Vasa by mar3kl - Billing Boats - scale 1:75

[jollymillar]

Mar3KL... just discovered your pics on your forum, and they are a huge help to me just starting my model. Thanks for the time and effort you have put in. JM

[Nisseofsweden]

Im all new here at this site, but has been building ship-models once in a while for several years. Now I am dreaming of building the Wasa-ship, so this build log has a great help for me. I just havent decided yet if I shall buy a Billing -kit, or a Corel.

[mar3kl]

The Billings kit is the most accurate out there, but has some problems you will need to work around, all well documented by various people.  I'm in the middle of a bunch of tedious work with gunport lids, so haven't posted in a while.  I hope to get some pictures on line soon though.

[mar3kl]

Some progress on the ship.  It took about three months to finish painting and installing all the sculptures on the other side of the ship, but now they are all done!

 

Now it's time to do the catheads.  Each cathead needed slots carefully cut into the front to hold metal pulleys.  This was quite difficult for me - the slots were big, leaving almost no wood on the edges.

 

 

On to the front railing.  The kit's plans are incorrect here; I'm following the actual ship as best I can, where the rails are curved and there are six sculptures, no shield in the center, and gaps at each end, presumably for the sailors to slip through on their way to the beak.  The bottom rail was pre-cut, with little slots for the sculpture backings to fit into.  I needed to fill in the ones on each end since no sculptures were installed there.

 

 

The railings installed, with the sculpture backings.  Note that slots need to be cut into bottom railing piece to make space for the catheads.  Again not a lot of wood left once the slots were cut, so it was a bit tricky.

 

 

The sculptures installed in front of the backing.  The backing shape and the sculpture shape were somewhat different.

 

 

All done.  I originally wanted all the wood but the top rail to be a light color to tie in with the deck and the beakhead doors below.

 

 

I decided this looked odd, so I stained the entire thing to match the hull and the bulkeads.

 

 

Next up was a truly thankless task - building 50 gunport lids and their rigging.

Edited April 13, 2015 by mar3kl

[mar3kl]

The kit provides plastic gun port lids.  Each consists of a square with a raised center section.  The center is painted, but the edges are meant to simulate wood, which they do rather badly.  Since I already scratched my gun ports and made them the correct size (bottom row slightly larger than top row), I needed to scratch the lids as well.  I ended up trimming the edges off the plastic lids, leaving only the center section.  I then made up a bunch of correctly-sized wood lids and glued the center sections to the lids.  Finally I added ring bolts and seized lines for closing the lids.  There were 52 lids, so this was a lot of very tedious, repetitive work.  At least it's mentally preparing me for ratlines later in the build.

 

First step was to prime the lids, which I did with flat yellow spray paint, so as not to obscure the details.  I then used a darker wash to bring out the details of the lion heads, and finally added the red background.  I also made 52 square lids of the correct size and stained them:

 

 

Here are some photos of the finished lids, with ring bolts added but not yet painted:

 

 

Time to add the closing ropes.  I had forgotten how to seize lines in the many years since building my last ship, so the first few were a bit of a learning experience.  For those interested, I used tan scale rope from Syren and was very pleased with it.  The most important thing for me was to wax the line first.  It made the line much easier to work with.  Start by tying a half hitch around the ring bolt.  This will be the length of line used to close the port lid:

 

 

Cut that line, and tie another line at the base of ring bolt, around the two ends of the first line.  This second line will be the seizing:

 

 

Bend the short ends of both lines down and lay them against the long end of the first line:

 

 

The remaining end of the second line gets wound round and round, about 4 turns, and pulled through to finish.  Wash the whole thing with a dilute mixture of white glue and water when done:

 

 

Clip the short ends of each line close (the glue mixture will make the line stiff and easy to cut), plus the end of the seizing, and your're done.

 

Now repeat 51 more times...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mar3kl]

Next on the deck furniture list was the capstan.  The kit version is more simplistic than the real thing - no bars and no base pieces, so I scratched those.

 

 

And here are some photos with the kevels added:

 

 

Next up are the knightheads...

