Vasa by mar3kl - Billing Boats - scale 1:75

[mar3kl]

Hola Karl - I thought about that after reading your build log, but I didn't want to risk messing up the iron and getting in trouble :-)

 

mark

[mar3kl]

And now I've added the tritons on the rear tower of the upper gallery, and finished one side of the stern (except for the balusters - still waiting for my drawplate to show up).  And there was much rejoicing.  I really enjoy painting the figures, but it's also a huge amount of work.

 

 

And the finished galleries together.  If I counted right, each pair of galleries has 74 sculptures.

 

 

Just for comparison's sake, here's the completely unadorned other side:

 

 

And finally, this is what the stern of the ship looks like so far.  Nothing exceeds like excess!  I still need to tweak some things, but it's by and large the way I want it.

 

 

I think at this point I'll take a break from painting and finish up some structural stuff on the outside of the hull - the rudder, message port, rearmost gun port lid, scuppers, etc.

 

 

 

[mar3kl]

I decided to deal with the rudder now, rather than at the end of the build, because I want to finish the stern completely and see how it looks.  This may be a bad idea since the pintles and gudgeons will be fragile.  The plans for the rudder are not very detailed; fortunately there are lots of pictures of the real model and Matti's build to steal from :-)  To begin with, there are no cutouts for the hinge pins, so I made those and attached the tiller stub:

 

 

I then added the pintles and hinge pins.  The kit provides some thick plastic pieces that wrap around the end of the rudder, but there are only 6 instead of 7, and they also look over-scale, so I didn't use them.  I had success with my first model using construction paper painted black, so I tried that here.  The hinge pins are planking nails with the heads cut off:  

 

 

And finally the rudder in place.  The gudgeons are also black paper.  I used wood glue to attach the paper hinges to the hull and the rudder, and sealed them with flat acrylic medium.  The result is pretty fragile - the only points of attachments are at the hinge pins - so we'll see how it holds up.  The plans don't show the tie rope, but various sources have it in their drawings, so I added it.  I assume it's to keep the rudder from falling off accidentally.  The sources I looked at don't show rudder chains; the portals on either side are for tow ropes.

 

You can also see the lion sculpture in place.  Only the head is gold - the rest is dull ochre.  I don't think King Gustav would have approved of lots gold leaf down near the waterline where it wouldn't be highly visible...

 

Edited October 19, 2014 by mar3kl

[mar3kl]

Port lid and hinges for the rearmost port.  I understand from Fred Hocker that the rearmost port was actually known to be open with a cannon in place, but I didn't get that information until I had closed up the hull, so my port follows the 1:10 model.  The hinges are from Amati - the kit doesn't provide any.  I blackened them chemically.  The rope for opening the port will go on at the very end of the build.

 

You can also see the small message port.  I didn't trust myself to cut an opening and make a lid for it, since it is very small and crosses one of the wales.  So I contented myself with scribing an outline and putting some small paper hinges on it.  I don't like the effect, so I'm trying to figure out how to improve it.

 

 

[mar3kl]

The kit plans don't show the scuppers, but again there are enough photos out there that I was able to scratch them.  Rather than just drill holes in the hull, I made small squares with holes in them and attached them to the planking.  Here they are after mounting:

 

 

And after staining:

 

[mtaylor]

The scuppers are nice touch that one doesn't see often on this model. 

[NAZGÛL]

Nice work, the details look in scale!

 

 

/Matti

[mar3kl]

I decided to finish off the stern by doing the rear gun port lids and false cannon, and adding better doors at the top of the transom between the grotesques.  The kit provides plastic port lids.  They have a raised center section with lions embossed on the top.  The lions are quite nice actually, although they need a dark wash to bring out the detail (otherwise they look more like bears than lions).

 

Since the lids are supposed to be unpainted wood, I couldn't use the kit parts as provided.  Instead, I cut the edges off, leaving only the center section, which needs to be painted completely.  I thinned the section down a bit, then built the port lids from three strips of 3mm mahogany laid edgewise.

