Mary Rose by djford - Caldercraft - 1:80

[djford]

Hello! And welcome to my third build log. Today I'll be sharing some of my initial progress on the Mary Rose kit by Caldercraft.

 

Introduction

I lived in Portsmouth for a few years, and was very keen to build one of the historic dockyard ships - HMS Victory of course being the most famous. Caldercraft also produce a kit for the Victory, but it is prohibitively expensive for a relatively novice builder. The Mary Rose was the next obvious choice.

 

Mostly made famous for her tragic sinking in the Solent in 1545, the Mary Rose saw active service for over 30 years of Henry VIII's reign. In the early 1970s, she was rediscovered, and many will remember the live broadcast of her being brought back to the surface in 1982; you can watch this on YouTube here, alongside a very young King Charles.

I visited the Mary Rose museum as a child, during which time the remains of the hull were being sprayed with preservative chemicals. I've since visited now that she's dry and on proper display, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend it if you're ever down in the city. I can recommend some good bars too.

 

Caldercraft's model was designed in conjunction with the Mary Rose trust. This, you would think, guarantees historical accuracy. You would think. Here's a stock image of the completed kit:

 

If you're reading this, you might already be aware of the problem, but for the uninitiated here is the only contemporary picture of the Mary Rose, from the Anthony Roll, an inventory of the Tudor fleet:

 

Compare the two photos and the issues will be very clear; Caldercraft's kit is based on a 17th century galleon, and the Mary Rose was a carrack, with high castles fore and aft. Caldercraft also has far less cannon than the Anthony Roll depicts, and as we know, the more cannons the better. Incidentally, this was one of the factors that lead to the original ship's sinking, as her open gunports sank beneath the water of the Solent. I digress.

 

I would really rather make a kit that resembles the original ship, and though there is very little of her remaining above the gunwales, the historical evidence for the high castles appears to be very convincing. As such, my intention is to build the kit - but to add a number of decks to each castle and make a few other amendments to bring the finished product more in line with the historic original.

 

References

Other than the above image, there are a number of references I'll be using for this build alongside the instructions for the base kit.

 

If you're a regular broswer of ModelShipWorld, you may have come across @Baker's fantastic (ongoing at time of writing) scratch build of the Mary Rose, which was a huge inspiration behind my thinking about editing the kit. I'm certainly not ready to scratch build my own version, but his build is a masterclass in both building and research. I'll certainly be referring to parts of this throughout.

 

I also had a brief chat with @Louie da fly, who was extremely helpful with both advice and some recommendations. Thanks Steven! I'm still not sure how to make those deadeyes

 

There are two key books I'll be using: Douglas McElvogue's Anatomy of the Ship: Tudor Warship Mary Rose, and Peter Marsden's 1545: Who Sank the Mary Rose? 

 

McElvogue's book is a fabulous resource, full of his own fully scaled drawings of his interpretation of the ship. It's likely a lot of it is made up, but it does follow the majority of the archaological evidence, and I'll be using his measurements throughout. After all, we'll never know exactly what she looked like - this is my interpretation.

 

Marsden's previous book Mary Rose, Your Noblest Shippe was my original port of call, but unfortunately it appears to be nearly unobtainable in the UK. I emailed the author, and he recommended 1545 instead, as this is a more recent version of his research - one which corroborates the extra decks in both fore and sterncastle. As a note, Peter Marsden is a well-established maritime archaeologist, and alongside his work on the Mary Rose he's also partly responsible for the UK's protection of wrecks act. Fascinating!

 

On to the build.

 

First Steps

Caldercraft's kit packaging is first class. The instructions are pretty detailed, and printed on massive sheets of paper in full scale - really useful.

 

Here's my first look at my expensive purchase:

 

A look inside:

 

And beneath the instructions:

That's a lot of dowel!

 

You'll have all seen the basics of kit building before, so I won't go into much detail, but here's a nice little indication I'm on the right path with my alteration ideas:

This illustration is from McElvogue's book, and is in 1:96 scale. The 1:80 transom piece is obviously missized, but the general shape matches up - all I'll need to do is add a few decks. Simple.

