Doreltomin

Hello Vivian, have fun on this one! I also think the same as Mark above, you are slowly and surely approaching "the dark side" Best wishes, this will be a nice build!

Thank you Joe, that will be a thing which I will surely follow with utmost interest! Meanwhile, thank you very much Chuch for your photos, they speak for themselves. As the saying puts it, a good photo worths more than a thousand words!

Hello Alzarius, you should take it like that, until now you just practiced planking. I am bit surprised of the dark colour of your first planking, I have expected to be something more flexible and less expensive wood like fir, which is a lighter wood. I am sorry but I am not in position to suggest you a wood supply in the States as I am from Europe and have little knowledge on what you can get there. However you should try some hobby stores near you, I am sure they have wood in various sizes among other things. But for the first layer you should look for the cheapest type of wood, not of cheapest quality as you need to be of regular grain and free of knots and irregularities to bend correctly. Also looking at your planking attempt it seems to me that it goes that way because you tried to put the planks straight from the box. You should have considered a little tapering of each plank at the rounded part of the hull to make them go well one near the other. Also if the rounding of the hull is extreme you should fill up the whole with some inexpensive soft wood like balsa which you later cut and sand to proper shape. If planking causes you headaches you can even fill your hull completely. Balsa is a very light wood so the model wouldn't be very heavy if filled up. Remember, the first layer is the one which does the shape and actually can be done with anything, including strips of thick paper if you want it! Just take a look here on the MSW: there are some folks which build their hulls of PAPER. Yes, check "paper models" and you will see how they do their hulls using strips of paper put first transversally, then longitudinally, all properly filled and sanded until the shape of the ship looks perfect. There's even somebody .... see him here: http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/1420-papegojan-by-mati-148-dutch-pinnace-1627/?hl=papegojan which did his ship in paper then dressed it in wood, and now it looks as if a wooden model, yet the core is.. paper! And one more word: it seems to me that you use CA glue, which is Cyano-acrilate or "super glue?" I would use PVA glue or "wood glue" instead! Good luck with your build, and remember.. there's no good or bad modellers.. only experienced and less experienced, and nobody has ever build its experience except if "hands-on" by doing many mistakes at the beginning!

By the way, I am not so sure if mahogany is a good choice for the second layer,even if your kit used this. As I have pointed previously, the trick is to find a wood which has the proper grain of oak reduced to scale. You cannot use oak to simulate oak reduced in scale, because the grain will look too coarse. You need something with finer grain. The best fit for this are fruit trees: plum, apple, pear, perhaps lemon. My favourite is plum, which grows into two different colours, one is darker and may be used for hull, the other is lighter and can be used for deck planks.

Hello, just as Rich said, the first layer is made of unexpensive but thicker planks just to make the required shape. If incidentally your building skills are not at their best, at least you can correct the shape using either sanding for the bulging parts of filler for the hollow parts. You can even add some wooden blocks and cut them to correct shape if this better suits your needs. The only important thing is that you get a correct symmetrical shape of the hull as seen in the plans. You may check the shape by the rake of the eye or even use some templates made of cardboard to check the proper shape where your eye says things are not all right. Once this is done, you use the second layer which is only "cosmetical"; it's purpose is just to make the hull show as if done from wooden planks. Sometimes it is as thin as just 1 mm thick and is made from veneer instead of planks. Here if you sand a bit more you will get a hole in the plank so you will need to sand with caution, but the purpose of the plank being so thin is to perfectly adhere to the correct shape which you made previously. Another trick is that the first layer is made of inexpensive wood, mostly fir or something like that, the second layer is made of expensive wood chosen to look as if oak (which was the wood generally used for shipbuilding) reduced to scale. Of course this does not apply to hulls which are to be painted, where the wood grain does not show, being already covered by a layer of paint. Hope this helps!

Hello, I have used this trick of blowing up the lines using a photostatic copier with blow-up capabilities many times. This drawback of having big black lines I solved by putting a sheet of clear drawing calque over and re-drawing the lines again, otherwise it will result in a mess. I did not invert the colour as you did, only used a coloured pen (usually, red) over the thick black lines to redraw over. Good luck with your build(s), will follow you with interest, these drop keels make an interesting feature of which I have wondered the details several times.

