Doreltomin

Maybe TMB comes instead from "Too Many Boxes" (Kits in the stash)? 🤨

Excellent model! As for the tendency to turn after you start going straight, probably the steering oars will help to correct that too.

Excellent looking model, if it weren't for the support would say a real plane! Also it was much feared by the Germans during the war, which called P38 "The two-tailed Devil".

Hello, am wondering if you are still struggling to get the correct ratios for the Mataro ship? This was just a votive model with little interest to look like a real ship of that times, being meant to be hung up in the altar of a church, but judging upon its details it was built by someone with real knowledge on shipbuilding, therefore it was "selectively compressed" regarding its length. Some time ago while doing a little fumbling on the subject stumbled upon a paper which discussed the correct proportions the real ship should have had for navigation. I don't remember details but I can look after if you are interested.

Also it should be said that British railroad modelling uses 1:148 as N scale and their H0 is 1:76, while Japanese N scale is 1:150. To add more confusion to the lot, Brits also use "fine scales" which are composite, or otherwise said are defined as a relation between an imperial and a metric unit. For instance "2mm" stands for "one foot for 2mm" or 1:152,4.

Furthermore, if your question refers to the inlet of the waterways, this is solved in various ways depending of the type of ship. If the ship and/or the waterways are wood, the inlet may be made from a lead tube and is left unpainted. For steel ships, the inlet is typically made of a steel tube welded in place and painted in the same colour as the waterways.

Hi Jules, Thank you for continuing your lesson on Dutch shipbuilding techniques, it is very much appreciated! Also, while I can't really add anything on the subject as all period sources are written in Dutch, and even 17th century one, which I can't read, just a few thoughts on the general topic of "building without plans". I have seen various kinds of professionals at work, from carpenters to blacksmiths, to furniture restorers, scissormakers or jewellers. I believe any good blacksmith with good experience on it would do a horseshoe without any plan, based on his own experience. Also it takes only one master plus an apprentice to do it, so virtually everything comes of a single mind. It may also be true for cartwheel makers, who generally speaking work in a team, or even the makers of the carts themselves, when all the details are traditional and known to all workers in the shop. This may also be true even for small traditional boats. I lived part of my life in a city by the Black Sea shore here in Romania, which also used to have a small fleet of fishermen boats. I never saw one of these fishermen boats being actually built, only repaired (this is sadly a dying art) yet it is obvious they only follow a known pattern. Even more, some time ago while being in a small city in neigbouring Bulgaria I saw the structure of a traditional boat half finished and thrown away to rot in a backyard. It was absolutely the same "blueprint" so to say, despite the fact that it was some hundred kilometers south and in a different country. So these traditional makers are completely able to do a traditional thing in their own way without any plan, following only a standard procedure. The old people a talked with, which did still remember the old days when you could visit a boat shop and order a traditional boat told me the first question a boat builder would pose to the customer would have been "how many (frames) the boat you want to be?"- this is just another way to say the length of the boat, considering the distance between frames is already known and "traditional". Now, the problem is in a boat shop would probably work up to four to five people, all led by the master boat builder, which would take them a reasonable amount of time in building one boat - several weeks for instance. But this would have been not possible for larger ships, which would need much bigger teams to build them, not only because a small number of people would take a completely unrealistic time horizon to do all the tasks, but also because bigger ships would need bigger pieces of wood which are simply not possible to move and to put in the right place just by a handful of people. So, when a master builder has to lead a bigger team, he can divide the tasks and give pieces of the ship to different builders, which may then be brought together. But to make sure the pieces fit, they have to be DESIGNED in some way, otherwise they would NOT fit. This is where design becomes compulsory. You can make a perfect horseshoe with no plan, if you have already done five to ten horseshoes a day for several years. It may also be true for traditional boats or cartwheels. But all blacksmiths I have seen make a small plan, even if it's only scribbled in chalk on their table, if they want to make something different, which they have not done before. This is also true for jewellers, which usually do a small sketch just for themselves before starting to cut gold or silver. This also applies for our modeller fellows which would do a careful planning, which would often include a small sketch, before starting to cut an expensive piece of exotic wood. So making a plan is a natural thing - it comes probably of our way of thinking. Also, if a plan may not be necessary when working alone, it becomes crucial if you have to work in a team with someone else. Otherwise, how could a team member understand the piece you need? So I come here to some conclusions: Firstly, doing a plan is a natural way of our brain to imagine something new. This plan doesn't necessarily need to be done with a pencil on a piece of paper. It can be done in various ways. Remember that paper was not always as available as it is today, nor were pencils, quills, ink, rulers, compasses and various other drafting tools. It may have been that shipbuilders traditionally used wax tablets for their draft, or a flat piece of plank on which you do your lines in chalk or a piece of coal. Moreover, having a plan done on paper or even in parchment would NOT help too much if brought on the shipyard, which is usually outside in the rain and aside some water. You can imagine how difficult would be to deploy a big sheet of paper if it rains or the wind is blowing. So if the shipwright had a plan, he would jealously keep it to himself safely home and refer to it when he will need it. I don't believe there may have been a guild's rule to destroy the design after the ship was made. Yet, I believe the were rules which said the plans were private property of the shipwright and he would keep to himself. It is not different today with architects, which have to provide copies of their plans to their customers for the building permit to be issued and then for the house to be built But the originals of these plans are private property of the architect and there may be a legal bound that both the customer and the architect will not give the plans to any third party. So I believe each shipwright may have had an archive (of sorts) regarding his builds, which would jealously keep to himself as it encompassed his tricks of the trade. It doesn't have to be a large archive with carefully drawn plans of ships, it may have been just a stack of leaflets with calculations regarding the ship's dimensions. Secondly, it has been said that the shipwright was able to do the shape of the hull just by pinching the floor boards and then do some tricks with the leeboard and such. Yes, it may have been like that for the first build, but then if the ship shape went right, why wouldn't the shipwright note just for himself the shape of each frame, to easier reproduce a successful design? Moreover, how would a shipwright ensure the ship he is doing would be symmetrical on both sides, except if he has a way to "measure" the shape and replicate on the other side? Thirdly, how would you convey your design to another member of the team if you can't draft it in some way, to tell the EXACT shape of the wooden member you need for your build? So these are just some things to ponder while claiming "shipbuilders did their tricks without any plans". Also, the plan doesn't necessarily have to be done in paper. It has been also claimed that Greek temples from the classic period were built without plans, because, obviously, no plan of this survived. Yet lately in an unfinished Greek temple, a scribbling have been found on a marble wall, which proved to be exactly the plan of the said temple. After the temple would have been finished, the wall would have been polished flat and the scribbling erased, but since it was left unfinished, the "plan" survived!

