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Ferrus Manus

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  1. Ferrus Manus
    On to the ship's boats. The ship has two boats, a caique and a canot. The caique is the larger one, and I have just taken all the parts for it off of the sprues. You know what that looks like to me, on the second thwart? mast partners. You know what that means? Masting and rigging. I was originally going to display the caique on the boat gallows and the canot on a separate stand. Now, I think I will rig the caique with whatever sail plan it might have had, and display the canot on the gallows.
  2. Ferrus Manus
    The upper railings: They aren't horrible, but they aren't as good as Michael D. managed to get his. I think the main culprit was me pressing too hard on each stanchion when gluing them into place, and the ugly glue-jobs I had to do on several rails, that then got covered with three layers of paint. The re-painting I had to do in areas where the paint was ripped off during gluing didn't help matters. They aren't as offensive in real life as they are in the pictures.
  3. Ferrus Manus
    I put on the stanchions for the railings after painting them. I would almost rather have painted everything red because I had to absolutely cake paint onto the pieces to get the red plastic to stop showing through. I aligned them decently enough, I think, and had to cut off parts of some of them to get them to fit around the oar supports and thole pins. None of these are directly aft of a thole pin, meaning there will be no issue fitting oars at the end. Then, I painted and installed the bottom four railing pieces. I still think I would have been better off using wood pieces, as they did not turn out completely straight. I doubt the top ones will be this bad, because they weren't as warped on the sprue. Some of the bottom ones looked like snakes when I took a good look at them.
  4. Ferrus Manus
    Now that I have finished the stern and all the decorative elements (mostly), I now need to decide where the line between extravagance and utilitarianism will be. I am thinking the line will be close to where it is in the painting. I am thinking the railings will be painted a light brown color, with the stanchions a darker brown. I will be excluding the railing flags. I have a sneaking suspicion that Heller designed the flag layout as would be displayed in a galley festival. Some of the flags, I suspect, would cause serious unwanted windage in normal use, when sailing or rowing. The painting shows very few flags, and seems to depict the Reale in normal operation. Heller sees the railings as being painted the same red color they came molded in, but I disagree.
  5. Ferrus Manus
    I proceeded to paint them gold (two coats) and glue them onto the ship. After around 10 minutes of fiddling, this is as well-aligned as I got them:
  6. Ferrus Manus
    I prepped the awning supports last night. My modus operandi at this point is to remove all visible mold lines and fill any visible injector marks, where possible. Today, I painted the supports a brown wood color. The reason I did this is because I have found that painting gold straight over unpainted plastic requires about 3-4 coats, and still doesn't look quite right. So, this time I'm trying a new method. I intend to put a layer of gold directly over this throughout, and see what happens.
  7. Ferrus Manus
    I thought they were metal plates. You are probably right. The cooking area and boat gallows are in place: I shaded the "bricks" with a bronze color, then covered them completely in different shades of wood ash. This image better shows the ashes.
  8. Ferrus Manus
    The painted boat gallows and cooking area:
  9. Ferrus Manus
    I repeated the same process on the port side, then weathered the entire thing.
  10. Ferrus Manus
    Yesterday, I hacked up the two spare awning support pieces and turned them into passable footboards. Today, I decided to start working on the oar benches. These are the starboard side oar benches, having had their mold lines scraped and having been painted: And installed on the ship: I will forego any and all weathering of this whole setup until the port side benches are in, so I can get it all done in one sitting. For weathering (depending on purpose and extent) I use either Citadel Agrax Earthshade, or (preferably) diluted Folk Arts Antiquing Medium, with the level of dilution varying based on color and extent of weathering.
  11. Ferrus Manus
    Fun fact: My "everything-cup" is actually older than me, and features the names, portraits and terms of all U.S. presidents up to Clinton.
  12. Ferrus Manus
    I glued the forecastle pieces in and finished the 36 pdr's rigging today. Then, I dry-fitted the port side catwalk/footboard assembly: Painting the piece was not that hard, but installing it was a different story. I put glue on the pins on which the footboards rest, as well as the outer part of the supports for the catwalk. Then, I fought the piece into place. I proceeded to think quickly, putting my metal ruler over top of the footboards and resting my "everything-cup" on top of that, ensuring they sat level on the ledge upon which they sit. The starboard side was not much easier. Both pieces had a slight horizontal warp, but the starboard side was worse than the port. I have yet to glue the aft footboards on the port side assembly, or any on the starboard. I have yet to fix the missing footboards, but I have a plan. I discovered shortly after starting the model that I had been erroneously given two copies of sprue #7 in the kit. Sprue #7 contains the main mast, the center catwalk pieces (which will come in handy when we eventually put in the section surrounding the main sheaves) and most crucially, the two fore-and-aft sections of the awning support. These pieces are almost the exact same diameter as the footboards, and the fact that I have extras means I can hack two of them up into four new footboards to replace the missing sections.
