Henry Grace a Dieu (Great Harry) by Louie da fly - FINISHED - Scale 1:200 - Repaired after over 50 yrs of neglect

[Louie da fly]

That's fantastic, mate. I'll be waiting with bated breath

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

The deadeyes have arrived. Now I have to work out how to attach them. I tried CA (no good) and an Oz brand of glue called Tarzan's Grip (too gooey). I went back to PVA and discovered that it was good enough to hold the rope and the deadeye together for long enough for me to wrap the rope around it and glue the rope back on itself. We'll see if that's a good long-term solution. I might have to back it up with a dab of CA.

 

And I've started on the flags. Though in almost everything I've been following Landström closely, in this case I won't be.  I started out doing so, but though I have the greatest respect for him and almost always agree with his interpretations, on more investigation I became aware that his flags for the Great Harry

 

 

bore almost no relation to those either in the Anthony Roll

 

 

or The Embarkation at Dover (painted about the same time)

 

 

In fact, apart from the long banners and the royal standard at the top of the main mast, none of them correspond to either picture. He's got the cross of St George (symbolising England) a castle (for Castile, home of Henry's first wife? which would be a bit weird as he divorced her), the Prince of Wales feathers, a (single) fleur-de-lis (symbolising Henry's claim to the throne of France), and what appears to be the Cinque Ports flag.

 

Plus what I suppose is meant to be a Tudor rose (it isn't - it's the red rose of the Lancastrian house in the War of the Roses, as the White Rose symbolised the house of York - the Tudor rose has red outer petals and white inner, signifying the joining of the houses at the end of the war, when Henry Tudor of Lancaster, after having defeated and killed the Yorkist king Richard III in battle to become Henry VII, married Richard's niece) and what might be the Sun in Splendour (the badge of Edward IV - again a bit strange because he was of the house of York).

 

On the Anthony Roll, there are horizontal stripes in green and white and in yellow and white, and flags divided vertically into half green and half white. The cross of St George is only half the flag - the other half is a vertical green band (Tudor colours) and none of them correspond to  Landström's flags at all. 

 

The Mathew does have fleurs de lis, but there are three of them on the flag, not one (4th and 6th flag from the left). It does also have the plain cross of St George and the red and blue English royal standard of lions and lilies.

 

 

So, what to do? After starting out on the Landström flags I've ended up going with the Anthony Roll. I've also waffled a bit about the sizes of the flags. At first I thought Landström's were too big and made smaller ones, but I changed my mind and went back to the original size.

 

Then I had to work out where the flags were supposed to go, and how many I should show. Does Anthony show all the flags on the ship, or only the flags on one side? He seems to have been a bit careless - he's just sketched in the lower ends of the flagstaffs so it's really impossible to work out where they sit. Some are at the gunwales, others appear to be on the top of the beam that supports the boarding nettings (which would be very impractical). Landström puts them on the gunwales, but has left off the ones Anthony shows at the weather deck. I finally decided that Anthony seems to have shown all the flags, from a three-quarter view, and that I don't have to add more. An the Embarkation painting shows the fixings of the flagstaffs in a way which makes sense to me.

 

 

There's a lot of speculation in all this, and I'm aware that neither painting can be regarded as perfectly reliable, but I'm fairly satisfied now with what flags to use. 

 

I haven't done them all by any means, and I had to do some experimenting to get the effect I wanted. I first did them on paper with acrylic paint, but it really didn't work when it came to solid bands of colour. I tried enamel on fabric - no good. Finally, acrylic on fabric, which gives a very stiff flag, but enables me to get the "look" I want.

 

I will be mostly following the Great Harry but taking a couple of the Mathew's flags to add interest. Here are all the flags I've made so far, including some incomplete ones and the ones I'll be discarding as no longer appropriate - either the wrong design or too small. You can even see the ones I did on paper at the bottom.

 

 

Steven

 

Edited March 19, 2022 by Louie da fly

[druxey]

Perhaps tone down the white a bit? Hard to tell from your photo - you might already have done that.

[Louie da fly]

Yes, it's not a dazzling white. But hey, these flags would be brand-new; the ship's on display for the king!

 

Steven

[Mark Pearse]

Hi Steven

 

Just catching up on models - & wow, what an extraordinary craft. I'll read your introduction, I'm sure there's some information on her there. 

[Louie da fly]

Flags all complete. In fact, I may have more than I need.

 

 

 

For flagstaffs I went across the road to get some more of that fine grass I'd used as packing in the hold of the Winchelsea nef, . As the grass stalks are already circular in section (and quite rigid and tough considering their diameter) it worked much better than trying to carve them individually from bits of wood.

