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

[GrandpaPhil]

3 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

Does that mean I have to carve 7 crew members, including one half-way up the mast?

Absolutely!

 

Your crew members for the Dromon came out wonderfully!

Edited July 21, 2021 by GrandpaPhil

[druxey]

I doubt if a boat was on board. Hoisting it in and out would be problematic with only one yard to suspend anything from! If anything, it would be towed.

[Chuck Seiler]

5 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

Does that mean I have to carve 7 crew members, including one half-way up the mast?

8 if you include the helmsman and the 2 guys with the horns. 

[liteflight]

Yes

And with carefully researched clothing coloured to match the available dyes ( of course) 

 

Fascinating build, I am following agog.  
I’m not a popcorn afficionado ( but thanks for making it available). I prefer the emu drumsticks you have elegantly offered.

 

Hull carving using buttocks:  this has been my preferred way of carving hulls for racing yachts.   To help with precise fairing of the hull I colour the wood glue with acrylic paint so that there is a good visual marker of your progress in fairing the hull or plug.

 

Photos  are my Footy “Presto” , colours are to honour her Italian designer Flavio Faloci

[Cathead]

Oh cool, this looks fascinating. I speak some German but probably not enough to be useful in translating maritime history. You've been a great influence in dragging my interests from obscure American riverboats to even more obscure ancient ships. This looks like a good extension to the rabbit hole.

 

I admit I was rather startled to see "Winchelsea by Louie da Fly" and wondered what prompted such a drastic change in modeling period for you!

Edited July 22, 2021 by Cathead

[Chuck Seiler]

The von Fircks book is in German as well, but the pictures are in English.  They must be...I understand them. 😄

[BANYAN]

You select some very fascinating subjects to model Steven - missed the start, but it seems you have made a very good start.

 

Any room left in the front row?

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

1 hour ago, liteflight said:

Hull carving using buttocks:  this has been my preferred way of carving hulls for racing yachts.   To help with precise fairing of the hull I colour the wood glue with acrylic paint so that there is a good visual marker of your progress in fairing the hull or plug.

 

Yes, this is only the second time I've carved a hull this way, but it seems to work well.

 

8 hours ago, Chuck Seiler said:

8 if you include the helmsman and the 2 guys with the horns.

 

Damn! I miscounted!

 

1 hour ago, Cathead said:

Oh cool, this looks fascinating. I speak some German but probably not enough to be useful in translating maritime history.

 

I learnt German for two years in high school - all gone - too long ago. And I never got any good at it, anyway.

 

1 hour ago, Cathead said:

You've been a great influence in dragging my interests from obscure American riverboats to even more obscure ancient ships.

 

Why, thank you - I think . . .

 

1 hour ago, liteflight said:

I prefer the emu drumsticks you have elegantly offered.

 

Have you ever eaten emu? Tastes like petrol!

 

1 hour ago, Chuck Seiler said:

the pictures are in English.  They must be...I understand them. 😄

 

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

11 minutes ago, BANYAN said:

Any room left in the front row?

 

 

Soitinly!

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

Just checking the plug against the midships template.

 

 

 

And marking out the line of the gunwale.

 

 

 

Steven

 

 

[Schrader]

Steven

 

This is what I like about this group!!!!   Really interesting subject

 

I’m seated here following your log

[AnobiumPunctatum]

I found time to take some pictures of the model and the lines of the reconstruction from Zimmermann. Hope the pictures are helpful.

 

 

 

Edited July 23, 2021 by AnobiumPunctatum

[Chuck Seiler]

    I dusted off my copy of the Fircks book and found that the model I posted was NOT a good representation of the Fircks plans.  This drawing from the book is close to the plans.

 

    Here is an approximation of what the castles look like from above-not triangles.

   He also includes several town seals, although not in color like Steven's.   Winchelsea, Dunwich and Yarmouth all show through-beams.  On Yarmouth they appear high up but the other 2 appear lower than depicted on the Fircks model.  I think if I use the Fircks plans I need to change the beams and/or deck so that the beams are low enough to step over.

