wefalck

P.S. just asked the colleague from which manufacturers his figures came ... here his answer: The figures were from - Scale 75 - Altores Studio - Romeo Models - Pegaso Models - Mercury Models - Revolution Miniatures So you have to check on the WWW what is available currently.

Talking about other people's projects: there is German colleague, I just remembered, who build a Viking-ship (the HAVHINGSTEN after one of the replicas after the Roskilde finds) in 1:25 scale and he had a whole boatload of 'Vikings' (or what he declared to be such). Not sure, whether you can see this without registering: https://www.segelschiffsmodellbau.com/t6718f20-Havhingsten-fra-Glendalough-21.html. He did a really good job in painting those figures.

By accident I chanced upon this YouTube film again last night: https://youtu.be/6QMtyl8aycI?si=9dMvRd8OdXucNWSK

Well, the sleeves around the smoke stacks are not just 'decorative': in order ensure sufficient draft, the smoke-stacks have to long, but then would cool down quickly. The sleeve isolates the actual smoke-stack, so that it stays hot. As even the sleeves become quite hot and old-time oil paints did not take the heat very well, ship company logos were painted onto an outer sleeve, some distance from the the sleeve that housed-in the smoke-stacks. Normally, the engine-exhausts are led into a condenser to improve fuel-economy. Some ships may have had the possibility to redirect the exhausts temporarily into the smoke-stack to increase draft (as is done on railway locomotives), but more commonly fans were used. The pipes placed behind or in front of the smoke-stacks are normally the exhausts for the safety-valves. Talking about pilot-houses open to the back: over here in Europe, when the pilot-house began to be enclosed, crews on some ships complained, because previously they got warmth from the radiating smoke-stacks, but now they were cold in the enclosed, but unheated pilot-houses ...

Sure, he is still active, but indeed hasn't made much progress in recent years on the bone-model. Perhaps, because he is rather busy as the editor of the LOGBUCH, the quarterly of our German equivalent to the NRG.

These boats/ships must have been very wet, think also of rain. So most goods would have be very carefully protected. Bales of skins could be an option. However, bales of cloth would have also been stored in barrels. Life animals might be another option.

Can't respond on possible figurines. There may be something in 1/24 that could be converted with some effort. As to any goods, this would depend from where to where the ship was sailing and in what mission: trade or loot (I gather the border between the two might have been a bit muddled at times ...) Right up to the 19th century, perishable goods and those, where humidity either had to be kept in (say pickled fish, beer, wine, etc.) or out (metal ware, dried fish, cereals/flour, etc.) where stored in closed barrels, the containers of the time. A typical good of a ship sailing to Island or Greenland would have been wood, pitch and all sorts of provisions. Ships sailing from the Eastern Baltic would have carried inter alia pine-tar, pitch, wood, hemp etc. There were some major trade-hubs, such as Haithabu and Birka, where everything from agricultural produce, metal ware, luxury goods to slaves were traded.

I can only speak about German naval boats, but I think it would be more or less the same for all navies: The bow-oars were indeed shorter than the others, as the boat would be much narrower at the first bench. Some 30 years ago a colleague of mine, who unfortunately died prematurely a couple of years ago, wrote a series of articles on the naval oars of the Imperial German Navy that summarise the knowledge pulled together from various books, naval instruction manuals etc. that are difficult to put your hands on. Although, I do have some of these sources, these articles were extremely helpful, when I worked on my current project. He gives as a rule of thumb the following dimensions/proportions: Length = 3 times largest breadth of the boat, 2/3 outside, 1/3 inside the boat. Max diameter = 0.017 times the length at 1/3 of the length Handle = 0.8 times the larges diameter and about a foot long Length of the blade = 0.27 to 0.3 of the total length of the oar Max breadth of the blade = 1.5 times the max. diameter. Min. thickness of the blade = 0.16 times the max. diameter, at the end. In fact, there are tables with detailed dimensions for all the oars of the Imperial Navy, which were standardised to nine different sizes and matched to the different boat types, which were provided in different size classes. In fact, there were some 20 different boat types in the navy.

Sorry, I indeed missed the point with the carpenters' glue. So once trimmed to shape, you lift off the assembly, apply the glue and put it back, right?

I quite like the look of the 'painted canvas' decks. My concern, however, would be how long it stays attached to the decks. These masking tapes are designed to be not too tacky and I know that ordinary painters' masking tape becomes quite brittle with time. Good luck with your lecture and make sure that the audience watches with their eyes and not their fingers 😉

I was about to suggest to use a home-made scraper with a half-round profile, made from a piece of razor-blade to shape the shafts of the oars. You can cut the profile into an ordinary razor-blade with a diamond burr. Brake off the piece with pliers. This scraper can be held in a pin-vice that is slotted cross-wise. I have used such purpose-made scrapers for shaping very small profiles etc.

