Cpt_Haddock

Regarding were I found the gun: I found it in my parents garage - like the "pickers" on Discovery channel. I have an idea of making one more gun out of clay for the main deck. I put some oak stain on the bright wood and tried to get a different nuance on the horizontal bars. I will have some planking on the "floor" put gaps so the structure underneath is visible. had problem getting the right angles on this part - in the lower picture. The vertical beams are a little convex.

Wow, that was a fine collection of pictures. I will need them. Thanks!

You are so right, It keep coming saw dust every were even when using the vacuum cleaner insert connected to the saw. The saw was nice but on the small-side for the Walnut - it so much nicer to use the Japanise hand saw - and the mini carpenter's plane I have.

Hi, slow progress but some new: I found some fresh wood that I used but soon realized I had to buy some dried from store. So I bought Walnut and linden wood. And then I needed a electric saw too.. Yes, as the fresh wood got drier it got hard as (apple tree) - not so easy to cut and work with. The linden was so much easier.

Finished the paper model and thinking about going forward with using wood. Have not yet decided the width - or keeping the deck round cannon holes or not. The section is now from the main mast area. I have found at least two kit that has a similar design - I think this was Corel: This below is not a Wasa kit but the above is, but one idea could be to skip upper cannon deck. I have run into some issues though. - The cannon (my) is a lower cannon deck type. It seems that the ship had a similar on upper cannon deck, but slightly lower. As the cannon (my) is on upper cannon deck, the cannon port gets to low. Also, as can be seen below, the cannon port on the ship (wreck) and museum model has different sizes. Some are wider and most on upper deck is more narrow than on lower deck. So I don think i will care less about the size . I could modify the cannon also but.. We will see. Here is two ports:

Before getting starting with the Sovereign of the seas and after finding a Wasa cannon in scale 1:15, i decided to try to build a section with a upper cannon deck port. The cannon is missing some details. I have the Wasa book with nice drawings and first I will try to do a cardboard model to get an idea of the size required and wood needed. I think it will be quite big - and heavy. I am wondering about what parts will be visible or not. I have cut some wood and dried but now I think I have to re-think the amount of wood and size of planks. I have not given up yet.

Some final pictures of the build - only acrylic showcase left to build - seem every other facility bought plexiglas for Covid-19 protection nowadays.

With the experience from doing all the mast I removed the old bowsprit mast and created a new with a small brass wire to stiffen up the mast to correlate the force pulling it backwards. New nicer hemp yarn - Amati rigging thread (bought all from Cornwall model boats) instead of Billing boat kits cotton. Made the plaque out of modelling clay. As well as the weapon shield held by the lion figure head together with an extra lion at the very front of the bowsprit. Could not resist making a moose horn to make the main mast more ornate.

Added only the upper rope and skipped the sometime used lower rope (for closing the port). Maybe I should have reduced the thickness (plastic part of the lids). The rope and hinges - to bad they are only seen when the port is closed. Finally all ports done. Time to glue the balcony platforms. All flags mounted and only some small things left - add some deck fillers - barrels, bags and cannon balls - redo the whole bowsprit (the mast is leaning backwards) - add a "Vasa 1628" plate to the stand

Mounting the anchor and preparing all the cannon ports in aluminum.

Decided to skip the lantern at the rear and only have a flagpole (with the big flag): The mizzen mast with multiple ropes. A bit clay for the anchor float ball

I made some mini-blocks that was not included in the kit: It was tricky to get tension on all wires even using a template and lots of wall paper glue: I hid all remaining wires under the crow´s nest. The mistake I made on the front mast keeping the shrouds connected to the blocks below getting it hard to work on the deck - this was avoided on the main mast and the whole shroud could be loosened to get access on working on the deck details.

Thank you Kirill - I wish I could paint like you on the Galleon ship of yours. Like a icon painting in 3D.

I missed working with wood, I noticed that the age (poor vision on close objects) was getting more and more annoying when working with the rig. I added some barrels and boxes for the deck. Used metal wire between the blocks instead of wire on the main mast.