Hello Jules, Thank you for appreciating my post, and also your invitation to continue posting on your topic - so you do not consider comments to "pollute" your topic! Also yes, it is important to put your lessons on Dutch shipbuilding of the 17th century into the right context. Also, about your lesson on drawing the proper arc to close between the large sweep and the floor, I can't read Witsen's text to know how he does it, but this is a simple geometry problem and can be easily solved. Many geometry problems can be done in more than one way so the trick is to find the easiest way and I would simply drop a perpendicular to line eg from the point g until it intersects the floor line. Then I would take the compass, put the needle in that point of intersection, let's call it x, and would draw an arc from point g to the floor line, called y. Thus, segment gx and segment xy are of equal length. Then I would rise a perpendicular to the line of the floor in point y until it intersects line eg. Let's call this new point z. We now have two new segments of equal length, zg = yz and the needed connecting arc can be drawn from point g to y by simply putting the compass needle in point z. But I can't say how close this outcome gets to Grebber's list of parameters. I would consider the height of point g given and the geometry procedure will give the rest of the points. But he may have worked backwards, starting from the given point y and determining the g, which may be complicated. Also we must keep in mind that today we can do these drawings using vectorial softwares of unprecedented precision, while in the 17th century they only had basic tools and probably couldn't measure everything too precisely. Also I cant't say about Dutch shipbuilders, yet English shipbuilders of the time spoke of a "rise of floor" which meant the angle the floor did from the horizontal. It was given as a fraction like "one foot of rise for every eight of length" and can be easily connected with our way of telling a slope in percentage. Thus, a slope of 100% would mean an angle of 45°. Best wishes, Doreltomin

