The San Marco mosaic ship c. 1150 by Louie da fly - 1:75

[druxey]

Whew! Got to you in time....

[Mark Pearse]

Hi Steven,  I hope you aren't in danger with the current bushfires in your area. Best wishes on that.

[Tony Hunt]

A ready source of boxwood for such figures is old folding woodworking rulers. I know some people think this is sacrilege (and perhaps it is) but if you go to the local fleamarket and find the guy selling old tools and other junk, he will often have some pretty beaten-up ones that are beyond their use-by date. They were made from excellent quality boxwood, too!

[Louie da fly]

Mark, thanks for the concern. No, the fires are around Beaufort, about half an hour's drive away - in fact people from there have been evacuated to Ballarat. And though the fire's still going strong, the weather's cooled down (it was 36 degrees here yesterday - about 100 degrees F - but today was only 18 (64 F).

 

Tony, thanks for the suggestion - I'd heard that, but so far haven't come across any at a decent price - or at all, to be honest.

 

Steven 

[Jim Lad]

Those fires are only 40Km away, Steven. Keep an eye on the wind direction!

 

John

[Louie da fly]

Going west at the moment, mate. Away from Ballarat. 14 degrees at the moment and they've predicted 24 degrees today.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

First, an update on the fires. They're still going and it's likely to be hot and windy on Wednesday - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-25/vic-fires-ballarat-beaufort-raglan-bushfires-warnings/103509258 . Here's a map showing where everything is relative to Ballarat (it's the outlined area - where the "Sovereign Hill" sign is - one of our most popular tourist attractions).

Most of the surrounding area is pretty sparsely populated. The firies are preparing containment lines in preparation for Wednesday to protect nearby Beaufort and Lexton, which are fairly small towns. The surrounding areas are farmland - mostly grassland. The fire is at Bayindeen and surrounds, in rugged forest country, which is why the firies are having trouble controlling it. Fortunately, though there have been property losses, people have been sensible and left home before they were in danger and there have been no fatalities. Residents of Beaufort and surrounds have been evacuated to Ballarat and nobody has been allowed to return home yet. Unfortunately, bushfires are a fact of life in Australia, and the mild, fairly wet summer has provided perfect weather for foliage growth this year. Hopefully, the hot weather will break fairly soon and if we get heavy rain it will take care of the fires.

 

Looking at happier news, here's some progress on the build.

 

Even though I've got a fair way into carving the steersmen I think I'm going to need to re-think them yet again. I've worked out where the tillers will be and though the faces have turned out quite well and the arms are pretty much in line with the test photos, and these guys' arms seem to be in the wrong position to control the tillers.

  

  
  The tiller acts totally opposite from the standard one for a stern-mounted rudder - instead of running forward from the pivot point it runs aft, and I'm still trying to get my head around how that works. I either need to correct that (reorientation of the arms) or make a whole new pair of steersmen. More test photos needed, I think.

 

Also, one of the steersmen has his head rather too far from his shoulders - look a bit like the Sphinx. Either replace him completely (as above) or a headectomy and move the offending piece lower down.  

 

  

  

I'll play with them a bit and decide what to do. I don't really want to waste all that work on the heads and faces, but they may just be beyond fixing.

 

Next point - I stretched some silkspan on a frame and painted it with dilute acrylic paint - but it seems to have developed fine wrinkles or puckers in the surface. I think you can see them in this photo.

I'm not so concerned with the larger wrinkles - I can probably just avoid using the bits that have them - but those fine ones seem to be right across the surface and just look wrong. I think I applied too many coats (it was quite a lot - I was trying to make the silkspan translucent instead of transparent ). I think this is beyond saving, and I need to try again, with fewer coats of paint - perhaps with more acrylic in the mix, just be satisfied with it still being a bit transparent. Any comments or suggestions?

 

Steven  

Edited February 25 by Louie da fly

[Thukydides]

I have never painted silk span before, but I imagine you would want to stretch it while wet to make sure it drys taught. You could take a look at this video where the person doing this doesn’t use a frame, but stretches it while wet so it dries flat.