 

 

And I've completed the first "run" of deadeyes - for the starboard main shrouds. I'm much happier with them than I was with the ones I'd made myself. Thanks VERY much to henrythestaffy, who 3D printed them for me. For one thing, they're all smaller, as well as being the same size and shape, something I'd been unable to achieve by hand. And the consistency makes them look so much better together. Compare the ones I made myself

 

 

with the 3D printed ones. Here I've replaced the first 3 sets (far left) and the rest are the old hand-made ones.

 

 

All replaced, and I've added weights to tighten the lanyards of the three on the far right, preparatory to putting a dab of glue on the back to keep them tight.

 

 

All the lanyards glued in place and trimmed to length. Note how much better they look than the old ones.

 

 

A couple of problems working with them - breaking a deadeye off the stem that held it to the base was a pretty delicate process - if I did it by hand the deadeye would break not at the stem but across the lower two holes. And if I wasn't careful enough with the tweezers, the deadeye would break off at the stem but fly off into the air, never to be seen again - I suspect they ended up in another dimension. Happened all too often. Unfortunately they're (i) tiny and (ii) transparent and (iii) greyish - which effectively makes them invisible. I've lost more of them than I care to admit.

 

I still have (I think) more than enough to complete the job, but so far I've only done the shrouds on one side of one mast - there's the other side yet to do, plus three other masts (sigh). This has taken a long time and been really fiddly, but I think I've got it a lot more systematic now, and if all goes well the following ones shouldn't take quite so long.

 

Steven 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 2, 2022 by Louie da fly

[BANYAN]

Nice work Steven, those new deadeyes look good, and as you stated, the whole arrangement looks a lot neater.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

After a lot of waffle and fiddle, I'm just finishing the last pair of deadeyes for the fore and main masts, which had the shrouds already in place but without the deadeyes. (Warning - kiddies, don't try this at home; much more difficult than doing it the standard way. Lots more swearing, too.) This was all caused by my lack of foresight when I was 17 - I glued the shrouds in place and added ratlines without thinking forward enough to decide what to do about the deadeyes, and by the time I got around to thinking about it I was trapped into working around a less than optimum situation. 

 

I discovered the least problematic way was to make separate loops around individual deadeyes and then glue the free end of each loop to the corresponding shroud. Doesn't look all that good close-up, but sort of merges into the shroud if you're more than 6 inches away. Not the way I'm ever planning to do it again.

 

Fore shrouds and deadeyes - lanyards held tight by weights (tiny clothes pegs) attached to the ends, with a dab of glue at the back of the top deadeye to keep them in place.

 

 

 

And complete . . .

 

 

Larboards main shrouds ditto (the starboard ones were completed earlier - see previous posts).

 

 

Last pair of deadeyes - lanyards weighed down to keep them tight. Once the glue is dry I just have to trim off the excess thread from the lanyard, glue down the free end of the "chain" (really just thick black thread) and trim it off when the glue dries.

 

 

I have to say this procedure was complicated over and over again by such things as deadeyes coming away from the channels after I thought I'd glued them securely, "chains" coming away from the hull ditto, glue plugging up the holes in the deadeyes so I had to pull the assembly apart and start again, mis-threading lanyards ditto, you name it. 

 

After this, the swear jar should not be getting full so fast (I hope!).

 

Now I just have to a little adjustment - a couple of ratlines have come unstuck at the end shroud or two, and a few other little bts and pieces. Then I'm ready to move onto the next step.

 

In fact, I've already done so. Greatly daring, I've glued the mizzen mast into position.

 

    

 

Once I've put the stays in place, I'll be starting all over again with shrouds and deadeyes. But this time I hope I'll have taken the lessons of the previous debacle on board and do it a bit more cleverly. 

 

Steven

 

 

 

Edited April 10, 2022 by Louie da fly

[mtaylor]

Looks good, Steven.  One would never know that the swear jar was filled during this.  I suspect that if I did that at that size, my swear jar would have enough to buy an new car.

[BANYAN]

As with many 'exercises in frustration' Steven, persistence provides a great result.  Slowly but surely the refit proceeds.  You must be pretty happy with these results?

 

cheers

 

Pat

[druxey]

I hope you had a severe talk with your 17 year-old self never to do that again! Coming along nicely, Steven.

[Louie da fly]

Thanks for the likes and comments, everybody.

 

Mark, I had to get a new, bigger swear jar. Maybe no enough for a new car, but possibly a tricycle . . .

 

Pat, pretty happy. The join between the shrouds and the "loops" isn't as good as it might be, but sometimes you just have to accept that it's as good as it's likely to get, and move on.

