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

[BANYAN]

Not mucking around are you; you are making excellent progress.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

Thanks everybody for the likes.

 

md1400cs, much of the "history" is speculation - trying to reconstruct what a dromon must have been like based on very patchy evidence from 1000 years ago, in Greek (so you have the added problem of translation difficulty and alternative meanings in English for Greek words - what exactly did they mean when they wrote that? And some technical terms just no longer exist in Greek, so the "meaning" is based on educated guesswork).

 

I'm very lucky the book Age of the Dromon exists - its my main source of information and guides me in many of my reconstructive choices. But there are many things even that source leaves open - just how do you construct a pavesade? Where exactly does it sit on the hull? Do the shields overlap the gunwale? A lot of educated guesswork needed when making the model. 

 

But to me that's a lot of the fun - working out how it must have been - or how it may have been, given the available evidence. As much of a detective story as a build log. And I find that very enjoyable. I'd rather try to figure out how a ship went together than have the plans handed to me on a plate. Others may feel very different, but that's how it is for me.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

•  

In between times I've been continuing on with making shields - due to the time it takes for the glue to dry, I can only make one a day. Here are the latest ones - five completed, two partly painted, one ready to paint and another in the mould.

I now have 26 completed shields - more than half way!

 

I got "on top of" making the oarsmen's arms. Here is the first one. I think I'll be making all the oarsmen with the arms carved separately - it gives me much more flexibility in placing them appropriate to the oarsman's position in relation to the oar handle.

Port pavesade nearing completion. (I miscalculated a bit, so I'm going to need a very short bit of railing to finish off) 

 

Port pavesade complete and starboard pavesade under way:

 

Uprights in place and the first length of railing glued and clamped.

Clamps removed. Note the wood shavings in the foreground, from carving one of the oarsmen.

 And second length of railing scarphed to the first:

So, by spreading my efforts between three different kinds of jobs (four if you count painting the shields as a separate job) I get a steady progress happening, and also don't get bored with the repetitive stuff.

 

Steven

Edited March 30, 2020 by Louie da fly

[Louie da fly]

Here are the latest shields. Top row are complete, the lower row are part done. 

And here are "the boys" so far. I've been carving them roughly to shape and when they're all done I'll go back and do the arms for each one, then smooth them off and make them all pretty.

 

Note the lack of social distancing. Also the 5 who have been cut off at the torso, because I realised I'd done the legs wrong for them to fit onto the benches. I'll have to go back and make lower bodies and legs for these guys, but not till I've got all the rest done. I thought about throwing them out and starting them again, but from the torso upward is ok.

I have to say, though, that I'm getting pretty jack of all this wood carving. I have fourteen oarsmen at various stages of completion. I need a total of 48, so I'm not yet 1/4 the way through. There's almost nothing else I can get on with - everything else has to wait on these oarsmen. Add to that I've somehow wrenched my left thumb, so it's getting painful to hold them as I carve. I think I'll take a break from all this and do some work on the Great Harry, which has been languishing unloved for quite a while.

 

Steven

[BANYAN]

I am sure these 'lads' can wait for a while   Nice work on the shields and rough carving.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[druxey]

Good progress though! I'm sure the fellows can wait for their transplants.

[Louie da fly]

Well, I'll be keeping on with the shields. One a day, and I have about 13 to go to get the 48 I need. The "boys" can take a back seat, though I expect I'll still be able to saw the rough blanks to shape even if I can't take them any further. So I won't be giving up totally on the crew.

 

In the meantime I re-looked at

 

http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=179436&p=2733651&hilit=longship+oar+length#p2733651

 

What I hadn't noticed back in 2015 was this:

 

There was a famous 19th century experiment in France where they decided to recreate a Greek Trireme, and they laid the hull out so that they used three different lengths of oars. It proved impossible to keep all the oars in stroke. It was sort of like a clock with three different lengths of pendulums trying to keep time. But there was also a considerably larger variation between the thalamites near the waterline, the zygians part way up, and the thranites at the top in the 19th century French model. (From memory, I think the bottom oars were about nine feet long (2.74 m.) at the lowest level and maybe 20 feet (6.1 m.) long at the highest level. . .  The most recent trireme reconstruction uses all 170 oars of the same length, and rearranges the seating of the oarsmen, with satisfactory results. . . . the difference in oar length on the 19th century French model was much greater than the variation on the longship; so some scholars who have belabored this point probably have not spent a lot of time rowing.