 

The bulkheads from Caldercraft's kit match up pretty well to those in both McElvogue and Marsden's books. I expected this - the hull is the best preserved part of the ship, after all, and it'll remain mostly the same in my build. Here it is dry-fit.

I've only worked with laser-cut bulkheads before, and Caldercraft's are CNC'd 5mm ply. It cuts nicely with just a Stanley blade, but the sawdust was something else. Probably not one to do on the kitchen table again.

 

Glueing the keel on:

 

And the lower main gun deck in place, with false backs for the main guns:

N.b. I may move these false blocks around later, or just add some more blanks for the missing cannon. I figured I'd slot them in place for now as they provide some structure to the next deck. I've emailed Caldercraft's parent company Jokita and am in discussion with them about getting some extra cannons shipped over - if that falls through I'm going to have to learn some new skills!

 

Here are the two top decks provided with the kit dry fit on the bulkheads. I'll be using the sterncastle piece, but the forecastle is completely the wrong shape.

 

And here's the upper deck glued in place:

You can see that this has a big crack in it in the photo. To get it into place below the forecastle supports you have to bend this piece nearly in half - I don't think it would have ever survived the process even if I were more careful. It's going to be planked over anyway, so no huge issue, but a weird design choice. 

 

Laying in some first deck planks:

McElvogue's book has these all at the same length on this deck, which works out to 45mm in 1:80 scale. The wood is also excellent, with a lovely grain that I think will come up nicely.

 

I did the classic trick of edging each plank with a soft pencil to simulate caulking.

 

And here's the sterncastle planked:

I've only planked up to this point as the front of the sterncastle is going to divide the deck at this point. I also realised midway through that with my additional decks above, this is going to be near-invisible, but I carried on for completion's sake. There will be an open doorway and a number of gunports allowing a view inside, so I don't think it's wasted time.

 

And on the subject of extra decks, here they are:

Excuse the various paraphernalia I've used to space these out!

 

Except for the first sterncastle deck, which is Caldercraft's original, these are all 0.8mm ply cut to the shapes laid out in McElvogue's book. Both McElvogue and Marsden agree that there were likely three decks on both castles, with another small half deck atop the forecastle, just behind the foremast. The forecastle here will be slightly further forward - I need to cut some slots in so that it can fit within the bulkheads.

 

I'm glad I took the time to cut these to shape now - I wasn't entirely confident in my plans, but seeing this rough mockup has filled me with a possibly unearned feeling that this is actually achievable with my skills.

 

Obviously there's a long way to go, but I can actually visualise this looking 'correct' - and that's a start.

 

Thanks for checking this out, and please do follow along! Any input is more than welcome.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 31 by djford
Accidental extra photo!

[Louie da fly]

Off to a good beginning! One thing I'd recommend is that you see if you can find out how many gunports survive on the wreck and if you can extrapolate from there how many she actually would have had. I think it's pretty well accepted that Anthony Anthony exaggerated the number of guns in his picture. More guns is not necessarily better, if you want to duplicate as well as possible the way she was. But also check the Anthony Roll for the number of guns the text below the picture says Mary Rose has.

 

Yes, McElvogue did definitely make some things up - for example, there was no boat found with the wreck, but he has drawn one. Just be aware of that and use your best judgment as to whether to believe him, and check his book for actual evidence he's based his stuff on. I'm talking from experience - I went with some of his ideas and found to  my regret they were speculation rather than evidence-based.

