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

[Louie da fly]

Trimmed the new panels of planking to shape at the stern, added the missing pieces to the broken wales and cut gunports

     I've also trimmed the deck beams so they tie in with the bottoms of the false "frames" that show above the top deck, so I can fit the decking in below them.

 

And something of a milestone, I've finally glued one of the superstructure panels back into place, after being off the ship for a long time. Because the stern is narrower, the old aftercastle panels don't quite fit on top of the old hull planking - I'll have to do a little adjusting to get everything together and fill up any gaps between the two.

     That's all for now. I really should get back to the dromon. It's been sitting there neglected for a while.

 

Steven

Edited April 1, 2019 by Louie da fly

[BANYAN]

Those 'repairs' are looking good Steven; lovely progress.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

I hope so, Pat. I'm very aware of the shortcomings, not only of the original, but of my rather bodgy repairs. But I suppose it's just a matter of keeping on with it and hoping it'll be alright on the night . . .😒

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

I've added the superstructure for the port side of the aftercastle. I had to sit with my thumb on the forward end till the glue dried - there was no other way to clamp it in position.

  

Because the stern is narrower than on the original model, the complex curves of the bottom of the superstructure and the top of the main hull no longer lined up with each other - there's a long narrow gap between them.

So I've started putting a sliver of wood in the gap.

I didn't want to make any more cannons than I had to, so I've also added port lids to all the gunports except those at the "well deck", where the guns are visible anyway.

 

Steven 

[BANYAN]

Coming along nicely Steven.  I visited the spot on the Hamble River where the remains of her hull lie during my recent trip to the UK; nothing to see but I can say I was there   I can send a photo if you like?

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

Pat, I'm pretty sure the Hamble River remains are of Henry V's (the Agincourt guy) Grace Dieu. My model is of Henry VIII's (the guy with VIII wives) Henry Grace a Dieu. Different ships with similar names, over 100 years apart.

 

Having said that, I think the Grace Dieu is fascinating as well. She was enormous for the time; if I remember correctly she was about the size of the Victory - in comparison with other ships of the era she was sort of like the Great Eastern compared with the Sirius.

 

There was (and still may be) a set of lines for the surviving hull on the Net. I think this might have been connected with the Time Team investigation of maybe a decade ago done by echo-location, I think. As usual, only below the waterline has survived, and you could only get a small picture taken from an angle which was all but useless. I've meant to contact whoever's in charge to get a proper copy of them but never got around to it.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

Well, I started adding more slivers between the port superstructure and the lower hull, and cutting them back flush with the planking.

Then an AAAAARGGGHHH moment, I'm afraid. I've discovered that I'd got the position and alignment of the port superstructure wrong. You can see it on the following photos. When I started putting in cross-pieces at the stern I realised the starboard side was higher than the port, so the crosspieces weren't square.

  

You can see the difference in angle between the top crosspieces and the one at the bottom, which is the only one that's correct. I could have left it as it was - "she'll be right" - but I know it would have sneered at me from then on, and I'd have cursed myself for not fixing it when I could have.  So I've removed it again (thank heaven for isopropanol) so I can fix it properly.

 

I've made a cardboard template which will be used to get the shape of the after end of the aftercastle right. I'll be able to re-use all the bits, but it's rather annoying.

  

 

In retrospect, I don't think there was any easy way to avoid this problem. There were too many variables - I just had to try it and see how it worked. But perhaps I could have thought it out better in advance instead of charging in like a bull at a gate.

 

Sigh.

 

Steven

Edited July 13, 2019 by Louie da fly

[rshousha]

What an amazing project! I wonder how many people can reach back into their youth like that. I have an old Raleigh racing bicycle with which I had a head-on collision with a car in 1979. I never got back on the bicycle and I still have it, rusty but usable. Restoring it would make a cool project. 

[Louie da fly]

Well, why not, Rick? Sounds like something worthwhile to do. And who knows you might get back on it and get a lot of enjoyment from it.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

Well, that's fixed, anyway. I've now put the port superstructure back in place and it now all lines up - at least as well as possible - any further discrepancies come from my 17-year old self not making it perfect in the first place. 

 

I was hoping to make the after face of the superstructure the same way it would have been back in the day, with the wales and the strakes made and installed individually, using the cardboard template to define the shape. Unfortunately it just didn't work out that way. I ended up having to make it out of a single sheet of wood (got it right on the second attempt), with the wales glued on the outside instead of forming part of the structure.

   

There  is now quite a gap between the lower hull and the  port superstructure, which I will have to infill with a new strake. 

 

Still, it's now starting to look like the kind of stern you see in Bruegel's paintings, which has got to be a good thing . . .

 

 

Steven  

[Louie da fly]

After quite a long gap, I've put the wales on the transom. Unfortunately the wales on the port and starboard sides of the ship don't line up perfectly with each other, so I had to fudge it a bit to get the transom wales as close to parallel and horizontal as I could.

