Vasa by puckotred - DeAgostini - Scale 1:65

[Eddie]

Hey howya goin Pucko, coming along nicely there mate. If you want to do more on it you could start to sand and shape the hull the fun part of ship building.

[puckotred]

Hi Eddie!

I think I'll cut the portholes before I start with the shaping and sanding, or I'll have to do the markings all over...

[BLACK VIKING]

Coming along very nicely Pucko. Nice idea with the templates for marking out the gunports a lot better than the Sovereign of the seas as you had to measure every one. Great work.  

 

BV 

[puckotred]

Thanks BV

[marktiedens]

Hi Mr.Pucko - you are off to a good start. I couldn`t help but notice the templates have the gun ports parallel to the frames. I am pretty sure they should be parallel to the planking & wales. If you look at a picture of the real ship in the museum you will see what I mean. I drew some lines on your picture to show you what I mean. It seems that none of the kit makers can get things right even though they have the real ship to look at. Just an observation.

 

 

Mark

[baskerbosse]

-Also, the lower gun ports should be slightly larger than the upper.
(That's despite the fact that both decks were armed with 24 pounders, -possibly an artefact from an earlier armament plan with smaller guns on upper gun deck)

 

Looks good so far, just be careful of the structural integrity of the planking when you cut the gun ports if you still have gaps between the planks.

 

 

cheers,

Peter

[puckotred]

 

Mark: I thought they looked a little strange.  On the 1:10 model from the museum they are a little offset from the wales but not as severe as the templates. 

 

 

And Peter: There's even more variations on the port sizes:

 

 

So with all this in mind I thought I'd just let the port markings from the templates be as is for the time being. It's difficult to alter too much when one doesn't know what DeAgostini has planned. 

 

Thank you guys for the head up on the issue. Easy for me to forget these details if you don't point them out.

 

Finished this months planking.

Wonder why they couldn't made the frames just a little higher:

 

 

Getting there, she was one big wall of wood:

 

 

Even though the bamboo was not the best quality (thickness and width very uneven), and it swells a LOT when soaked, it's very easy to bend in all directions. And sanding is easy too, so I'm sure all those bumps and cracks will be gone after a kilo or two of filler and a couple of weeks sanding... 

 

 

Now on to planking the stern...

[md1400cs]

Pucko,

 

More of the same info. This from the Museum plans set. Members notices seem correct, odd that you would receive this type of template.

 

Nice update - good luck with your "cutout" decisions ----

[puckotred]

Thanks for the pic Michael. Looks like the distance between the ports are wrong as well... 

That was a letdown. I'll let it be for now...

 

[puckotred]

Planking of the stern underway.

 

First of all cleaning up the details:

 

 

 

 

And the first planks:

 

 

 

 

 

This is how far I got day before yesterday. When I was going to continue the next day the 2 dark strips you see had shrunk so much that there was a 1mm gap between them and the next planks. had to rip them out and start again.

 

This is my second try:

 

 

I discovered that you could use a bending iron without soaking the strips. At least with this small amount of bending.

The planks on the real ship are are angled Upwards quite sharply and hopefully there will be a second layer. I suspect there will be very thin strips... (0,5mm)

 

 

[Jörgen]

Its good you warn me about soking the planks. Will try with heat only when I get there.   Doing some treenailing on shearborne at the moment......

[puckotred]

If you soak the planks, don't glue them until they are 100% dry... The dark wood seems like it swells the most when wet.

[baskerbosse]

Looks good,

With DeAgostini, you seem to be getting a pretty accurate model compared to other manufacturers.

The hull shape looks excellent.
There's always bound to be inaccuracies though, as long as they are accurate enough for your purposes, that's fine.
(I't easy to get bogged down in correcting every detail)
For the Corel Wasa, I found the inaccuracies too great to ignore with respect to the gun ports (wrong sizes, wrong locations, even the wrong number of gun ports), so I made a template from the museum plans. Even that is inaccurate, since I only made one template for both sides (on the real ship, the gun port layout differs from port to starboard)

 

I would be a bit worried trusting the manufacturer to get all the building steps right though. (You mentioned it's difficult to change things when not knowing what DeAgostini has planned, do you get any plans from the start?)
It often even pays to consider the rigging phase while building the hull. The Vasa for example has the main halliard knighthead below deck. It helps to rig this early in the build (before closing up the deck)

I don't know what DeAgostini has planned here? Potentially place it on deck instead?

