of painting but I enjoy it and find it relaxing. Before continuing on the side ports, I did the ones at the stern. /Matti

I don't know mate. The list of her guns state there were all cannons on deck, (one of them strapped as it had no carriage). The 1:10 is great but has some errors, like the front railing being quite wrong. They do change how they think she was built after finding new evidence. For example the pinrails on the deck on top of the cannons should not be there if I got it right. /Matti

Awesome Ulisses, great work! It must feel empty now? /Matti

The lantern looks really nice and suits the model well! I planned to not have one as an homage to the real one at the museum, but looking at yours makes me think twice. /Matti

Hey, last days have been really hectic so I haven´t had time to post. Karl, you are ahead of me in the build now, but I took some pictures of the rigging when I was at the museum and hopefully they can help. Also post a pic of the museum plans. /Matti

Great clean work mobbsie, it looks professional! /Matti

Cheers mobbsie, thats good to hear! Werner welcome to the forum, looking forward to see your build! /Matti

Such a great look you've given her! Gorgeous work Frank! Frank I photoshopped the contrast a little to make the black background darker. I just love your model! /Matti

Thanks Chris for the kind words! Do you mean to to make the painted sculptures and surfaces more gritty and aged like on a ship thats been in use for long? Or to make them look like on Vasa in the way she looks now? I guees you mean the first so I answer that I made sci fi models earlier and learned alot from looking at how ILM modelshop (the guys who made the studiomodels for the original Starwars films) did their paint jobs and weathering in the days before computer generated effects. They could make plastic cups look like huge engine part just with a really great paint job. So looking at their models like the x-wing or Slave 1 and think through how they did it is worth a lot in my opinion. You also learn lots from looking at youtube videos about weathering models; military vehicles and figures often have amazing paint jobs and there are lots of videos of how they do it. Weathering wood like the hull is quite hard and more unforgiving as you can't simply redo the paintjob like you can on plastics. A good tip is to have pictures of what you are trying to achieve with the paint job and think through what stages are needed. I find pictures of replicas like Batavia or Gotheborg to be great and I also look a lot at paintings by the artist Vroom. I sometimes take pics of a building or a train that looks interesting. Other models can also be good for this, and you can ask the builder how he did the paintjob. If you like my work then look at Franks HMAT supply and Nigels Royal Caroline both with really great paintjobs. I think we use different techniques so read their logs aswell. I think my main tip is not to try and make it perfect, the odd and quirky stuff often gives character, so I try and add stuff like that. Perfect is boring, drama is good. About weathering a model of Vasa. Paintjobs usually comes down to artistic preference, what look you like and that's what you should do. But sometimes I hear the argument that a Vasa model should not be weathered and this is how I see it: She was built outside during a period of two years. Two years is a long time for wood to stop looking all fresh cut. I had new cut wood starting to turn grey by laying in the sun and rain in one summer. Vasa was tarred giving her a look far from a unpainted and unweathered model. I can definitely appreciate a natural looking model as it can be a nice look in it self, but it’s not the way the real ships looked. Here is a picture of Gotheborg when she was launched. And she had been inside a building during the whole build. It's easy to imagine she would have looked even more gritty if she'd been built and tarred outside. A surface outside goes dirty quite quickly at least where I live. Dust and pollen will cover it and rain will make dirt runnings. Sun will blend colors, Some weathering is in my opinion necessary if you want the model to look realistic and have a sense of scale. Washes is also a great way to blend the colors. Finally a pic from the Vasa film. I share the way they imagined she would have looked in this scene: Sorry for the long post, but I find this topic interesting. /Matti

Great work mate, the shape looks really nice! /Matti

Thanks Jan and Ling! Ling I dont think there could be known measurements as they were salvaged but if you check out Claytons cannons he made for the 1:10 you get a sense how big they should be. kirill, I'm not sure I understand why you want them thicker and longer. But no, no question remain. They are not perfect but I did them to the best of my ability. And I said the rigging is simplyfied earlier in this thread (post 881 and others). This is just a model built for me, and I know my limitations. Perhaps I get to your level in later builds. /Matti

Cheers Lawrence! /Matti

Frank and NIgel your work is a big inspiration for me so thanks! Kirill, yeah they are simplified. It's my first go at ship building and rigging them like the original is well above my skill limit. Karl, it turned out great! /Matti

Nice stern! All these great builds of this nice ship... Well done Popeye! /Matti

Crisp work on the details, and I love your blue! /Matti

I like your painting! For me the replica Batavia painting looks to airbrushed and perfect. I'm sorry to hear about the Zeven Provinciën project! I was really happy they where doing it. /Matti

You've made a lot of good work Karl, well done! Your capstan looks great, (I didn't mean fewer holes, but fewer bars like on the real ship today). It's neat to see our different solutions to details. /Matti

Made the last steps of the capstan work: And how it turned out mounted to the ship: The lighting outside was great for captuaring the paintjob so I snapped a few more. /Matti

I drilled a little hole first and then made it larger and finally squared with a exacto knife. I needed to make the top end harder so it wouldn't break when making the top holes. I used superglue for that. If you want to weather it, do it before adding the glue. When you're done you need to add a coat of flat varnish as the glue will be glossy. /Matti