   

[druxey]

Reef points back then? I thought that this was a later invention and that a bonnet or bonnets were used.

[Louie da fly]

Thank you very much, Christian and Chuck. All these reconstructions are very similar (as one would expect, given that they are based on the same originals). The differences are relatively minor, within the expected variation - no more than the differences between various of the originals. 

 

Zimmerman's reconstruction looks most like the ships on the seals of Hythe and Haverford West

 

     

 

                                        Hythe                                                                                      Haverford West

 

(though the Hythe seal doesn't show a bowsprit) - apart from the missing fighting top it also looks like the ship on the seal of Sandwich. Fircks reconstruction seems to be based on the Winchelsea ship (see the horizontal line behind the middle of the the steering oar, not shown on any other seal) but the superstructure is simplified. The trapezoidal shape of the castles seen from above in both reconstructions is pretty much how I intend to make mine. Zimmerman's model (though not the plans) shows oarports, though I can't see anything in any of the contemporary illustrations to support that.

 

There are "bumps" on the Winchelsea ship which are higher than the main through-beams. They also appear on the San Sebastian seal. Are these beams for a foredeck and poop?

 

Chuck, there's certainly quite a bit of difference in the level of the through-beams between various seals. The Winchelsea one seems to give a good height for the deck and the bulwark is a decent height above that. It's up to you how you interpret these beam heights. Certainly, without a time machine  no-one can tell you that you're wrong!

 

Druxey, surprising as it seems, reef points appear to have been invented  as early as the 13th century as shown in the seal of Hastings

 

 

Seal of Dover - 13th ventury

 

 

Mural in the Skamstrup church in Denmark - probably early 14th century.

 

And they were still in use in the early 15th century:

 

 

1405-09 Belles Heures de Jean de France St Nicholas saving the ship in the storm

 

And somewhere between then and the 16th century they seem to have vanished to be replaced by bonnets, only coming back into use in the 17th. Who knew?

 

Steven

Edited July 24, 2021 by Louie da fly
Added pics of the seals of Hythe and Haverford West

[druxey]

Thank you for clarifying the early date for reef points, Steven. Why then, I wonder, were bonnets in use until so much later?

[Chuck Seiler]

Landström shows those 'bumps' as well, on both SANDWICH and WINCHELSEA.  With SANDWICH you can see the deck.  The beams appear to be at deck level and the higher up beam do appear to support raised foredeck and poopdeck.

[Louie da fly]

3 hours ago, druxey said:

Why then, I wonder, were bonnets in use until so much later?

 

A very good question, Druxey. Somehow the technology for reef points got lost or forgotten. Like chain pumps, which the Romans had (and perhaps the Byzantines), but which got forgotten/lost until the 16th century. And it's interesting, because it seems to me that reefing is a far more efficient method of adjusting sail area than bonnets.

 

3 hours ago, Chuck Seiler said:

Landström shows those 'bumps' as well, on both SANDWICH and WINCHELSEA.  With SANDWICH you can see the deck.  The beams appear to be at deck level and the higher up beam do appear to support raised foredeck and poopdeck.

 

Yes, though these in themselves are theoretical reconstructions, I find Landström's stuff to be very believable - his vessels always look seaworthy, unlike many other reconstructions I've seen of various ships over the years (some in museums!).

 

Steven

Edited July 24, 2021 by Louie da fly

[Chuck Seiler]

We know the Bremen cog had thru beams and that was only about 100 years later.

[Louie da fly]

11 minutes ago, Chuck Seiler said:

We know the Bremen cog had thru beams and that was only about 100 years later.

 

And according to Landström the 13th century Kalmar boat had them as well (p. 191).

 

Steven

[AnobiumPunctatum]

Quote

He also includes several town seals, although not in color like Steven's.   Winchelsea, Dunwich and Yarmouth all show through-beams.  On Yarmouth they appear high up but the other 2 appear lower than depicted on the Fircks model.  I think if I use the Fircks plans I need to change the beams and/or deck so that the beams are low enough to step over.

I don't understand, what you mean with "stap over". The beams are the deckbeams and the deck planks are sitting on.