 

Cheers,

Peter

[puckotred]

Thanks Peter,

 

I'm not too worried about the accuracy of the model, as you said it's enough for my purpose. But the ports was way off,

 

No plans what so ever! Not even a picture of the finished model. That is the downside of this build... no chance to plan ahead. You don't even now what parts will come next month. I still have 2 strips from the first shipment that I have no idea what to do with. And the main halliard, I too wonder how they plan to do this... And no measurements. When placing the templates one is to count 17 planks down to mark the lower line of the template. If you didn't plank as the instructions you're in trouble.

 

[Frankberge]

Good log to follow this one is. I bought the vasa museum plans with a plan of scratchbuilding it, but then i learned about this kit instead. So i subscribed to these magazines 3 weeks ago. I havent seen a single magazine in my postbox yet. But im hoping they will start pouring in next week. I ordered them off editionatlas. How long did it take for you to recieve the first shipment?

 

After reading your log i figure out maybe its best for me to wait and build it until all the parts have been recieved. 

Was those cannon port templates in the kit? Considering Fred Hocker was involved with the making of this kit and provided them with the newest research/plans up til now. This must be the doings of Deagostini/AL. If they have altered such a thing i wonder what else they have decided to change for the worse. 

The kit being designed with Fred Hocker and the newest research and plans was the main reason i ordered this ship. Being told the old plans were quite wrong. I thought this build of vasa was the one to have. It will be interesting to see how this this ship turns out!

I wish you good luck and you are doing a great job already. Please finish the ship and inform how the build is. It is of great help.

[puckotred]

I think it took almost 6 weeks before the first issue came. But after that it settled on every 4 weeks. 

 

3 years is a long time to wait... but not a bad idea. I could never wait that long though... If you are patient starting the build when you have 40 issues is a good idea. It will spare you some problems with alignment of the frames.

You can still paint all those decorations....

Templates came with issue 41.

We'll see what more faults this model has, but luckily we are on a forum where other members are kind enough to guide us in the right direction. 

 

Thank you for your kind words, and I will finish it...

[puckotred]

I found some useful info on an Italian forum. A builder has measured the gunports from the museum plans and converted them to this models scale.

 

Here

 

The placement of the ports is pretty accurate on the template at least... you only have to resize and rotate them.

[baskerbosse]

Hi Mr Pucko,

 

A good idea.

That is what I did too, -a word of caution though;

You cannot just use the museum plans scaled to the correct scale as the template directly.

The plan is a projection and therefore needs to be adjusted for the curvature of the hull.

 

Cheers,

Peter

[Foxtrott]

Peter is right.

If you use the deck-plans of the Vasa you will get the correct positions of the gun-ports without distortion.

 

The mounting-angle of the gunports follows the wales - as shown above.

 

The intervals of the gun-ports are irregular.

 

The patterns of the gunports are different at the starbord- and port-side of the ship.

 

A nightmare for a modeller. But you will get it, Puckotred

 

Alexander

 

[puckotred]

That time of the month again...

 

This time I got:

 

A bunch of 0.5x5mm planks, one "stormstycke" , a stern decoration and 2 little sailors:

 

 

The 2 sailors(Whatever they should be good for). I don't think I'll include them in the build.

 

Building is slow at the moment, life and stuff coming in the way.

 

Will update once something interesting happens...

[Vivian Galad]

Hey Mr. Pucko! Nice kit to build, great work so far - being late to follow your log. Love the Vasa, such a story and the hard lesson on building ships.

[puckotred]

Thank you Vivian ☺️

 

One of historys great fails. Sweden in a nutshell 

[puckotred]

New Shipment!