 

Here are the port lids and decorations prior to painting.  You can see the lid prior to and after cutting off the edges:

 

 

I then spray primed all the lids at once, with a medium flat yellow ("Demon Flesh" miniature primer, if you are interested :-).  After that, I put a thin layer of pale yellow on the lion heads, and followed that with a dull ochre wash.  The result picks out the lion mane and other details rather nicely.  Add a red mouth and red for the remainder of the lid, and I was done.  The painted decorations on the wood lid work out rather nicely, I think.

 

The cannon were sprayed with flat black primer, then washed with dark bronze.  Here's the result:

 

 

Then on to the doors.  What I did originally was simply scribe lines on the base of the transom and paint the result red.  It looked OK, but the "doors" were recessed and I decided I wanted them flush.  So I scratched some doors from pieces of wood and dropped them in the recessed, then painted them.  Here's a photo of the finished stern:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[maltbyguy]

Hi Mar3kl

I am just starting to cut out my gunports on my Billing Vasa I like your idea of false gun caridges but how much can you see when the guns are in place ? I wondered if the extra work was worth the final result ? I was just going to fasten a ply board for the gun spigots to fasten to I would apreciate your thoughts

Andy

[mar3kl]

The earlier pages in the build log show how I set up the ports and carriages, so you can see what you think of the approach.  I think you can see enough of the carriages to warrant constructing them instead of using false cannon and a backing strip, but that's purely personal preference.  It's certainly less work to go the false-cannon route.  You might want to mock up one of each and see which you like better.

 

mark

[mar3kl]

This was a small project to fix the poop deck gun ports.  The kit has them as semicircles, but they are completely circular on the real ship.  I decided to lower them so they could be circular.  First I created the lower circular part of the port:

 

 

Then I filled in the upper part with a small piece of wood having a circular profile on the bottom.  Worked nicely.

 

 

Next up will be the round gun port decorations...

 

[mar3kl]

And now the round gun port decorations.  They don't look much like those on the real ship, unfortunately not a lot of detail.  But putting them on the model gives the upper part of the hull a nice finished look.  And I like the lower location of the rearmost port. 

 

 

 

[mar3kl]

My original attempt at the message port was simply to scribe a square and add some hinges.  I didn't like the result so I decided to create a port and put a small lid in it.  First I cut out the port, by drilling some holes in the corners, cutting them together, and cleaning up the result with files.  Then I needed a support for the lid.  That involved a small strip of wood maneuvered through the hole and then rotated.  There are now several such small strips of wood rattling around that part of the hull :-)

 

 

The port lid itself is very small and has an extra thickness at the top where the wale runs:

 

 

The port lid in place...

 

 

And stained with hinges added.  The result is in my opinion much nicer than scribed lines, although the size of the port made the project a little tricky.  Again, the rope used to raise the lid will be added at the very end of the build.

 

 

[mar3kl]

My drawplate arrived so I was able to create thinner balusters for the upper gallery.  

 

 

Another angle, which also shows some changes I made to the rear tower sculptures.  The kit  sculpture is a short triton standing on the head of another triton.  I think it's meant to simulate what on the 1:10 model is actually two sculptures, one along the roof of the tower and one standing perpendicular to the tower at the base.  The kit also provides enough of these sculptures to do eight per tower, and I only used five.  That meant I had enough left over that I could cut the extras in two and use the bottom ones separately, standing up as they do on the 1:10 model.  A complicated explanation, but here's the result:

 

 

The balusters are small enough that I couldn't add much detail, but every little bit helps:

 

 

And now the port side galleries are actually finished!

 

 

 

[WackoWolf]

Just keeps getting better and better all the time.

[mar3kl]

Thanks for the compliments!  

 

Here's another project - the last on the hull before I go back to painting.  The ship has an interesting fairing at the bottom beak support, I assume for improved hydrodynamics.  The kit plans don't show much about it and I only found a couple of photos showing it on the real ship, so I needed to guess what it looks like.  I wanted a fan shape with the top running from the center of the beak to the outer point of the lower beak support, so I measured the top and bottom total length to figure out the taper of each plank.  Here you can see the planking beginning from the center, and the taper of each plank:

 

 

And an idea of the angle of the fairing:

 

 

Now the planking is done.  You can see where, even with beveling the sides the outermost planks sit too high.  That will be fixed with sanding.