 

Next job is to cut arched gunports in the transom, then make the lower part of the stern. I also have to fit a sliver of wood between the main hull and the upper works to fill the gap noted in the previous post. Slow but steady progress.

 

Steven

 

 

[Baker]

Nice work on this model Steven.

 

Better slow but steady, then fast but wrong.  That is also my way of thinking about this hobby.

 

[BANYAN]

Nice repair Steven; looks very good to the eye.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

Thanks for the likes and the comments.

 

17 hours ago, Backer said:

Better slow but steady, then fast but wrong.

Funny, I'm in the middle of reading a book called "Finders Keepers" by Craig Childs about archaeological looting, (which is a major problem and is nowadays carried out on an almost industrial scale) - the thing that grabbed my attention though, was his statement "I have secretly wished to be an archaeologist myself, but I do not have the patience for the scientific tedium involved, which would test model-ship builders." (my italics).

 

Nice to see the recognition of one of the main qualities of a ship modeller . . . Maybe I'll make this my signature?

 

Steven 

[Louie da fly]

The arched holes in the transom have now been done. I started off drilling holes where they were to go:

 

Then one by one cutting around the holes with a No. 11 scalpel to make them into arches of two different sizes - larger ones for cannon

  

and smaller ones for railing pieces or swivel guns. 

  

All done.

 

And I've started filling in the gap between the lower and upper works on the port side of the ship. The lighter colour wood is the new stuff.

Steven

[Louie da fly]

Finished with the "filling piece" on the port side.

 

And added the planking across the stern.

 

Unfortunately the port and starboard sides don't quite line up, so I've had to taper the planks to gradually change the angle of the planking and get it right at the different parts of the stern (and bodge it a bit, such as lining up the upper surface of a wale on one side with the lower surface of the one on the other side). It's a legacy of my 17 year-old self, plus the changes I had to make to incorporate the existing superstructure into the new hull shape.

     

But once it's cut to shape and sanded smooth you have to look pretty carefully to see it. 

 

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

I decided I couldn't live with the off-square stern sneering at me, so I took everything off below the transom and started again. To overcome the problem with the wales on port and starboard sides not lining up, I carved the curves in the port side below the transom so they did. I had to re-align some of the port side wales a bit, too, but it felt good to do it.

 

Her are the pics:

 

I put in new wales on the transom, all parallel to the gunwale and the lowest wale. That gave me a starting point. I had to re-cut two of the lowest line of arched gunports, as they'd followed the (off-square) line of the wale below them. And here I have started planking below the transom.

 

The two cut-out curves of the port side at the stern have been adjusted to line up with those of the starboard side:

 

 

And the first panel of planking below the transom complete.

  

Here it is from the port side. The lighter-coloured wood is the new stuff. Though I was originally going to colour it the same as the original wood I've decided instead to keep it as it is, to show the new work compared with the old.    

Steven

 

[BANYAN]

Nice work Steven; careful you may end up[ with a wholly new ship at this rate   

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

That was always a concern, Pat. Certainly I had to ditch a lot more of the old structure than I'd wanted to (have a look at the first couple of posts in this build log). But I've managed to keep much of the original and I'm pretty happy with that. The hull above the waterline will mostly be original, as will the main deck and the forecastle, but the deck of the aftercastle will be new. It's a shame I lost the main hatch and the longboat - they were pretty cool.

 

The bowsprit, fore and main masts and their spars and shrouds I still have, along with their original sails (which will have to be replaced but will serve as a pattern for the new ones). The mizzen and bonaventure mizzen have been lost along the way, along with their spars, sails and rigging, and will have to be re-done. 

 

I'm hoping that when it's all done it will be a nice snapshot of what I was capable of at 17, with the new stuff showing how much I've learned in the interim.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

I'm nearly finished on the stern; in fact I've gone as far as I can until the bottom planking is done.

 

Love these new clamps! (For Aussies, these are available at Officeworks very cheap, and have a very light grip so they don't warp anything. Oh, and they don't get stuck to the glue like my wooden miniature clothes pegs).

Added the sternpost. I'm always a bit undecided how far to take things - do I make it the same as I would have when I was 17 and iggerant, or upgrade to my current state of iggerance? Usually I do a bit of each - for example, except for the sternpost the keel is in one piece, rather than made in bits like the originals. 

 

I've also cut out the arched hole for the tiller. Unfortunately you can see the balsa crosspiece of the frame behind it.

 

So I added another crosspiece below it and cut a hole in the first one for the tiller. Still a bit of tidying to do. Here she is upside down. You can see the added balsa crossbeam and the original crossbeam with a central cut-out just behind and to the left of the number 3.

 

And looking through the arch. The crossbeam of the aftermost frame has had the hole cut in it, but you can see through to the next frame's crossbeam behind it. Naturally that won't be visible unless you look very carefully with your eye up against the hole. 

