10th-11th century Byzantine dromon by Louie da fly - FINISHED - 1:50

[druxey]

Thanks for the response: I realized that the lower xylocastra would be open: it was the upper parts that were higher and would be affected by wind. Now, if the protective coverings were leather and only rigged over lattice when going into battle, that would make good sense to me.

[Louie da fly]

Yes, but that only really applies to ancient Greek vessels. Leo is pretty specific about the use of planks for the castles.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

The other thing is that these ships were very vulnerable to the weather. They simply wouldn't have put out from a protected harbour if the winds were strong. 

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

I've now done 36 oars for the upper bank. Only 14 left to go! (I'm not going to do the lower bank until later, when the hull's pretty much made).

 

I've bent several wales and have re-configured where the wales go, after having another look at the archaeological finds from Yenikapi. Looks like I won't have so many wales to do, which is a bonus.

 

And I'm working on two figures - a steersman and a flute player (who gives the time to the oarsmen)

Edited August 21, 2016 by Louie da fly

[cog]

 

And I'm working on two figures - a steersman and a flute player (who gives the time to the oarsmen)

Didn't know flute players were used to give the oarsmen their rythm. I seem to be lacking in my schooling on the topic, thanks for the information

[druxey]

There used to be a program on the BBC many decades ago called "Music While You Work". I guess this is the pre-radio version! I had that cartoon image of a drum being used to coordinate the rowers. Is this completely erroneous?

 

Those are incredibly small figures that you are carving, Steven!

[Louie da fly]

I think you have to take time and place into account, Druxey. I really don't know about the drum, but it certainly appeared in Hollywood epics like Ben Hur. But then they also perpetuated the myth that the Romans used slaves to man the galleys. Certainly, there is contemporary evidence for the use of flutes both in a Byzantine and an Ancient Greek context. 

 

The guys are 1:50 scale, and I've already made one. But I wasn't all that happy with him - I think these will be better. I'll be mass producing the oarsmen, and apart from them I'll have the two steersmen, the flute player and probably the captain reclining in his krabbatos.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

I've got four wales made and fitted onto the plug for the dromon now. I looked again at the Yenikapi archaeological finds and realised that I was trying to merge the wales of two different ships, so I had more wales than I should. So instead of having 5 wales each side, she'll only have three (including the "gunwale" (not really a good name - guns hadn't been invented).

 

This is something of a relief, as I'm finding it rather hard going getting them to the shape I want, and I'm rather glad to be getting rid of 40% of my problem. I'm hoping to get the other two wales bent this weekend, and then tweak all of them so they're exactly the right shape.

 

 

 

 

 

I've also done more on the flute player and one of the steersmen. The flute player's pretty much complete except for smoothing off. I won't be able to complete the steersman until I have the steering oars in position so I know exactly where his arms and hands should be.

 

 

 

The flute is a separate piece, as there's no way I could carve it all from one bit of wood. So there's a hole for the flute to go through. 

 

 

 

 

Actually this is just my trial flute, to see if it worked. I'll be making a better one.

 

 

 

 

When I'd got this far I so pleased with him I was very tempted to leave him as he was, but the photo makes him look a lot rougher than he looks to the naked eye. So I suppose I'll have to smooth him off after all.

 

Here's the picture I modelled him on. He's the one in blue. I realise this could be taken as some sort of horn rather than a flute, as it doesn't have holes in the barrel as does the one held by the guy in the stern. But flute is the word the sources use, so as far as I'm concerned that's what he's playing. And anyway, I don't think there's any point putting finger holes in the flute at this kind of scale . . .

 

 

By the way, note the tiller on the steering oar.

 

Steven 

Edited September 1, 2016 by Louie da fly

[druxey]

A flute without finger holes? Are you sure it's not a pre-Galilean telescope the figure in blue is holding? Just kidding! The hull is coming along nicely, Steven.

[Louie da fly]

Perhaps the kind of horn they called an oliphaunt, on account of because the first ones were made out of tusks.

[Louie da fly]

I've got all the wales made now, and temporarily attached to the plug.

 

 

 

I'm pretty happy with the smoothness of the curve, and how symmetrical they are from port to starboard.

 

 

 

There's still some tweaking to be done, as the latest wales don't follow the plug exactly at the tighter curves.  I'll put them in my home made bending jig (a piece of wood with nails in it) and finalize the shapes.

 

My pieces of wood were all just a little too short to do the gunwales in one long run, so I also have to make extra pieces for the tight curve at the 'tail' and scarph them to the gunwales.

 

Then I'll round them to the correct cross-section, and they'll be done! 