Hello Jules, many, many thanks again for taking your time to explain the subtleties of Dutch ship design and also to translate the relevant bits and pieces from Dutch to proper English. Some may not feel it, but reading from a three centuries old text isn't the same as just knowing the language. I do not know exactly how much the Dutch language changed in these three centuries, but as a non-Dutch speaker, I can understand the meaning of a Dutch simple sentence like "Geen fiets hier", yet I could have not by any means understand all the subtleties of Witsen's text without your compassionate translation so this is why your effort is much appreciated. Also I have seen some fellow members compare the "Dutch system of designing ships" which you are introducing here with others, mainly the one developed in England - and even as a "proof" produced some fine examples of naval plans developed around 1815-1825 from which a medium-experienced modeller could build a splendid authentic model, saying that compared with these, the "Dutch system" may seem crude. My friends, have you ever noticed that our host here speaks specifically about the system presented by Witsen in his two books: 'Aeloude en Hedendaegsche Scheeps-Bouw en Bestier' published in 1671, with a second more enlarged and completed version 'Architectura Navalis', published in 1690. This is specifically 17th century and there's an old saying along the lines "you can't compare pears with apples" or whatever fruit suits you. I also remember my father in the late '60's using his slide rule with an uncanny dexterity, yet in the '80's during my school days I had to buy myself a handheld calculator while learning doing the structural calculations which my father did by his rule. Also, forgive my father for I have sinned, even if he taught me too how to use it and I still have his rule somewhere, I can't remember anymore how to use it as the calculator is much easier. Therefore in much the same way 19th century navy drawings cannot be compared with any 17th century "system" simply because the first have some 100 more years of drafting expertise added to them. So just let me ask you the following: if you had to go to a dentist, would you prefer one which uses the latest 21-th century tech, or someone whose cabinet employs technologies and techniques which stop to 1980? It's just 43 years ago now, less than half a century, yet their technologies have had a good advance. So, speaking about ship designs, please return to 1671 and show me a single original draft of a ship from any nation, be it Spanish, Venitian, French or English, of similar age and also similar or better in complexity than these Dutch drafts which our friend Jules is presenting us here. I bet you can't find any. Most 17th century English ship plans are either drafts of real 17th century ships as taken off in their 18th century yards, or genuine bits or pieces left by sheer chance by some of the 17th century shipwrights, which generally speaking are NOT enough to build a complete ship if you don't add knowledge for the said ships from other sources. During the 17th century shipwrights of most nationalities cautiously kept to themselves their "secrets of trade" and there are just some happy exceptions to the rule which can help us to understand how not only they designed their ships, but also how ship drafting evolved from mere scratches on a wooden board to the wonderful complete drafts available in the 19th century. One more remark about the Dutch system of "shell first", or alternatively, "bottom first" as it was specifically called in some books. The "shell first" is mainly the old system which was used for ships around all Europe; it was first spread in the Mediterranean by the Minoans and Phoenicians and everybody used it in the same way for several centuries and it's still in use for traditional boats today, although this is almost a dead art now. I remember seeing some ten to twenty years ago a little movie showing the build of a Portuguese traditional riverine boat in the same way. It was specifically during the 17th century that the English, based on a wide array of foreign sources too, developed a practical and successful method to raise a plan off an existing ship in order to replicate it. This is the whole trick. But Jules' drawings clearly demonstrate that the Dutch were able at this point to do the same, so it may never be clear whether the Dutch took this art from the English or it was the opposite, or even they both learned from the same third source. So even if Witsen's method may look crude, he was fully able to build a whole ship using his methods, and after having built one ship, he could have raised the curves from existing frames and was perfectly able to replicate his design, if it proved successful, or to slightly modify it to obtain some desired properties. Also what is shown here is that the Dutch were perfectly able to develop ship lines which suited their own shallow waters. These Dutch ship lines are completely different of any ship lines the English or other nations did use at the same time - and also if you read attentively what Jules presented when dealing with the yachts presented by Witsen, their shipwrights were perfectly able to adapt their designs from the Dutch shallow waters to the Swedish waters. Too bad the design of the Swedish royal yacht Lejonet isn't shown in the book, although a portrait of that fine craft survives in a painting done by Backhuysen which is now kept in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Best wishes and keep your wonderful History lesson coming, Jules! Doreltomin