 

A lot of second layer planks. (0,5X5mm) and more decorations

 

The 2 pieces on the right are swans

 

 

Also done lots of filling/sanding/filling and sanding again.

 

Getting there slowly. I would recommend to do the planking with something else than the supplied bamboo.

 

 

 

I decided to go along with the 12X12mm size of the gunports. The placing of them seems ok so I have drille the center hole and can rotate the gunports to follow the wale. DeAgostini gives the measurement where that wale should go by making a mark so and so many mm from the lowest ports. So that is what I will follow when sanding is done. Sorry for the delay but family and model building is not a good combination 

 

Edited October 9, 2018 by puckotred
spelling

[puckotred]

At last I got something done.

 

DeAgostinis approach when building the hull is to assemble the keel after you done the first hull planking.

Why I just don't know. 

 

Had a really hard time cutting the 4mm trench along the whole hull:

 

This part was the easiest:

 

For some reason the bow part did not fit the false keel underneath. Unable to see exactly the point I had to fair away it took ages of hit and miss.

Doing this before the planking would have saved me a hour or so...

 

Again this was the easiest part. Good fit:

 

Gunports now following the curve of the (second) hull planking:

 

The line was determined by measuring from the gunports.

This is the curve the second planking will follow.

 

Started second planking of the stern:

 

I had ordered planking screws from Germany to aid me in this, but the Swedish post decided to misplace my shipment.

Seems as all they can do is do a search on the computer (as we do at home with a tracking number).

And when I asked when they would get someone to look for it they answered after a brief silence that they don't do that...(!?!) 

Thats service!

Anyway, a combination of CA and wood glue made the strips follow the curve of the stern:

 

One side (almost) finished:

 

Gunports will have their finishing touch later on:

 

And lower part done:

 

Now I will work upwards to the top of the stern, and I have 50 gunports to open up 

 

[md1400cs]

Pucko,

 

Nice update 

 

PS: Be careful with your spacing here. This caused me a lot of grief. 

[puckotred]

Ooops... thanks for the warning Michael. Think I'll wait cutting that gunport. 

Another problem with not having plans or the whole kit... you can't test fit anything. 

 

[baskerbosse]

If it helps, here are some views where you can see the run of the gun ports in the bow.
https://digitaltmuseum.org/021016514730/regalskeppet-wasa-i-torrdocka-efter-bargningen-1961/media?aq=topic%3A"Regalskepp"&i=12

Note especially how forward facing the chaser ports are.
As noted by Michael, you may need to more the upper gundeck port slightly upward.
I suggest to keep an eye on your distance between the upper edge of the upper deck gunports and the height of the weatherdeck..

The hull shape is looking great. Looking forward to second planking..

 

Cheers,

Peter

[Jörgen]

Nice job Pucko. Is it the Postnord that is failing again? When I looking on your build I get more and more convinced that it is better to wait for the parts and build it in your own way and just skipp Deagostinis weird approach.

[MarisStella.hr]

Hi Puckotred... nice Wasa is building on here, nice work indeed ...

Was the water line raised a bit later on, when the ship was built, so it passes over the lowest wale (rubbing strake) ?... by this, the gunports were put too low ?...

 

Regards, Zoran

[puckotred]

Hello Jörgen, yes it's Postnord. And after reading complaints on their Facebook page all hope is gone that one will ever get service from them... You are right about waiting for the parts. But I can't wait... I have been thinking that I should just go full on and follow the instructions to 100%, see what happens and then get the complete kit when/if Artesania Latina issues it. By the way, also in the shipment the Postnord misplaced are these and these AND THESE So you can understand I'm really really mad

 

Thanks Peter, I'll try and keep all in mind.

 

Thank you Zoran, and thank you for visiting. If you are referring to the drawn line on the hull that is just a marking of the curve the final planking should have. I used it to get the angle of the gunports. Although the gunports where very low. She was never meant to sail the high seas, so they did not think this was too big a problem (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have a vague memory that I read this somewhere.) Where DeAgostini will put the waterline I have no idea. If all turns out well they might even put it in the right place  but I wouldn't bet money on it...