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

One of those days, I'm afraid - rather frustrating. My attempts to tweak the shapes of the wales didn't work the way I wanted them to. The bends I'd made were either too sharp or too loose, or the wales seemed to be the same shape after I'd bent them as before I started. And it had all seemed so easy!

 

Eventually I gave up  - the alternative as I saw it, was to go ahead getting more and more frustrated and make mistakes - or trash the wales and throw the plug of the ship against the wall. So I decided to put it aside and come back when I was fresh.

 

Some better news - my flute player has made a lot of progress. I've filed him smooth(er) - though there's still work to be done - and the stand has gone - he's now standing on his own two feet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back next weekend, hopefully with better results.

 

Steven 

Edited September 4, 2016 by Louie da fly

[druxey]

How are you bending your wales, Steven?

[Louie da fly]

Druxey, I'm soaking them in water, then bending them in a jig and using a heat gun on them to make the bend permanent.  

 

Some of it at least was my own fault in misreading my own notes on how much bend was needed.Normally it works well. I think I just had a bad hair day today. Plus I think I was trying to do too much too fast.

 

Steven

Edited September 4, 2016 by Louie da fly

[S.Coleman]

Your carving is great. The hull is really coming along.

[cog]

You've got a giant match stick too, like Igor. Considering the size of your flutist, it really nocks me socks off, wonderful work, Steven

[cog]

I remembered Wintergreen making a steambox http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/9951-sea-of-galilee-boat-by-wintergreen-sort-of/page-2#entry303750, couple of planks and a steam source ... might be a bit of an overkill for the size of the wood you are bending

[druxey]

Thanks for the explanation, Steven. Often wood will spring back a bit after bending, so you might consider over-bending the wales slightly off-model, using the plug as a guide. Perhaps that will solve the problem, as well as using pieces over length so that you have something to hold on to while bending. I usually bend 'in air', rather than on a jig as it's easier when working a compound curve.

[Robin Lous]

Hey? I missed this one until now. 

 

Wonderful!

 

Robin

[Louie da fly]

Druxey, I've had success with the jig and I'm happy to continue with it.

 

I think the main problem was that I tried to sort out 6 wales in the time I should have been using to do one, or maybe two, properly. If there's not too much going on this weekend I should be able to have another go at it and not hurry this time, but concentrate on getting it right, even if I only finish one or two. (The wood is patient).

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

I've pretty much got all the tweaking done on the wales and fairly happy with the result. I took my time this weekend, working on a single wale and getting it the way I wanted before moving onto the next one. A little bit of asymmetry at the bow between the port and starboard "gunwale", but I'll be able to fix that next weekend.

 

I've also bent the two 'tail' pieces of the gunwale to go on the curved stern - one either side. Not totally happy with them - the "plank and nails" jig I made doesn't make as smooth a curve as I'd have liked, and I've had to cut and file the wales to shape. Which makes them thinner than the rest of the gunwale. I'd been planning to taper the gunwale at bow and stern anyway, but I'm not sure I haven't been forced into cutting too much of a taper. If it doesn't work, I've thought of another jig to make better ones.

 

 

 

Then I cut scarph joints (my biggest bugbear to date) to join the tail pieces to the main gunwale.

 

This means I now have to think about putting the actual structure of the hull together - wales, keel and frames. I have to admit it's a bit daunting - mainly scared of stuffing something up by carelessness and having to start over again and make new pieces. But if I'm careful and painstaking  I'm hoping everything will turn out all right. I've got a bit of wood the same thickness as the keel so I can work out where and at what angle to cut the wales at bow and stern to fit smoothly when it comes to glue them to the keel.

 

The flute player is nearly finished now. I've cut him off his stand, and he stands nicely on his feet. He's also got eyes now, and I've added folds in his tunic and a bit of structure to his hair so he doesn't look like he's wearing a Beatle wig (or for our Australian viewers, like Eric Bana doing an impression of Ray Martin). Maybe needs a bit of sanding still, but honestly the remaining roughness is invisible to the naked eye.

 

 

 

 

 

I've realised the steersman has his arms up too high. If you kept them up there all the time you were steering you'd get tired arms very quickly. So I'm going to replace him with another guy I'd already been planning to make (to go on the other steering oar) and use this one as a sailor pulling on a rope. And rather than make a second steersman, I'm going to have only one rudder in the water and the other swivelled back out of the water (to reduce water resistance, apparently a fairly common practice). It should add a bit of interest (as well as meaning I don't have to make another steersman).

 

Oh, and I've been working on the lion's head to go at the bow to house the Greek Fire siphon. The original was made out of metal, probably bronze, but I'm carving mine out of pear wood. He's looking pretty good so far, I think. I'm basing him on a Byzantine lion statue I photographed when I was in Istanbul many years ago. He started out looking like an angry Homer Simpson, but now he’s actually staring to resemble a lion!