 

I'm currently following up on this information. The French trireme appears to have been built by Stanislas Henry Laurent Dupuy de Lome in the time of Napoleon III (1860's). Unfortunately all I've been able to come across is the first page of the reference, at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1095-9270.1982.tb00069.x If anyone subscribes to the International Journal of Nautical Archaelogy and could provide me with the full article I'd be very grateful (I'm not a university, so as far as I can see I can' get access).

 

The thing is, I followed the oar lengths in Pryor's Age of the Dromon, with the lower oars 3.395 metres long and the upper oars 5.178 long. I've agonised about whether I should cut the upper oars back to duplicate the lower ones, but I really think I should take the attitude "I worked with the best information I had at the time" and move on. Additionally, the difference between the upper and lower oars is nowhere near as much as it was in the French trireme, so it may not have had all that much effect on performance in the "real world".

 

Steven

[BANYAN]

Ah the joys of finding further information; only too familiar with that problem in my build.   I also took the same approach; it was the best I had at the time but I have recorded it.

 

The shields are looking great and will add a real 'oomph' to the overall build when they are in place (sorry about the highly technical terminology).

 

cheers

 

Pat

Edited April 7, 2020 by BANYAN

[Mark Pearse]

On 4/5/2020 at 11:21 AM, BANYAN said:

The shields are looking great

ditto, & I especially like the colours they used. 

[Louie da fly]

Thanks for the likes and comments. Yes, the shields are rather attractive, especially the colours. I've tried to duplicate these as closely as possible with my limited palette (keeping in mind that the people who did the original pictures also had a limited palette and might not have got the colours quite right). I think Byzantine shields are particularly beautiful and interesting - not at all like Western Europeans shield patterns, which wound up in a dead end once they started introducing rules - only a certain number of colours, only a certain number of shield motifs and arrangements. This was because they developed the subject of "heraldry", which allowed you to describe a coat of arms in words so anyone could reproduce it - in a book or whatever, and as a means of individual identification, but it also restricted the flexibility of design.This never happened in Byzantium, so you have all kinds of "coats of arms" - many of which simply couldn't be shoe-horned into the Western descriptive system. 

 

Though I've been concentrating on the Great Harry for the time being, I haven't completely dropped the dromon. Here are the next 5 shields, plus one part painted and another in the mould.

And I've been carving more oarsmen.  Two more so far - since I dropped the feeling of "I must get this done" the enjoyment has come back. It should be fun, not a chore.

One guy had his legs too far out from the body to fit him between the oarbenches (my bad). So after a bit of thought I developed a cunning plan -  I cut the legs off and glued them back on closer to the body, with dowel joints to keep them in place (you can see the dowels if you look carefully). Now he fits, but I'll be taking more care in future to try and avoid it happening again.

 

 

Steven

[mtaylor]

I looked at the picture before reading the text and the only thing I could think was... "Ow.. that's gotta' hurt".  The shields and crew are coming along nicely.

[Louie da fly]

23 minutes ago, mtaylor said:

"Ow.. that's gotta' hurt".

[Kikatinalong]

Steven the shields have become the parts I look forward to seeing the most. Actually quite inspiring and food 4 thought regarding my own. 

I have this image that the next time Louisa asks you to carve up a roast for dinner that when you plate up the meat be little oarsmen. 😂

Cheers 

Peter.

[druxey]

The ornamentation on the shields looks terrific!

[Louie da fly]

Thanks for all the likes, people, and the nice comments.

 

Peter, I've got quite a bit of info on the shields used on carracks, which I'd be happy to share with you. And the technique I've been using to make mine should work on yours as well. It is nice to have shields that are the right thickness for the scale we're using, and this is the only way I've been able to figure out that actually works.

 

Druxey, all these are taken from original Byzantine representations of shields - I'm just copying them.

 

            

But I am pleased with the results - better than I'd been expecting (unless you use a magnifying glass). Though sometimes the colours aren't quite right - or the shields are taken from carvings so I have to make an educated guess of the colours, based on those that are common on painted representations.

 

Steven

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 8, 2020 by Louie da fly

[Kikatinalong]

Steven,  once I'm at the shields stage I will more than likely take u up on your offer. As the kit for my Carrack is from the 80's some of the shields have definitely started to sort of rust As well being to thick and bulky for my liking. 

