Lin Feng

Cheers Max, we work the same way then.
 
I have been working with the tops. It's funny how fast this step feels after doing slow work like the ratlines.
 
What I've done is making holes for the  connections for the ropes/next level deadeyes holders.
 
I also tried to make the skanskläder for the mainmast:
 

 

 

 

 
 
/Matti
 
 

I haven't had a lot of time for the project over the past couple of weeks, but I have managed to get some of the beakhead sculptures painted and installed.  I started with the large sculpture at the bottom of the beakhead.  It depicts a conflict between Thetis (a sea goddess) and Peleus (a hero).  Zeus and Poseidon tell Thetis she has to marry Peleus, and she refuses.  Peleus, on the advice of Proteus (another sea god), attempts to force her to marry him by binding her while she is asleep, but she wakes and is understandable somewhat annoyed.  She then fights with him, shifting form, becoming among other things a lioness, a serpent, flame, an eagle, and water.  Peleus manages to survive, so she agrees to marry him.  Their son is Achilles of Trojan War fame.
 
Understanding the myth helps make sense of the rather complicated sculpture.  The detail's not great on the moldings, but it's good enough to see the hapless Peleus, plus Thetis as a mermaid, a lion, an eagle, and flame.  The 1:10 has a serpent, but I couldn't find it in the kit sculpture.
 

 
Here are some close-up photos of the ten Roman emperors at the top of the beak.  The kit provides three sizes of sculpture, and they don't all fit properly, some being too long.  Luckily Karl is a genius and talks in his build about using a clothes iron to shrink the sculptures as needed.  The process worked like magic, and shrunk the sculptures in most cases enough to fit.  Some needed their plinths chopped off because I got nervous at the thought of increasing the heat and getting more shrinking.
 

 
More emperors.  The front emperor Augustus had to be carefully fitted to avoid running into the lion figurehead.  You can also see the balusters between the emperors - on the kit they are part of the beak side, and flat.  I cut toothpicks into a semi-circular cross-section and glued them to the flat parts, making more of a 3D look.  I wanted more detail on them, but they are just too small.
 

 
 

Jadzo,
 
Thanks for your kind remarks. Regarding the figures, no no primer was use. I just washed the figures, and using hobby paint just applied it directly upon the gilded metal. All the colors adhered very easily.
 
Thanks for dropping by.
 
MIchael

Ah, the final ratlines of this stage is done, phew. I was bound to make mistakes as it was my first time, and the final mast became better than the first. But I'll look at the mistakes as lessons learned and move on.
 

 
I made a side by side with one of my ref pics, and besides the oversized deadeyes and that I didn't get the right number of ratlines/spacing, I'm happy with how the shaping of the ratlines came out.
 

 
Now  it will feels good to make other things like finishing the tops and planning for the railings.
 
 
/Matti
 
 
 
 

A small update - I decided to go ahead & build all 14 gun carriages.I didn`t like the generic kit carriages so I built some from scratch.The sides were built up from 1.5mm square strips.I simulated the reinforcements on the tops& fronts with black heavy paper.The pegs in the axles are made from .020 inch wire. The axle brackets were made from the same wire hammered flat & bent to shape.i have decided to use the kit cannon barrels.Each carriage will have 38 pieces when finished.In the last picture the kit carriage is on the left & mine on the right. Although they are a little taller than the kit ones would have been I am fairly happy how they turned out.
 

 

 

 
/Mark

Hi guys:
 
Continuing with the sail details  I arrive to the Lateen sail.  At first it appeared to me that the form to arrange the folding rigging lines, according to the Plan, was not logical.  So I tried to see them in the pictures of the 1:10 model at the Vasa museum and Clayton´s  and although it is difficult to see the details one thing is clear: there were different.
Revising again the drawings in the Manual instructions I noticed another inconsistency between the drawing that comes in the Plan and the one in the Instruction manual and although is not complete it seems to be the correct one.  Finally I decided to use the latter with some part of my own.
 
PLAN:

 
MANUAL:

 
MY OPTION:

 
Saludos, Karl
 
 

Hi guys:
 
These past two weeks I finished fixing the sails to the spars corresponding to the main and mizzen masts.  Also adding more details to the sails and spars:
 

 
Thanks for your likes.
 