  13. Ferrus Manus
    The forecastle walls are positioned on the deck in their final arrangement, in which they will be glued.
  14. Ferrus Manus
    Alrighty. The offending seam lines were mostly visible on the top of the forecastle walls, so I scraped them off with a knife: Then, I scraped the paint off the inside of the walls, and rescribed them with wood grain: I proceeded to fill in the injector pin marks with Tamiya plastic putty: One of the repainted walls: Afterwards, I cleaned up the paint on the front and shaded the gold: The decorative scenes on the forecastle show Greek/Roman square-rigged galleys and galley battles.
  15. Ferrus Manus
    These are the painted forecastle walls: These grand totaled about two hours... ...and still more to come. As per Michael D's advice, I will have to go over the top of them with a knife. I got them to the point where the gold mistakes can't be seen with the naked eye, but there's still more to do on the back. There are several injection mold marks that I want gone, and I might even scribe in some wood detail. I remember finishing up the Esmeralda at about this time last year. That took me 6 months. I think that my skills have improved since then in the wrong way. I have attempted to be faster instead of better, and I think it's just a matter of retraining my mind to stop rushing. Time to take a break for a few hours.
  16. Ferrus Manus
    The forecastle decks are painted and glued into place: The two painted lower forecastle bulwark assemblies:
  17. Ferrus Manus
    I know that the beginning of the rigging is still pretty far out, but I still have to clear something up. Heller swears these things are belaying pins. I've even seen some Corel builders use them as such. However, having rigged plenty of fore-and-aft vessels, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. My idea is that these are the ladder rungs to get up into the forecastle. If they were used as pins, there would be no way up. I haven't seen another form of ladder on any version of this ship. For that reason, I will be belaying pretty much all the rope work to cleats or something similar. I even have a relatively solid idea of where all the cleats are to go.
  18. Ferrus Manus
    The forecastle area is complete with the exception of the finalization of the 36 pdr's rigging.
  19. Ferrus Manus
    While the video shows how to weigh anchor on a galley, it does not show how the anchor cable is stowed. My only guess is that it must be removed and sent to some sort of rope locker, then retrieved when it's time to drop anchor. The video has been very helpful, though.
  20. Ferrus Manus
    The next thing I need to do before closing up the forecastle is the anchors. When I dry-fitted the anchors together, I was taken aback by how humongous they are. If they were made of cast iron, surely they would have weighed in considerable excess of a ton apiece. Now, this begs the question: how were they weighed? I see no form of winding gear on board the ship. Not a capstan, not a windlass, nothing. Granted, if a hundred men lined up on the catwalk and pulled, each of them would probably only have to lift 40 pounds max, including the weight of the anchor cable. I want to display the anchors fully hauled in and stowed. This begs a different question: where do you put 60+ feet of anchor line? There isn't much room for it on the forecastle, although that's what Heller says to do. This is how Heller commands one to stow anchor: After seeing the discussion on Michael D's build, my assumption that this was completely wrong was confirmed. In fact, this is so incorrect that the davits on the beakhead would snap under the weight of the anchor if they attempted this. the davits, according to an expert who informed his build, were actually used to weigh the anchors' buoys. The Landstrom book depicts the anchor stowage almost as incorrectly. The only major difference is that Landstrom belays the catting line on the huge timber heads on the forward bulkhead instead of a cleat on the davit, and runs the anchor cable off to some unknown location. This implies the existence of a rope locker on the real ship, but I am unaware as to where it would be located. Back to the anchor buoys- they are included in the kit and mentioned in the very beginning where you are instructed to set them up, but never again. I plan to show them hanging off the bulkheads just outboard of the anchor itself, with the line in a simple coil underneath the anchor, not attached to it in any way. I don't plan on setting up the anchors until I have a clear idea of how the anchor was weighed and where the anchor line goes.
  21. Ferrus Manus
    My favorite galley story is that of the two Italian brothers who attempted to find a sea route to India in the 13th century (I think?) using two galleys. They rounded the coast of Morocco and were never seen again, alive or dead.
  22. Ferrus Manus
    So, today I started on the work I'll have to do before I close up the forecastle. The first order of business was the gun rigging. Originally, I wasn't going to rig the guns, but since they gave me two out of the three sheaves I needed (and then didn't mention gun rigging in the instructions) I figured I might as well. I bashed together another sheave for the 36 pdr, then got to work. The interesting bit was the rigging of the 36 pdr. I drilled two holes for the ropes in the front of the gun carriage, inserted eyebolts, tied on the ropes, and did the exact same thing I did for the 24 pdrs. The interesting thing about it was the fact that the ropes run to the catwalk, which means they actually travel upward from their sheaves.
  23. Ferrus Manus
    Not really.
  24. Ferrus Manus
    Sometime, I want to do a model of a Medieval galley.
  25. Ferrus Manus
    The 61 footrests, painted, stained, and installed on the ship:

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