Doreltomin

Hello Vivian, I am glad to greet another lover of medioeval ships, and a lady too! While it is true that you ladies are not so numerous to represent this wonderful hobby of ship model building, it is certainly true with respect of quality of the job. Some of the best models I ever saw were made by female modellers. So, good luck with your build and show us how a Portuguese caravel looked five hundred years ago! There are some wonderful portuguese sources to help you. In fact, the best books on shipbuilding of the period which we have today are portuguese. As an example, just take a quick net search for "Fabrica de naus" written by father Fernando de Oliveira back in 1580. Also, you may do a search for a ship called "Nostra senhora dos martires" also known as "The Pepper wreck" for inspiration. And as a welcome gift for you, if you like medioeval ships, take a few moments to look at this wonderful movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZPJhEZR-Gg Best wishes!

Sails set = yards raised. Sails furled = yards lowered. That's a rule. With all the sails set and going at full speed with the wind the stability of the ship increases in the same way as a bicycle keeps its upright position while on movement. This overrides the downside effect of the heavy weight of the yards set up on the masts. Otherwise, with sails furled, each heavy piece would be put as lower as possible. Preparing for heavy seas, the sailors not only would set the yards in the "lower" position, they would sometimes take them down completely. Preparing for very dangerous passages like rounding the Cap Horn, they would even take down the upper segments of the masts! All was done to ease the tops of the ship, otherwise she would become dangerously "top heavy"... a thing which was awfully right for the unfortunate Vasa! The photo on the box is just a mistake, it really shouldn't be a guide.

Hello Kimberley, First of everything, congratulation on your purchase of the Heller kit. I know it may look small and it may dissapoint you at the first glance, but the size definitely does not matter in shipmodelling. There are or were some modellers which did real works of art with models even smaller than that. Just do a quick search on the net to see what you find if you search images for "Donald McNarry". His favourite scale was 1:192! Secondly, you should take your kit just as a starting point, not as a definitive thing. The instructions which they give are just basic, or even beyond that. If you leave it just at the basic level of the instructions, you will come up with something very toy-like. But you can transform the thing which you have into something much more interesting. Just take a look at these pictures here: http://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/texel/texel.html All the ships which you see here are made in resin by Artitec. Their scale is said on this site to be 1:90 (in fact, I believe the real scale is 1:87) which is even smaller than yours 1:75. But just take your time to look on HOW they did the things: they painted the resin to look like real wood! This is the best trick. You will not have to contend yourself with painting it with colour this and that as they say; it will not look like real wood. You will have to learn how to make plastic to look like wood, and the Artitec site is a very good "teacher" for that. Then, you must become "independent" of the basic colours which you now only have: it means that, apart of the paints which you already have, would also need some other colours. You will need to buy at least flask of white, another of black, then three more flasks of the basic colours: blue, yellow, red. A bottle of thinner and one of acetone to wash your brushes would also be of good use. If you have that, then you can mix them together and you can get all the colours you want. You can mix them in some empty small bottles or flasks which you have but also, for a small amount of paint, you can also mix them directly on a piece of cardboard. As an example, for brown you can mix yellow and red, which will come out orange, then you will add black until it comes the brown which you want. The next trick is: the painting should be done in layers. First a general layer is done, then you will have to paint each plank individually with a different nuance. Look at how wood changes colour as it ages in the real world and try replicate it. If you ever fancied trying art painting, it's almost the same thing, only here it's applied on plastic instead of the regular canvas. Yes.. shipmodelling is not just a pastime, it's an art! Express yourself like an Artist... Best wishes and good luck with your build!

Hello Dan, That's certainly a fascinating project! In fact, we are here on no firm ground with such early ships. We have certain bits of information on ships prior of 1700, but nothing is certain with them. However, this only makes such a subject more challenging and interesting. Turning these little bits and pieces which you know of the subject into a coherent picture is not just a technical job, it's firstly a work of art. I particularly like your way of building the hull, haven't seen such system yet, so will follow that with much interest. Good luck with your work!

Excellent thread, thank you for your building tips, Paragraf. Although technically your Victory is a paper model, in fact your tips are certainly good for wooden modelling too. Will follow your build with much interest! Cheers!

Excellent workmanship, Isalbert! Victory isn't a quite easy subject because the ship still exists and there are a lot of known details which you have to follow closely. Also, the scale you have chosen is very demanding, but your craftmanship is certainly up to that! Keep on the good work and thank you for the photos!

Hello, I just wonder if this computer-aided design of a period wooden ship isn't plain misleading. Don't misunderstand me, I also work as a professional architect, busy all the day long with my 3D models, but I remember the old days of the hand drawing and I have seen how this 3D models and uncanny precision of the CAD can modify your thinking. I mean, there may be too much precision which for practical reasons wouldn't be necessary for a wooden ship, where some 1-2 cm of adjustment and deviation from the standard dimensions would have been quite normal. Then, there is something else which annoys me from a long time ago and I am not yet sure how it was on a real ships.What do I mean: I know all period plans of these ships show the vertical sides of a gunport to be a true vertical, while the "horizontals" are parallel with the respective gundeck. Is it like that on their period plans because it is plainly easier to draw or was it also true in reality? Each gundeck lid would have been custom-built and then fixed to place, a tedious and time consuming process. For the real ship I believe it would have been easier to do it otherwise. I mean, on the shipyard there must have been a logical development of the things. First, the frames were erected and put to place. Then, the external wooden skin was put to place, then the gundeck beams were fixed inside and the gundeck put over. Then, I believe for practical reasons it would have been easier for them to make a wooden jig of exactly the needed size for the gunport aperture including two "legs' to align it do the deck at the needed height, mark the place and then cut the gunport along the marks. If it was needed, the true vertical of the frame was adjusted away to make room for the gunport aperture. This way the "horizontals" would be paralel with the deck, the "verticals" of the gunports wouldn't be true verticals anymore, however the gunport lids would have been at 90 degrees each, easy to build, easy to adjust and easy to switch from one gunport to another if needed. What do you think?

Hi Tony, just take a look at the picture above. You will notice the ship actually has three masts: two "normals" as for a brig and then there's a third, a thinner one. It looks as if a normal "ship" with a mizzen mast put VERY close of the main mast. That was called a snow, a kind of rig which gradually dissapeared, being transformed into the two-masted rig called "brig"