 

Druxey; yes he's promised it won't happen again. Interestingly, thinking about the projects I've got planned for myself for the foreseeable future, (and I'm looking at three or four scratch builds, which should keep me going for a good while), though all will have shrouds, none of them will have deadeyes 

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

I've now moved onto the mizzen mast (that's the main mizzen -the one directly aft of the main mast - not the bonaventure mizzen - the one at the stern).

 

At the scale I'm working at, and with my 17 year old self looking over my shoulder, I'm not using the traditional method of adding the shrouds - just too difficult. Instead, I start by gluing the shroud or "chains" in a triangular loop around the deadeye. As follows:

 

 

 

Shrouds and "chains" with deadeyes attached.

The next step was to fix the chain deadeyes to the channel.

However, I realised that this was the method I'd used before which didn't work all that well, because I had to push the deadeye around to get the lanyard through the holes, and it usually was too much for the glue and the deadeye would come off.

 

So I tried another way. What I did instead is set up the two deadeyes with the lanyard joining them before I added it to the hull. Shroud and "chain" deadeyes connected with lanyard.

All done for one side.

And adding the deadeyes:

 

 

 

 

The idea is to glue the tops of the shrouds individually to the mast just below the top, but first I have to work on the stays - I should have done them before I started on the shrouds.

 

Lower mizzen stay - deadeyes:

 

These deadeyes are made of card impregnated with PVA (white) glue, and are about as small as I can make them by hand using natural materials.

 

According to Landström's reconstruction drawing, the upper stays are belayed to the main backstay each side with crowsfeet, not to the mainmast. I checked with R.C. Anderson's "The Rigging of Ships in the Days of the Spritsail topmast 1600-1720" - the best book I've been able to find for anything even vaguely like the Great Harry's period (even if it's at least 55 years too late) and he agrees. Unfortunately, the pictures of the Great Harry in the Anthony Roll and the painting of the Embarkation at Dover are of no help, and Great Harry seems to be just about the only example of a ship of this time that has a mizzen topmast at all, and no other representations show how this stay works. So either I cheat (tempting!) or I try making the crowsfeet.

 

 My first attempt at the upper mizzen stay with crowsfeet:

 

         

 

A bit messy

Hmmm, not looking all that good - can't keep all the ropes tensioned at the same time

URK!

 

So, I developed a cunning plan. I made a jig to make the crowsfeet separately, using styrene foam, a bit of balsa and dressmakers' pins:

Not bad, but you can see at the sharp end the threads don't converge evenly.

 

New version, which I hope will work properly.

We'll see . . . 

 

Steven

 

 

 

[druxey]

Crowsfeet at this size without a euphroe are very awkward as you can't tension the whole system at the same time as one would on the real thing.

[Louie da fly]

Agreed. But making a euphroe at this size is also very difficult.

[Louie da fly]

Well, not perfect, but not too bad, either. Here are the crowsfeet for the mizzen topmast stays, connected to the main backstays.

 

In progress:

 

      

I had to push the larboard backstay out from the hull before it would meet the crowsfeet so I could glue them onto it.

 

And, complete. Euphroes would have been more elegant, but not really possible at this scale. There's a sort of "blob" made of the collected cotton threads which looks sort of like a euphroe, and that'll have to do. I'm pretty happy with the result.

And here are the larboard shrouds and "chains" with deadeyes attached.

 

 

Steven

 

Edited April 15, 2022 by Louie da fly

[druxey]

Steven, I totally understand the difficulty of a euphroe at that scale; it would probably disintegrate. Time to have another chat with your 17-year-old self about a more suitable choice of scale!

[Louie da fly]

I thought afterwards that maybe I could have got the euphroes 3D printed - but then again maybe not - possibly still too small to be practicable.

 

Steven

[henrythestaffy]

Steven, if you did want them printed what size and how many holes would you need?

[Louie da fly]

Henrythestaffy, don't worry about it, mate. They'd be so small that there'd be no way the holes would be big enough to put the thread through.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

It's been awhile since I posted - I've been doing  a lot of fiddly stuff. First, the mizzen shrouds:

 

Threading the lanyards between the upper and lower deadeyes and fixing the assemblies to the channels - 

 

 Threading the shrouds through the bottom of the fighting top. (Yes, I know I should be threading through first and then adding the deadeyes at each end of the doubled shroud, but at this scale it wasn't realistic. However, it's more accurate than the way I did it on the fore and main.

