One more small cog c. 1410 by Brinkman - scale 1:13

[Louie da fly]

Beautiful precise work, Silverman! Yes, the knees look really good now. And your baling solution is very well thought out.

 

Steven

[Wintergreen]

What Steven said. Very nice progress 🙂

 

One little thought about the stringer. While it does look good on the model I think it would probably not been let into the frame tops. Mostly for the additional exposed endgrain from the notches. Yes yes, the stringer itself blocks some water intrusion, but I think it would eventually open up and let water in since it is subject to some forces. 

Instead, pragmatically bolted to the frames without any notches.

 

Keep it up!

[Chuck]

 

Absolutely beautiful!!!

[Brinkman]

First off, I changed my screen name. My old one was a screen name I came up with 20 years ago and nowadays I usually just go by my real name.

 

Thank you all for the likes!

 

Steven: Thank you, I'm so much happier with the knees now!

 

Wintergreen: Yes, what you say sounds reasonable. Thank you and I will keep it in mind in the future.

 

Chuck: I love that camera angle so much that I'll reuse in today's post as well. And it was well timed of you to leave a comment here as I was just about to cite one of your posts regarding ropes.

 

It was very interesting to make the coaming for the gang ways. The gang ways curves and as the coaming has a lean to it it gives it quite a difficult shape.

Both the Almere Wijk 13 and NM107 cogs had this kind of gang way with coaming. The coaming probably both gives longitudinal strength and defines the hold.

 

I have also started to look more into to the rigging and made some more rope samples. On my last model I made the ropes from linen, but after reading this post from Chuck I tried making them from Gütermann's thread and they look so much more defined. The samples range in scale from ⌀8mm (⌀5/16") to ⌀27mm (⌀1 1/16"). The two different colours are of course to represent plain rope and tarred rope. All but the second from the right are three plied and that one is four plied.

 

I think I will have two shrouds on each side like Kalmar I that is of similar size and I have ordered The Rigging of Ships in the days of the Spritsail Topmast (1600-1720) for some inspiration on dimensions even if these ships of course are of much later date.

 

Next up is the rudder.

[Chuck]

Looking great…and that is some fine looking rope.

[Brinkman]

Thank you Chuck, it means a lot to hear it from you.

 

Regarding the rigging I just remembered that I recently read about the Gedesby find from Denmark which is very unique as much of the rigging was intact! The ship was of similar size as mine, but about 150 years earlier. I will look more into that ship and a replica that was made in the 90s for inspiration.

[Brinkman]

Thank you all for the likes!

 

Here is the rudder. I really liked the elegant flow of it and it felt wrong to keep the rudder boxy in cross section so I gave it a simple hydrodynamic shape.

[Wintergreen]

Nice black smithing! Very neat hardware.
Maybe you want to shave off the lower edge of the rudder a fraction. The reason being to prevent the rudder from un-shipping if the boat is grounding. Again, just a minor detail.

I also think you are correct in giving the rudder a shaped cross section, even shipwrights of old must have had an eye for that I presume.

 

Keep it up!

[Brinkman]

Thank you for your input Håkan! You are right and in order to better protect the rudder I added a sacrificial heel. 

I have started to look into the ceiling of the hold. The hold itself will be divided in two parts - fore and aft of the mast beam, where the later one will be the primary compartment. The ceiling in this part will have thicker boards. And to get an even thickness on my hand sewn planks I used the dremel:

I've seen woodworkers on Youtube use this technique with full size tools to plane large boards so I thought I could try it too. The surface quality actually turned out quite ok. The planks were just hot glued to the plywood.

[Brinkman]

But back to the bowsprit before doing the ceiling. Or rather, back to the proto bowsprit.

 

So, two weeks ago I was almost ready to bet money on me removing the bowsprit from scope. I had tried for a month to come up with a way to mount it that I felt was suitable and just couldn't find any. Then I read on this forum someone calling this kind of bowsprit 'proto bowsprit'. I really liked this as the function of it is something totally different from what we normally call a bowsprit and using a different name for it helped me move away from the conventional ways to fasten a bowsprit. And a week ago I started to look into the Gedesby find for inspiration for rope and I saw that there had been a full scale reproduction made of that ship, Agnete, and it had this kind of proto bowsprit! But I couldn't find any good picture of how the lower part was fastened. There was a book written of Agnete and I had to loan it from a library abroad which could take time.

 

Then this Friday I got a message that I could collect the book. That made my cogs spin a bit faster and while at work I finally came up with the simplest way to fasten it - with a step. The end of the proto bowsprit should of course just rest in a mortise in a wooden block. At the end of the day I got the book, but there was no picture showing this area, but that didn't matter now.

 

The spar itself is not the one I will use, but I think it will be something like this in size. The step is placed off center to clear the proto bowsprit from the fore stay. I'm really glad that I could use a similar crutch to what in this seal. First I planned on using a branch but I think a forged crutch just looks so much better. A simple lashing will hold the spar to the crutch.

 

[Louie da fly]

A nice solution, mate! Looks very good. Your research on this build is very impressive, too.

 

Steven

[Mark Pearse]

And a very nice piece of metalwork too, a very believable look of wrought iron - could you tell us a bit about how you made it? It doesn't look like brass, but perhaps it is...

 

In terms of the vessel, what was the bowsprit used for?

 

[Brinkman]

Thank you @Mark Pearse! It is indeed made from brass. I ground a piece of brass pointy in both ends and then curved it making sure to anneal it frequently to keep it malleable. And then solded it to another piece and blackening it after tidying up the solder.

 

The only use of the proto bowsprit was to hold the bowlines. On larger ships of war it could also be used for grappling hooks.

Edited November 12, 2023 by Brinkman

[Brinkman]

Two steps forward, and one back.