 

And if you don't already have it, I'd recommend R.C. Anderson's The Rigging of Ships in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast for when you get to the rigging. Yes, it relates to ships from a later date - his book starts at 1600 - but it's possible to extrapolate backwards and get a fair idea of what would have been already in use in 1545. And also refer to the two contemporary pictures that show Henry VIII's ships - the Anthony Roll and the painting  The Embarkation of Henry VIII at Dover for the Field of the Cloth of Gold - for more details of rigging. For example, the latter one (despite its faults, and it does have them) shows sailors working on the yards without footropes - they were a later invention. And also other contemporary images from around the same time. See in particular my collection of 'Great Carracks' at https://au.pinterest.com/lowe1847/great-carracksnaos/

 

Interesting that Marsden is also thinking in terms of three decks for forecastle and aftercastle. McElvogue seems to think that's maybe taking it a bit far, but I think it's best to just use your judgment (and cardboard mock-ups) to see what you think. It's all speculation past a certain point, and your guess may be as good as anybody else's.

 

Looking good, mate.

 

Steven 

[Stevinne]

There is a very nice Mary Rose build log on another site by a member named Graham who also bashed the kit to bring it more into line with the Anthony Roll. He is nearly complete with his and it is looking very nice. 

[Baker]

Great start, and good luck with Mary 👍

 

I also have the book "Anatomy of the Ship: Tudor Warship Mary Rose" a very interesting book.
But, I sometimes wonder how they get the detailed drawings of a parts of the ship of which nothing remains.

Be careful with the information from this book.

3 decks in the castles is quite high. I am curious what the result will be.

 

 

 

[djford]

On 10/29/2024 at 1:26 AM, Louie da fly said:

Off to a good beginning! One thing I'd recommend is that you see if you can find out how many gunports survive on the wreck and if you can extrapolate from there how many she actually would have had. I think it's pretty well accepted that Anthony Anthony exaggerated the number of guns in his picture. More guns is not necessarily better, if you want to duplicate as well as possible the way she was. But also check the Anthony Roll for the number of guns the text below the picture says Mary Rose has.

 

Yes, I'd noticed the extra gun deck and wasn't going to include that. Certainly the Caldercraft model doesn't include any rear-facing cannon on the transom or in the fore or sterncastle decks - those I'll be adding in for sure. I think at this scale any of the smaller anti-personnel guns are too small to include, but I've got my eye on a few additions - stay tuned!

 

I've picked up a copy of The Rigging of Ships, thank you for the suggestion.

 

On 10/29/2024 at 8:23 AM, Baker said:

Great start, and good luck with Mary 👍

 

I also have the book "Anatomy of the Ship: Tudor Warship Mary Rose" a very interesting book.
But, I sometimes wonder how they get the detailed drawings of a parts of the ship of which nothing remains.

Be careful with the information from this book.

3 decks in the castles is quite high. I am curious what the result will be.

 

Thank you very much! Yes, I'd agree - McElvogue is very free with his interpretation. Ultimately my model will have to be my own interpretation as well.

 

To both of you - yes, I'm interested to see how three castles looks when fully mocked up. Note that the forecastle will also have a small 'half deck' just behind the foremast - I'm certain that it will seem very top-heavy, but it would also appear that that's how the carracks were designed. I'll update with progress soon!

 

Thanks for the kind words.

[Louie da fly]

3 hours ago, djford said:

yes, I'm interested to see how three castles looks when fully mocked up.

Me too. Looking forward to that stage of the build. Oh, and the rest of the build!

 

Steven

[djford]

Time for an update!

 

I made a lot of progress on the kit this last week or so, and began making some amendments as discussed in my first post.

 

First, I finished planking the deck under the forecastle:

As mentioned in the previous post, the planking ends here as there's a dividing wall at the aft end of the forecastle.

 

I also made my first scary major amendment to the kit, and cut off the stem to replace it with my own. I think it looks okay - the join is much less noticable in person, especially after some sanding.

I made this out of the sprue which the keel was CNC'd from in the first place as it's the same thickness and wood type.

 

First planks going on:

 

And at the top:

For better or worse I followed the line of the deck for the first plank. This necessitated a very early gap for a stealer. Not sure if that's correct, but this a double planked hull, so any crimes can be hidden later with the second layer.

 

I also stuck some extra 'dummy' blocks into the transom. The Caldercraft model doesn't include the sternchaser guns shown in the Anthony Roll, and there were no guns found in the transom, but Marsden does allow for their inclusion in his overview of the main gun deck. If nothing else, I can always decide against including these later.

