Glen McGuire

That's another B word we don't say around my herd, Ken! 🤐

I thought we stopped being a family show when @mtaylor made the reference to Monty Python and canoes during my Oseberg build log! 😃

NO. NO. NO. We do NOT say the B words around my cows (BBQ, Brisket, t-Bone, etc).

I'm with Steven on this. I am no great artist and would likely find a new hobby before attempting something as intricate as what he did with his incredible restoration project, but I did manage to hand paint a reasonable design with small lettering on my tiny Roman quinquereme sail (muslin fabric).

Glad you could make it back, Mr. Pirate!!

My little cows sprouted horns very quickly. Then I did some paint mixing and swirling trying to get coloring that resembled their real life inspirations above. Now, back to the base. For the grounds inside the wall, I wanted green grass bisected by a gravel path for the cows. This was my first try at landscaping in a model, so there was definitely some trial and error. For the grass, I went to the model railroad aisle at Hobby Lobby and got a small package of coarse ground green grass. Mistake. I should have gotten the fine ground as the coarse was too large for my scale. So I ended up sifting the grass thru a screen to capture the smaller particles. That worked ok. For the gravel path, I used leftover sand (actually aquatic substrate for aquariums) from my Adventure Galley build. I mixed in a little leftover reddish-brown dust from the sea wall construction for a bit of color variation. The application process I settled on was: 1) spread a thin layer of white glue on the clay surface, 2) sprinkle the grass/sand liberally on top of the glue, 3) gently pat everything down with fingers, 4) blow off excess, 5) using a small syringe, drop a thin layer of diluted white glue over the top of everything and let it soak in. After drying, everything was nice and tight, no flaking or particles coming off. I think it came out looking ok. Next, I secured the "land" portion onto the main base and added the sea wall.

That is funny, Grant! Here's a better picture that shows her true colors. Her hide is kind of like a metallic paint job on a car. Get her out in the bright sun and the colors really come to life. She's a bit unique as you don't see too many Texas longhorns with her color scheme.

Thanks, Bob! As far as the color of the longhorns, I'll try to make one burnt orange and white like Dimples in the first pic below. I may try to make the other longhorn black and white like Sweet Eileen in the second pic below. Actually, she's a really dark brown when you get up close, but most people look at her and think she's black. I'm working on the horns first though. Then I'll work on the paint job.

He's trying to convince me he's a better lookout than beast of burden. You have a good point though, so I will pass your warning on to him and see if he changes his mind! OMG!! That never crossed my mind but I think you are right!! So to ensure there is no confusion, the cows will be undergoing a breed-change procedure soon to transition from holstein to longhorn.

Here’s where the whole base is at right now. I added a thin layer of modeling clay to the land behind the wall and will add some grass and a gravel cow path on top of it. The 3 small rods are a design change I made to the claw (with apologies to Archimedes). I decided the claw needed the ability to swivel right and left to some degree. Otherwise, you are just counting on the Roman quinqueremes to run straight into the claw’s hook. With a stationary claw, it seems like the Romans would be able to steer away from the hook pretty easily. So my claw uses a capstan concept to add lateral range to the claw. The 3 small rods fit into the main pole and are used rotate the pole and swing the claw’s hook back and forth as necessary to snag the incoming quinquereme.

The craw or claw is coming to life. The first pic below is a still shot from the video mentioned earlier and is basically what I tried to recreate for the claw's base. My version is not an exact replica but fairly close. Here are the piece parts made from basswood scraps. I scored the wood to age it a bit similar to what @gjdale did with his Shipyard at Foss' Landing project. The workforce also showed up looking for some green grass since there's none left anywhere around central Texas. Here's the assembled base. Next was making a cap/fulcrum for the top of the main pole. The first pic, once again, shows the goal. To replicate, I cut and shaped a couple of brass brads and then silver-soldered them together.

Thanks, Pat. And yes, I plan on some a scum line or something at the base of the wall similar to the one on the left side of this pic. Although I haven't figured out the right color yet. The scum looks like a really dark green to me in this pic but in others look more of a charcoal gray or even black.

Can't believe how fast you got that first layer of planking done! Warp speed and it looks great!!

OK, Mark. I do remember Get Smart (mainly the closing scene every show where the automatic doors would close on his nose), but not that line so I had to look it up. That whole exchange was hilarious from the start: "I suppose you can guess what they call me."....."Lefty?" 😄 Back to the build. I've been chasing my tail for the last few days trying to figure out what to do next - the claw, the landscaping, the seawall rocks, the water, the penguins, etc. I finally decided I needed to get the main elements of the base configured and then start on the claw. So I did a little mockup to figure out the components and get a visual of whether or not I was on the right track. I thought it looked ok, so I began work on the real thing. I made a small wooden base for the sea wall to rest on and give it some elevation above the water level. Then I drilled alignment holes in the bottom of the wall, small base, and larger base and inserted dowels into the bottom of the wall. The dowels should give the wall additional stability. I also carved out a hole in the small base for the main vertical post of the claw. Here's the initial assembly. Next, I'll continue with the claw's construction. There are a lot of simplified illustrations out there of what the claw might have looked like. I found a video animation of a working claw that is more detailed so I'm going to try and mirror it to a large degree (although mine will definitely not have the release mechanism). Here's the video if you want to take a quick look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1YrueoGlbE