 

 

It is also potentially you could be painting the layers while the previous layer is still not fully dry. This is a big no-no in acrylic painting as you reactivate the previous layer and make your surface less smooth.

[druxey]

Steven: You need to stretch the SilkSpan, wet it with water alone first and let it dry to make it drum-tight. Then, when you re-wet it with dilute acrylic, it will initially sag, but re-dry tight and smooth again.  

[Tony Hunt]

On 2/23/2024 at 8:29 PM, Louie da fly said:

Tony, thanks for the suggestion - I'd heard that, but so far haven't come across any at a decent price - or at all, to be honest.

PM your address to me and I'll put a couple into the post for you to try, if you'd like. 😀

[Louie da fly]

18 hours ago, Thukydides said:

It is also potentially you could be painting the layers while the previous layer is still not fully dry. This is a big no-no in acrylic painting as you reactivate the previous layer and make your surface less smooth.

That might be the problem. I may have done that.

 

17 hours ago, druxey said:

Steven: You need to stretch the SilkSpan, wet it with water alone first and let it dry to make it drum-tight. Then, when you re-wet it with dilute acrylic, it will initially sag, but re-dry tight and smooth again.  

I've done that, and it worked that way, but I think I might have done it too many times.

 

8 hours ago, Tony Hunt said:

PM your address to me and I'll put a couple into the post for you to try, if you'd like.

Thanks, Tony. Liteflight has promised me the wood from a box hedge he removed and I'm looking forward to that, but it'll probably need to season for a while. In the meantime I wouldn't mind having a try at the stuff you've got. I'll PM you with my address. And thanks, mate 

 

Steven

[Cathead]

Just a quick note on fires, I'm in winter on the opposite side of the world, but we're under what the US calls "Red Flag Warnings" today and probably tomorrow, with near-record high temperatures, gusty winds, and a long-running drought parching fuels. Ironically, there's also been a lot of prescribed burning in the area lately, taking advantage of more benign but conducive fire conditions (my wife spent all Saturday working a big one). 

 

Back on topic, I'm very much looking forward to seeing how you apply your typical artistry to the silk span.

[Ian_Grant]

Steven, off topic I know; apologies:  with your research into these ancient ships, do you have any idea what scale diameter mast might be suitable for my Roman galley? It must not have been too massive since the guys had to tilt it up into the tabernacle, and also lift it onto the storage racks. I was thinking maybe 14"???  Which would be 7/16" at scale, so 1/2" dowel. What do you think?

[Louie da fly]

I really don't know. But perhaps you could take a few hints off Richard Braithwaite's Trireme Olympias build log. I know that's Greek rather than Roman, but a galley is a galley, and his build is based firmly on what was used on the real Olympias reconstruction.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

Hoo boy. This aft-facing tiller business is a pain in the neck to get my head around. I can understand how you hold a tiller crosswise or forward-facing, but aft-facing has me bamboozled. I finally made a full-size test-piece and got my lovely wife to take photos of me holding it in what I think is the most likely grip and stance for the helmsman - but who knows? 

Note - we're having our summer (all four days of it) in autumn. A series of 34 degree (93 F) days. Ballarat's like that. (we sometimes get snow in November, too).

 

And I changed the tiller sockets to be slightly angled inboard from the rudder blades - otherwise the tiller would be fouled by the railing when turning it outboard (if you get what I mean). So I had to close up the existing holes with wooden plugs, and also change the shape of the rudder shafts to allow for the rudders being somewhat higher up than I'd originally thought.

I hope this works!

 

Steven

Edited March 10 by Louie da fly

[woodrat]

This is just another way to manage a tiller but this time from a distance. It is a rascona from the Po river in italy as depicted by Admiral Paris. Note how the tillerman is seated and effectively has a tiller parallel to the plane of the rudder. Maybe the people who used such tillers did not stand to use them?

Cheers

Dick

[Louie da fly]

I can always rely on you for something interesting and useful, Dick.