   

 

Pulling tight, with tiny pegs as weights to maintain tension, and a dab of glue at the back to keep them in place.,

    

I seem to have forgotten to take photos of putting on the lower ratlines. But what the hey, you saw me doing it on the other masts. So here instead are the topmast and topgallant shrouds and ratlines going on -

   

 

  

 

I hadn't been happy with how the fore topmast and topgallant shrouds came out - I cut the ends off the ratlines while they were in place, and it didn't work too well (looked untidy). So I've since been using a different technique - I add the ratlines in place, remove the shroud/ratline assembly and trim off the ratlines with a scalpel blade on the cutting board, then glue the shroud/ratline assembly back on.

 

So here are the new shrouds and ratlines for the fore topmast and topgallant.

 

  

 

At this point the shrouds are removed and the ratlines trimmed.

   

And put back in place. The tiny pegs used again to tension the shrouds while the glue dries. Then the shrouds are trimmed to length.

      

All done!

 

Now for the bonaventure mizzen!

 

Steven
 

Edited May 13, 2022 by Louie da fly

[Jeff T]

The detail at this small scale is incredible!  Excellent job!

[mtaylor]

Looking very good, Steven and also very fiddly.  

[BANYAN]

Great job Steven, the rigging is coming on very nicely.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

The bonaventure mizzen is now glued in place and the lower stay is being put in position. I have yet to pull the lanyards tight on the pair of blocks that tensions the stay. 

    

And I've added deadeyes to the lower bonaventure shrouds; when the glue dries I'll be able to join the pairs of deadeyes and put the shrouds in place.

I've begun to attach the main halyard tackle (pendant?) to the capstan - just glued the nearest bit in place, and I'll gradually wrap it around so it looks like it's actually doing its job.

 

And - FINALLY - I'm able to start work on attaching the yards and my beautiful hand-painted "cloth of gold" sails - starting with the forecourse - I've attached the halyards to the yard - still loosely for the time being; I yet have to get them positioned correctly to attach the yard to the (fake) parrel truck. It's interesting - ships of this period don't seem to have hauled their courses up very high - they are usually shown quite a long way below the tops.

   

 

Steven

 

Edited May 17, 2022 by Louie da fly

[BANYAN]

Love that sail Steven; looks great.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[ChiefClanker]

Steve,

 

Oh, That is looking good!  Keep up the great work!

 

Chief Mark

 

[Louie da fly]

Thanks for the likes and comments, everyone. Here's me with the deadeyes and tackle for the bonaventure mizzen's lower stay. (OK, you can't see them, but they are there, trust me).

 

Now for the shrouds.

 

Fun and games all the way. First I made all the shroud/deadeye assemblies (8 of them)

and glued the lower deadeyes into place - except for one assembly which somehow vanished into another dimension - I must have brushed it off with my sleeve - serves me right for leaving them on the tabletop instead of in a container. So I had to make another one. Surprisingly, the lost one didn't turn up as soon as I'd done this. 

 

Note that the bonaventure mizzen doesn't have channels, so I had to figure out a way of fixing the lower deadeyes to the hull itself. Fortunately, I'd run a rail along the inside of the bulwark, and the "chains" (really linen thread) fitted through the gaps between that and the upper ends of the frames. 

 

 

But trying to fix the shrouds at the top was a bit of an issue - they should have gone up through the lubber's hole and around the mast, but there just wasn't enough room to do it well, so when I got them through the lubber's hole I just glued them to the floor of the fighting top. Which opened up another can of worms - the top was just fixed to the mast with PVA (white) glue via a circular hole through the floor, so it it tipped over in various directions as I added the shrouds. I had to get fairly imaginative to get it straight, but it ended up ok.

Then I was tensioning the shrouds when one of them had the lower deadeye pull out of its belaying point in the hull, so I had to push the thread back in place, which turned out to be very difficult indeed - it wouldn't go through, kept pulling out of place and just when I thought I had it fixed the tweezers turned out to be both sides of the mast so I couldn't close them . . . (I threw my magnifying headset on the floor - first time I've ever done it - and the language wasn't the kind of thing I'd have liked my grandmother to hear) - but I finally got it into place.

 

THEN I discover that two of the shrouds are twisted around the adjoining ones, so I have to dissolve the glue holding the lower end in place, pull the shroud out, take it around the other shroud to fix the twist, thread the lower end back through the gap between the rail and the frame and then glue it back place. Like I said, fun and games.

 

   

 

 

But now it all seems to be pretty good, and I'm ready to add the ratlines (sigh).

 

Steven

Edited May 20, 2022 by Louie da fly

[Drut]

Superb restoration work ! 😉

[druxey]

Not, in fact, a bon-adventure at all! Glad you got it all sorted eventually.