 

 

Edited September 11, 2016 by Louie da fly

[Louie da fly]

So here's the latest photo of the lion's head. Still a fair way to go . . .

 

 

[druxey]

Certainly leonine!

[Louie da fly]

I've done some more since, and he's looking better still. But too dark for photography at the moment.

[Louie da fly]

More progress on the lion's head. I'm pretty pleased with him, but if I wanted him to be a copy of the Byzantine lion I saw in Istanbul I've missed out. If anything he's a bit too natural and not stylized enough . . .

 

Here's the original

 

 

And here's my carving

 

 

 

 

 

 

With my hand for size comparison.

 

 

 

 

 

I've made him with his mouth somewhat more open, so the Greek Fire nozzle can fit through.

 

Still a way to go - got to do his mane and smooth him off. Then when the bow of the ship is finalized, I'll cut away at the back of the head to fit it to the ship.

 

Steven

Edited September 15, 2016 by Louie da fly

[Robin Lous]

Very neat lion!

 

I like this a lot...but I think I've said that before already. 

No harm to repeat it

 

Robin

[Louie da fly]

Here are the last ten oars for the upper bank.

 

First, sawn roughly to shape

 

 

then trimmed to follow the outline of the oars.

 

 

They'll take a few days (or evenings) to make, but it's good to see the end in sight. That's 40 oars carved with hand tools so far - and approaching 50.

 

I won't be doing the lower bank until the hull is built, as I have to work out how they'll fit inside.

 

I've got to the stage that I need to trim the wales to length so they can join the keel smoothly.

 

Then I have to put metal pegs in the keel (something I learned from Druxey's latest build) so it lines up with the plug. As I don't have a drill press and I don't trust myself to be accurate enough with a hand drill, I have to wait till the guy across the road is available to help - which means I won't be doing it till the weekend.

 

Getting the hull made is taking far longer than I expected - mainly because the things I've been doing towards it mostly can't be done in the evenings, so I go from weekend to weekend, and do 'fill-in' jobs like carving crewmen and oars (and lion's heads!) in the evenings between.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

Two down - Eight to go!

[Louie da fly]

Five oars down, five to go!

 

 

I've smoothed off the lion's head somewhat and worked on his mane. Close to finished, but I'll have to put him to one side until I've done the hull so I can cut the back to fit against the bow of the ship. Something wrong with either my camera or my technique - a lot of the time it doesn't focus properly. This is the best I've been able to do.

 

 

 

I took a leaf out of Druxey's book and put little brass pins in the top of the keel to fit in corresponding holes in the plug. I was hoping the guy across the road could make the holes with his drill press - I don't have one myself and I don't trust myself with a hand-held (electric) drill at this scale - the keel is about 4mm thick and the hole is 1.5mm diameter. But his chuck would take such a small drill-bit, so I had to go to Plan B.

 

I used an awl and the pointy end of a triangular-section rat-tail file to start the hole, and then when it was well enough established I was able to make it bigger with the hand-drill. It all worked surprisingly well. I should have doe it this way earlier. The hole was still a bit tight and I was able to hammer the pins in (they're just brass escutcheon pins) and then cut off the heads. They sit nice and firmly.

 

 

I've tried fitting the keel to the plug with the pins and it works well. As Eeyore said about his birthday present - it goes in and out like anything! 

 

I was fiddling with the keel and unfortunately I lost hold of it and it fell on the floor, and the tail broke off at the scarph joint. Perhaps a blessing in disguise - it makes fitting everything properly easier, and I can align it exactly against the plug when the time comes to glue it back together.

 

But now the keel sits in place I've discovered that the wales are just a tiny bit too short (about 3 millimeters - 1/8")  to join the keel properly at the stern. I'd got very disappointed at this, then - epiphany! I don't have to cut new pieces and scarph them to the wales to make them longer, I just need to re-shape the plug very slightly and shorten the keel a little (only a few millimeters), and they should come in nicely. A job for the coming weekend, perhaps, if i get the time.

 

Oh, and I've found a contemporary picture showing a support for the steering oars which I like the look of. It's a Byzantine representation of scraping the hull of a ship. You don't see the steering oars, only the stocks the ship is up on, but the shape looks good. I'd been puzzling over what I was going to do and now I've got something I'm happy to go with.

 

 

Steven

Edited September 28, 2016 by Louie da fly

[Landrotten Highlander]

Nice work so far, and a briliant solution to the length problem.

Re focussing the camera - I have found that if I am too close to my subject the camera struggles to focus.  Taking the picture from a bit further away, then cropping it on the computer solves this.

Slainte