17th-Century Speeljacht by 0Seahorse - FINISHED - scale 1/50 - CARD

[0Seahorse]

Hello colleagues
Many modeler friends said to me that it would be nice to assemble a cardboard sailing ship, but rigging is generally too difficult. Therefore, a few years ago I asked Ab Hoving for an idea for a simple model with the simplest possible rigging, and I didn't have to wait long (2-3 hours) when a precise and immediately three-dimensional design of a "recreational yacht" appeared on my computer. ", i.e. "Speeljacht".
This design is very similar to the commercially available plans drawn by Cor Emke.
[url]https://www.modelbouwtekeningen.nl/nvm-1006017-speeljacht-volgens-nicolaas-witsen-167.html[/url]

 

Recreation on the water was probably not an invention of the Dutch, because in the tomb of Tutankhamun an image of the pharaoh fishing on the Nile was found, which can be considered entertainment on the water. However, until the 17th century, sailing ships of various types fulfilled basically only commercial and war functions or were used for work, such as fishing. It was only when the trade in Asia enabled merchants to build great fortunes that yachts for entertainment appeared.

Maybe it was then that "yachting" appeared as a way of spending time with family, friends or for business purposes. Not only did people relax by sailing for pleasure, but such expeditions were accompanied by delicious feasts, including plenty of drinks. Nicolaes Witsen even mentions a "beer house" under the aft deck. In addition to romantic trips, owning such a yacht meant prestige and/or wealth - a bit like modern billionaires and oligarchs.

The decorations were chic, but not flashy. The Netherlands was a Calvinist country, so one had to be modest. There was usually a family coat of arms on the stern.

A similar model was developed in wood by Kalderstock.

And for the inquisitive and curious: the Clean2Anywhere Foundation has been experimentally recycling plastic for several years, building replicas of small historical yachts from it, including this speel yacht. Link to one of the videos where you can see the construction of a speel yacht:
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqrIHFulcZU&t=3s[/url]

And how is my construction going? So quick and easy that I didn't take many photos, especially obvious stages like frame frames,...

...or "first - false planking"

The retouched cardboard edges of decks has always "disgusted" me, so I experimented a bit and glued narrow strips on the visible edges, imitating the face of the boards. The stripe is 0.7 mm, my hand trembled a bit and it didn't turn out perfect, but I think it's a very good idea for the future.

Since masking the edges like this has a future, I went ahead and played with the edges of the planks at the stern. There is also something to complain about, but that's my fault - I liked the idea itself.

A large number of visible frames required tedious gluing and retouching, and initially I planned to glue them to the hull first and then continue covering them with the planks. Fortunately, before I started committing such stupidity, I changed my concept and built this component separately, finally gluing the finished one to the model. In total, in four stages: 2 amidships and 2 aft.

The last layer of planks (in color) went very well, and of course the corrections were made on the edges that are covered with wales. This is how it turned out:

Modest decorations (as I wrote at the beginning) will only be made of cardboard (no resin), so that the model is fully paper as standard. It was necessary to choose the coat of arms of some noble family. The final choice fell on the van Loon family, also because their "palace" still houses a popular museum.([url]https://www.museumvanloon.nl[/url])

That's it for now, only decorations, leeboards and very simple rigging remain.

 

Regards
Tomek

[GrandpaPhil]

Looking forward to this one!

[0Seahorse]

It took a long time to finish the hull, but it can finally be presented.

In accordance with period drawings, I applied thick nails (glue and paint) on the wales, and attached two pairs of reinforcements to the stem.

All the finishing touches and modest decorations appeared. Initially, I thought about cutting them with a laser, but it would require some plasticizing (e.g. with glue) and painting - which means a lot of work and time. So I cut out several copies by hand with a sharp scalpel and glued them to the sides. The decorative ends of the railings are simple bottomless "boxes" that I used to mask the ends of the edges of the railing.

In the stern part there are belaying pins printed in resin , a bench and a rod on which the sheet of the second sail moved. And a few little things at the stern.
All decorations are "conventional", i.e. you can make others according to your own intuition and skills.

Leeboards, characteristic for coastal units that moved in shallow waters, according to the plans, had semi-circular indentations - after gluing such a part, I gently cut out these indentations with a scalpel, corrected them with a file and covered the whole thing with strips. They were hung with an eye on a hook coming from the side. They were lifted by ropes, which is clearly visible in the photos.

A few more words about the rudder blade, which unfortunately I don't have any photos of. A simplified version would consist of layers of cardboard and that's it. Usually, however, the rudder blade was thicker at the front edge and thinner at the rear. That's what I did: the side layers of 0.5 mm cardboard are glued together at the back, and an additional narrow strip of cardboard is glued between at the front. This can be seen on the masking strips. The front edge (where hinges are) was not perpendicular, but ended at an angle - the glued side parts in the color have appropriate protrusions at the front, which, glued together, create a triangular ending. The recesses for the hinge axles are, of course, masked with another small strips. The thicker upper part of the stern blade, where the tiller is mounted, was created by appropriate shaping and simply gluing thicker cardboard between. For imaginative modelers, instead of the missing photos, I am posting a scan of the parts.

And that's all.

Regards
Tomek

[Hubac's Historian]

Another brilliant subject, Tomek.  I love the clean and simple lines.

[ccoyle]

@0Seahorse Tomek, do you have a target release date for this kit? I know a guy who might be very interested in purchasing a copy! 😉

[0Seahorse]

@ccoyle Chris, I am preparing instructions and typesetting for the printing house. If I finish this week, next week... we have two holidays and half of Poland takes additional holidays to have... 9 days off. But the work will certainly go to the printing house next week. It would be safe to say by mid-May.

 

Tomek

[0Seahorse]

The moment has finally come, "finally", because I made two sails all week long and made a total of 12 of them. Each time something went wrong (stains), I made a mistake (wrong course of the warp and weft), after the third attempt it turned out that  I drew the template wrong, the fourth one had stains again, etc. But finally the model is finished.
All in all, with such simple rigging there is not much to describe, so maybe I will share an idea (found on YT and simplified) for a different way of making coils of ropes hung on belaying pins.
There are, of course, several methods for making and hanging coils, and one of them involves tying them in such a way that there is a single loop at the top and only this loop is attached to the belaying pin. The original video is here: How to make coils.
Taking into account that the scale is smaller, I used a 6mm round dowel in which I quickly cut a groove.
1. I braided dowel 4 times

2. I passed one loop

3. I put the second loop into the first loop

4. I tightened everything together

5. the size of the loop can be adjusted with the free end of the rope

I don't know how this method will work at 1:100, but at 1:50 it's certainly a good idea.

 

And now a few pictures:

Greetings

Tomek

[ccoyle]

Outstanding! I think I may need to pry the padlock off my wallet!

[Jsk]

Well, that one's going to be added to my stash!

[GrandpaPhil]

Same here!  Nicely done and designed Tomek!