Indeed, jewellers' drawplates are not suitable for reducing wood in size. I think we had this discussion already in some thread here. The anatomy of an oar depends on it's use and the period. Sea-oars are rather different from the oars that are used on inland waterways. Basically, sea-oars are symmetrical, so that one can use them forward and backward. Also the diameter is round for much of the length. Likewise, the blade is quite narrow. The diameter is, of course, proportionate to the length. The length depends on the breadth of the boat and whether it is single- or double-banked. For single-banked boats the length would be about three- to four-times the breadth. In 1/128 scale I think it would be not so easy to make the blade and the shaft in two pieces. You would need to slot the shaft for the blade and this could be a challenge for a shaft only somewhere, say, 0.6 to 0.8 mm in diameter. I would start from a flat piece of wood (or styrene), layout the shape, cut out the shape, and then shape the shaft and blade by scraping and sanding. My 1/160 scale oars where made from layer of paper blanks cut out with the laser-cutter and laminated together using varnish. They were further shaped using diamond files.

Nice progress indeed ! Just wondering: where the pilot-houses open to the rear?

Absolutely. Here my personal selection: https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/madrid/madrid.html The building inside is also congenial.

That would have been a job for my shop-built filing machine ... I like the strategy for arriving at a solid round boss. Instinctively, I would have tried to silver-solder the boss on, but the large brass-piece might have drawn too much heat.

Yep, oils are good for leather. Not sure whether I read this or whether I just tried, when I was into 1/35 military figures in the mid to late 1970s. I gather the Humbrol paints didn't give the right shine and I was look for something more leather-like.

Thank the zealous law-makers, the custom-officials are only executors - today no one uses common sense and judgement anymore in case some greedy lawyer finds a way to sue them. BTW in earlier post I erroneously wrote the German Ivory Museum is in Michelstadt, it is in Erbach, another town nearby: https://elfenbeinmuseum.de/.

Ah someone, who also read Heraclitus ... for me almost all that is almost all I remember from my A-level in Ancient Greek nearly 50 years ago 🥴

I gather the postman was well-paid for this 🤑 ... shipping cost from everywhere have exploded - except the for the Chinese, who are state-subsidised.

In Germany these nuts are sold as 'stone-nuts/Steinnüsse' and have been used since about 200 years to make buttons (apart from using antlers and horns) - before plastics (first celluloid and bakelite, then hydrocarbon-based plastics) took over. I have to make a mental note again, to get some samples, because I am still looking for a dense, homogenous but not brittle material to make really small blocks (say 1 mm long).

In principle it is easy to show whether a material is bone or ivory, but one has to take a sample and make a thin-section for microscopic inspection. Apart from the DNA-analysis, one can also take samples for a C14-analysis, which shows the age of the material (in the case of historic ivory).

There are precedents for ivory antique containing shipmodels (and other artefacts indeed) sent to exhibitions abroad that were held up by customs and were only released after a long battle. It's not necessarily the fault of overzealeous customs officials, but that of imprecise and summary legislation. So I would rather not use any ivory, even if mamuth ivory is legal. In Michelstadt/Odenwald (Germany) there is a traditional centre of ivory working and an ivory-carving school, which has been hit very hard by the ban on ivory. However, they today use man-made substitutes. These don't seem to be easy to obtain on the market, but I once bought some small pieces for a restauration project there from a workshop.

I am not a carver at all, but I can see, where the texture of the chosen wood would pose serious challenges at this small scale. I only know Wengé as wood for furniture (and don't like it's colour and texture, but it seems to be fashionable these days) and would have doubts, that it would be suitable for small-scale carving. And, of course, I like the result of your carving efforts both, the execution of the carving itself and the colour of the wood.

A seldom seen subject here. As I have a soft spot for those boats from the Venice lagoon and I will follow the progress. That book has been sitting on my shelf also for some time now - I think I bought in the bookshop 'Carta di Mare' in Venice or from Gilberto Penzo. The 'Padiglione delle Barche' of the Museo Storico Navale in Venice preserve a couple of Bragozzi from the late 19th/early 20th century: https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/venezia/museonavalevenezia-3.html. I took a few pictures in case one day I also want to build one.

If you are sailing before the wind, the boom would have to swing out as much as the shrouds permit ... the gaff may be steadied by guys, but not all ships had them. The flag-halliards seem to have been run in a somewhat haphazard fashion, whatever was deemed to be convenient at the time. Thus, I have seen many contemporary images, where the halliard is let down to a cleat or belaying pin at the aft bulwark. Another option is a cleat on the boom. In general, the halliard is somewhat inclined forward, so that the flag unfolds and it recognisable when there is no wind.