Question on iron banding on 16th century rudders.

[GrandpaPhil]

The instruction booklet that came with my plans for the Victory Models Revenge shows the rudder banding below the waterline as being painted white with that lead anti-fouling paint that they used to use before copper plating.

Would that have been something done to prevent corrosion?

 

[allanyed]

For some years prior to copper sheathing the bottom was coated with what I believe was a mixture of pitch and tallow and this was possibly applied liberally over everything below the water line, including the pintles and gudgeons (the banding you mention).  To the contrary, the beautiful paintings of 17th century ships in The Master Shipwrights Secrets show the pintles and gudgeons darker, but these are modern paintings rather the contemporary.   A search of contemporary models on the RMG Collections site might show some examples for you to consider.

 

For the future, maybe take a look at contemporary drawings to get an idea of the size and design of real pintles and gudgeons.  As you know there were recent posts in  https://modelshipworld.com/topic/33530-frigate-diana-by-rossr-occre-185/page/3/#comment-996293 regarding the sizes and such of these rudder components and how to accurately depict them at various scales.   

Allan

[GrandpaPhil]

Thank you, Allan.

 

That’s what I figured.

 

I made the pintles and gudgeons from card and the pins from pieces of toothpicks.

 

I embossed the bolt heads with my pounce wheel.

 

I think it looks alright.

 

I’ll repaint those pintles and gudgeons below the waterline with the dingy white after this round of gluing dries.

[druxey]

It seems that smaller 17th century ships did not have pintle straps, but the inverted pintles were driven though the keel instead. Several contemporary models in the NMM show this feature. (The photo here is of my current model of 1682, following this design). Presumably earlier ships also were built this way.