Allan, regarding the distance between bench and thwarts, you simply cannot take authentic period drawings in the same way as our normal shipmodel drawings. Ours are made by shipmodellers for the use of shipmodellers and include as much details as possible to make the subject easy to build. The authentic plans of the epoch did never bother with many details, but instead centered on important things. For instance the exact position of the hawse hole or of the thwarts was not important to the said drawing, because anyway it would have been done later during the build and possibly not by using drawn plans and/or measurements, but simply a template, which could have been a piece of scrap wood used to take the "right" distance from bench to thwart from an existing boat which was known to be an easy rower. Also, I remember reading that during the 17th to 19th centuries people working on shipyards were so highly specialised that people doing "decks" weren't doing also coamings and so on, up to a certain point there was just one guy which was the "specialist" in doing hawse holes in the whole London area so he travelled from one yard to another doing his job, therefore using period drawings to figure the exact position of such details may be futile. Also, talking from my experience as a trained architect, when I draw a handrail for a flight of stairs I do not need to specify also the height and/or details of it as this is already known thanks of safety standards which have to be obeyed anyway. Only if I want a specific detail I have to draw it for the builder so that he knows what I mean. Also, Jules, thank you for taking your time to translate all those texts from Dutch to plain English, which may allow us to learn some wrinkles on Dutch shipbuilding art - this is much appreciated!

Hello Andrew, Thanks for your input. Actually I do not know how this material my have been called properly in English, but it seems to be the same material I was talking about. Using your hint I have found a wikipedia reference on it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drafting_linen It is a very fine textile, however even this one can only be used for large scale models ranging from 1:10 up to 1:50 or something. Beyond this I believe Wefalck's suggestion on using paper instead is the only correct alternative!

Huh, interesting question! Actually in our space age, with our computers and robots and stuff should we be able to do something like a very fine cloth. But is there any need for this, except for modelling purposes? The only answer which comes to my mind is not new, but rather old: the fabric which was once used to reinforce the backside of transparent papers used to copy plans on it.It is a kind of material which I believe was discontinued in production some time before Second World War, or slightly after it, when the use of new material like plastics developed. A friend of mine has a piece of such old transparent paper which he keeps jealously and uses to put pieces of it into water for a long time, until the transparent part dissolves and leaves only the fabric. It is then ready for use as sailcloth for ship models! Another answer for fine fibers may come to mind from the books which we all read as kids. Do you remember Captain Nemo and the clothes of his crew? Jules Verne talks about fine tissue done with fibers taken from mollusks, which he calls byssus. While the Nautilus itself was only a fantasy story (but what a story!) the byssus thing is not. See it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_silk However, insofar I know today there are just a couple of people in the islands of Southern Italy which know how to make such tissues, and I am not sure if it's good enough for our modelling purpose.

Fascinating subject! Thank you Mark for starting it and everybody else for their valuable information added to the thread!

Hello everybody, I completely agree with you that the stub mast and bowsprit are modern additions - it shows from the colour of the wood. However, the rest of the model looks genuine - at least to my eyes. Whether it is real or just a modern conception done with the aim to deceive, mimicking an old model, cannot tell just from seeing a picture. However all the details look authentic even if the deck covering is intriguing. As for the "fire buckets", I also thought they were just a bit odd decorations, nothing more. Generally speaking, when someone tries to mimic an old model, besides great care taken to make the materials look old they carefully avoid strange, unnatural details not seen elsewhere. Now if you analyze this model, it shows as if its builder didn't care whether the details he uses were seen elsewhere in real period models, be them in museums or private collections - he seems just concerned with showing the details of the real ship as best as he could. Again, cannot tell, it may be a recent model built by a exceptionally skilled modeller, or a genuine Georgian model. Now if you ask me, I would go for the later.

http://www.charlesmillerltd.com/Catalogues/ms301013/lot0347.html Hi Druxey & all, Here is the link to the said model. Certainly for yachts deck covering was not temporary! However we must keep in mind that yachts were the luxury limousines of the times so these little ships were finished in a style not matched by the common warships!

