Atakebune by catopower - Woody Joe - 1/100 Scale - Japanese Sengoku Period Warship

[catopower]

The castle structure is now done, except for the decorative fish fittings that adorn the corners of the castle towers. These fish figures are called shachihoko, and are found on many castles, gates, and the homes of some nobles. I'll save these for later, as it's easy to knock them off during construction – Something I know from first-hand experience. 

 

Anyway, here's where we are as of now...

 

Next, I'll need to get back to finishing the lower hull modifications. But, before I get to that, I thought I'd start taking care of the many sculling oars I'll need. These are partial oars, so I don't have to make the whole oar, just the lower part that sticks out of the ship. This ship is represented as having 36 pairs of oars. 

 

Below, at the bottom, you can see the pieces as provided on the laser-cut sheets. Immediately above those is an example of one oar that's been cleaned up. At the top is a sculling oar from another model, so you can see what the whole thing should look like. I might have to make some full-length oars from scratch if I display any of the doors open. But, I don't know if I'll do that, as that leads to so many other details that aren't provided in the kit, like the internal deck, walls, and structural members, etc.

 

 

Cleaning up all these oars is slow going. Below are 12 cleaned-up sculling oars. Only 60 more to go.

 

Now, another modification I'm considering, though perhaps this one will be fairly minor. The kit includes a forward leaning mast, equipped with a yard and sail. Only a mast is depicted on the museum model, as that's all that's shown in the original painting. But, the kit looks like this:

 

 

Now, I think whole idea that the mast wasn't in the center of the ship is somewhat controversial. But, that it leans out in front of the shipmay be even more controversial. To my knowledge, this arrangement isn't seen on any other Japanese ship in history.

 

Now, I have noticed that the museum ship has a feature on deck that leads me to think that the forward leaning position might be just to drop it out of the way from the castle structure, and that it might be pulled upright when actually sailing. This would pivot the mast at its base, deep inside the hull, and cause it to come up through the deck, a bit further aft.

 

Unfortunately, the best museum photo I have that shows any of the deck in front of the castle structure is the on below. But, in it, you can see a few features that I've marked out with color arrows.

 

 

The red arrow points to what look like mast supports. To me, these are familiar as the tops of supports that stand to either side of the mast. The mast would usually be lashed to these supports. 

 

The green arrow points to what look like deck panels. Removable panels that stick up from the main deck would cover a long, narrow opening, through which the mast could be raised to a vertical position. Similar panels are seen on coastal transports. And, similar slots for the raising of masts are seen on  other types of Japanese sailing craft.

 

Now, this could simply be a museum invention to try to explain how this forward leaning mast might work. But, it makes sense to me. I can't see the whole features, but I can speculate. And, it would be easy enough to add this to the deck. Plus, it would give me a reason not to add the sail provided in the kit, which looks a bit odd to me anyway.

 

I suppose the yard arm could also easily be stored below deck and brought up through that slot when they decide to raise the mast and sail.

 

I'm going to try running this by a couple people who are familiar with atakebune before I make modifications there.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 6, 2022 by catopower

[catopower]

For those following my Atakebune build, my apologies for the progress delay!

 

I could try to make an excuse that sanding down all those sculling oars got boring and slowed me down. But, that wouldn't be entirely true.

 

I did finally finish sanding those oars. I guess the model only needs 66 of them, but I'm sure I counted 72 in the kit. Maybe there are spares. 

 

Also, I made the mast. It has a square cross-section and is tapered, but was actually quite easy make, as the parts are all laser-cut and simply need gluing together and then staining or dying of the wood. Also cut the hole in the deck planking. That was easy too, as the thin plywood sub-deck has the hole already cut, so the planking just needed to be cut through.

 

 

As I mentioned before, the forward rake of the mast is quite unusual, and it doesn't appear on any other Japanese watercraft I've ever seen or read about. But, I'm more convinced about my speculation that the mast would have been raised to a vertical position when carrying the large squaresail. 

 

One thing I found interesting that is unexplained about the kit, is that there is a hole cut down below to hold the foot of the angled mast in place. However, there is a second hole just in front of the first. If you place the foot of the mast there, the mast sits vertically...

 

 

Below, you can see the lower structure with the two supporting holes for stepping the foot of the mast.

 

 

My guess is that the designers at Woody Joe agreed that the mast would be raised to a vertical position when carrying a sail, but had it stay in its position at the very front of the hull.