 

[mar3kl]

The knightheads were fun.  There are seven of them, four in pairs and three singles.  They all have sculpted heads - the pairs are roman soldiers, two of the singles are moors, and one is a noblewoman.  The kit doesn't say much about what to do here, other than to show some drawings of the knightheads with blobs on the tops.  I don't have carving skills, so I decided to look for some miniatures with heads that might fit the bill.  Turns out 28mm scale figures work perfectly, so I bought a few on the internet, chopped their heads off, and attached them to the wood pieces.

 

The kit plans are also somewhat incorrect about the pulleys in the knightheads.  They show single pulleys for the pairs, and doubles for the rest.  They should be doubles for the pairs and two of the individual knightheads, and a quadruple for the large one on the foredeck.  I didn't realize this at the time so I had to go back and fix it later.  The result was fragile enough that I didn't want to jam the kit brass pulleys into the slots, so I left them empty.  Here is the first attempt at making the pulley slots, with the pulleys inside.  Two pairs and three singles, one of them larger than the other two:

 

 

Two of the knightheads, with moorish heads attached:

 

 

And the heads painted:

 

 

And mounted on the deck.  Upon reflection, the foredeck knighthead isn't as fat as on the real ship, but I don't want to redo it - getting the moorish head mounted was a little tricky.

 

 

 

The noblewoman ready to be painted.  Took some searching to find something suitable on the internet - most of the choices were elvish princesses; this is a little closer to the real thing:

 

 

Painted and mounted:

 

 

The roman soldiers painted and mounted.  I've also switched the pulley openings to be double instead of single.  I still need to tweak the divider a bit and get it even.

 

 

And the foredeck Romans and moor, also widened for the correct number of pulleys:

 

 

Now it's on to the gun carriages...

[fmodajr]

Good job on the improvising of the knightheads!

 

Frank

[md1400cs]

The noblewoman ready to be painted.  Took some searching to find something suitable on the internet -

 

Yes nice upgrade! do you have a supplier link? I'm tempted to follow your lead. I'm rebuilding my knightheads. What I had installed was weak

these noble heads look very good, much closer to 1/1s

 

Nice work

 

Cheers Michael

Edited April 30, 2015 by md1400cs

[mar3kl]

The figures for the knightheads are 28mm scale.  Most are from Essex Miniatures in the UK - Roman and Turkish soldiers.  The noblewoman is from Dark Sword miniatures in the USA.  They are cast from white metal, which contains lead, so be careful removing the heads - wear gloves and a mask, sweep up and dispose of any filings very carefully, and wash your hands afterwards.

 

On to the gun carriages.  These were surprisingly painful to get right.  The carriages have three main pieces from laser cut wood - the two sides and the base.  The sides come in two different heights, although the difference is small and not noted anywhere in the instructions. 

 

The first problem was that the instructions show the side pieces attached to the sides of the base, whereas the actual carriages have the sides attached to the surface of the base.  The difference is significant - one way the carriage is low and too wide; the other way it's tall and too narrow for the cannon to rest correctly.

 

The next problem was that even in its low/wide configuration, even the smaller of the two carriage heights was slightly (1/2mm) too high for the cannon to fit through the gun port.  That might has something to do with my custom bulwarks, or just might be the kit parts not being sized correctly.

 

The kit has two-wheel artillery carriages for the two small falconets on the poop deck, which aren't correct.  I ended up making my own small carriages instead.

 

Then the kit supplies brass rod for the axles, and brass trucks, both of which would require painting and wouldn't look right even then.  I substituted with wood dowels for the axles, and wood carriage trucks from Amati.  Unfortunately the holes of the wood trucks are wider than the kit wheel holes, which makes the carriage slightly higher.

 

And finally a small point - the pivot slots for the cannon trunnions aren't far enough forward.

 

The results, for those still interested, are that I needed to: (1) make the side pieces slightly lower by cutting off 1/2mm or so at the base.  No idea why they provided two sizes, since even the small one is too big.  (2) make the base narrower, (3) cut slots in the bottom piece for the wider wood axles, (4) move the pivot points forward, and (5) attach the side pieces to the side of the base, not the top.  All in all way more work than I thought it would be.  My strong recommendation is to make a single carriage, test it against all the ports, and be prepared to get creative getting it to fit properly.