 

In between planks drying in place, I also cut two holes in the transom for the sternchasers. Obviously the photo shows the holes before cleaning them up!

If I decide against these in the future I can always plank over these when I put the main planks on the transom. Still debating!

 

On the subject of cannon, here are all the provided barrels. They're some sort of very soft white metal, which I assume may be lead. They're also not very well cast - lots of the barrrels are filled with flash from the casting process, and there are a lot of seam lines.

I emailed Caldercraft's UK distributor asking for more cannon to meet my needs, and they quoted me a quite extortionate amount for what I asked for. I think I'll have to make my own.

 

So to finish off this update, here's where I am on the first layer of planks:

As you can see, I've reached the base of the first sterncastle deck. I'm 2/3 of the way to the keel with the lower planks. Overall, they've gone on quite easily - I took to soaking them thoroughly, but the lime? is very pliable even when dry and I've not had many issues. There are small gaps in a couple places around the bow but nothing a bit of filler and some sanding won't cure.

 

And, to finish off, a new addition to the stempost. This follows the scale drawings in McElvogue's book, which came out to 38mm at 1:80 scale. It looks correct to me compared to most of the material.

 

Hopefully my next post will come to you with a completed hull and possibly a cannon update. Watch this space!

 

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

[Louie da fly]

Aaah, planking. So much fun. Your changes look good. And I think you're right to add the gunports to the transom.

 

Not sure what the metal is they made the guns out of, but almost certainly not lead - that stuff's toxic and probably illegal to use in most countries - certainly would be avoided. But there are plenty of metals and alloys which can do the same job. Also IIRC lead shrinks in the mould when it's cast. These ones, for all their faults, don't look like they have done that. Yes, you can probably cast your own using these as 'blanks' to mould from.

Steven

 

 

[Baker]

You are on the right track.
looks promising 👍

[djford]

17 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

But there are plenty of metals and alloys which can do the same job. Also IIRC lead shrinks in the mould when it's cast. These ones, for all their faults, don't look like they have done that. Yes, you can probably cast your own using these as 'blanks' to mould from.

I'm actually looking at 3D printing a few test pieces at the moment - there's little variety in the metal ones provided, and I'd like to include a mix of bronze and iron cannon on the main gun deck as the Caldercraft 'dummy barrels' are only culverins and not port pieces or slings. Hopefully an update on that soon!

[djford]

And another update - with a very shipshape ship!

 

Here's the full hull planked (first layer of course).

I'm really pleased with the work I did on this. My last two attempts had a lot of gaps which required some liberal use of wood filler, and whilst this is certainly not flawless - there's a few ridges, especially around the bow - it's a huge improvement on my last attempt.

 

I even threw in a couple mini scarf joints instead of just cutting filler wedges:

But of course this won't be visible in the final model, as the next layer has to go over it.

 

Anyway, some more progress, gunports opened up:

As a note, the ports in the plans from Caldercraft are not in the right place - not because they'd be historically inaccurate, but because one of them actually intersects the bulkhead within the ship and not the block where the barrel is supposed to go. Quite surprising really, as the instructions have been otherwise quite good.

 

The eagle-eyed amongst you might also notice the front two bulkhead uprights in the forecastle are now gone. I cut these off earlier as my adapted forecastle won't match the shape of the uprights. I think I'm going to take the third set off as well, but for now they're quite useful for laying the ship upside down whilst working on the hull.

 

Here's the hull after a vicious attack from an orbital sander:

Some of the gaps are more obvious now, but the main bulk of the hull is smooth enough that I'm comfortable planking over it. I did take a woodcarving gouge to the planks by the keel as I'd not cut the rabbet deep enough.

 

I tidied up the waist in preparation for its sidings - removed the bulkhead uprights and cut the ends of the planks framing each castle to a nice taper.

 

And here's the next layer beginning! You can see the waist panels have also been put in, along with a reinforcing plank behind them. I think I should have started the first plank layer 5mm higher so that this plank ran all the way along the length of the ship, but it'll likely be planked over anyway.