Almost the front mast completed. Just two more mast, and then put on all the cannons with gates. Almost there:

Making more templates for the other mast shrouds. And small loops with rope from a tip here on msw.

The fixation of the front mast shrouds: And placing the sail from the top and downwards. Here is fabric drained in wallpaper glue:

This is how I made the front mast shrouds:

Did look forward to start with the rigging but at the same time not. It turned out to be more tricky than expected. I though more and more about people building those small ships in bottles. I started with the masts and the capstan. I also fixed the cannons. I prepared all the mast and boom parts and decided to start the rigging from the front of the ship. I wanted to rig with sails but "folded". I used wallpaper glue for fixing the fabric so to simulate gravity. I also used wallpaper glue on the wires for gravity-effect. First I used glue then sugar/water but that did not work. At the start I used the wiring from the Billing boat kit but soon bought some better wires that didn't "fuzz" that much. I had three major issues with the bow: 1) the rope connecting the lower blocks - to the other side without a joint - I made a joint at the underside of the bowsprit: 2) The next problem was that the whole mast at the bow bent backwards when attaching all the wires to the front mast. I remade the whole bowsprit due to this later. 3) Finally I did not want to drill in the mast (afraid it would brake) but fixed the bow yard using two wires "on the outside" one on each side -

Closeup on the nails and wooden plugs, some nails came without the head - so I used them for the joints: The work on the hull done. Time to move on to work on the cannons. This is how the cannon barrels looks like after oxidation. All These also have to be darker to match the hull. Quite monotonous work building all these cannons. These museum cannons have wooden wheels though:

Bow paintings and gold: It is supposed to be a Polish man (when I was in Poland a few years back - they told me a history of some country men foolish the Swedish army in the forests back in the days) on his knees i the blue area. I simplified that part. Instead added a sword to the upper figure and put some left-over parts in the are (in red). One side of the boat finished with wax mixture. Mounting the rudder and stern. I used plastic spares (brown) as rivets melted in each end using a soldering iron for the mountings of the rudder. I had at this point in the build spend a little more than half of the total building time (calendar time). Starting in Mars 2015 and at this state of the build in February of 2018.

Thanks, interesting, I have seen that ship in Stockholm. I think they use it at hostel nowadays. Haven been on board though. _ Cumbria seem a nice place to live

This picture is taken a little more than two years after I started the oxidation of the brass parts. As can be seen the green is more strong. I experimented some with boiled egg white and heating (heating and spraying with vinegar and then put metal in a plastic bag with wet paper and egg white). The oxidation took some time (and I even tried electrolysis but after using the opposite process to clean my car brake caliper from rust - the whole basement smelled a mixture of burned transformer and vinegar.. ) It was during the drilling around the cannon port that a couple turrets fell inwards. The wood was to hard to drill through. I did not see that I could do the carving on the top of the deck pulleys, so I put a round metal ball on top instead:

Thanks md, I have also the Sergal Sovereign as my next-next project. Do you know why there seem to be different stern versions for the Sovereign? I have seen at least three different. Sergal has two animals around a weapon shield, then there is one with a woman between two riders and also one with an angel between riders.

It is good to have lots of clamps. Deep blue on the boards under the bulwarks. Here is the beginning of the balcony that will be removable. First the upper balcony. On the lower domes I will use split tooth picks instead of the kits plastic pieces. The big problem I run into was that the split pieces had to be removed to paint the gold apart from the blue. Here the result after painting. Added some bling to the lower balcony. Brass nails of the blue boards. The complete side: With the round window: Adding more nails, I noticed a bit late that the nails "bulged out" on the inside along the deck. And then the same on the other side. I planned to do the cannon ports last but tried out the hinges on the fake port. I then spend a few days drilling and fixing nails before starting with the bow. The bow was fun. Here is a picture from the museum: I did not want to cover this piece in gold. I had to try that the bow sprit fit. One thing made me confused when comparing Wasa/museum model and BB490: The heavy rope from the bow sprit to the fore mast. I skipped the weapon shield and decided to have a rope trough as in the wreck picture.