 

Here are some photos of the small carriages I made for the falconets:

 

 

Slots being cut for the carriage axles:

 

 

 

And the axles attached.  Once the trucks are on, I'll cut the axles uniformly, letting them extend a millimeter or so past the truck.  In this photo you can also see the front of the carriage and the rear elevation bar.  Neither of these were described in the kit plans, although the kit photographs show them in place and they are required not only to look right but for the cannon to fit properly in its carriage.

 

 

Next up: picking cannon and painting them properly.

 

 

[mar3kl]

The kit comes with four kinds of cannon.  Two are false cannon designed for use with the kit's badly flawed gunport design.  The third kind is a large full size cannon for the weather deck; the fourth is a smaller full size cannon for the 2 quarterdeck falconets.  

 

The original ship had a number of different kinds of weather deck cannon - falconets, culverins, howitzers of different sorts.  There's no way to procure these different guns in the right shape, and I don't have the skills to 3d model and print them, or carve masters and make molds from them for casting.  What I'd really like is if the Vasamuseet provided 3d scans of the guns so hobbyists like us could 3d print them, but that's another story.

 

In any case, I used a single size of Amati full size cannon for the gun deck guns - I'll slide them through the ports and drop them onto the false cannon I made.

 

For the weather deck guns, I used the two small kit cannon and 8 of the remaining 14 larger kit cannon, since they didn't look too bad as culverins.  For the remaining six large-bore guns I found some Amati cannon with nice decoration on them.  I figured three different kinds was enough and left it there.

 

The kit cannon are brass, and the Amati cannon are finished in copper.  I sprayed all of them flat black and then mixed up some bronze paint to finish them with.  Results below:

 

 

Edited May 16, 2015 by mar3kl

[mar3kl]

Here the carriages have been stained.  I ended up painting black lines in place of using wood or black paper to simulate the iron straps securing the truck axles.  Even the smallest veneer was too thick, and split badly, and it was hard to cut paper that thinly.

 

 

Cannon mounted to their carriages, breeching ropes seized to ring bolts.  You can see the three sizes of gun here.  The ones to the rear are the 1lb falconets, on scratched carriages.  I've also trimmed the axles down to size.

 

 

 

The cannon mounted on the deck, with breech rope ring bolts still to be attached.  Most of them fit perfectly, the cannon in the exact center of the round port.  A couple needed slight shimming under the trucks to get them to the right height.

 

 

 

Then I drilled small holes in the waterways to hold the ring bolts.  I didn't dare drill into the false ribs along the bulwarks because I thought they might split.  Finally I clipped the ring bolt ends fairly short and stuffed them into their holes.  Here are several views of the result.  Came out pretty well, I think.

 

 

 

 

 

[mar3kl]

I've been a bit busy with high school graduations and vacations, but I've managed to spend some time working on the ship.  Here are some photos of the channels and deadeyes.  They were reasonably straightforward, with a few caveats.  First, the deadeye notches on the foremast and mainmast are slightly off - the plans show extra notches, and two are in the wrong place.  The first photo shows the filling in of a notch and its replacement in the correct location.

 

 

Here's a photo of the mizzen channel.  Rather then use thread to fasten the deadeyes to their chain plate, I used Amati metal strops.  I took a brief look at making the deadeyes vaguely triangular in shape, but I decided not to.  It was just going to make the strops hard to fit, and my fingers kept getting in the way when I tried to file them down.  Hats off to Matti for persevering here!

 

Also note the block in the middle.  I'm using aftermarket blocks from Syren since they look better.  The plans specify double blocks, but they should be singles.

 

The kit-provided chain plates were simple strips of brass.  I blackened them chemically, then used various jigs and small pliers to bend them into shape.  The brass is fragile and work-hardens, so get the bends right the first time.  All in all, tedious, but straightforward.  

 

Attaching the channels required a bit of fettling to get the angle of the channel correct, and required some filler to close gaps where the channel curve didn't quite match the curve of the hull.  Again, nothing unusual, and the result looks fine.

 

 

Care needs to be taken in positioning the channels so the deadeyes don't obstruct any gun ports.  This was not difficult, just needed to be done.  Here's a photo of the fore channel with all the deadeyes attached.  It's very helpful to dry-fit the main mast and tape a thread to the top.  Then you can run the thread down to the chain plate and make sure it's aligned correctly.

