AnobiumPunctatum

Chuck, I had the same idea. The Hanse Kogge is a really good model of the cog wihch was excavated in Bremen. I think it's the best model of this shiptype you will find in the market. I own a book from the museum in Bremerhaven which contains all drawings they made during the excavation. The model matchs this drawings quite well.

Hi Clare,
 
thanks for your explanation.
 
 
Hmm, perhaps it's a goed idea to use colors which work with different dilutions. I have some Airbrush colors which work with alcohol and some oilcolors, I can try. WIth the actual crisis I have enough time at home to test.

Hi Clare,
 
I will follow your log with great interest. I have both cogs of shipyard in my stash and will start this weekend with the cog "Wütender Hund" ("Mad dog"). YOur log will be a fantastic help. Can you give little bit more information about painting the model. The hints in the description of shipyard are not really informative
 
Regards Christian

I made some Progress with the quarter gallery.




Matthias

Yesterday I finished planking the starboard side by adding the stern post.
I did some sanding, but that is not completely finished yet.
Here are some photos.
and some more pictures from the hull upside down.

 
 

Today I finished the Port side planking. Alltogether it looks okay, but I know my corners. What do you think?
 

Finished up the painting of the sail. Was a nice break from planking – I understood what I was doing, for the most part!
 

I have a slight issue showing up with the hull planking – the plank ends at the stern shouldn't be overlapping the sternpost like this. Looking ahead in the instructions, it doesn't like like this should cause any problems, but seeing this as your building the model is a little troubling.

Meanwhile, planking the hull continues. As you have seen, I'm high up enough on the hull that the inboard side of the planks are becoming exposed, so they have to painted prior to installation.
 
Note that the stem (and hence the bow) is on the right.

So, the planking continues and I'm now preparing the deck for installation.
 

Chuck, I had the same idea. The Hanse Kogge is a really good model of the cog wihch was excavated in Bremen. I think it's the best model of this shiptype you will find in the market. I own a book from the museum in Bremerhaven which contains all drawings they made during the excavation. The model matchs this drawings quite well.

Another short update on the Hanse Kogge. 
 
I've been working on the lapstrake planking and reached the point where it was time to add the keel. Seems like it's not much work done. But, in fact, the keel is made up of the main keel and the knees, if that's the proper term, for the base of the stem and stern posts. Plus, the keel is made up of three separate layers that have to be glued together and each of the knees are made up of five layers. The middle layer of each of the knees is slightly different than the other layers, so that together, they create a notch that later pieces will fit into. This seemed kind of clever to me.
 
I pre-painted the necessary pieces and glued them up. Later, I touched up the paint a bit and then glued them to the hull. I also did the same with the keel at the same time, as I wanted to make sure everything fit correctly and that there were no gaps between the parts.
 

I always find it confusing and have to double check which direction the ship is facing. Even here, as I'm writing, I have to stop and check. The bow is on the left in the photo above.
 
Today I discovered that a couple plank pieces I installed the other day had slipped out of place before the glue set fully. As I've been using contact cement, this required a bit of very careful surgery. It's rather appropriate that I have a scalped on hand for this model.
 
In the following photo, I marked the ends of the knee at the bow with red arrows. The planking slip-up is clear, but I marked it with a big fat green arrow.

I repaired this by carefully slipping the scalpel blade under the plank. Of course, what's mostly going on is that I'm cutting into the plank piece itself, and cutting away a thin slice of the back side, which is glued into place. But, this allowed me to reposition the plank, to create the proper overlap. I reglued the piece into place, but now the plank extends a little too far out, as you'll see in the next photo. 

The plank position has been fixed, and there is no longer an unsightly gap at the bow. I'm not too sure this will affect the later planking, but it seems like it's positioned correctly with the registration marks printed on the stem end piece. Looks like I'll have to trim off the very end though, which also means that I'll have to repaint the nails without the benefit of the little laser-etched circles. I think it will be alright though.
 
The stern knee placement went fine and there are no signs of any planking issues there.
 

Finally, as you can see below, the pieces for the next planking strake are ready for installation. Those two piece to the right are stem and stern post pieces that will go on soon.
 

One other thing I discovered with my model work that I corrected before I wrote this post. I managed to forget to paint the nail heads of the previously attached planks. I took care of those first thing. Must have been tired!

Hi Clare,
 
thanks for your explanation.
 
 
Hmm, perhaps it's a goed idea to use colors which work with different dilutions. I have some Airbrush colors which work with alcohol and some oilcolors, I can try. WIth the actual crisis I have enough time at home to test.

I've bought wood by both companies. The timber in both cases was really goed.
 
By Massivholzwerkstatt I had the possiblity to get the timber in the different thickness I need.

I've bought wood by both companies. The timber in both cases was really goed.
 
By Massivholzwerkstatt I had the possiblity to get the timber in the different thickness I need.

Hi Clare,
 
thanks for your explanation.
 
 
Hmm, perhaps it's a goed idea to use colors which work with different dilutions. I have some Airbrush colors which work with alcohol and some oilcolors, I can try. WIth the actual crisis I have enough time at home to test.

