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

[cog]

5 hours ago, liteflight said:

Or do I have something grabled?

Yes, actually,  you do.

[Roger Pellett]

Steven,

 

Great job!  I don’t know if it’s Readily available to you down under, but within the past couple of years WoodenBoat Magazine (WoodenBoat.com) published an article an out lateen rigged boats still sailing in southern Spain.  Might be informative regarding sail handling.

 

Roger

[Louie da fly]

Thanks, Liteflight. I'm still thinking about the final configuration, but I have to say the guys hoisting the sail is appealing to me more and more.

 

9 hours ago, liteflight said:

could you fancy a quinquireme (port of registry Nineveh, last port of call: Ophir) with full and weary crew and peacock sound effects?

Oh, yes, I can see myself doing that - 

 

Quninquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, ...

 

Um . . . the song is alouette (lark), not allumette (matchstick). Makes much more sense that way. Apparently was used to teach soldiers French during WWII. It's a bit graphic, though, if I understand the words correctly - Lark, pretty lark,  I'll pluck you . . .

[liteflight]

7 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

Um . . . the song is alouette (lark), not allumette (matchstick). Makes much more sense that way. Apparently was used to teach soldiers French during WWII. It's a bit graphic, though, if I understand the words correctly - Lark, pretty lark,  I'll pluck you . 

 

What a relief!  Now I understand all the baffled looks when I sang.

 

If the sails would only be used for running with the wind astern or very close to that; there would be little need for tacking, or handing the sail round the mast.  So the running rigging would be simpler as the decision would be “sail or not sail”.  So I’m not sure about the rope you label as “vang” and it’s usefulness.  I have sailed Thames Barges with a big sprit rig, and the vangs would only be used for close-hauled work.  ( I have still not become quite reconciled to transatlantic use of the word to mean a kicking-strap, nor it’s pronunciation as spelled).  
 

But, especially in the Med, brailing would be important to kill the sail if the wind got into a sub-optimal direction. Dropping the halliard would be faster? But more messy and hazardous to keep the sail under control with the wind, say, on the beam.

 

Do sail handlers  really shin up lateen rigs to furl the sail (or release jammed brails ). Must do I suppose, and it would be a colourful addition to your dromon.

Thinking a bit further, It would be a good place for a lookout, if not very comfortable, but it would not be impossible to have a semi-permanent canvas sling seat for a lookout.  Kinder anyway than a bight of rope on bare feet.

but this would only work if the yard was raised in the sailing position.  And even a fully braided sail would present a severe windage to an unkind wind.

 

[Louie da fly]

2 hours ago, liteflight said:

Now I understand all the baffled looks when I sang.

Yes, that would be rather confusing to all concerned (if they understood French!)

 

I'd agree with you about tacking - I don't think it would happen, they'd only be wearing, but as Mark points out, that means the danger of gybing (even with what is the equivalent of a loose-footed sail) which could capsize the vessel rather too easily.

 

Vangs appear on many, but not all pictures (both contemporary, and modern photos) of lateeners I've been able to find. I expect it's intended to keep the upper end of the yard from swinging too far to one side or the other.

 

Dropping the halyard may well be faster, and it seems to be a fairly common practice on dhows, from the photos I've got. In fact it looks in this photo like the sail may be hauled up unfurled, fbut it's a bit hard to be sure whether the unfurled sail is attached to the yard they're hauling up or behind it. But the second photo seems to indicate the sail is down near the deck but unfurled.

 

  

 

2 hours ago, liteflight said:

Do sail handlers  really shin up lateen rigs to furl the sail (or release jammed brails ). Must do I suppose, and it would be a colourful addition to your dromon.

Yep. 

 

  

 

So it can be done (no rope ladders on my model). And yes, I've thought of adding a figure doing that, but it would be difficult to keep him from spinning around with only a single rope keeping him in place.