The Anthony Roll only shows three gunports in the waist, and four in the 'nether' deck beneath the sterncastle. Marsden's Who Sank the Mary Rose? details four in the waist and three in the nether, and McElvogue's book agrees on the four in the waist, but has a series of smaller gunports in the nether deck. I think I'll probably go for the three in the nether deck, but I'm not going to open these out until I'm ready to begin the construction of the sterncastle proper.

 

Here's a few more second layer planks in place:

I've put two untapered planks at the keel and at the wales. From here I think I can get away with about a 1mm taper for the majority of the work - I'm sure this will change as I go lower down the hull. The walnut provided is a nice quality of wood, but there is a lot of colour difference in the various planks. I'm tempted to go with it, as I'm sure with some finish over the top it'll all blend together anyway. I know the actual boat was likely painted, especially with 'white stuff' as antifouling below the waterline - unsure if I'll recreate this. I do intend to add the stripes on each castle as depicted in the Anthony Roll.

 

And on the subject of castles:

Here's McElvogue's interpretation of the forecastle scaled up to 1:80. At present my plan is to follow this, at least as much as is feasible. After some discussion with @Louie da fly on here, the structure of at least the first deck of the castle is a little clearer - especially the two 'prongs' at the prow.

 

My deck cut-outs from the first post sit nicely on this:

(Note that the hole for the mast will need to move - I measured this against the original kit's mast placement, and the foremast in the adaption will be slightly forward of this.)

Here's an initial mock-up with some of the scraps from the initial planking:

Obviously this is a very rough start - I'm not entirely sure how the planks will meet at the prow, and I'm less sure about how the two prongs will sit. I'm sure there is better terminology than 'prongs'.

 

And here's the underside, which will rest on the knee at the top of the stempost. Again, all old scraps of wood, mostly from a previous build.

 

That's all from me today - feels like a lot of progress, but also like there's a huge amount to do.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

[MikkiC]

Very nice! I'm gonna watch this one if you don't mind. And as for that box of pain meds holding up the deck on the sterncastle....good choice. You just might need them during this build. 

 

And you've consulted two fantatic and reliable sources. Agreed @Baker is a builder in a class of few. His work is stunning. And @Louie da fly, well his work is in that class as well. He is also a reliable, kind provider of info. His knowledge is vast. 

 

I, too, have interest in this ship and am not ready to scratch build. I thought about your path as well with the kit. I'll be eagerly watching it unfold. 

Edited Thursday at 08:02 PM by MikkiC
typo

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  Will there be any latrine holes in the bottom of the forecastle ?  Obviously, the heads will be concealed within the structure, so there's no need to construct the seats ... unless you want to - in case anyone wants to examine the underside of the forecastle using a mirror.  Hmmm, kinda like some show cars where the undercarriage gets painted-up nice and they show it off with a mirror on top of a wheeled floor jack.

[Louie da fly]

That's coming together well, Doug. Good work on the placement of the guns, the formation of the forecastle. For the full forecastle are you going to make a preliminary cardboard replica (as per the highly esteemed wireless-type Goon Show) to see how it looks before you cut wood?

 

Steven

[Baker]

indeed.
first making a cardboard replica of your forecastle can't hurt.
And then you can also check if you have enough space for your standing rigging of the fore mast

[djford]

On 11/14/2024 at 7:58 PM, MikkiC said:

Very nice! I'm gonna watch this one if you don't mind. And as for that box of pain meds holding up the deck on the sterncastle....good choice. You just might need them during this build. 

 

And you've consulted two fantatic and reliable sources. Agreed @Baker is a builder in a class of few. His work is stunning. And @Louie da fly, well his work is in that class as well. He is also a reliable, kind provider of info. His knowledge is vast. 

 

I, too, have interest in this ship and am not ready to scratch build. I thought about your path as well with the kit. I'll be eagerly watching it unfold. 

Thanks Mikki - yes, I suspect so. Agreed, both are an apparently bottomless wealth of information!

