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

[Louie da fly]

Something of a red-letter day. I've finally made the last shield of the 48 I needed for the sides of the dromon. Here it is just started.

And dried out after 24 hours in the mould:

and added to the shields made but not yet painted.

Trimmed to shape, and the first coat of paint added to it and the rest of the unpainted shields.

Tomorrow I'll be able to do the next coat, and the day after that I ought to have them all completed.

 

And another milestone - I've carved half of the oarsmen I need.

Yes, ok - five of them don't have anything below the waist. I was thinking I really ought to give them lower halves before I could claim I was half way through - but why spoil the moment? I'll fix them at the appropriate time when I'm good and ready. You could also say "But where are their arms?" But that's another project, which I'll do when I've carved the bodies.

 

They're a bit of a mixed bunch, but then so are people in general - all kinds of sizes and shapes. However, when they're all done I'm going to look over them and see if any need altering to make them all work together better. And then I'll add arms, smooth the figures off, do the final touches, and paint them.

 

Steven 

 

[BANYAN]

Nice work Steven, you are probably carving these in your sleep now.  What better then sitting out in some of this nice autumn weather and doing this though  Are you doing a 'pace/timing keeper' also? 

 

cheers

 

Pat

[druxey]

Congrats on reaching this stage, Steven.

[mtaylor]

Wonderful shields, Steven.   

[Louie da fly]

Thanks for all the likes and comments.

 

6 hours ago, BANYAN said:

Are you doing a 'pace/timing keeper' also? 

Already made: Apparently they used flutes to mark the time for the oarsmen. The high pitch is easier to hear over all the creaks and groans of a wooden ship under way.

 

 

 

 

Steven

 

[Louie da fly]

And . . .  FINISHED!

 

Here are the last seven shields:

And here they all are together - 48 of them. Another thing to tick off the list. Nice to have them all done.

Steven

[BANYAN]

Very nice work Steven; that will certainly add a pop of colour to the model.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Kikatinalong]

The shields are masterpieces Steven,  my favorite is 2nd row, 6th from the left. All that colour will truly bring the model to life.

The flute player also looks amazing. 

Looking forward to seeing it completed. 

[mtaylor]

Stunning shields, and no two are exactly alike.  They'll make that ship pop to life.

[Mark Pearse]

They will look amazing on the model. The figures also - & what's the story about the one with a red hat & looks to be sitting on his hands?

[Louie da fly]

Thanks for all the likes and encouraging comments (blush). 

3 hours ago, Kikatinalong said:

my favorite is 2nd row, 6th from the left.

 I'm rather fond of it, too. It comes from a picture of David and Goliath in a 9th century manuscript called the Sacra Parallela. That "rosette" motif recurs over and over again in Byzantine decoration and often appears on shields. I have my own personal favourites, of course - probably the one I like most is the third row, third from the left. That's from a big 3D gold ikon of St Michael currently in St Mark's, Venice. Very colourful (and very difficult to paint!)

  2 hours ago, Mark Pearse said:

what's the story about the one with a red hat & looks to be sitting on his hands?

 Well originally he was going to be the captain and would be sitting on the kravatos (day-bed) under the awning on the poop deck. That was before I decided to change it from just a normal dromon to the Emperor's personal skaphos. I carved an Emperor figure (Alexios the First, actually, based on a picture of him from the time), and a portable throne, some courtiers and a couple of bodyguards. And painted the ship red and yellow, as befits the Emperor's personal ship.

 

Which meant the captain had nowhere to sit. So he's unfortunately at a bit of a loose end. I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with him . . .

 

Steven

Edited April 20, 2020 by Louie da fly

[Baker]

Beautiful shields Steven 

 

Great work  

[Louie da fly]

Thanks.

 

Just a supplementary note: some of the shields were rather difficult to work out.

 

For example, there's no way of knowing the correct colour scheme for the shield mentioned above: 

In the original manuscript illustration the shield is shown as gold, which I have interpreted as yellow. But it's more likely to have been multicoloured - because the illustrator used gold leaf for everything - clothes, armour, shield, shoes - what the "real" colours of the shield should be, we'll never know. 

 

And my favourite shield had its own difficulties: 

The picture on the original ikon I took it from is pretty tiny.

Try to get closer detail and it goes all fuzzy.

Plus the shield is shown in 3/4 view - partly side-on - so I had to change the proportions (stretch it out sideways) and guess what's on the bit you can't see: 

Well, I did say I liked the detective work as much the build itself, and for me this diversion into shields has been a fascinating journey, as well as a bit of a respite from the carved figures.

 

But now - back to carving . . . only 24 oarsmen to go . . .

 

Steven

  

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Louie da fly

[Louie da fly]

I've been unable to cut out any more oarsmen for the time being - I broke the only blade I had for my coping saw, and I have to wait till we can schedule a visit to the hardware shop - not going to make a special visit just for that! 

 

In the meantime I've been tidying up the existing ones - I wasn't happy with some of them; I'd cut the heads too narrow so I couldn't give them the full head of hair that was normal in Byzantine times - several of them had short back and sides and a few were bald! 

 

I'd resigned myself to not being able to fix that, then I thought maybe filler would help. I stored the residue from sanding the bamboo of the Great Harry's decks and mixed it with white glue. Turned out to work very well - much finer than the usual sawdust, though I had to remove random bamboo fibres that had got into the mix.

 

The first iteration had them looking like 1950's starlets:

But after the glue started to dry and I manoeuvred the filler around a bit with a toothpick, they looked surprisingly good. Note Harpo Marx at the far right, Harrison Ford far left . . . 