 

There's no sign of "crows nests" until about the middle of the 13th century, much too late for my dromon. So any lookout would have to perch at the top of the mast any way he could . . . or maybe he could sit on the yard;

 

 

 

 

 

[liteflight]

Steven

Love the lateen pics.
 In my future lies a a sailing Luzzu.  There was a plan published in one of the comics, but the sailing rig was a bit conjectural with two lateen sails and a headsail set on a bowsprit

 

The picture of the unfurled (unbrailed) sail 

 

Would be hazardous in the extreme if the wind was coming abeam and rising.  I can see that on the narrow beam if a dromon it would get snargled round Tholes, oars, coffee cup holders etc, as well as dipping in the water and becoming unmanageable.  The captains (nautarchs?) would be well advised to douse the sails early and break out the sweeps.

 

with your carving skills, the enterprising chap on a rope would be, I hope, fun and a relief from rows and rows of rowers!

 As to him swinging round; You could

a)Cheat and wire the rope to stiffen it (I often use copper wire repurposed from transformers, etc) Or have him with an artifact slung over his shoulder which acts as a steady, or perhaps a long-stemmed rose held in the teeeeth to serve as a steady

b) let him swing.  How flukey are the winds indoors in Ballarat, eh? 

c) pose him like stout Cortez well up the yard gazing at something with a wild surmise ( I used to wonder if this was some sort of telescope, and why would it be so wild?)

 

[Louie da fly]

1 hour ago, liteflight said:

 In my future lies a a sailing Luzzu.

That's avery attractive vessel. I had to google it to find out what it looked like. Then I did an image search for "sailing luzzu" and came up with quite a few models, but also some very interesting antique paintings, which might work as a source for the sail plan - some with a very interesting set of sails - see https://pixels.com/featured/2-luzzu-marco-macelli.html and http://www.artnet.com/artists/nicola-f-crescimanno/a-luzzu-passing-st-pauls-island-in-stpauls-bay-wK6SPXgpTXGIuWVyeq3WTQ2 and https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/A-luzzo-off-Valetta-by-moonlight--and-A-/68A066740A840864 -  and https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/A-luzzu-at-sea/7E3E8FB3E8304088  - a vertical mast near the bow with two sprits going up diagonally from it, one each side, (or sometimes just one) holding the corners of one or two square sails. That would be an interesting rig to portray . . .

 

I agree with you about the dangers of having an unfurled sail flapping around on deck uncontrolled. Still, maybe these guys are in harbour safe and sheltered from such things.

 

Whether or not I go ahead with the guy climbing the halyard, you've certainly made some interesting suggestions. 

 

I couldn't make out the French quote in your signature (and of course Google Translate is useless for colloquial language). "Not of her, Rhone eyes, but us" (??????) Must be poetry. That doesn't have to make sense . . .

[Louie da fly]

Roger, I somehow missed your post re Wooden Boat magazine. I went to their website and did a search for "lateen, Spain" but nothing came up. Do you have the magazine yourself? If so, could you let me know the name of the article (and preferably issue date) when you get a chance?

 

Thanks, mate.

[liteflight]

On 8/25/2020 at 9:32 PM, Louie da fly said:

 

 

 

I note the tidy nature of the workbench; and after all that carving.  
I note also, with intense curiosity, the Vegemite jar.

A natural stain for a homespun rowers tunic?  Lubrication for a thole pin? 
I also love the scale clothes peg and will have to go and create a venerable text On its use as a pseudoparrell.

[liteflight]

Thanks, Steven

I also found the various paintings, and some of them are very “atmospheric” and would be inspiring

I’m unsure about the policy on reproducing assorted pictures on this Forum

Apart from the Maltese models for sale, most of the models seem to be the same one from, I think, Model Boats.  
The second and third references are similar rigs, and powerfully evocative to me.  There is also an interesting wee triangular sail apparently flying from the sprits, or praps the captain’s bikini being dried after a refreshing swim?

 

39 minutes ago, Louie da fly said:

couldn't make out the French quote in your signature (and of course Google Translate is useless for colloquial language). "Not of her, Rhone eyes, but us" (??????) Must be poetry. That doesn't have to make sense .