 

Steven

[Mark Pearse]

Hi Steven,

 

I went to a talk on the sailing of the Duyfken late 15C ship, they noted that the person on the steerage can get thrown across the boat. My thoughts are that your stance looks good, but perhaps a stance more braced...wider stance perhaps? Just a thought

[Louie da fly]

That would make sense, Mark. And the helmsmen will have a wider stance, if only to make sure they can stand upright on the deck without having to have one of those ghastly flat stands attached to their feet .

 

Steven

[liteflight]

In a Blinding Flash of the Obvious I have just realised the wakeboard is the modern embodiment of the green plastic foot-base on toy soldiers!
 Steven’s comment above triggered the BFO

 

The rudder/tiller combination is fully reversible - all wave forces, shocks and running into dead second-hand hippppopotomi will kick back into the tiller and the steersman’s ribs if the stance is correct.  Big regular forces (waves) could probably be resisted by a good lateral stance.

Additionally there would be frequent small shocks from the hydrodynamic forces and possibly these would make the steersman’s ribs painful, calloused or both

 

None of the above is unique to the trailing tiller system, it is just that ships of this era had, essentially, very short tillers (compare with the length of tiller of say a Naval Cutter or Brixham Trawler) which would make the steersman’s strength a necessity.

 

As a spokesman for the Department of Useless Information (DoUE) I can observe that the an old term for the Steersman was Gubernator ( Latin) from which we get the terms

Governor (US)

fly-ball governor ( engineering and frequently US)

“Guvv’nr/ Gov” ( London Cabbies)

 

Parthian thought:  you could carve yourself as photographed*, Steven, to make the model truly distinctive 

 

*with or without wakeboard

 

andrew

Edited March 13 by liteflight
Attempting to improve clarity ( worth a try)

[druxey]

You would definitely need a wider stance on board anyway with the motion of the ship under you, as well as bracing yourself against the pressure of the rudder/tiller combination.

 

I see you've been at Mots d'heures gousse râmes again, Steven. Sometimes I worry about you!

[Louie da fly]

On 3/13/2024 at 11:05 PM, druxey said:

I see you've been at Mots d'heures gousse râmes again, Steven. Sometimes I worry about you!

That's not me, that's Liteflight. I accept no responsibility for him . . . 

 

The wide stance is well on the way . . .

 

Here's close-ups on their faces.

Steven

Edited March 15 by Louie da fly

[Louie da fly]

And they're done (except for thinning the legs a bit, and a bit of sanding and painting). I think the stance is wide enough. If not, too bad. I've spent so much time and effort getting them the way I want them, particularly the grip on the tiller, that this will have to do.

 

Roughed out:

   

And finished.

   

Separated, and hair carved:

And trimmed. I pride myself that my figures should be able to stand upright all by themselves, and usually I manage it. And two other crewmen I'd also carved (not sure if I posted them at the time) working on the rigging.

 

I need to cut a little bit away at the base of the helmsmen's feet. At the moment they look like they're from the 70's with platform shoes.

 

And then that's all the carving done.

 

Steven

 

 

 

Edited March 19 by Louie da fly

[Bryan Woods]

Steven, I would choose you, to make my carvings, over a 3D printer any day!

[Knocklouder]

Gobsmacked,  I believe that's how you say it. Not sure if that's how you spell it though  lol

 Great job mate! !   

Edited March 19 by Knocklouder
typos of course

[Louie da fly]

Thanks, people! I'm pretty happy with these, and I feel I'm getting better with carving hands, which have always been my biggest problem.

 

Knocklouder, Gobsmacked is the way you say it. It's a verb - so you'd say "I'm gobsmacked". I think it comes from the slang term "gob" (which means mouth, at least in the UK and Oz) - so it means you feel like you've been smacked in the mouth. More of a British term than an Aussie one, but I use it myself because it's so descriptive. (By the way, in Oz a gobbie is a slimy expectoration - though perhaps that's a bit too much information).

 

Steven

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

Fair dinkum.

 

[Louie da fly]

4 hours ago, Snug Harbor Johnny said:

Fair dinkum.

Too right.

[Louie da fly]

Painted and ready for shading.

And I found places for my previous zombie helmsmen . . . pushing it a bit, but it would be a shame to waste them.

 

Steven

[Glen McGuire]

Fantastic work on all those little dudes, Steven!