Small waves and assorted whitecaps added to the epoxy resin. For the waves I use acrylic medium gloss gel. It has the perfect consistency to swirl around and make random waves and ripples. It's white when applied but quickly dries clear. To apply it around the ship, I dab a blob using a long prong made from a coat hanger (circled below). It works well except when I get careless and swipe it against the glass (see arrow below). Also, during application, it looks like I've made the sea a frothing, white-capped, overdone mess. But in the last 2 pics, you can see how the winds calm as the gel dries and the effect is much better. To apply whitecaps, I use a shredded brush affixed to a dowel at a sharp angle. It takes just a few tiny dots of acrylic paint at a time. Completed water effects below. The thing I really like about the gloss gel is how the light shines off the edges of it (in the picture above, you can see a bit of the glint). In the picture below, it's hard to tell the whitecaps from the natural shining of the light, but it's distinct when looking at in person and a reasonable look. And with that, the SIB portion of this build is complete and it's time for the claw! Every time I think of the claw, instead of Archimedes, I keep thinking of the movie Toy Story where Buzz Lightyear is trapped in the arcade game with all the little aliens who think the claw is a deity. They whisper "the Claw" in such reverenced tones. And then when one gets snatched, he says, "I have been chosen...farewell my friends...I go to a better place". 😄

Looks like you are off to a great start on this one, Bob! What did you use to darken the lines between each deck board?

Whoa, wait just a minute now. @Keith Black already awarded me the highly coveted penguin seal of approval, so I think I'm done with them for this build!

Thanks, Javelin. Although looking at it now, I think the ship would look better if it was pushed back in the bottle a quarter inch or so. But then again, with the way the water was angled in the bottle, that quarter inch would have lowered the ceiling of the bottle's inside and made it harder to get the mast inserted into the hull. Regardless, I'm glad to be done with the ship! The only thing left is to add some texture to the water along with a few whitecaps. Then it's time to put on my Archimedes hat and start building the claw! That should be fun.

That's some serious soldering skills, Pat. Well done.

This is such an intriguing subject. It's fascinating to watch you unlock clues to the build from the variety of mosaics.

Loved those Rocky movies!!

Your are correct Grant, I did some serious editing. The video would have been 6+ hours long and R-rated for language had I posted the entire hideous event! 😬😬😬 SDH commences in 3...2...1...

OMG! I am dying!!! I am soooo not worthy.

It was a good, solid start for the man at this point. But the model was about to get angry and start fighting back with a vengeance. The man's last triumphant moment for many hours was getting the mast stepped into the hull. But in doing so, you can see what a tangled, jumbled mess I had made of the rigging lines. The 2 lines of black thread are the stays, one for the starboard side and one for the port. Both are tied off at a sternward eyebolt, run thru a hole in the top of the mast, back down thru an eyebolt between the forward ballistas, out the bow and out the front of the bottle. The tan threads are 2 braces and 2 clew lines. Neither are tied off. I ran them thru eyebolts and out of the bottle so I could adjust the yard and sail afterwards (in theory anyway). The plan was to pull the threads and take slack out of the lines as I pushed the mast/sail into the bottle. Unfortunately, that turned out way harder than I thought and resulted in the hot mess seen below. Trying to sort out the lines and untangle everything inside the bottle was a disaster. The more I tried, the worse things got. And every time I adjusted a thread, it would drop and get tangled up in the oars. UGH!!! So I decided I needed to pull the mast/sail out of the hull and out of the bottle and try the whole thing again. Getting the mast/sail back out of the bottle was ridiculous but I did manage to pull it off. Speaking of pulling it off, I also pulled off a bow/bowstring from the middle ballista on the port side of the ship. UGH again. Back at square one, I reinserted the mast/sail, this time being super careful to try and keep the lines organized. Big fail. So I carefully extracted the mast/sail from the bottle again. Ugh. Try again. This time, I was super-DUPER careful not to tangle up the lines. Even bigger fail (if that was even possible). At this point, the model had put the man on the canvas 3 times. The man was woozy, couldn't see straight, and about to give this thing up and find something better to do with his time. The only thing left I could think of was a Roger Staubach Hail Mary. So I decided to unthread all the lines from the eyebolts and hole in the bow, leaving the back stays tied off and running thru the hole in the top of the mast. The braces and clewlines remained tied to the yard and sail, but I pulled their lines straight out of the bottle. From there, I separated everything and cut the lines down to a manageable length. Then I reinserted the lines 1 at a time and did something I did not think was possible. I re-threaded them back thru the tiny eyebolts that run along the inside of the bulwarks. If I had thought that was even possible, I would have done it originally. Now I know I can do it, so I won't go thru this nightmare again! The downside of doing this was that I could not get the braces and clewlines very tight. So they look like they are flapping in the breeze. But at least they are in place. However, the stays are nice and tight. So the man was back on his feet. Still staggering and a bit woozy, but still in the ring. Now it was time to revisit that bow/bowstring I'd separated from its ballista. A small dilemma - I needed long tweezers to reach the ballista since it was in the middle of the ship. But the ends of my long tweezers were too fat to pick up the tiny piece. So I found yet another use for duct tape by affixing my fine point tweezers to the ends of my long tweezers. It worked perfectly and allowed my to drop the tiny piece right in place. After that, it was a matter of adding the forward grating and corvus which was pretty easy. And suddenly, the fight was over. Shortly thereafter, the judges rendered their verdict - a controversial, split decision going in favor of the man. Whew!!

Here's the ship, mast/sail, and attached rigging lined up ready for the insertion process to begin. Starboard side of the hull getting dropped into place. The long tweezers have serrated ends so I wrap the tips in painters tape to keep from marring the surface of the ship. Both halves are in. as well as the brackets that will be used to push the halves together. The 2 halves of the hull successfully pushed together and brackets removed. Stepping the mast. I grab the lower end with tweezers and use a prong to pull the top towards the front to get it upright enough to slip into the hole in the deck.