 

 

And finally a photo of the main channel.  While it may not be clear from the angle, I managed to avoid obstructing the gun ports.

 

 

Next, the gun deck cannons and port lids.  Getting near the end of the hull work!

 

[mar3kl]

The gun deck cannon are from Amati, and replace the badly designed gunport/cannon setup provided by the kit.  I sprayed the cannon flat black, then overlaid it with dark bronze.  Fixing the cannon to their false carriages (thick CA glue) wasn't too difficult, I just had to make sure none of them fell into the hull.

 

 

 

 

 

[mar3kl]

Time for the gunport lids.  I wanted to display the lines used to open the ports as well as those to close them.  For this I brushed a length of thin rope with a 50/50 mix of white glue and water and hung it to dry with some tension on it.  I then cut short lengths and inserted them into a small hole on each port lid.  

 

 

I'd already drilled slightly larger holes in the hull, so all I needed to do was insert the other end of the line into the larger hole while attaching the lid to the hull with CA glue.  The lines used for closing just get tucked into the open port.  The result looks quite nice, and the port lids look suitably imposing.

 

 

 

 

[mar3kl]

Almost done, as I attach the top rails along each side of the ship.  I want to have them in place before I start rigging.  First I went back and painted the edges of the railings immediately above the bulwarks.  Then I painted the edges of the top railings and installed them.  For the most part they fit rather surprisingly well - a few stanchions had to be shortened a bit.  The railings are extremely delicate and the plywood is prone to delaminate.  All in all a fiddly little task, but it really adds nice detail to the hull.  I had to curve the forward rails to match the curve of the hull, which also meant the plank on top of the railing needed to be cut from wide stock and curved to match.

 

 

 

 

Next up are the stern lantern and flagpole, then I'm done with the hull and can move on to the masts.

 

[mar3kl]

The stern lantern was tricky.  The plans have almost no advice (and conflicting photographs!), and neither the original ship nor the 1:10 model have a lantern.  So I made something up.  Six sides, the frames shaped with a little detail to make them interesting.  The top and bottom are turned brass.  I primed the pieces and painted them an antique gold.  The kit is supposed to provide clear acetate but I couldn't find any so I used some from a clear presentation cover.  I really wanted to put plastic screening behind the "windows" to simulate window panes, but I couldn't attach the screening to the acetate without making a blotchy mess.  Scribing lines on the acetate didn't work either - the ink kept smearing - so I left them clear.  The result isn't too bad; I'm going to live with it for a bit and see if I get any ideas to improve it.

 

 

 

Forward of the lantern is the flag pole.  This was fairly straightforward.  It wasn't clear from the plans what dowel stock to use, and I didn't want to accidentally use some that was intended for masts or yards, so I took a wooden skewer and tapered it until it looked right.  I attached it to the spar behind and then simulated some iron straps with black paper.

 

 

And now the hull's done!  Here are some photos of the result.

 

 

 

Now I need to go off and think about masts for a while.  The plans are pretty sketchy here, and in the absence of Vasa II, I'm going to need to look at as many photos as I can before proceeding.

 

 

 

[mrcc]

You are doing such a fanstastic job!

All quite impressive...

[md1400cs]

Mark,

 

Nice update. Looking very good indeed. Yes masts, those will be an issue. I found these in my files, may be of help if you don't have them. I am also about ready to start the masts on mine.

 

PS: Some of these jpg's are small files (:-(

 

 

WasaMast copy.pdf

[WackoWolf]

Beautiful work on the Aft section. Very nice on the eyes. Thank you for sharing this with us. Keep the pictures coming. 

[mar3kl]

Thanks for the encouragement and compliments, and the photos.  I'm looking forward to the rigging - it's going to be a challenge looking at various sources and trying to come up with something good.

[mar3kl]

I've spent the past three months building the masts.  It's been a complex process, mostly because the instructions are terrible.  I've had to engage in a bunch of detective work to figure out which parts go where, because the layout of the laser cut plywood sheets doesn't match the instructions' layout, and the part list isn't descriptive enough (imagine 20 parts for the mast tops, all described as "top" and you get the idea).  Add to that a bunch of missing parts, as well as various conflicts between instruction diagrams and full scale plan sheets, and the fun just keeps increasing.