No, you wouldn’t.

I learned this from my Father, who was a French teacher after the war.  It’s not poetic and is far too simple to be thought about.

Poetry? I don’t know any! Much

In actual fact I don’t know how to forget any poetry, including all the hymns and songs ever heard!  

[Louie da fly]

Vegemite jar contains a mixture of Rit dyes for getting the colour of the running rigging right.

 

Reproduction of pictures is ok so long as it's "for study purposes" but shouldn't be taken too far.  That's why I put the link in. Just about all the stuff I usually put up is straight from Pinterest, so is probably in the public domain.

 

Oh, got it - there's a book of this kind of thing - called "Mots d'heures gousses rames", which contains such gems as 

 

"Un petit d'un petit c'est un eval . . ."

[druxey]

Mots d'heures gousses rames! That takes me back a few years. Chortled my way through it (if anyone doesn't know what the book is about, say the words out loud.)

[liteflight]

Well I have learned qch de nouveau today, and it isn’t finished yet!

[Kikatinalong]

I wont know  what to do with myself. 

Steven. Is that a nice sized Carrack burning brightly in the back of your mind?

 

The Facebook highlight was well deserved as your Dromon is a thing of beauty. 

Regards 

Peter.

[Louie da fly]

One of my favourites was "Queen, queen, wake up the peasants" (Reine, reine, gueux eveille)

 

I also have the famous book "Let Stalk Strine" compiled by Afferbeck Lauder, which includes such gems as "gloria soame" and "terror souse" when talking about architecture . . . and Strine's sub-dialect Rye-wye, with quotes like "The trine stanning at plafform nine goes to  Rare Dill"

[druxey]

Another classic! My favorite from that was 'Egg Nishner".

[cog]

22 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

eveille

Je présume "reveille" mon ami

 

The remainder is gibberish to me

[Ekis]

22 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

One of my favourites was "Queen, queen, wake up the peasants" (Reine, reine, gueux eveille)

It's rather: "Reine, ma Reine, réveillez les paysans"

[Louie da fly]

Probably. French is by no means my first language - but gueux turns out to mean beggars, not peasants  . . .

[PhilB]

Ah, at last I can add something substantive to the discussion.

"Les gueux" is used today as a derogatory term to refer to someone as uneducated, simple-minded, impoverished and with questionable sanitary habits - exactly what you'd expect from a snobbish noble speaking about peasants. And if you look at historical quotes using the word "gueux" you can see that it is used to refer to the "common people" who are necessarily so far inferior to the educated and cultured aristocracy.

 

So it's a word deeply anchored in historical concepts of class and culture.

 

But if I've understood your discussion of poetry, y'all are talking about French words strung together to have a vague consonance of English nursery rhymes and such. I think Desnos was fond of that sort of thing. And it works in English too: "Wants pawn term, dare worsted ladle gull, hoe lift inner cordage..." nonsense, but when pronounced out loud takes an approximate sonority of the story of Little Red Riding Hood - Ladle Rat Rotten Hut.

 

Now, as far as your dromon is concerned, I'm amazed, envious and in awe. Such fine detail! A real masterpiece.

And as you can see, I've got entirely too much time on my hands. <g>

[liteflight]

Interesting weird eclectic knowledge that the denizens of this forum posess!  
 

not only on the detail of dromonry, but the far edges of linguistics as well.  I feel in serious danger of learning several new things each day,!

 

And at my age learning new stuff, even about boatbuilding, is a GOOD THING

[Louie da fly]

3 hours ago, PhilB said:

y'all are talking about French words strung together to have a vague consonance of English nursery rhymes and such.

Yes, you're quite right, Phil. Blame it on Liteflight - he started it .

 

The one about the Queen sounds vaguely like the old children's rhyme "Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day" and "Mots d'heures gousses rames" is "Mother Goose Rhymes" (Mère l'Oye). 