Hi Clare,
 
I will follow your log with great interest. I have both cogs of shipyard in my stash and will start this weekend with the cog "Wütender Hund" ("Mad dog"). YOur log will be a fantastic help. Can you give little bit more information about painting the model. The hints in the description of shipyard are not really informative
 
Regards Christian

Hi Clare,
 
I will follow your log with great interest. I have both cogs of shipyard in my stash and will start this weekend with the cog "Wütender Hund" ("Mad dog"). YOur log will be a fantastic help. Can you give little bit more information about painting the model. The hints in the description of shipyard are not really informative
 
Regards Christian

It looks fantastic Tom and is a nice add on to the Alert of trident model

I finished page 11 of the instructions with the completion of the lower planking. But, I found that there is a slight disconnect in the instructions.
 
Here's where I am so far on the planking. 

Planking has been going quite well. The planks are very well shaped, and go into place very easily, laying right where they need to go.  The planks are marked with a thin black line as a guide for laying the next planking strake in clinker fashion.



The disconnect I'm describing is simply that instructions don't show the rest of the hull planking that needs to go on in between pages 11 and 12. 
The last planks I added here are planks 70 and 71, which make up this last strake. 
 
It appears that planks 72 through 74 make up the next two strakes, and these need to be added before continuing to the next page of instructions. Not a big deal, but it would have been nice if this were clearer in the instructions.
 
Clare

I managed to make some time to work on the Bremen Cog this week.
 
On other Shipyard kits, the frames are all covered with a first layer of "planking", what a lot of people call "skin". On this kit, only the lower part of the hull is covered. On the upper part, there are only stiffeners.

 
I already test fit the internal floor and walls and assembled the longitudinal beams that will support the main deck. Not sure why so much interior is present. There is only one small hath on deck, and even if it's left open, you wouldn't be able to see more than just the area around the mast. I actually took this photo before adding the hull stiffeners or lower hull covering.

 
I started painting using the paints included in the kit in the mixture described in the instructions. It's actually something of a two step process, as you first have to paint the parts with the light colored paint. It's simply labeled 03 on the jar, but the manufacturer, Renesans, says it's Naples Yellow.  I found that it works best to thin it down and then paint the paper with it and let it dry for at least 24 hours. 

 
I didn't do such a great job with the paint job on the interior. It was my test/practice area and isn't going to be very visible anyone, so I wasn't too worried about it. In the instructions, the builder clearly painted all the laser-etched nail heads. I didn't think I was going to be able to do these, but I ended up giving it a shot later on. Only thing was that I didn't decide to paint the nail heads until I had completed the interior area.

In the last photo, you can see that the nail heads turned out okay. At least I thought so. It took a little time, but wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I just had to use a very fine brush and dab. 
 
 

Here the first mistake I made on this model. There are tabs along the edge of parts 37, 38, and 39. It wasn't very clear to me, but these tabs are supposed to be glued to the outside of the inner keel piece. I needed to correct this by adding just a little thickness to the edge of the inner keel piece, so i cut strips of excess card stock and glued them into place. The photos show just the first strip.

 

 
Finally, here are some shots of the first of the planking.

That puts me somewhere on page 11 of the instructions. A long ways to go, but I ran across someone else's build log on a paper modeler's forum and was inspired by their build and the fact that it took them only a little more than a month to complete it. I can't imagine my build will be so quick, but it's nice to know it's possible.
 
Next time I post a build update, I should have the main hull planking completed.
 
Clare
 
 

Chris, are you going to build the kit, or just do a review? Hope you build it. I'd love to see it going together.
 
As for the Bremen Cog review, I'm thinking there is enough there to tell people what they want to know. 
 
One thing I'll add here, and as a disclaimer I should point out that this is kind of a plug for a company that I do some work for, but I kind of talked the owner of Ages of Sail into carrying the two laser-cut cog kits, plus a big order for their new wooden kit.  So if anyone is considering building any of these, please consider buying from Ages of Sail!
 
Now, on to the build...
 
To start with, I used a scalpel to cut the needed parts from the laser-cut sheet. The instructions show a double-edged razor blade, but that seems a little dangerous. The scalpel works quite well.

It is interesting that they laser-cut scarf joints. They look great, but they will get covered over later in the build. At this stage, I used simple Elmer's wood glue for these parts. It allows me some adjustment of the parts before the glue sets. In the photo above, it's a bit hard to tell, but the bow end is on the left side.
 

The next step was to fit all the bulkheads and hull stiffeners into place. All the parts slip easily into place and no glue was used at this stage – I wanted to test fit everything first. Plus, I love how quickly the hull takes shape at this early stage.
 


As you can probably see, once I was happy that I got everything into the correct places, I started adding glue to the joints. The close spacing of the bulkheads already gives the model a very solid feel, though the bulkheads at the ands are very delicate and they will buckle very easily, so a lot of care is needed in handling it yet.
 
The above photo doesn't show the vertical stiffeners that are added next. There are two on either side of the keel. You can see the slots for them in the bottom of the bulkheads. There is also a piece that is added to the outer edge of the lower bulkheads. You can see the notches for them in the edge of the bulkheads below the lower deck. You'll see this in later photos.
 

With the bulkheads all glued into place, you'll notice an interior space taking shape. This will be deal with in my next post. This takes me into page 6 of the 52-page kit instructions.
 
The instructions here discuss their method of painting to give the model a wood-like appearance.
 
Clare
 
 

It looks fantastic Tom and is a nice add on to the Alert of trident model

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