 

With that in mind, I started with the bowsprit and worked backward.  There were several false starts and backtrackings along the way, but I'm reasonably happy with the result.

 

Here's the front of the bowsprit, with various fittings attached.

 

 

And the rear of the bowsprit.  I added the spiral binding, made of black paper, as well as reinforcing pieces on each side, made from thin veneer steamed into shape.  I couldn't find the kit-supplied cleats so I scratched some up.

 

 

Oh wait, I found the cleats!  Turned out they were made of plastic and buried in with a bag of parrel beads.  I liked the shape better, so I removed mine and replaced with the kit's.  Note the gammoning: the plans don't mention that you need a pair of gammoning slots at the bottom of the beak.  The forward slot requires that you thin down the reinforcing pieces above the slot.  A little delicate but doable.  The light makes the spiral binding look purple, but it's black.

 

 

And a view of the bowsprit in place.

 

 

[md1400cs]

Mark,

 

Nice work. We are at about the same place. Yes the instructions for these bits are mostly MIA.

 

BTW your figure painting details, and painted trim details are so beautiful. Such a pleasure to look at.

 

PS: I was just going to start the foremast as well, maybe I will wait and let you do all the research first (:-)

 

PS2: I believe that the kit billings platforms are much more accurate than those ridiculous ones that came with the Corel. Do you intend to hand build the platforms, or use the kit provided ones? In any case your build is gorgeous.

 

Cheers,

 

MIchael

[mar3kl]

Speaking of the platforms...

 

Here's the bowsprit platform:

 

[

 

After I pored over the instructions, plans, and part manifests for a while, I figured out that four of the platforms - bowsprit, mizzen, foretop, and maintop - are exactly the same, and layout instructions appear just once, in the area for the mizzen mast.  Obvious in retrospect, but not when you are staring at a laser cut sheet of circles and you don't know which go where.  In addition, the instructions are wrong about how to assemble the top - part numbers don't match with reality and the diagrams are incorrect.

 

Once I figured out how the top needed to be constructed, I went about modifying it.  The pieces are much too thick and there are too many of the rings.  I removed one ring and thinned down the base, the two full rings above it, and the half ring above that.  Very tricky delaminating the plywood without breaking the pieces, but I managed to do it.

 

Next, I planked the base in a manner similar to the real ship - as close as I could get with my skills anyway.

 

Finally, the kit provides 8 "braces" evenly distributed around the base.  5 are raised to hold the half-circle rail, the other 3 are smaller.  I needed to recut all of them because they didn't fit right.  Ironically they fit better with the extra ring eliminated.  I have no idea how they would fit if you followed the instructions and used all three rings.  I thought about adding a full set of them (the real ship seems to have more like 16-20 of them) but they would have been too crowded together.

 

Finally I drilled three holes each side for the futtock plates.  I tried several strategies for making futtock plates and attaching deadeyes to them, none particularly successful, so I'm thinking on it for a while.  The kit has no information on the subject at all - I assume you use rigging thread, which isn't correct.

 

The result is pretty good.  I can't imagine building the platforms completely from scratch identical to the real ship - lots of very delicate pieces.  The kit version was OK after all the reworking.

 

[mar3kl]

Now the sprit topmast.  The kit supplies a dowel with a bulge at the end.  You're responsible for turning the bulge into a nice square mast base and simulating a fid at the front.  You can also see here the trestles for the platform.

 

 

Crosstrees added...

 

 

And the finished mast and flagstaff.  I needed to scratch the flagstaff - the kit mentions it but doesn't provide any dowel stock that I could find.  There are also vague references to "mast tops" which go atop the flagstaff, but again I couldn't find the corresponding parts.  I later ended up scratching them from thin slices of dowel.

 

The lower mast cap needed a slot cut in the bottom to fit over the knee to which the topmast is attached.  I added simulated metal bands with paper.

 

The upper mast cap also needed to be scratched - the kit makes reference to a part number but again no part that I could find.  I just took some strip stock and made one that looked reasonable.  The upper cap needed a hole drilled in the bottom to go over the topmast.

 

Both caps need a semicircular cutout in the front middle, to which the next mast up will be attached and covered with a simulated metal band.  I found those cutouts a little tricky - the masts taper and you need to make sure that the cutout fits properly while the mast aligns with the mast or knee below.