Hello Engeland, First of all, I believe your picture does not show a real wooden ship, but instead a replica used for movies. The extreme left of the picture certainly shows an iron hull where the orange spots are rusty patches. If so, the ship is something like a ghost ship where gray-black planks, masts and even sails would seem appropriate. But natural wood from which sailing ships were made doesn't show this colour neither at the beginning, nor when it goes older. Instead they look something like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/20110417_Lelystad%3B_Batavia_Haven_12_ship_at_Batavia_Harbour.JPG The hulls were made of oak planks protected with a mixture of pitch and tar. When saying tar, you would not think of nowadays tar derived from oil which is mainly black, but instead of some wood distillates which were mostly brownish in colour.

Hello Mark, I just have stumbled upon this thread of yours and read everything which was written here so far. Interesting thing, I am also very passionate of English yachts although my favourite period starts a bit earlier with the Stuarts dynasty. Just some quick thoughts for now: yes, painted canvas glued with wet paint over the deck and lately painted over was common practice on English Yachts from the Stuart period already. It was thought a good way to protect the quality people inside the cabins from the water seeping between the planks - at the time, it was somehow inevitable due to the imperfections of the deck caulking. However, the paint colour was not a common grey... instead it was either the same bulwark red or sometimes even more fancy things like a checkered black and white pattern! But if it is thought that the ship portrayed is new / in the trials, then it may be possible either that the decks are covered with old canvas tarpaulins to protect them, or alternatively that the canvas deck coverings is not yet painted. However, it is certain that the cover of the middle cabin was already painted in red so we may ask ourselves why they would have painted that and not the decks. As an aside comment, the same technique of painted canvas was used with 19th century railway carriages. Their tops were made of wood, carefully caulked and then a canvas top was laid over and painted. Usually white at the beginning - at least in Britain or Austria- , which white would later became a darker and darker shade of gray. Not from the movie, but from the locomotive's smoke and ashes.... The pinky colours of the galley chimney and the lower part of the mast: the chimney was in fact a copper tube whose colour when new is, as you know, pinkish and later it turns to a darker pink-grey or even dark green when oxidizes. The same goes for the lower part of the mast, which was coppered up to a certain level to protect the wood against the water spraying from the deck. Hope this helps

Excellent resource, Admiral Paris is one of the classics... thank you very much grsjax and all! Just in case, for all the non French-speakers which have difficulties to download the resource: to download you must first check the box which says En cochant cette caisse, je recconais avoir pris... etc. It is just a check that you agree with the terms and conditions on which you have to click first, otherwise the download does not happen!

One must not forget that Royal Ships of the 17th century were not only powerful machines of war, they were first of all a display of force of the respective kingdoms. Nor do this happens just to our human race, it is the same with other species: take for example the lions, where the dominant lion has an almost superfluous mane which can be seen from miles away, yet loses it when loses supremacy among his group! The same goes for or the bright colours of birds' feathers, which are used to attract females but also as a display of power... the more powerful the male, the brighter the colours! Moreover, colours in 17th century ships were not only used to make ships more pleasant/attractive and a bold declaration of power. The main reason was practical: to protect the wood against the rough elements. I have also wondered at first why they would put a lot of gold leaf on something which is basically a machine to kill? The plain answer is that gold leaf is one of the most effective ways to protect wood against elements and this was learn from a long time ago. One must not forget that Egyptian pharaohs had their wooden furniture and coffins covered in gold leaf at first for practical reasons! Unlike other known materials like iron or copper, gold does not decay with time therefore covering things in gold on the long term comes out cheaper than covering it in other decaying materials which would mean in several years you have to strip down the protection and renew. Of course covering all the ship in gold leaf would cost a fortune therefore they had to make a balance of costs and added in also other materials. One more point is that bright colours were seen only when the paint was new. It might therefore be correct for a model of the unfortunate Wasa to have bright colours since she is one of the few ships known to have capsized only after 20 minutes of navigation. But for most of the 17th century ships it may be taken as certain that their paints were faded off after several weeks of navigation on rough seas. Therefore it is again a matter of choice from the modeller, how you would to display your model? be it in bright colours just as recently taken out of the building yard, or battered after several weeks of navigation on heavy seas? The choice is known also in other modelling branches: some prefer to run their locomotives and railway stock as brand new, others take their time and talent to make them look weathered!