Saludos, Karl

And now the large triton at the waist.  The kit sculpture was a little odd - it looked sort of like a sarcophagus - so I reshaped it a bit.  The sculpture lies across three of the wales, so I needed to add little blocks to fill the gaps.  Also, there is a rope line of some sort that passes through the sculpture, so one of the filler blocks has a transverse hole cut in it that will allow the line to pass through.
 

 
With that, it's time to move up to the group of sculptures at the beak, starting with the complicated scenery under the beak deck.

I just finished making the upper railing slots and dry fitting for the starboard side.
(glad this is done!)
 




 
I also took this time to drill the belaying pin holes on both sides of the ship lower railings.
 



 
I sanded down the supplied belaying pins, in order to thin them down. I will stain them later.
 
Dry fitted belaying pins



 
So now I only have a couple of minor things to work on before I start the masts in a week or so.
I want to make 2 more kevels and place them where I will be removing the belaying pin rails above the cannon.
 
Thanks,
Frank
 

Next up were the herms along the side of the hull.  Again the sculptures were pretty good, but where the ship has two kinds, the kit provides only one.  I painted them all the same, trying to get at least some fish scale detail on them.  Here's a close-up:
 

 
And a view of the entire row:
 

 

Hey all, here is an update finally. I've done the other side of the mainmast and made the portside of the mizzen mast. I found it difficult to imitate the sagging curves of the original, but it was easier on the mizzen as the shrouds are angled straight up. First a reference pic I took at the museum:
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
/Matti

Thanks for the kind words, much appreciated.
 
With the structural hull stuff basically done, it's back to painting.  The kit supplies small sculptures to go between the middle pair of doors.  Unfortunately the difference between the deck heights won't fit the sculptures.  I went back to the plans and I don't see any way the deck height difference could have been increased, so no idea how they expected this to work.  I used small sections of toothpick instead.
 

 
The kit provides the same small sculptures to use at the bottom of the space between the two doors to the helmsman's cabin.  This time they fit nicely.  The sculptures are quite small and very low on detail.
 

 
Above the small sculptures are a set of creatures - fauns?  Devils?  They seem to follow the real ship sculptures quite nicely.  The ship has three whole ones and two halves - one at each end - but the kit only provides the three whole ones.
 

 
Rather than go back to the starboard side quarter gallery sculptures, I'm going to proceed down the port side painting sculptures all the way to the figurehead, and then work my way back down the starboard side.  That way I get some variety with the painting.
 
 

I started trying to make the slots for the railing posts. At first I tried using a tiny milling bit with my dremel, but after a couple of attempts I gave up due to my unsteady hands.
So I switched to hand drilling two small holes (.035 dia) right next to each other and then slowly filing out the middle and making them rectangular as best as I could. My posts are 1mm thick x 2mm wide for the ones that support the curved  pieces and the rest are 1mm thick by 1.5mm wide. Most of them came out okay with a couple of slots ending up too big. (Some walnut wood filler should work!) .


 
Working my way down the port side, I milled all the slots and dry fitted the posts that I will be using.
Nothing will be glued down until later after the installation of the shrouds and ratlines.





 
Now onto the starboard side.
 
Thanks,
Frank
 

My drawplate arrived so I was able to create thinner balusters for the upper gallery.  
 

 
Another angle, which also shows some changes I made to the rear tower sculptures.  The kit  sculpture is a short triton standing on the head of another triton.  I think it's meant to simulate what on the 1:10 model is actually two sculptures, one along the roof of the tower and one standing perpendicular to the tower at the base.  The kit also provides enough of these sculptures to do eight per tower, and I only used five.  That meant I had enough left over that I could cut the extras in two and use the bottom ones separately, standing up as they do on the 1:10 model.  A complicated explanation, but here's the result:
 

 
The balusters are small enough that I couldn't add much detail, but every little bit helps:
 

 
And now the port side galleries are actually finished!
 

 
 

A small update - finished the hull nailing.Hard to see the small nails unless you are close up. Also started planking the decks. After planking the decks I am going to make up one gun carriage to determine where to position the round gun ports & cut them out before finishing the planking on the outer hull to try & minimize splintering.
 

 

 

 

 
I am planking the deck with different length planks in no certain pattern as the original is.
 
/Mark
 
 

This was a small project to fix the poop deck gun ports.  The kit has them as semicircles, but they are completely circular on the real ship.  I decided to lower them so they could be circular.  First I created the lower circular part of the port:
 

 
Then I filled in the upper part with a small piece of wood having a circular profile on the bottom.  Worked nicely.
 

