Winchelsea Nef 1274 A.D. by Louie da fly - FINISHED - 1:75

[Tony Hunt]

This is such an engaging model. I love it.

[BANYAN]

Great progress Steven, the build is really coming to life now.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[AnobiumPunctatum]

Really wonderful progress. Such figures in scale 1/48 would be a dream.

[druxey]

Love your buisiniers!  Four shrouds a  side makes perfect sense as they are easier to install in pairs. You are making great progress, Steven.

[Louie da fly]

19 hours ago, AnobiumPunctatum said:

Such figures in scale 1/48 would be a dream.

 

I agree. Much though I enjoy carving them, it would be nice to have the option of just buying them ready-made. Unfortunately, nobody seems to make mediaeval civilians - at least not in 1:48 scale.

 

Steven

[Cathead]

Some of those images seem to show shrouds both fore and aft of the mast, while your prototype shows them only aft. Thoughts as to why?

[Louie da fly]

Cathead, I think it was different artists' attempts to show in 2 dimensions something that was in 3 dimensions. So some of them showed the shrouds exactly as you'd see them in a side view, with the "near" shrouds hiding the "far" shrouds, while others tried to show the presence of the hidden "far" shrouds by putting them before the mast, even though strictly speaking that's not where they were.

 

That's my take on it, anyway, having seen quite a few attempts to show 3D before they worked out how to show perspective.

 

Steven 

[Ian_Grant]

Kind of like where cartoons sometimes show both eyes on the same side of the nose......

[Louie da fly]

Hey! Picasso did it first!

[AnobiumPunctatum]

Quote

I agree. Much though I enjoy carving them, it would be nice to have the option of just buying them ready-made. Unfortunately, nobody seems to make mediaeval civilians - at least not in 1:48 scale.

In 1/48 I don't know an manufacturer of mediaeval figures. In 1/72 you can find lot of figures by Valdemar Miniatures. I planned to use them by a small cog diorama.

[Cathead]

12 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

I think it was different artists' attempts to show in 2 dimensions something that was in 3 dimensions. So some of them showed the shrouds exactly as you'd see them in a side view, with the "near" shrouds hiding the "far" shrouds, while others tried to show the presence of the hidden "far" shrouds by putting them before the mast, even though strictly speaking that's not where they were

 

So that makes sense, but is that the case for something like the image below, which you shared earlier? It just stretches my logical/factual brain to see those right-hand shrouds as being intended to represent the port-starboard mirror image of the correct ones aft of the mast, since they're carefully placed at a completely wrong angle symmetrical to the right ones. In addition, the three forward shrouds are even drawn as combining with what appears to be a forestay before reaching the mast, different from the aft three (oddly, there's no aft stay at all).

 

I realize these aren't blueprints and that art in this period was somewhat abstract, but it boggles and fascinates me to try to understand the mix of detailed realism and perspective inaccuracy. It's like trying to learn a truly foreign language with some recognizable patterns but fundamentally different grammar (like Japanese numbers).

 

]

 

Not trying to take this thread too off course, I'm just fascinated, and part of the theme here is understanding what we can learn and understand from these images.

[Louie da fly]

11 hours ago, Cathead said:

It just stretches my logical/factual brain

 

Ah, there's your problem right there - "logical/factual" - this is the Middle Ages, mate; not only that, but the people who did the picture are artistic types. You're quite right, however. Artistic types are less interested in perfect accuracy than in an overall impression.

 

There's a story that Babbage, the inventor of the "difference engine", the first computer, worked by cogwheels, wrote to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, picking him up on a line in a poem he'd written 

"Every Minute dies a Man,

Every minute one is born"

 

pointing out that if that was the case, the world population would stay static, and suggesting that he should amend the second line to

"And one and a third is born" (close enough within the limits of accuracy, and still sticking to the metre of the poem).

 

Surprisingly, Tennyson didn't follow his advice, but he did change the lines to 

 

"Every moment dies a Man,

Every moment one is born"

 

Much better as poetry than Babbage's idea, and sufficiently vague to overcome Babbage's objection. After all, how long is a moment?

 

Tennyson was a poet, Babbage was an engineer. They just didn't think the same way. 

 

Steven

 

PS: The Winchelsea seal shows four shrouds on one side as you'd expect in a proper side elevation (as the ones on the other side are of course hidden), but it also shows two backstays, with a sailor climbing up one of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 17, 2021 by Louie da fly

[druxey]

Your Babbage/Tennyson analogy is an excellent one that I'd forgotten. Thanks, Steven!

[GrandpaPhil]

If you’re looking for mediaeval miniatures, I’m not sure what the exact scale conversion is, but 32mm scale (28mm is 1/56) seems to be a very popular scale among the wargaming and rpg crowd these days.

 

I just did the math.  32mm scale is approximately 1/48 scale.