Hello, as Kester says putting a picture will help a lot in figuring the exact problem. Otherwise, like that "on the blind" it seems that you have a plank on bulkhead hull with a keel not stiff enough. You may need first to take the deck out to have acces inside the hull, then you will need to devise a way, something like a cradle or a jig to fix the hull in the proper position. Even fixing the hull on your tabletop, provided it is stiff and perfectly flat will do the trick. Then you will need to insert some stiffeners inside the hull to keep it in the correct position even after it is removed from the previous fixture. I believe you can try cutting two squares of plywood of the proper distance between each space between bulkheads and then securely glue two of them each side of the keel put so that they would form a "V" in transverse section touching the keel, the angle between the two sides of the V being roughly 90 degrees. After glued properly to each bulkhead they will be stiff enough to block any twist movement of the hull. Good luck and show us what you did! Best wishes,

Hello Alan, I took my own copy of Wolfram zu Monfeld "Historic Ship Models" and opened it at page 66, and found the said list of different measurements. I believe we have the same book, is it the one published by Sterling Publishing Co, Inc. NY? There's indeed a list which gives the English foot to be 308.0 mm, but I wonder if this is right. To my knowledge, the dimension of English foot did not change at least from the 17th century until nowadays, so if they did change anything into the 19th century it was the way they "translated" it into a meter, not the dimension itself. Moreover, in my calculations I always use the English inch of 25.4 mm yet I have an old Hütte engineer's manual which I have inherited from my father which gives one English inch to be 25.399956 mm. The difference is very small, yet as you said, if you add many inches together, it can get a significant amount. This only happens if you work your model metric and always try to "translate" your measurements from the old imperial units into milimeters. Here is the really nice part when working with imperial units: if you use an imperial scale and use a measuring tool divided in inches and fractions of an inch, working for example your model to a scale of 1' = 1" your model will always be true to its scale of 1:12. Moreover, if instead the English foot you will use a measuring tool divided into French feet or Swedish feet to measure a plan which is made into these units, the model will still be 1:12. Of course, this only works if that unit is sub-divided into 12 inches. It will not work for the Amsterdam foot which was divided into 11 duimen. Don't ask me why, and moreover, how on Earth they managed to divide that foot into 11 equal parts So if using a different foot or a different way of translating your foot into milimeters, your model will still be accurately proportioned (supposed you made it accurately) only the scale which you know to be a true 1:48 may in fact be 1:51.5 or 1:46,79 or something like that. It's just a question of numbers. This applies as well with the old Navy Board models, many of which are known to be built in 1:48 scale, yet if measured carefully, some of these models show not to be built at a true 1:48 scale but to a slightly different scale, depending on which measuring tools the model maker used and how accurately these tools were made. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_(unit) you have an abstract of the measuring ways used in Europe from the early times (it is a wiki source so use with the due caution as it is known for the wikipedia sources not to be always reliable) and here: http://www.historiaviva.org/cocina/medidas_v2-ing.shtml a review of the measuring system in Spain in early 15th century. Hope this helps!

http://www.archaeology.org/exclusives/articles/648-yenikap-byzantine-serci-limani-turkey @Louie, didn't know of this extraordinary find in Yenikapi... Thank you, very interesting informations! Together with the venetian ship and the roman wrecks in Pisa, this may be one of the most significant finds in the last years to shed light onto early ships from late roman, early byzantine era!

Hello Kevin and Eamonn, that's what I love most to this game, it gives you a good opportunity to find out things about various ships with so interesting histories. Thanks for posting that! @ Titanic: please, come in and have a seat.. it's free for everybody to guess the ship and, if you guess, then you can post the next one! Cheers, Dorin. P.S: Kevin, don't forget it's your turn!

Hello, very interesting, Ab Hoving is a well known modeller and historian and his books are a must for people interested in Dutch ships. Thank you for sharing this exciting news with us! Here's the link to Seawatchbooks: http://www.seawatchbooks.com/113004

Excellent, congratulations DFellingham!!! She is indeed the Romanian cannonboat Grivita built on the Fiume yard which then was in... Austro-Hungaria, So Jan, I am sorry, you were just an inch close of her, but picked instead the wrong lady. Fulgerul (The Lightning) was built on the French yard Forges et Chantiers de la Mediteranee, la Seyne, Toulon in 1873 and looks quite different. If you do a quick search with her name you will get at least two of the three known pictures of her. DFellingham, it is your turn to put in the next mystery ship!