 

The kit provides curved metal bands to use here, but I found them overscale and used black paper strips instead.

 

 

Some more views of the finished bowsprit.  It was probably a pretty scary place to crawl out to and work on.  One slip and you likely get crunched under the bow.

 

 

[WackoWolf]

Excellent detail work. Thanks for sharing your great work with us. Keep the pictures coming.

[mar3kl]

Thanks for all the compliments!  On to the foremast.  The dowel stock from the kit is wide at the base, tapering toward the top, and then bulging out at the top so you can file the dowel down to make a square mast head.  As far as I can tell from various books and internet sources, the mast is also supposed to taper inward about 1/3 of the way down toward the base, so the base is narrower than the mast at its widest point.  Since I don't own a lathe, that required putting the dowel stock in a drill and spinning it while pinching the dowel with sandpaper.  It worked reasonably well.  The instructions and the plans disagreed on the mast length, so I picked one.

 

Here's a photo of the masthead, with the cap, cheeks, and trestles installed.  The cheeks are supposed to have metal braces to support the yard lift pulleys; I simulated them with black paper.  You can see the topmost of four woldings as well - after I made them, I discovered the kit plans are wrong and the ship didn't have foremast woldings, so I removed them later.

 

The mast cap hasn't had its braces (more black paper strips) installed yet.

 

 

Another view, where you can see the pulleys installed.  They are brass, so I blackened them with brass blackener.  Here you can also see two blocks associated with the fore yard running rigging.  I installed them early while it was easy.

 

 

And finally the mast installed.  I looked at several sources to try figure out the correct rake.  As near as I can tell the mast is supposed to be perpendicular to the deck, with the trestles tipped downward at the fore end very slightly.

 

 

[mar3kl]

The foremast platform.  This required a number of modifications, just like the smaller platforms.  First, the center hole was the wrong shape.  It's narrow enough that the shrouds will have a hard time passing through, and it's not centered.  The photos I've seen of the real ship seem to show a square, centered opening.  So I reworked the base to look that way:

 

 

I then planked the surface in the same pattern as the real ship:

 

 

And here's the final product.  I had to again remove an extra ring and thin down all the pieces by about half to make it look right.  The braces again needed recutting slightly to deal with the changed platform profile.  I ended up splitting them in half, which doubled the number and let me put 16 around the platform instead of the 8 that the plans call for.  This is reasonably close to the real thing.

 

Because all the pieces are plywood and laser cut, there's char on the edges.  The pieces are delicate enough that sanding off the char wasn't possible, so I'm going to do some color washes that blend things together.

 

 

[fmodajr]

Mark,

 

Very nice job on the platforms and masts in general. The platforms can be tricky!

 

Frank

[mar3kl]

The platforms are definitely tricky.  Thinning down the plywood is difficult and the resulting pieces are very delicate.  The result is I think a little more accurate though.  Here are a couple of photos of the finished foremast with the platform in place.  Again, I removed the woldings later when I discovered the kit plans were wrong and the foremast didn't have them.  I also ended up removing the platform, since it will make it easier to attach deadeyes and easier to run the lower shrouds.

 

 

On to the fore topmast.  This was also a little tricky.  The dowel stock has a bulge at the base that you file into a square cross section, but it's actually more complicated than that.  The bulk of the cross section needs to match the diameter of the foremast above the trestle trees and not cover the pulleys below the trestle trees, which is a bit too narrow for a good fit through the trestle trees.  Also, you need to be careful to allow enough of a gap between the topmast base and the foremast for the shrouds to pass through.  The plans are again wrong here; they show the topmast base and the foremast joined tightly together.  This photo shows what I came up with.  

 

 

And the finished fore topmast with its platform and rigging blocks.  The platform is identical to the bowsprit platform - pieces thinned down by a third, base planked, and one circle eliminated.  The rigging blocks concern me - they are way easier to install now rather than after the mast and its standing rigging are in place, but the running rigging plans are very difficult to interpret, and I'm hoping I don't need to redo the blocks once I understand the routing better.  The blocks by the way are from Syren, not the kit.  I didn't like the look of the kit blocks.

 

 

Edited October 24, 2015 by mar3kl