 

I have started on the ceiling by first painting the area that will be covered and then laying planks.

But I'm not feeling it. I do not understand why I put in the spacing between them and why I used short planks. Looking at Almere Wijk 13 the planks were put tight together and were even longer then mine would be. I will remove them even if that will be hard because of the treenails.

 

The paint I'm using is a 50-50 mix of oil based wash and linseed oil. The edges of the planks are also painted why it looks a bit dirty.

 

Edit: After giving it some thought I think removing them will be pretty easy. I will just drill away the treenails and only one of them were glued to the floors so it will be easy.

 

Resawing all the planks by hand on the other hand will not be so easy.

Edited November 20, 2023 by Brinkman

[Mark Pearse]

Hi Brinkman

 

From a practical boat building point of view, if floors are fixed to the hull there should be some side gap, even if small. I haven't looked it up, but my guess timber will expand across the grain around 2% - so 3mm for a 150mm board. Floors can also be fixed into panels that are loose, not fixed to the hull - in that scenario they could be done without gaps. For a working boat, there's a lot of advantages to loose floors. Is there evidence in the example you cited, that the floors were fixed to the hull?

 

PS The dark colour is beautiful

[Brinkman]

Mark, I also thought about loose panels at least in the middle to clear the bilge from debris. But I don't see any evidence for it.

 

Reading through the sources again I see both ceilings with gaps and without, so I wasn't really as wrong about that as I thought earlier this evening. But I think it will look better with minimum gaps.

 

Most ceilings were fixed with treenails, probably for longitudinal strength of the hull.

 

Ripping the new planks went much faster then I first thought it would.

[Brinkman]

I felt a bit frustrated a week ago when I was disappointed with the ceiling after having spent time and resources on it. But it was quick to remove the planks make the new ones. Part of the frustration stems from a dwindling supply of my pear wood. I didn't know how much I should buy when I started on the project so I thought I would order just enough to start so I had to order more when it would be easier to estimate how much I needed. But it seems like I ordered pretty much the exact amount so each time I have to discard something I worryingly look at what I have left. 

 

But I'm much happier with the new ceiling. I left a sub millimeter gap between the planks for a hint of the floors and futtocks. I thought I would just use straight planks, but as the the ceiling climbs further up on the sides the curvature increases and I had to spile to keep the gaps constant. Other times I bent planks I used hot water but I couldn't do it here so I instead used a heat gun to make them more pliable.

 

'Ceiling' is a good and rational word, but in Swedish we use the word 'garnityr' that comes from the same root word as 'garniture' and in everyday Swedish it means cake decorations making it quite funny when it is used here.

 

The planks look a bit dirty as I painted the edges before mounting.

I mentioned earlier that I interpret this area to be the main hold and I will add low bulkheads at both ends. On the sides of the ceiling we have a small area left and I'll later see how to fill it.

 

Fore of the ceiling we have the secondary hold area. Here I think I will have a more simple ceiling with more narrow and thinner planks with wide gaps. These gaps can later be covered with loose planks where needed .

 

And then knees will help keep the mast step in place.

Edited November 27, 2023 by Brinkman

[Louie da fly]

I'm loving following this build and your logical process of decision making and problem solving. Beautiful work.

 

Steven

[Brinkman]

Thank you for the likes!

 

Steven: Thank you very much!

 

The secondary hold got it's ceiling.

I wanted this area to be separated in style but still connected to the main hold. The separate areas are connected by lining up the planks, but differ by the ceiling being open or closed and how the edges adapts to the round hull - while the last planks in the main area are shaped, the last planks in the secondary area are simply cut off.

 

The connection between the planks is a hidden scarf joint that surely is not historical, but it looks good and helped lining up the planks.

 

I mentioned that the wood supply is running low. Some time ago I laid aside two pieces reserving them for the bulkheads, but now I see that I need larger pieces. Let us see if the remaining piece of timber is long enough:

Yup, it's long enough. Sometimes you really need to be lucky when you don't plan your work in advance.

 

[Mark Pearse]

More beautiful work, & it's a satisfyingly large model. It has the feel of a real boat at this size.

[Brinkman]

Thank you for the likes!

 

Mark: Thank you, and it will be very interesting when doing the crew and cargo and see how that effects the sense of scale.

 

My work place has a photo competition and my contribution is of me working on this ship. I work in a design department and many are into photographing and photoshopping, so only unedited mobile phone images was allowed to level the playing field.

I really dislike photos where people obviously are fake working, but I did it anyway here...

Edited December 6, 2023 by Brinkman

[cotrecerf]

Never mind, it gives a good clue to the actual size of your superb model. Carry on!

gretings 

 

Joachim

[Wintergreen]

Very nice photo, your contribution to the photo competetion I mean.

While 1:13 is quite a large scale, the true size of your model has eluded me. Until now. Wow, I like the size!

 

Keep it up!

[Mark Pearse]

That's an interesting looking magnifier, is that a drop-down second lens?

[Brinkman]

Thank you for the kind reactions on my photo. Many years ago I was into photographing and it was fun to think about composition again.

 

Joachim & Håkan: Thank you, but the photo exaggerates the size a bit as I used a fisheye effect to get the lines in te background as I wanted. But yes, just under 1m is still quite large.

 

Mark: I like the magnifier a lot and it actually has two drop down lenses that can be used in any combination.

[Ferrus Manus]

Awesome job on the proto-bowsprit! 

[tartane]

Well done so far! I am intersted in the construction of cogs as you can see in my last topic. 

The rigging is different than some nowaday  pictures of cogs show. I did research on this subject and discovered a kind of rigging that is similar to ships with latin sails. 

I would like to advise you if you want to,

Constant

[Mike Y]

Charming photo! And the model, of course. Interesting subject and your level of details that goes into it 😊