 
Next up will be the round gun port decorations...
 

I decided to finish off the stern by doing the rear gun port lids and false cannon, and adding better doors at the top of the transom between the grotesques.  The kit provides plastic port lids.  They have a raised center section with lions embossed on the top.  The lions are quite nice actually, although they need a dark wash to bring out the detail (otherwise they look more like bears than lions).
 
Since the lids are supposed to be unpainted wood, I couldn't use the kit parts as provided.  Instead, I cut the edges off, leaving only the center section, which needs to be painted completely.  I thinned the section down a bit, then built the port lids from three strips of 3mm mahogany laid edgewise.
 
Here are the port lids and decorations prior to painting.  You can see the lid prior to and after cutting off the edges:
 

 
I then spray primed all the lids at once, with a medium flat yellow ("Demon Flesh" miniature primer, if you are interested :-).  After that, I put a thin layer of pale yellow on the lion heads, and followed that with a dull ochre wash.  The result picks out the lion mane and other details rather nicely.  Add a red mouth and red for the remainder of the lid, and I was done.  The painted decorations on the wood lid work out rather nicely, I think.
 
The cannon were sprayed with flat black primer, then washed with dark bronze.  Here's the result:
 

 
Then on to the doors.  What I did originally was simply scribe lines on the base of the transom and paint the result red.  It looked OK, but the "doors" were recessed and I decided I wanted them flush.  So I scratched some doors from pieces of wood and dropped them in the recessed, then painted them.  Here's a photo of the finished stern:
 

 
 
 
 
 

Back working on my model!
 
I started making the assembly for the upper railing system. I am doing this so I can lay out the slots I will need to mill for the posts. I want to do this now (as discussed above) before I start the masting and rigging.
 
I made the curve pieces by taking some walnut sheet and grinding a radius with my oscillating sander.
Then I penciled the outside line and ground the outer side using a disk sander.


 
I notched one end of the curved pieces and one end of the straight pieces so that there will be more support when gluing together.

 
Now I glued the different sections together for both side of the ship. I left extra stock on the curved section and also on the straight sections, so I can accurately fit everything later in the build. (I will also paint these sections white at a later date)



 
I made up a bunch of the railing posts and left extra stock so I can fit everything later.

 
Now I will start marking and slotting the railing for the posts. (Hopefully I can find tools small enough for the slotting)
 
Thanks,
Frank

The kit plans don't show the scuppers, but again there are enough photos out there that I was able to scratch them.  Rather than just drill holes in the hull, I made small squares with holes in them and attached them to the planking.  Here they are after mounting:
 

 
And after staining:
 

Port lid and hinges for the rearmost port.  I understand from Fred Hocker that the rearmost port was actually known to be open with a cannon in place, but I didn't get that information until I had closed up the hull, so my port follows the 1:10 model.  The hinges are from Amati - the kit doesn't provide any.  I blackened them chemically.  The rope for opening the port will go on at the very end of the build.
 
You can also see the small message port.  I didn't trust myself to cut an opening and make a lid for it, since it is very small and crosses one of the wales.  So I contented myself with scribing an outline and putting some small paper hinges on it.  I don't like the effect, so I'm trying to figure out how to improve it.
 
 

Hi friends:
 
These two last weeks I was a little lazy with my sails, in part of doing other things as:  dealing with termites in my house!! , and in part because fixing the sails to their spars is not as fun as with other parts of the construction.  Anyway this are some of my advances with the bowsprit and foremast sails:
 

 
Saludos, Karl

I decided to deal with the rudder now, rather than at the end of the build, because I want to finish the stern completely and see how it looks.  This may be a bad idea since the pintles and gudgeons will be fragile.  The plans for the rudder are not very detailed; fortunately there are lots of pictures of the real model and Matti's build to steal from :-)  To begin with, there are no cutouts for the hinge pins, so I made those and attached the tiller stub:
 

 
I then added the pintles and hinge pins.  The kit provides some thick plastic pieces that wrap around the end of the rudder, but there are only 6 instead of 7, and they also look over-scale, so I didn't use them.  I had success with my first model using construction paper painted black, so I tried that here.  The hinge pins are planking nails with the heads cut off:  
 

 
And finally the rudder in place.  The gudgeons are also black paper.  I used wood glue to attach the paper hinges to the hull and the rudder, and sealed them with flat acrylic medium.  The result is pretty fragile - the only points of attachments are at the hinge pins - so we'll see how it holds up.  The plans don't show the tie rope, but various sources have it in their drawings, so I added it.  I assume it's to keep the rudder from falling off accidentally.  The sources I looked at don't show rudder chains; the portals on either side are for tow ropes.
 