 

Yeah, I don't believe that I could have scratch built this with my current skillset - the castles are a looming concern on that front 🤣 thanks for following along!

 

 

On 11/14/2024 at 8:35 PM, Snug Harbor Johnny said:

  Will there be any latrine holes in the bottom of the forecastle ?  Obviously, the heads will be concealed within the structure, so there's no need to construct the seats ... unless you want to - in case anyone wants to examine the underside of the forecastle using a mirror.  Hmmm, kinda like some show cars where the undercarriage gets painted-up nice and they show it off with a mirror on top of a wheeled floor jack.

I had not considered it - I'm not sure where exactly they'd go, and I'd be a little reluctant to cut random holes just for that sake. If there's evidence that they existed in specific spots I'd be interested to hear more!

 

 

[djford]

On 11/15/2024 at 2:46 AM, Louie da fly said:

That's coming together well, Doug. Good work on the placement of the guns, the formation of the forecastle. For the full forecastle are you going to make a preliminary cardboard replica (as per the highly esteemed wireless-type Goon Show) to see how it looks before you cut wood?

 

Steven

 

On 11/15/2024 at 6:28 AM, Baker said:

indeed.
first making a cardboard replica of your forecastle can't hurt.
And then you can also check if you have enough space for your standing rigging of the fore mast

 

Hi both, thanks for the comments!

 

Yes, I spent a little time mocking the castles up in cardboard. Here we go:

 

First, the forecastle. Liberal use of sellotape - please don't take this as evidence of my modelling skill.

I took the measurements for this straight from McElvogue's book - Marsden's is slightly different, but largely follows the same design principles and height, so I'm happy to continue with this.

 

A piece of string tied to the mast where the top will be - again, based on McElvogue's rigging plan. This didn't interact at all with the sides.

Obviously this is not 100% accurate, but I'm pleased with it so far. I feel like the height is good, and it's not too obnoxiously tall.

Here I put the other masts into their respective slots - the foremast is further forward than the Caldercraft model's instructions as it comes up through the forecastle. I might have to move the other masts around a little bit too but at the moment I'm happy with their placement.

 

Inspired by this success, I continued with the sterncastle:

I had trouble getting the cardboard to hold the right shape without internal supports, so it may look a little skewed in some of the following photographs - there really isn't much to attach it to at the moment.

 

Here all the masts are in place with the 'shrouds' at the correct height. Again, no interaction when held straight and when the sterncastle is the correct width - in this photo it has splayed open at the top where the mizzenmast shrouds fall.

My only concern with this is how high the shrouds are on the mainmast - they start slightly lower than the shrouds on the foremast on my model, and I think this is because I'm measuring McElvogue's distance from the Caldercraft model mast. I would guess the waist panels on my model aren't as high as in McElvogue's drawing. Either way, the solution is to raise the height of the top on the mainmast slightly, which won't cause any issues with shrouds against the sides. I'll definitely be measuring this again before committing to that change - but as we don't have the masts of the original ship, it is of course up to my interpretation. I also don't think the shroud channels on the Caldercraft model will be accurate to the original, so I might well end up customisng these.

 

As you can see in this photo, the height of the shrouds on the fore and mainmast is relatively similar - the mainmast would ideally be slightly taller:

Either way, I'm pleased with this experiment - at least for now I know that the proposed forecastle design will work with this height of foremast top, and I can work around the heights of the shrouds in the mainmast once I'm closer to putting in the superstructure.

 

As you can probably tell from these photos, I've been doing this in between letting planks dry on the ship - here's where we are with that:

 

Getting there!

 

And finally, here's some of my experiments with 3D printing cannon barrels!

It's hard to get across the size of these, but I've modelled them off of drawings in McElvogue's book - there will be 16 'dummy' barrels which have 2mm x 8mm pegs at the back to stick into the gunports on the main deck, and then a number of full-length barrels for which I will have to create carriages. I'm currently printing a second batch of these, so I'll report back once I've made more progress.

 

Thanks for reading!