Peter

 

[Louie da fly]

No worries, mate. I can also give perhaps some more accurate ideas on what would have been on the shields (and, for that matter, on the sails) of an early 16th century Portuguese carrack, compared with what's on the kit. I've sent you a PM.

 

Steven

Edited April 8, 2020 by Louie da fly

[Louie da fly]

Just out of interest I made one of the blocks that's been found in the Istanbul excavations. Here's the original:

 

 

 

and here's the model.

 

    

 

I don't yet know what I'm going to use it for - but it does look very useful.

 

Steven

[cog]

Ah yes, the giant match, and clamp. Nice detail, despite the size.

 

2 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

I don't yet know what I'm going to use it for - but it does look very useful.

You never know when it comes in handy, Steven

[Louie da fly]

And here's another block, this time from the 11th century Byzantine ship wrecked at Serce Limani (also known as the glass wreck because of the cargo it carried). The block turns out to be very small when you make it at 1:50 scale - 4mm long, 2mm wide and 1.2mm thick. Drilling the holes was quite a challenge (it took three tries before I succeeded).

 

Here's the original block as discovered (from The Rig of the Eleventh Century Ship at Serce Liman, Turkey - MA Thesis by Sheila Matthews, TAMU 1983:

 

And here's my copy of it under construction:

 

Transverse hole:

Holes for sheave slot

Trimming to size:

Finished:

And assembled, with lines in place:

VERY fiddly. Now to work out where to use it!

 

Steven

 

 

 

[mtaylor]

Amazing work.  I hope you figure out where they go.

[druxey]

The triple sheaved block looks to function rather like a deadeye.

 

I knew that you were copying Byzantine shield images, but had to congratulate you on how neatly you were reproducing them at such a small size.

[Louie da fly]

Thanks for the likes and comments. Druxey in particular - having seen the painted decoration on your hospital barge oars, I regard that as high praise.

13 hours ago, druxey said:

The triple sheaved block looks to function rather like a deadeye.

Quite possibly, and I might end up using it (them) for that purpose. I'd like to know why it has that narrow flange all around one edge, though.

 

Steven

Edited April 11, 2020 by Louie da fly

[Louie da fly]

A rather bad place to get a knot in your piece of wood.

Filled the holes with a mix of white glue and sawdust.

Trimmed it down.

I'm leaving the final smoothing off for the moment - I'll do that as a separate action when all the figures are made.

 

Steven

[BANYAN]

On 4/10/2020 at 10:13 PM, Louie da fly said:

I'd like to know why it has that narrow flange all around one edge, though.

Hi Steven, pity about that knot, though once it has been smoothed it should mostly remain unseen?

 

WRT the flange, to me that indicates the block may have been inset into the bulwark or bitt etc, with the flange acting to stop it going through?  Alternatively though, if the flange was on the inside of the eye of an attached rope (based on direction of 'pull') it could be there to stop the eye being pulled off, much like a grove serves on a deadeye?

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

That's right, Pat. Regarding the flange I think the first idea is more likely - an eye would probably pull off if the vessel was tossing about at all.

 

Just a quick update - another 5 shields complete plus one partly painted and another under way. So far a grand total of 41 complete out of 48. Only another 7 to go!

Interesting these shields with multiple dots. They seem to come up a fair amount. Perhaps it's supposed to represent a sky full of stars? And that motif that looks like the Greek letter pi (π) appears a lot, too - no idea why.

 

Steven

 

 

Edited April 13, 2020 by Louie da fly

[mtaylor]

The dots aren't nail heads are they?  This period may be too early but I recall reading of shields with nails in them for resistance to sword slashes.

[druxey]

Knot nice. "It's just a lignin wound"! Again, lovely work on those shields.

[Binho]

Wow, coming along nicely Steven! Loving your shields!

 

Regarding oar lengths, for ancient ships it is hardly a settled argument. The main point of contention is that in Athenian naval inventories of the 4th-5th centuries three types of oars are called out. One camp says that all the oars were the same length, but the difference was in the gearing and paddle shape - the other that they were different lengths, like the 15th century and earlier ‘alla sensile’ rowed galleys. Personally, I fall in the later camp (at the moment anyways). So don’t worry too much! 

[Louie da fly]

Well, there you go. I'm still learning. This information - and all the information other members provide so generously - increases the knowledge base and the understanding. Thanks for that, Binho.

 

Steven