Cannoniera Olandese No2 by Sandor Laza - Mantua - Scale 1:43

[Sandor Laza]

Dear All,

 

I started to build this kit in 2013 and it is still a work in progress.  Meanwhile I changed jobs twice and countries once, but I am optimistic, I will do finish this ship sometime... Anyway, here are some photos of the kit when I opened the box.  I will post some photos on the build progress soon...

[Cabbie]

Good Morning Sandor and welcome aboard

I am sure you will get it done. Sometimes i think that building a model ship is a bit like building your own home.

You do sit and wonder sometimes if it will ever be done, but eventually it comes together.

I haven't got a clue what you are building, but instead of looking it up i will wait for the progress photos.

Hooroo Chris

[Sandor Laza]

Dear All,

 

Thank you for your encouragement on my previous post! I am attaching some photos of the first step of the build.  I assembled the keel the bulkheads and the deck. The keel was slightly bent so I needed to straighten it a bit.  Otherwise the kit was precisely cut, so it was easy to make it. For a cautionary word for the beginners: make sure that the bulkheads are precisely orthogonal to the keel, it will help planking a lot! 

 

[Sandor Laza]

Dear All,

 

I started the planking of the ship back in 2013 and stopped a few weeks later because I hit a small planking problem that needed to be solved...  But before that, here is the ship with planking almost finished:

 

 

As you can see, the first few planks starting from the board bend naturally. Unfortunately when one reaches the fifth plank, the shape of the hull would force the planks in an unnatural direction. Following that natural bend would mean that some of the planks would not end on the keel but on other planks. You can see a planking here that followed that path:

 

(this is not my ship, just using the photo to demonstrate the point...)

 

I believed (rightly or wrongly), that this is not correct and I will attempt planking the ship in such a way that all plans end on the keel.  Unfortunately this requires bending the planks laterally which is not an easy undertaking. An additional problem is that this is a single planked ship, so, the work needs to be very precise, no opportunity to hide the problems with a second planking. (I was thinking about putting on second level of planking, but achieving the laterally bent look would have been equally complicated.) I decided to give it a go and if things go badly, I can always apply a second planking the "easy way" that you can see on the picture above.

 

Now that I am almost ready, I would give you two advice if you decide to follow my path:

 

1. Fill the area between the first and the last three bulkheads with balsa wood and shape it to form a base for the planks. (I marked the area to be filled with blue rectangles on the picture blow.
2. Pre-mark the curvature of the planks on the balsa wood to make sure it looks nice and natural.

 

This will save you plenty of troubles...

 

 

 Anyway, I will post more images after I finish the planking.  Meanwhile I will post some photos of the deck furniture and the cannons I built while I was fighting with the planking...

[Sandor Laza]

Dear All,

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent a lot of time figuring out how to plank this ship. Meanwhile I decided to do something else just to progress a build a bit. I decided to build a cannon. I made some research on the topic and that was off-putting too... I never built a cannon before and it turned out that real cannons are way more complex than I originally imagined! Finally I decided not to overcomplicate the matter and make only a few small modification to the kit design to make it more realistic.  But I decided that on point in time I will do build a proper model of a cannon, just to see if I can make it!

 

Here are some photos of my firs cannon(s). The photos are slightly discoloured for whatever reason. Still, I hope you will get the gist.

 

[Cabbie]

Good Morning Sandor

Tis a mind boggling exercise all right, this thing called planking.

Some what mysterious in its various ways.

A bend here, a bend there, spile here, spile there,

and in the end make it look top notch.

If i conquer this one day, I,m going take up doing Rubik's cubes again, should be easy.

 

And just doing one layer of planks makes it harder,

But yours is looking like, it is going to come up very nice.

 

The cannons are looking very realistic too.

Hooroo Chris

Edited December 18, 2015 by Cabbie

[Sandor Laza]

Dear All,

 

The first round of the planking is ready, but I will need to do some touch-up on it.  I must admit, it is way better than I expected but still need some work filling the gaps with wood filler and sanding. I am curious myself how it will look at the end.

 

Meanwhile here is a photo of another gun that I made when I was fed up with planking:

 

 

[amateur]

Hi Sandor,

 

The pic you show is not 'just an other modl'. It is the model (or a very good copy of it) that is owned by the naval Museum in Den Helder (Netherlands). It is a model build by the original builder of these ships, and shows the ship 'as build'. In your case i would believe the planking pattern of this model.

 

Jan

[Sandor Laza]

Hi Ian,

 

Thank you for the comment! Well, then I am building another wrongly planked ship... Anyway, I like my pattern better, but I will make sure that I will include a comment in the building log marking that it is planked incorrectly!  Thank you for the comment again and have beautiful Christmas!

[Sandor Laza]

Dear All,

 

Two more cannons I made while doing the planking (apparently wrongly :-) on the ship...

 

 

I wish a beautiful Christmas to you all!

 

[Sandor Laza]

Dear All,

 

Here is the last cannon I made for the ship. Planking still needs a lot of sanding/wood filler but I will get there eventually.

 

At this moment I am thinking about building the rudder, but I have some difficulties believing what I see on the plans and on some of the existing models. The question I always ask myself building the ship is "Why would they do that way?" I think on a ship all things have to be practical to the extreme, so if there is no practical explanation for something, I start to doubt the plans...  Anyway, I will collect all my concerns and I will open a topic, I am sure the experts here will be able to give me an answer!

 

Meanwhile enjoy the cannon!

[amateur]

Hello Sandor,

 

I don't know whether or not you can see the pics on this forum (they changed their open/restricted status)

 

https://modelbrouwers.nl/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=377393

The model is a model from the maritime museum in Antwerp. (The same as the model you showed above)

Jan

[Sandor Laza]

Hi Jan,

 

Thank you for the link! Yes, I have seen the photos, but the rudder assembly is not clearly visible on them.  Meanwhile I contacted the maritime museum in Den Helder. They told me that their ship is on loan, so they can't make photos for me, but they sent a link to a photo gallery of a model in the maritime museum in Rotterdam.  It is brilliant!! The photos seem to support my suspicion that this part of the plan is not correct!

 

http://maritiemdigitaal.nl/index.cfm?event=search.getdetail&id=100085101

 

Anyway, I think this photo gallery will help me a lot!!!

 

Best regards,

 

Sandor

Edited December 28, 2015 by Sandor Laza

[amateur]

What is the problem with the rudder of your model? Wouldhave thought that a rudder can't go wrong....

 

Jan

[Sandor Laza]

Dear Jan and All,

 

Thank you for your interest, I will come back to the rudder issue in a subsequent post, there are a number of issues there and I need to put my mind around them before posting. Moreover, I just want to finish planking the hull just to see how the rudder would fit to it.

 

Talking about planking. Work is progressing slowly but steadily. I must say, loads of wood filler and loads of sanding. Nevertheless, one side is almost done (although I the same days ago, but I always discover some imperfection, but I will have to stop at some point...).

 

Meanwhile I decided to upload a few bits of deck furniture that I made earlier. Not a big deal, but I would like to document each part of the ship to make the life easier for anyone who decides to build this ship in the future.

 

[a3seidel]

Hi Sandor, I show you a link how I made the planking, Maybe it will be also a help for newbies. (ctrl C + ctrl V in your browser) or click:  

http://www.modelbouwforum.nl/threads/kanonneerboot-nr-2-van-kapitein-j-c-van-speyck-cannoniera-olandese-nr-2-mantua-art-797.256708/

regards:  a3seidel- Holland

Edited October 4, 2018 by a3seidel