 

My belief is that the foot of the mast remained in the same location, and that the mast was hauled into a vertical position, which really moves the body of the mast very close to the front of the castle structure. 

 

In any case, I don't plan to raise the sail, so I'll leave the mast in its forward leaning configuration.

 

 

 

Now, I'm going to place the panels that would cover the slot for raising the mast. I'm considering actually cutting open the deck now, so I can illustrate how this process would work, and how the mast would look in it's raised sailing position.

 

Hmmm... Okay. I'm off to it.

 

 

[druxey]

Intriguing detail. Why would one wish to cant the mast forward at all, I wonder? The model is looking great, Clare.

[catopower]

Thank you, Druxey. It's a good question, to which no one will ever know the answer. It's all speculation.

 

I figure that either, A, it gives the occupants of the castle structure a better view without having the mast so close to the structure, or, B, it's an intermediate step in tucking the whole mast down below deck where it would lower the center of gravity of the ship.

 

On most ships, the mast is lowered across the top of the ship, and the simple, single structure on top of most Atakebune had a hole in the front and back ends for the mast to pass through. But, with such an elaborate structure on the deck, that just wouldn't be possible here. And we don't actually know what the inside of the yagura or box structure looks like, so it could easily have a kind of space down the middle for storing not only the mast, but the yard as well. 

 

But, it's just my guess. I'm going to try to pass this by some knowledgeable folks in Japan to see what they think about the idea. Most likely, the best answer I'll get is that no one really knows for sure.

Edited March 28, 2022 by catopower

[catopower]

Here are the results of my latest minor modification. Below, you can see how the deck looks just aft of the mast. I cut open a slot and made a cover for it, which fits nicely into place. You can also see a pair of mast supports behind that, and there's deck reinforcement plate behind that. The reinforcement place is probably just a thicker section of the deck in reality. It is through this thick plate that a pair of halliards lead out from the deck and up to the tip of the mast.

 

 

 

 

The photo below is actually an earlier photo where I was using a temporary assembly to figure out the positioning and workability of the mast support on the left. Also, you'll notice that the thick plate I just mentioned is not in place yet.

 

 

Leaving the mast free and the deck covers removable allows me to illustrate how the mast might appear if it is in a raised position. Again, this is only speculation, based on what little I could see of the deck of the Saga Nagoya Castle Museum model. But, I think this makes sense, and this shows it as workable.

 

 

More work on the yagura, or box structure, to come next.

 

 

[catopower]

Small update for anyone interested!

 

You might have noticed that the kit doors are made so that they work as boarding ramps.

 

 

While I've seen doors on other atakebune models and painting like this, it's not the way the museum model's doors work. On that model, and in the original artwork, they are outward-opening double doors, with a metal  bracket on the inside for barring the doors shut. For boarding, I believe there would be ramps dropped down from inside.

 

The one good thing about this arrangement is that a counter attack might be prevented from boarding the atakebune by shoving the ramps all the way out or cutting them loose. If the ramps and the doors are one in the same, you have to re-raise the ramps to close up these openings. Assuming these actually have ropes for lowering/raising the ramps, if there ropes are cut, there's no way to close up the big hole in the side.

 

 

And, yes, in any case, the sculling oars in front of the doors have to be taken in before I can do anything.

 

If you look at my earlier model photos, you can see how the doors looked before I did any work to them. Below is an update photo I took before modifying the doors. But, note that I've added most of the remaining horizontal trim on the yagura, or box structure. The very bottom rail has to be left off for now, as I have a modification to make to it at the stern. But, the upper 3 rails were added, giving the model is little more detail in depth, like the museum model.

 

 

I started modifying the doors on one side. But, I can't fix them into place yet, until I decide if I should leave any of these open. The problem is that the interior does not at all look correct. To begin with, the sculling oars are not full oars, they're only the lower portion that sticks out. I could make a few of them full-sized, but then I'd have to come up with a way to properly rig them with ropes, called hayao.

 

 

By the way, these doors aren't fixed into place. I just have them taped into place from the back side. I'll eventually need to add something to represent hinges. And, I'll think about leaving one open door.

 

More later.

 

 

Edited April 4, 2022 by catopower

[druxey]

Thank for your educational comments about doors and ramps.

[catopower]

I'm just speculating. What do I know???

[mtaylor]

16 hours ago, catopower said:

I'm just speculating. What do I know???

More than anyone else here at MSW I suspect.   What you're pointing out seems reasonable.