 

 

 

Steven

Edited April 29, 2020 by Louie da fly

[druxey]

Can you come and restore my hair too, Steven? That mix worked out very well. Soon you'll be recycling everything from the workshop waste bin.

[Louie da fly]

Thanks for the likes.

 

Druxey, I think it would end up more as a helmet than a hairdo - or like the women's hairstyles of the 60's with all that hairspray; if you flick your finger against them, you'd get a "clunking" sound . . . (not that I ever tried that . . .)

 

Steven

[BANYAN]

Very clever and well applied; brings them to life.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

I've been agonising over the calcets at the top of the masts, which take the halyard. I'd followed a diagram which showed the calcet as having two sheaves, but try as I might, I couldn't get it to work properly.  Any arrangement I was able to come up with was always awkward and overcomplicated.

  

I thought this violates Occam's Razor - the principle that the simplest solution to a problem is usually the best. After looking at many contemporary pictures and also modern photos of lateeners (many of them dhows) I discovered that almost without exception (where it was shown) they certainly had blocks with multiple sheaves, but at the lower end of the halyard.

 

 

 

My thanks to Woodrat for his help and advice, which confirmed me in my decision to change the calcets to single-sheaves (which of course meant I had to make new ones!)

 

Also, based on archaeological finds (admittedly from several hundred years later), I changed the connection between the calcet and the mast, from a socket and tenon to a long scarph (known in French as a sifflet or whistle joint - probably because it resembles the angled cut at the top of a tin whistle).

 

I've attached the calcets to the masts with brass pins cut short and filed down. In due course I'll paint them black to resemble iron.

And I discovered two more Byzantine single-sheaved blocks! I already had one single-sheaved block from archaeology, but these ones were in considerably better condition and were about double the length.  From a 7th-8th century wreck, but so similar to later ones that I'll be using this design in the dromon. The two blocks are identical in design, with a slight difference in length. Here's my reproduction at 1:50 scale of the larger one - yet another opportunity to use my gigantic oversized matchstick.

It seems to be a standard feature of Byzantine (and mediaeval Mediterranean) blocks that they didn't have strops around the block to connect them to the rigging, but a hole through the block.

 

 

Steven

 

 

Edited May 3, 2020 by Louie da fly

[Mark Pearse]

1 hour ago, Louie da fly said:

they certainly had blocks with multiple sheaves, but at the lower end of the halyard

These days you'd call that a "handy billy".

[Louie da fly]

10 minutes ago, Mark Pearse said:

These days you'd call that a "handy billy".

Well, a lot handier than the previous arrangements .

 

Steven

[mtaylor]

19 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

I thought this violates Occam's Razor - the principle that the simplest solution to a problem is usually the best.

 

Maybe Murphy's Law took precedence?

[Louie da fly]

Or possibly Parkinson's . . . Damn! I'm derailing my own thread again! 

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!* (as Lewis Carroll wrote in the poem Jabberwocky)

 

My lovely wife went to the hardware shop and bought me a packet of coping saw blades (to replace the one I'd broken, leaving me unable to saw anything.)

 

So the production line is again in full swing. I've cut out the 24 oarsmen yet to be carved.

At my rate of carving them - about one a day - it'll probably take at least a month to do them, but at last we're moving again.

 

Steven

 

* It took me years to find out that this was an in-joke. It is two of the declensions of the Greek adjective kalos = good, (καλού and καλη) which is among the first things you learn when you study Ancient Greek.

[cog]

She just wanted to get you out of her hair

[Baker]

A small investment for her. And she has rest and peace for a whole month 😉

[druxey]

"...he chortled in his joy! " New coping blades indeed! You have a good lady there, Steven. My own, bless her, wouldn't know a coping saw blade from a jeweler's saw blade.

[Louie da fly]

8 hours ago, druxey said:

You have a good lady there, Steven.

You can say that again.

 

8 hours ago, druxey said:

My own, bless her, wouldn't know a coping saw blade from a jeweler's saw blade.

Fortunately I was able to give her the broken one as a model, with an approximation of the required length to fit in the saw. No worries, as we say in Oz.

 

14 hours ago, cog said:

She just wanted to get you out of her hair

Actually, not so. We've been working flat out together fixing up the garden - we've been building garden walls and paths. I only get to work on the model in the evening or when it's raining. Yesterday I wheelbarrowed a big pile of sand from the front driveway up the hill to its new storage area up the back. Today it's been raining heavily, so we get a break. You can see the results of our efforts in the "What Have You Done Today?" thread in "Shore Leave".

 

Steven

 

[BANYAN]

Great news,  look forward to seeing the new crew members, less work for the few already 'on the books'

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

I've carved four of the new oarsmen pretty much to shape, ready for final smoothing off. Only twenty to go . . .

 

And I've been working on the five I had to cut in half because the legs were wrong.

To keep the two halves together, I had to drill a hole between them and glue in a wooden rod, which I then trimmed to length. Look away if you're at all sensitive . . .

I took other photos, but you really don't want to see them . . .

 

And here's one I prepared earlier.The two halves joined:

A nice solid join between the two halves, and I was able to carve the lower half without worrying about them coming apart.

Not too bad. Once all the finishing is done, you won't be able to tell them apart from the ones I carved from a single piece of wood.

 

Steven

[cog]

A pair of arms would do some good, considering the act they should perform ... Nice save though Steven. These chaps will certainly not like you for first cutting their legs off, and now have them row without their arms!