You can also see the lion sculpture in place.  Only the head is gold - the rest is dull ochre.  I don't think King Gustav would have approved of lots gold leaf down near the waterline where it wouldn't be highly visible...
 

Here are the upper gallery tritons.  Again, they had to be thinned about 50% in order to bend without cracking.  I did break one, but some CA glue fixed it nicely, another good thing about plastic figures.  I also added balusters in the gap between the roof and the lower part of the gallery.  The real ship has small faces here, but I had to make do with square pieces of wood.  I will fill in the gaps between the balusters with very thin turnings and try to paint some detail on them.
 

 
Here you can see the full upper gallery, with the lower Gideon sculptures, still looking a bit like Greedo from Star Wars.  The lower figures were particularly difficult to bend to shape, since they are short and thick.  Even with thinning, they had a bad tendency to crack.
 

 
And finally, the full effect.  I still need to do the tritons on the tower roof, and the thin balusters.  The latter will have to wait until a drawplate that I've ordered arrives.
 

 

Hi Mates,
 
Minor update finishing-up the anchors; I decided to use the Corel provided stocks (the two light wood pieces are from “I don’t remember” were).
 
The anchors should be attached to two separate half stalks. I faked this by using a micro saw blade to imitate the two halves. Weak, but looks ok. Though I needed to add a shunt to fix the anchors in place.
 
Then went down to the kitchen to take command of some of the Admiral’s designer for “guest” toothpicks.  Photos are self-explanatory so will keep this brief. The Vasa did not use metal framing, but instead had treenails for joining the two halves, along with four metal bolts.
 
-----------------------------
 
My first attempt at wrapping the anchor rings with rope was, well a failure. As you can see-oops- not enough rope length on my first attempt. Second and third tries were charms. Using tarred rope was a question, but the 1/10th did not, so I mimicked that thought.
 
As I went along, I used GS Hypo to fix in place the three or four loops at a time. Came out better than I expected. After dabbing the glue I used a finger to remove excess. This glue is really cool. As you can see the glue disappears.
 
Last few pics just for the visual. Need to attach and fix anchor’s main ropes etc.…though not sure about the anchor rope, maybe too thick??  
 
Also need to make two buoys per Landström’s drawings. Speaking of whom the correct details for wrapping the rings with rope are SO beyond my skills, I saw the pic and started laughing…..
 
PS: Only port side will have the fish-davit, for a “transition look”.
PS2: Yes those eight brass nails should be black, got lazy on this bit. Time will dull them (;-)
 
As always thanks so much for your dropping by.
 
Regards,
 
Michael

I tried an experiment here.  On the real ship, the lower gallery is marked by alternating cornices and taller sculptures of men playing instruments.  In between these sculptures are narrow balusters, painted in green and white on the 1:10 model.  The kit models them as unadorned square sections of wood; I thought I'd try something different.  I found a bunch of turned toothpicks, cut them up, painted them, and installed them between the sculptures.  I'm not sure I like the effect, but I'm going to give it some time.  I think they may be slightly too large, and I may end up replacing them with narrower-diameter balusters, even if painting detail on them will be difficult.  Certainly the ones on the upper gallery need to be narrower.
 

 
Here I've added the smaller cornices.  They are of course somewhat different from the real ship - larger, I think - but they look OK.  I've also added some detail around the base of the towers.  The front tower is supposed to have an ornate gun port at the front, but the kit doesn't provide anything and I have so far avoided getting into the custom carving business.
 
You can also see here that the rear tower is missing its finial.  I had to chop it way down to get it to fit under the upper gallery.  It was either that or cant the entire tower outward, which looked odd.  I'm in the middle of looking around for something small and finial-like that I can add to the tower without running into the gallery above.
 

 
Now I just need to add the tritons on the roof of the lower gallery and my first gallery will be complete in all its 50 sculpture glory.  Then three more to go...