 

 

And after a bunch of sanding, and a few passes through the guest bedroom with a vacuum cleaner:

 

 

And the finished product, after more sanding, some modest filling, and staining:

 

 

Another view.  I think it turned out nicely.  Now time to move back to painting things!

 

 

 

 

[WackoWolf]

Nice. I agree I think it turn out perfect after sanding and stain. Keep the updates and pictures coming.

[mar3kl]

Thanks for the kind words, much appreciated.

 

With the structural hull stuff basically done, it's back to painting.  The kit supplies small sculptures to go between the middle pair of doors.  Unfortunately the difference between the deck heights won't fit the sculptures.  I went back to the plans and I don't see any way the deck height difference could have been increased, so no idea how they expected this to work.  I used small sections of toothpick instead.

 

 

The kit provides the same small sculptures to use at the bottom of the space between the two doors to the helmsman's cabin.  This time they fit nicely.  The sculptures are quite small and very low on detail.

 

 

Above the small sculptures are a set of creatures - fauns?  Devils?  They seem to follow the real ship sculptures quite nicely.  The ship has three whole ones and two halves - one at each end - but the kit only provides the three whole ones.

 

 

Rather than go back to the starboard side quarter gallery sculptures, I'm going to proceed down the port side painting sculptures all the way to the figurehead, and then work my way back down the starboard side.  That way I get some variety with the painting.

 

 

[mar3kl]

Next up were the herms along the side of the hull.  Again the sculptures were pretty good, but where the ship has two kinds, the kit provides only one.  I painted them all the same, trying to get at least some fish scale detail on them.  Here's a close-up:

 

 

And a view of the entire row:

 

 

[mar3kl]

And now the large triton at the waist.  The kit sculpture was a little odd - it looked sort of like a sarcophagus - so I reshaped it a bit.  The sculpture lies across three of the wales, so I needed to add little blocks to fill the gaps.  Also, there is a rope line of some sort that passes through the sculpture, so one of the filler blocks has a transverse hole cut in it that will allow the line to pass through.

 

 

With that, it's time to move up to the group of sculptures at the beak, starting with the complicated scenery under the beak deck.

[mar3kl]

I haven't had a lot of time for the project over the past couple of weeks, but I have managed to get some of the beakhead sculptures painted and installed.  I started with the large sculpture at the bottom of the beakhead.  It depicts a conflict between Thetis (a sea goddess) and Peleus (a hero).  Zeus and Poseidon tell Thetis she has to marry Peleus, and she refuses.  Peleus, on the advice of Proteus (another sea god), attempts to force her to marry him by binding her while she is asleep, but she wakes and is understandable somewhat annoyed.  She then fights with him, shifting form, becoming among other things a lioness, a serpent, flame, an eagle, and water.  Peleus manages to survive, so she agrees to marry him.  Their son is Achilles of Trojan War fame.

 

Understanding the myth helps make sense of the rather complicated sculpture.  The detail's not great on the moldings, but it's good enough to see the hapless Peleus, plus Thetis as a mermaid, a lion, an eagle, and flame.  The 1:10 has a serpent, but I couldn't find it in the kit sculpture.

 

 

Here are some close-up photos of the ten Roman emperors at the top of the beak.  The kit provides three sizes of sculpture, and they don't all fit properly, some being too long.  Luckily Karl is a genius and talks in his build about using a clothes iron to shrink the sculptures as needed.  The process worked like magic, and shrunk the sculptures in most cases enough to fit.  Some needed their plinths chopped off because I got nervous at the thought of increasing the heat and getting more shrinking.

 

 

More emperors.  The front emperor Augustus had to be carefully fitted to avoid running into the lion figurehead.  You can also see the balusters between the emperors - on the kit they are part of the beak side, and flat.  I cut toothpicks into a semi-circular cross-section and glued them to the flat parts, making more of a 3D look.  I wanted more detail on them, but they are just too small.