Hello Ron, In the meantime I had the time to check in my collection of old magazines. The Benjamin W Latham appeared in the former East German magazine Modellbau Heute number 11/1989 (which is, november 1989) and is a well researched topic written by Michael Sohn which includes several photos of the original ship, all credited to author's own collection. One even shows the ship being built on the John Bishop yard in Gloucester. It may well be that the plans are drawn by the author and are based on his own research. Whether the author also studied the Ronnberg plans I cannot say but it's a clear thing that they are different from the one on which the Model Shipways kit is based.

Now you are getting really close! C'mon Jan, a little effort, you are really on her, there's only a little twist of the tale

Hello Jan, you got the right type of ship, about right in time, but not too close in location... at least you guessed the continent! I might also add this white livery is not the original one, this is one of the last photos of her, taken sometimes at the beginning of the 20th century. Originally she was black.

Hello, Thank you David! So I believe it's my turn to put up a photo again. Here she is, our next mystery ship. As usual, I have tampered with the flag for the beginning so don't try to recognize her by this feature!

French cruiser D'Estaing of 1879, La Perouse class?

Hello Doris, that's a very nice helmsman you have there! I am as always impressed by your talent and your attention to detail. Therefore, just as a help for you to make the things look more realistic and not as a criticism of any way, please find attached a sample made putting together details from two different Willem van de Velde drawing depicting people aboard two of the yachts of King Charles the 2nd of England. Even if the drawings are about one hundred years earlier, I believe the sailor's clothes would have been the same. As you can see in the drawing, the crew usually had a long mantle with sleeves, long pants and always wore tarred hats to protect themselves against the wind, sea and sun. Moreover, I believe the position of the long wooden pole connected to your yacht's rudder may be too raised up. It should have been made parallel with the deck and going just above the deck light in such a way that the metal ball terminating the rudder post would be at the proper height for being grasped by the helmsman's hand. Hope this helps.. anyway, you can as well leave everything just as it is, it looks stunning anyway!

Hello, that's very interesting.... looks like a cargo boat still she has some places for passengers too. And I can see at least four safety boats at a side, which makes it at least eight boat for the whole ship. May seem this is after the Titanic disaster. The ship itself looks as if built between 1900 and the beginning of the first world war, but have no idea yet on how to pinpoint her.

Hello Don9of11 (That's a funny nick you have there!) Thanks for posting your mosaic photo support, it illustrates perfectly what I wanted to say; which is, you don't need to put all the support picture under your vectorial plan at a time, you can put only the relevant part and draw it, then close and put in the next etc. It's easier to do that if you intend to draw all the plan in vectorial, because the bitmap image plan actually uses a lot of resources for the drawing, has to 'map" every point of the image, while the vectorial only uses the coordinates of the start and the end points of a certain (straight) line. This way you will have a full plan free of any distorsions which you can later print and use for your modelling purposes. Best wishes,

Hello, I have managed to fix such bended plastic pieces by dipping them into very hot water (actually, boiling) and setting them to the correct position with two pliers. It also may be a good idea to try the technique on a piece of sprue to set the correct temperature before doing it on the actual piece. The boiling water is hot enough to make your piece pliable yet not that hot to make it lose its correct shape. I would not try heating a plastic piece in another way; it may melt or, even worse, can ignite if heated too much.

Hello Congratulations Jan, she is indeed the Cosmao, built by the Chantiers & Forges de la Gironde, Bordeaux, set on keel in 1887, launched in 1889, put on service in 1891 and offered to scrap in 1919! I am pretty impressed that you were not confused among the many French second class cruisers (they had 24 of them, starting with the Forbin of 1888 and ending with the Infernet of 1899) and picked the correct one! So.. your turn!

@ Jan: You are right, some of these 19th century French ships look quite strange with their heavily inwards curved shape and those turreting superstructures. At least this one looks a bit more "normal". Good thinking so far.. you can go further in that same direction! @Jud: thanks for the imput. Never thought until now how hard it would be to climb on a rope ladder from a swinging boat even in a moderate sea. May be tough! Also, it may well be that the picture itself is made from the missing boat! So, any more ideas or should I drop in one more clue?

@ Jan: that's correct. Besides, because we are on a shipmodellers' forum, I can tell you these square windows which are typical French are a modeller's nightmare. But letting that apart, isn't that a very interesting ship shape?

Thank you Menno! So here it goes again: Which ship is this one?