Hi Moony, The image you posted actually comes from a book written by George Frederick Campbell which is called "China tea clippers" , 1954. As for your question, back in 1860 there were two situations: there were either well known shipbuilding companies which gradually switched from wooden construction to iron, therefore they had to buy iron profiles including iron plates from a local supplier or there was the inverse situation where an iron company extended their trade into shipbuilding. There are also known cases when two well known firms, one in iron working, the other in shipbuilding, start to work together. In both cases they borrowed some practices from the previous wooden construction like the distance between frames. In a lengthy process of trial and error they learned the proper thickness of an iron plate for a said distance between the frames, just as in the case of the wooden builds. Then they bought the appropriate plates either from a local supplier or had them made to specifications. So the thickness varied with the distance between frames, which in turn varied with the length of the ship, and their choice was more or less the job of the ship designer. Smaller ships had a smaller distance between the frames, bigger ships had more. Just to make you an image, the plates were offered in a wide range of thicknesses, the standard being much the same as today: https://www.tedpella.com/company_html/gauge.htm So I am afraid the only correct answer to your question is: find the original drawings of the ship and you will find also the correct thickness of the plates, there is no standard!

Hello Gary, the answer to your question is, as always "depends" Depends on epoch and more important, depends on nationality. One thing is certain, the gunports were cut after the deck beams were placed in place and the deck was laid, so that the lower and upper sill were always put parallel to the deck. Now there is a wide debate even among the members of this forum whether the other two sides are put square to the upper and lower or were put parallel to the frames. Some say the first, some say the second. In the first case the lids would be rectangles with square corners, in the next they would be slightly parallelograms in shape. One thing is certain: square (which is, with the height equal to the width) they never were. Tell us which nationality and which epoch your ship is, then we may come out with a more detailed answer!

Hi Jason, While I can't give any answer (yet) to your riddle, I really appreciate this one! An old building which incorporates parts of an HMS Whatsthename... really interesting, will follow with much interest! By the way, googling is of almost no use here.... as long as you can't know precisely what to look for So far I only found the story of the Resolute Desk from the White House, made from the wood of HMS Resolute. Interesting story, but of no use for our quiz!

Actually I also had some trouble with port and starboard, simply because in my own language we use the French terms (babord and tribord). However some time ago I learned the English terms come from Viking times: "starboard" is in fact the "Steering-board" as the Viking ships were always steered with an steering oar put on the right side of the ship. So if they had the steering oar always on the right, they landed always with the left side on the quay, so this was the "port" (harbour) side. As simple as "bonjour" (which is "Good day" in French). And, by the way, the story goes that "babord" and "tribord" comes from mid 19th century when the French had several floating batteries used as depot ships. Each battery had the name "BATTERIE" and the number below, written with big white letters going all over on the round stern. So if you were looking from the left side, you would see "BA.... ". If you were looking from the right side, you would see "....TERIE". So this is from where they got the names "BA-bord" and "TERIE-bord" As with your strakes, you should start with the first under the wales put parallel to it, then go down and taper the strake at the stem and at the stern as you see it necessary. Keep in mind that with the real thing they did never have straight long planks the size of the whole ship. Instead they used several shorter planks put in line for every strake, and as need arose, these planks were curved to make the proper round of the bow. Good luck with your planking!

I support Don9of11's view, if you do not have a table saw or other power tools to make the groove, you can still do it by using two strips glued to a larger piece of wood. An incidental advantage of the method would be that you can glue only the inner strip; the outer strip of wood will be glued or even pinned after the case has been made and after the glass has been put to place, to retain it securely in its wooden frame. If incidentally your glass breaks, you will just have to take the pins off or cut out the outer strip, take out the pieces of glass and put another glass panel in its place.

If you have to do many similar pieces it is better to make yourself a wooden jig the form you want your piece bent, otherwise will be difficult to get all the pieces in the same shape; if you make them by the hand there will be inherent dimensional variations from one piece to another. Wish you good luck with your hammock rails!