The Ship Model Forum

Hello Gents! I hope everyone is enjoying this fantastic hobby of ours. I've been looking around today, seeing what everyone is up to, and sure enough, the builds are getting more spectacular by the day. It's an amazing time to be a ship modeler.

I told everybody last year that I was getting back into scratch building carracks, and then I promptly got sidetracked by a nice Japanese girl named 'Ise.' Long story, and more on that on the kit-based WIP pages, but...long story short, the Callen Clarke scratch-built ship yard is back in business!

I have been planking together some new builds that I would like to share with all of you now. Altogether I think we're going to wind up with at least five, perhaps six galleys in 1/700th Scale. As far as I am aware there are no kits of these vessels anywhere, and as far as I am aware no modeler has ever attempted these subjects in this scale. I don't know why, but that seems to be the case. I've got three (count 'em THREE) WIPs currently that are close to completion, and three more that I plan, so altogether, this thread will probably cover at least six models, perhaps more.

But we're going to start with the one I started with, the Khufu Sun Ship. What is the Khufu Sun Ship? I'm so glad you asked!


I took my first plunge into Galley Waters in 2012 when I bought a book called 'The Boat Beneath the Pyramids' an excellent book about what is, in fact, the oldest ship in the world.



This is a fantastic book about a fantastic ship, and I mean FANTASTIC, in every sense of the word, the Khufu Sun Ship, or Cheops Solar Barge, or whatever you'd like to call it is the only complete and intact reconstructed vessel from Ancient Egypt, and not just any period in Ancient Egypt, we're talking about Khufu of the Old Kingdom. You know, the guy that built the Great Pyramid? Yeah. That guy.



This little statue is actually the only depiction we have of Khufu, one of the greatest builder-rulers of all time.

The Khufu Sun Ship was found disassembled and complete in a pit next to the largest of the three pyramids on the Giza plateau.



Actually (this is amazing) there is _another_ ship almost identical that's been found in another pit near by, but this is the one that was found first, and has been reconstructed. It dates from circa 2500 B.C. That's right, four-thousand five hundred years ago. That means this ship had been in the ground almost a millennium at the time of the Eruption of Thera, and the Hebrew Exodus. In the time of Jesus it was already more than two millennia old. Quite extraordinary. And this wasn't the only pyramid ship, by any means. There are multiple boat pits at nearly every significant pyramid, most of them long since robbed or otherwise destroyed, unlike this one. It turns out that, for the Ancient Egyptians, boats and pyramids went together like bread and butter.

Here's some pics of the actual ship.





And here's some models/reconstructions.





So what is it? Well, it's a 'solar barge,' a ceremonial vessel that played a symbolic (functional) part in the state religion of the Old Kingdom, the most venerable version of Ancient Egypt and the period of greatest artistic and architectural achievement. I'm not an expert on Ancient Egyptian religion, but I very definitely think I'd like to model the Oldest Ship in the World.

Oh, and I think it looks pretty amazing too.

_________________
Pessimists see the world as it truly is...
Optimists change the world.

Ok then! On to the build!

Technology is so amazing, thanks to my digital SLR, I actually know the precise date I began this build on: June 25th 2012. Having just finished the book, I wanted to attempt to actually build the model 'shell-first' just like the prototype. Here you can see the beginning of my efforts seven years ago...

















Building that shell was very difficult, and also, as you can imagine, what I wound up with was extremely fragile. But this is where the build got hard. Because I started with the shell, the cross-beams upon which the deck would eventually sit, had to be cut and fitted individually, with a spacer piece between each of them to ensure uniform placement. In addition, the spacer piece had to be sanded after the fact. In addition to that addition...I could only do a few beams/placers at a time, because too much glue would melt the shell of the hull...

So, this very quickly turned into a not very fun build. And there was the looming question....

How am I going to make oars?


Not just any oars, leaf-shaped pharaonic oars...



You know how it is when you've started something you don't know if you can finish. I'd been there before. To be honest, my house has more than a few ships that will never be completed. I thought this was one of them. And since it was so small, well, it was easy to forget. So this is where the build stalled, for 7 years...

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Pessimists see the world as it truly is...
Optimists change the world.

And then, a funny thing happened... I started working on scratch building new ships, starting with the Tudor Carrack Mary Rose in 700th Scale (that's a different thread.) But, in the process, well I started thinking about rescuing the old Egyptian girl I had abandoned seven years ago. Tedious as ever, but I decided I really did want to see her through.