 

But "Let Stalk Strine" is "Let's Talk Australian" spoken with an Aussie accent. It took me years to find out that the "Afferbeck Lauder" who supposedly compiled the book is just "Alphabetical Order". Gloria soame is "glorious home" and terror souse  is "terrace house". I'll leave the others for your ingenuity to sort out. (The first to guess them gets an all-expenses paid trip to Outer Mongolia on a yak).

 

By the way, just on an incredibly picky linguistic point, the word réveillez seems to imply the meaning of "Re-awaken", presumably return to wakefulness after being asleep (otherwise why is the syllable re- in there?). Perhaps there was once a word éveiller which meant "to wake" - not from sleep but from the normal human state of unawareness? After all, (at least according to that fount of all knowledge Google Translate) the word éveillé means awake. And yes, éveille would be the second person singular imperative of the verb éveiller. I admit that using tu when addressing the queen is a bit disrespectful, however. But otherwise the joke doesn't work . . .

***********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Now back onto the actual topic of the thread (yes, I've derailed my own thread again), here's some photos of what I've been working on lately. And a warning to the wise - think ahead and don't make things out of sequence! I made the xylokastra (wooden side castles) back in October - December 2018, almost 2 years ago. But more importantly, I made them before I put the oarbenches in. So, guess what? The columns that support the castles don't fit in the spaces between the benches. No matter what I do I can't make them fit. 

 

   

 

The red squares below show where the columns should go. Unfortunately they don't.

 

 

(By the way, I neglected to mention that I'd finished all the rope loops attaching the oars to the tholes - you can see them in the photo above)

 

After great rending soul-searching, I finally decided my only option was to re-make the castles. Which was a real pain, because I'd spent so long painting them with pretty patterns and it looked like I was going to have to do it all over again. I slept on it and came upwith a cunning plan - if I kept the top part with all the pretty painting, re-made the columns, cut the arches apart and put them between the columns, I might be able to re-use almost everything if I was prepared to bodge sufficiently.

 

I'd always been unsatisfied with the old columns anyway. I'd just joined them to the top structure by putting a dab of glue on the tops, and right from the start they'd begun to come loose. You can see this on the far right column in the picture above, but they all did it. A more secure method of attachment would be a definite improvement. So I made a whole set of new columns - each carved to the full height of the castle structure from a single piece of wood, so there was no join between the column and the bottom of the arches.

 

 

Here's the first one in progress. As the column is now made from a single long piece of wood, the capital had to be built up by gluing thin strips around the column and then sanding them to shape.

 

   
 

 

 

 

Here is one of the old castles, with the two new end columns and a beam joining them. The beam will be below the floor structure, but as it'll be behind the arches it won't really be visible. Actually, I got the position of the beam wrong. If you look at the next photo I've moved it up to the correct height.

 

 

So, then I pulled the old castle to bits:

 

 

The old columns (and their capitals) are likely to get thrown out. I've scored between the arches, but won't separate them until I'm ready to use them.

 

And here is the old superstructure glued to the new column assembly. The Vegemite jar is now mult-tasking as a weight to keep everything in place. And with one of the end panels glued in place.

 

     

 

Note - the big worry I had was that the new configuration of the castle structure was wider than the old one because it had to fit between the benches, which was the problem I was trying to solve. But by adding the end columns to the ends of the castle, I'd made it just the right amount longer, and it still looked good.

 

I've since realised that it's better to have the intermediate columns only coming up to the bottom of the castle floor, as then I wouldn't have to change the battlements. So I'll cut those columns shorter before I add them.

 

And here are the results of my experimentation with dye colours. I already had thin cotton in the colour I wanted (the reel on the far left) and my purpose was to dye thicker white thread to match that colour. I had dye in "brown" and "tan" and tried various mixtures. My first attempt is on the far right - just brown in two different strengths and dipped for different times. The dark one I'm keeping for tarred rope - it's not black but dark brown, but that's probably closer to the colour of rope tarred with natural tar.