 

 

 

[mar3kl]

I'm a big fan of the plastic sculptures.  They are easy to bend, thin, etc, and as you say take paint very well.  I wish they had more detail, but that costs money and these kits are built to a price point.  Maybe the Vasamuseet could produce 3d printed sculptures scanned from the real thing, and at various scales, hint hint :-)

[NAZGÛL]

I agree about the advantages with plastic sculptures. To the kits defence they seem to be based on the Landström drawings made around 1980. I think most of them are quite good actually, much better than I would ever expect from a kit with this price.

 

 

/Matti

Edited November 14, 2014 by NAZGÛL

[mar3kl]

Here are some photos of the figurehead.  It's composed of two flat plastic pieces that sandwich the wooden laser-cut prow.  The plastic pieces matched the contours of the wood pretty well - some gaps needed building up with filler.  For reasons that escape me, the port side piece has no tail, but the starboard side piece does.  So I needed to trace the tail I had onto some scrap wood and try to shape it as best I could.  You can see the result below.

 

 

The main problem was that the wooden prow is flat across its thickness, and it needs to be rounded so it looks like a 3D lion.  Also there's no texture of the lion's mane.  And in the front, again with the wood being flat there isn't any realistic facial detail.

 

I dealt with that by building up layers of wood filler and gently carving it into shape, blending it with the plastic on the sides.  Here you can see the back of the lion's head, which looks pretty good now.

 

 

The face was much more challenging.  I know nothing about carving/sculpting, so I just needed to try my best to make something vaguely face-like.  It doesn't look too bad, I think.  Here you can also see the Vasa coat of arms clutched in the lion's paws.

 

[mar3kl]

Here's a photo of the curved triton where the beak meets the hull.  They did a nice job on this one - it's got some good detail on it.  I like the shell/fan on his head, for example.

 

 

And here's the base for the large triton on the top edge of the beak.  You can see where I needed to section it to get it to match the curve of the sculpture properly.

 

 

After dry-fitting the sculpture to the base again, it still didn't fit quite properly, so I needed to remove some wood from the front and add some to the back for a better fit.

 

 

And the finished result.  This was another nicely done sculpture, and I'm quite pleased with how the paint came out on it because it's so prominent.  The curve of the triton below matches well too.  All in all this part of the beak, with all its different curves and angles, came out nicely.

 

 

[mrcc]

Beautiful work!

[mar3kl]

Thanks for the compliments!  Here's a photo of the triton that lies above the large curved triton.  This is another cool sculpture effort - I needed to stare at it a bit to figure out what it was supposed to be, then I "saw" it and could paint it properly.  It's not exactly like the 1:10 model, but close.

 

And despite all the curves and angles, the two sculptures fit together quite well.  The kit did a pretty good job here.

 

 

[mar3kl]

I've been busy with things other than ship-building lately, but I've managed to make some progress.  Here is a photo of the sculpture group above the figurehead.  The kit provides a two-part sculpture that you glue together for a 3D effect.  It appears to be some sort of lion-maned dolphin.  The 1:10 model shows two more sculptures, one on either side, plus a mask of some sort on the back of the dolphin.  The two additional sculptures aren't in the kit and appear to be sea serpents of some sort, purple with yellow wings.  Finally, the 1:10 has two long tritons following the curve of the front of the beak, also not provided by the kit.

 

I didn't want to deal with the mask on the back of the dolphin, so I left it off.  I reshaped two extra triton sculptures to look at least a little bit like sea serpents, and then used two more extra triton sculptures at the front of the beak.

 

 

Now on to the last sculpture on this side of the ship - the large warrior at the back of the beak.

 

 

[mar3kl]

The large warrior sculpture has some nice detail, but is missing its sword and cloak.  I scratched a sword by thinning down and then curving a toothpick.

 

 

The cloak is a thin, flat piece of wood cut to shape.  I'm not happy with the paint details, so I'll probably end up re-doing them.

 

 

[mar3kl]

And finally, after several months the sculptures on one side of the ship is completely finished.  Here is a view of the unfinished starboard side:

 

 

And by contrast the finished port side.  Lots and lots of sculptures there!

 

 

Now I have to repeat the entire exercise on the starboard side, which will take a while.  I don't think I will post the progress since it's exactly like what you've been seeing.  So I should pop up in a couple of months ready to start on deck furniture and cannons.