 

Looking aft past the frames you can just see daylight through the cut-out in the crossbeam and the tiller arch. 

And added more planking and the bottom wale (which still needs to be trimmed to length).

 

Next is to make the few cannons I'm putting on this model. I have yet to close up some more of the gunports I don't want open so I don't have to make too many cannons.

 

Then I can close her up with bottom planking and upper deck.

 

Steven

Edited September 11, 2019 by Louie da fly

[BANYAN]

Who would know what level of 'iggerence' you were at, or had the potential to show, back then mate; I say do it to your current level of 'ignorance'.  I show/demonstrate mine on a near-daily basis and have become somewhat 'immune' to outside comments.

 

cheers

 

Pat

Edited September 12, 2019 by BANYAN

[GrandpaPhil]

Very cool rebuild!

[Louie da fly]

I have to make cannons for the aftercastle before I can add the upper deck to it. Back in the day I made a "cast bronze" cannon out of type metal (remember that stuff?) cast in plaster of Paris. I need to do some tidying up and somehow add a trunnion before I can cast more of them. And type metal is completely unavailable nowadays . . . 

But for the upper deck cannons I'll need "built-up" cannons, as found on the Mary Rose:

 

Here's my first attempt. Not as precise as I'd like, but to the naked eye it looks pretty good. Note the "poor man's lathe", using a very thin file and a tiny hacksaw to cut the grooves. Another 13 to make.

 

  

And here are the two guns together.

 

 

Steven

Edited November 28, 2019 by Louie da fly

[mtaylor]

Nothing wrong with the "poor man's lathe" and the quality of work you're doing, Steven.   Look pretty darn good from here.    I used that method on my Constellation cannon and actually enjoyed doing them.  I hope the rest of them go as well.

[Louie da fly]

Well, my technique has improved. Here is a comparison between the first gun barrel I made and the most recent. I've got the reinforcing bands much narrower and (at least in my eye) the whole thing looks better.

 

Note also that the first one is shorter than the last, due to my having got my maths wrong when I scaled it down from the photo. But that really doesn't matter, because all these guns will be sticking out of arched ports in the ship, with the inboard end concealed. And anyway guns of the time were not standardised at all. The new one is the right length, but both are a little too thick (1.5mm brass tube), but not so much that they would be outside the normal variation in gun sizes. The differences in detail are so tiny that they're pretty much invisible to the naked eye.

 

So I'll be keeping all the guns I've made so far and using them in the ship.

 

Steven

 

 

[Louie da fly]

By the way, these guns are breech-loaders. The narrower bit at the left hand end of the newer one is supposed to represent the "breechblock" where the "magazine" is inserted. Not exactly sure how these things worked, but apparently this is what they looked like.

 

Steven

[Roger Pellett]

Steven,

 

I’m sure that your guns are more precise than the ones made by the blacksmiths in the early 1500s.

 

Roger

[mtaylor]

Steven,

From Wikipeda.... here's a picture.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breechloader#/media/File:Early_breech_loaders.jpg

[Louie da fly]

Roger, I seriously doubt it - I'm working at 1:200 scale - a tiny error at that scale would be enormous in the real world. (But I appreciate the thought  )

 

Mark, thanks for these. There's so much variation in what was in use - the two middle ones are swivels, with the breechblock very evident (and there's a magazine at the bottom of the display). The two bottom ones appear to be stave-built (made of strips of wrought iron edge to edge in a circle to form the barrel), with reinforcing bands shrunk on to keep the thing from blowing apart when fired. The other two - wrought into a tube-shape by a blacksmith?

 

And here's a photo and a diagram of how this breechloader at least worked:

 

 

And then there are cast bronze guns which were used for the main armament, which were muzzle-loaders much more like those we're all used to, and changed very little over the centuries.

 

 

According to the Anthony Roll ( https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anthony_Roll ) of 1545, the Great Harry had the following crew and guns (numbers in Roman numerals):

 

Men
Souldiours - cccxlix
Marryna[r]s - cccj
Gonnars [gunners] - l
[total:] vij^c

For the Harry Grace a Dieu
Ordenaunce, artillary munitions, habillimentes for the warre, for the armyng and in the deffence of the sayd shyppe to the see

Gonnes of brasse
Cannons - iiij
Demy cannons - iij
Culveryns - iiij
Demy culveryns - ij
Sakers - iiij
Cannon perers - ij
Fawcons - ij

Gonnes of yron
Porte pecys [port pieces] - xiiij
Slynges - iiij
Demy slynges - ij
Fowlers - viij
Baessys - lx
Toppe pece - ij
Hayle shotte pecys - xl
Handgonnes complete - c

 

All in all a fascinating subject.

 

Steven

Edited December 3, 2019 by Louie da fly

[Baker]

15 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

Not exactly sure how these things worked

Boem