[Chuck Seiler]

19 minutes ago, AnobiumPunctatum said:

I don't understand, what you mean with "stap over"

    STEP over.  Druxey noted in post 17 and Steven in post 20 that the beams were a bit high over the deck in the model I posted in post 10.  This is very evident in the other pictures on the website indicated.  The beams were thigh to waist high.  In post 21 I noted that the model of the Hedeby 3 knarr that Steven was using as a reference also had high beams--more like s\thwarts or speaders than deck beams.

 

     The SANDWICH diagram looks like the beams are at deck level but the WINCHELSEA is unclear.  If I make the beams ABOVE the deck level, they should be low enough that the sailors could easily step over.

[Baker]

On 7/21/2021 at 1:41 PM, Louie da fly said:

Does that mean I have to carve 7 crew members, including one half-way up the mast?

Yes please 😉😇

a very interesting build 👍

[AnobiumPunctatum]

Chuck ,

 

You could not interpret this really precies from the seals. It could also mean that the shipside is lower. Have a look at the people how big they are.

You can develop a possible hull design, which will be mostly the same for every seal. Than you can add the specific detail. Where do you find the right dimensions of such a ship? You choose the big knarrs of the vikings. There are a lot of new findings you can use for the length as basic for such a ship.

If they will find a shipwreck of a nef such as the cog of Bremen, we have to learn everything new.

[mtaylor]

Part of our problem in today's world is that back then perspective seems to have not been used.  Thus, people seem to always look larger than the boat/ship.   

[Chuck Seiler]

Really?  I hadn;t noticed. 🙂

[Louie da fly]

Not so much perspective (though it's true that they didn't use it - the secret had been lost after Roman times and wasn't re-discovered till the Renaissance) but generally if something was important, you made it big.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

Okay, so I've made the stem and sternposts.

 

It took a bit of adjustment to get them to follow the line of the slots I'd cut in the plug. The plug is still in two halves, just held together with a G-clamp. That way I could adjust the slots until everything fitted.

 

First I made the inner curve of each post approximate as closely as possible the curve of the slot

 

 

But even that needed a bit of work -  the slots on the two halves of the plug didn't quite line up. So with a bit of trial and error, and adjustment back and forth,  I got the slot and the inner curves of the posts to mesh, so the posts would sit in the slots correctly. The two posts are not identical, so I marked them with pencil to tell them apart (B for bow, S for stern), and did the same for the plug and the keel.

 

 

 

Then I took it all apart and adjusted the outside curve of each post to match the shape in the original picture on the city seal.

 

 

 

 

I had originally thought to have the keel in a slot in the plug, but then I looked at the midships section of the Hedeby/Haithabu knarr and it seemed to be outside the body of the hull (see picture in my first post). So I decided to do it that way - to the degree that I glued in a bit of wood to fill in the slot I'd already cut in one side of the plug.

 

 But the more I thought about it, the more impractical it seemed to be - nothing seemed to work if I did it that way. And then of course it occurred to me - this is a nef, not a knarr - there's no reason to suppose the construction method was exactly the same in a non-Scandinavian ship. So I went back to my original idea, and it seems to work much better.

 

The main issue was getting the scarph joints between the keel and the stem and sternposts exactly in the right place and fitting perfectly. If I stuffed it up I'd have to re-make either the keel or one of the end posts.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't get it perfect - one of the cuts wasn't exactly at right angles across the joint - but not too bad, and I used filler made of PVA (white) glue and sawdust to fill the tiny gap I'd left on one side of one of the joints. As you can see from the photos above I used cling-wrap to ensure the posts and keel didn't stick to the plug.

 

Et voila!

 

 

And I've succumbed to peer pressure and started on the crew -  this is the helmsman under way (pear wood from the neighbour's tree and No. 11 craft knife)

 

   

 

 

 

 

(yes, all right I did want to do it, really )

 

 

Steven 

 

Edited July 26, 2021 by Louie da fly

[BANYAN]

Good progress Steven.  yeah, we believe you, we really do

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Tony Hunt]

I like the cut of his jib! 😀