 

 

The others are various mixes of the two colours in different strengths, but none of them achieved the colour I wanted. I showed it to my lovely wife (the expert in this sort of thing) and she said "It needs green". "Oh, and you have a packet of green dye that's been hanging around ever since I've known you." She added green dye to the mix - and - perfect! The thread next to the reel on the left is the end result. I'm very happy with it.

 

There's more going to come - I'll add an update in the next few days.

 

[Cathead]

Oh, man, good fix. That's a soul-wrenching discovery.

[druxey]

Well, back on topic. It was a fun diversion, though! I'm sure that the full-length columns will be less likely to collapse than the originals, so perhaps it was a fortunate accident. Glad you could save the decorative painted part of the xylokastra.

 

Stupid question: couldn't you find thread in the color you needed without having to make the witches' brew of dye?

[Louie da fly]

23 minutes ago, Cathead said:

That's a soul-wrenching discovery.

Serves me right. If I'd waited till the benches were in it wouldn't have happened. Still, lesson learned . . . I'll try not to make that mistake again.

21 minutes ago, druxey said:

Glad you could save the decorative painted part of the xylokastra.

 

Me too. At first I really thought I'd have to do everything again. It's often good to sleep on a problem . . .

 

22 minutes ago, druxey said:

couldn't you find thread in the color you needed without having to make the witches' brew of dye?

Not where I live - very limited choices unless I send overseas for it, which I didn't want to do. As it is, I have several different thicknesses, all white, which I can dye the corrrect colour. And relatively cheap.

[liteflight]

And after the diversion the castles are better and stronger, toooo.

 

I have some faint recollection of an historic ship that you were building and contemplating the rigging of ( please excuse me for using a preposition to end a sentence with)

 

I would apologise for inadvertently triggering the diversion, but I enjoyed it and hope that it was a valid therapy for “carvers thumb of the brain” and/or xylokastra blues.

 

You followed effectively the aeromodellers mantra which is that following re-kitting (aka a tentpeg landing) you place the bits in a bag and do not look at them on that day.

The next day, magically, they are not as badly comminuted and you can see the way to repair it.

[BANYAN]

Nice fix on the xylokastra Steven; as Druxey says; probably a small bonus in that the real thing may have need that extra structural support from below anyway.  WRT threads, there are a number of good suppliers here in Oz online with colour charts etc available - give me a call if you need details.  That said, the final mixture and method you used produced excellent results.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

16 hours ago, liteflight said:

( please excuse me for using a preposition to end a sentence with)

What did you use a preposition to end up with for? As Churchill (the Prime Minister, not the Duke of Marlborough) is reported to have said - misplaced prepositions are a grammatical fault up with which I am not prepared to put. I also enjoyed the diversion, but it really was time I got back the serious busines of modelling - it's not supposed to be fun!

 

And I agree about the "put it aside" technique. It has served me well on more occasions than I like to think of (damn! There's that preposition again!)

 

Banyan, thanks for that, mate. At the moment I think I have all the thread I need, of all thicknesses and colours I need. I think it was actually your advice that led me to getting that cotton thread (from Spotlight), for which I'm very grateful. It's high quality stuff.

[Louie da fly]

And some more - the front face of the port castle is done. I re-used the arches -once I'd separated them I just had to trim them a bit to fit.

 

     

 

   
 

And here's the castle dry fitted in place. Doesn't look too shabby at all . . . you'd never know I'd stuffed up.

 

     

 

Still working on the back of the castle - If it sticks out too much inboard the crew won't be able to get between the castle and the pump assembly.

 

And here are the blocks for the tacks and the vangs in place on the yards.

 

     

 

I've made four bitts to take various bits of rigging (halyards, sheets).

 

 

And here they are in place. (The aftermost one is a bit hard to see because it's mostly hidden behind the aft crutch for the yards.)

 

      

 

 

[Landrotten Highlander]

The rower behind the one with the blue shirt (middle post of hte castle) might have some issues getting to move forward with his hands, as his oar will hit the post right in front of him.  Too late to make a minor adjustment there?  PErhaps have the post end on the bench rathe than behind it?