Edited December 17, 2021 by GrandpaPhil

[Louie da fly]

Trouble is most of them seem to be wearing armour (surprise, surprise!). Good for wargaming, not so good for ship modelling.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

Nearly complete! Just a few things to organise and she's done!

 

First, adding the forestay. It seemed to me that it would be sensible to fix its lower end through a hole in the stempost, but the contemporary representations, when they show anything at all, show it wrapped around the stempost, clumsy though that appears. 

 

       

 

So that's how I did it.

 

 

 

Holding the "eye-splice" together at the top of the forestay with a small peg until the glue dried.

 

 

I had already worked out that I would have to cut a hole in the front "wall" of the forecastle for the stay to pass through, so that was already done.

 

 

Putting in lanyards between the pairs of hearts at the bottom of the shrouds to replace the wire spacers. I used a needle to get the thread through the holes.

 

     

 

Shrouds and stays (including backstays) in place and lanyards loosely tied.

 

 

Adding the yard (sorry about the quality of some of these photos!).

 

 

Tightening lanyards. In retrospect I would have made the wire spacers longer so I could pull the shrouds tighter while keeping the upper and lower hearts far enough apart. The shrouds and stays aren't really as tight as I'd like them to be, and I'm a bit worried that they'll start to sag after a while. Note the halyard wound around the windlass.

 

 

 

Making the parrel. The halyard passes through a sheave in the mast (not sure if a rotating sheave is correct for this time and place, despite being in common use in the Mediterranean at the same time - it might have been just a hole in the mast, back in the day). The ropes are a bit furry - it looks worse in the photos than in real life. I tried the beeswax trick too late - I should have done it before I put everything in place.

 

 

 

 

 

Flagpole for the forecastle - in the shape of a spear.

 

           

 

As Winchelsea is one of the Cinque Ports, I'll be using their banner. Here it is on the seal of Dover, and in full colour (but note this is a modern flag - with a stern rudder instead of a side rudder).

 

 

     

 

Adding the crew (at last!)

 

Buisiniers

 

 

Working the windlass - also note the pumps have now been added.

 

 

 

Climbing the backstay to unfurl the sail.

 

      

 

 

 

A little more to do, but getting very close to complete.

 

Steven

 

 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Louie da fly

[Chuck Seiler]

Well done!  Your work is always an inspiration.

 

How do you plan to display it?

[Louie da fly]

Not sure. The junk shop in town was selling small aquariums a few months ago - maybe I'll get one of those to serve as a ready-made case. I've been thinking I'll put a back board in it with a reproduction of the original Winchelsea town seal to serve as a comparison with the model that's based on it.

 

Steven

[Cathead]

51 minutes ago, Louie da fly said:

The junk shop in town was selling small aquariums a few months ago

Gotta be careful with your wording on a nautical website; for a second I thought you had a local dealer in Chinese sailing vessels.

 

Model looks fantastic. I've definitely considered the aquarium case idea before, seems reasonable. Can't wait to see the final version.

 

As for the rope fuzziness, when I submitted my Viking ship to the NRG contest, one of the judges at first criticized the fuzziness of my lines, then backtracked to wonder whether it was intentional and/or accurate for the rough hand-made ropes of the period. So that can always be your excuse, too!

[Roger Pellett]

Steven,

 

Great work on the model and figures.  When posed, working the ship, they are really lifelike.

 

Roger

[Ian_Grant]

Beautiful ship and work!

[AnchorClanker]

Your ship is looking very good!!  I am looking forward to seeing the final product.

 

[GrandpaPhil]

Beautiful work!

[druxey]

Just catching up. Terrific sense of time and place with the figures. Well done!

[Louie da fly]

Here are the anchormen pulling up the anchor - the one at the front is of course Ron Burgundy.

 

 

 

 

Making the Cinque Ports flag. This took more work and mucking around than pretty much any other aspect of the build. I first tried doing it with acrylic on paper - disastrous. After various other attempts, this is enamel on a piece of old cotton sheet. I need to work out a better method of making flags, but this will do for now. I found that I hadn't allowed enough room between the top of the shrouds and the cross at the top of the mast to add the other flag shown on the town seal, so I eventually decided the best thing to do was just leave it off. 

 

       

 

And . . . FINISHED!

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately there was something wrong with the light when I took the photo, so I'll be asking my wife (who's a good photographer) to do some better ones.

 

And here's the town seal for comparison.

 

 

Now I can get back to working on the Great Harry.

 

Steven

[AnchorClanker]

Congratulations, Louie da Fly!!  It looks awesome.  Way to go. 

 

[druxey]

Well, congratulations on a super and distinctive model with a lot of careful thought behind it. Well done, Steven.

[Keith Black]

 Steven, great job especially considering what you had to use as a reference for the build. 

[Louie da fly]

But that's 50% of the fun! Speculation, research, trying to make sense from pictures and descriptions with far too little information, and ending up with something that looks beautiful and would have worked as a seagoing vessel.

 

Steven

[henrythestaffy]

You are a very talented man Steven