Remember I could only do about 2 or 3 beams per day, each one having to be cut to exactly the right length. The prototype is not so different, in fact. The entire hull consists of hundreds of uniquely shaped planks, which go together like an enormous jigsaw puzzle. I didn't replicate the shape of each individual plank, but I did feel a little sympathy with those ancient Egyptian ship-builders that had to do everything the hard way.

And then finally came the magic day when I had put the last beam in! Finally I could start on the deck! The barge was finally moving forward after seven years!










You see, these beams form a border around the midships deck, so that you can see into the hull, but at the extremities of the stern and bow, the deck is completely covered over, so it wasn't necessary to carry the beams all the way to the stem and sternpost. Thank God!



Now, finally, I could start thinking about those lovely sculptured posts at each end of the hull...



I started by simply free-hand sanding a piece of round rod...



And then glued it and bent it. PS is such an amazing and forgiving material. I had no problems with this, despite my initial skepticism.

_________________
Pessimists see the world as it truly is...
Optimists change the world.

As you can see, there are some aspects to this build that I did the hard way. After a five-year hiatus of scratch-building ships (at least ocean-going ones) I was still ramping up again...





But, after all, how do you make an Egyptian reed-boat finial out of styrene in 700th scale? There was no one to tell me how to do any of these things. After being stymied on where to find tiny cones that might do the trick, I pretty much just tried my luck at roughing it out...and it seemed to work. That's kind of how this build went. Everything was hard to do, but everything worked.





Starting the cabin now. This is a lovely little structure for the Pharaoh to occupy during his journey to the Sun, if I'm understanding Ancient Egyptian Religion. It has no windows, no furniture, and no doors, but two door-openings. Just the fact that I had finally gotten to this step had me really excited.









Stern Finial. Note that it's been sanded smooth on top. Starting to look like it's supposed to.

_________________
Pessimists see the world as it truly is...
Optimists change the world.

Bow finial.



Now to the question of OARS...

I actually cracked this one on a concurrent build, a Phoenician Galley, which I'll be sharing on this thread next, but the basic idea is illustrated here. I bought some Plastruct 0.01" round rod, the smallest rod they make, and the smallest styrene rod you can find outside of stretching sprue. The issue was this: How do I make multiple oars. That is, how can I quickly fashion multiple copies of the same object without having to measure and sand incessantly and go blind in the process. Late one night, as I lay in bed trying to sleep, the idea finally came to me.

I decided to lay down some double-sided tape on a piece of glass. I then rough-cut a number of tiny rods from the Plastruct stuff, and taped one end down on the glass. I then rough cut (no measuring) some much smaller pieces, and began gluing those to one side of the long rods. The idea was to make a blade-blank at the end of the oar-haft, which could be cut to size in one go, and then sanded to shape. I glued the short pieces to the long pieces on one side only first on the entire suite of oars I intended to create. This would cause the rods to adhere to the glass, and stay put when I put the final bit on the other side of the haft.



The only 'measuring' up to this point, was to make sure that the two short rods stopped at exactly the same spot on either side of the long rod, and that the three pieces glued together were perfectly flat.



Once this was done, I made a 'model oar' from which every other oar would be cut, measured and sanded...







It's not what I would call 'easy,' but it's doable. I did lose some to sanding too short, or breakage, at the rate of about 1 loss per 8 good oars, but the good news is, they didn't take long (individually) to make. I did have to wait a day between assembly and sanding/shaping, but that was no big deal.

The next step was to detail the cabin!



Here's what the cabin looked like in the book...



I briefly thought about trying to replicate this pattern with PE railings, but, despite my extensive brass collection, I couldn't find anything that matched precisely the dimensions I needed. Once again, it meant doing things the hard way...

_________________
Pessimists see the world as it truly is...
Optimists change the world.

The cabin has an open doorway at each end. This necessitates blacking out the interior.



Facing the aft-end of the cabin.





The cabin itself has this strange cage-like structure that surrounds it. This cage also extends forward into an trellis-like framework, which may have been an awning.

_________________
Pessimists see the world as it truly is...
Optimists change the world.

Here is a penny for scale.



And in the custom case that will eventually be her home. I have quite a few of these small wooden bases. I feel quite strongly that small models should be on bases that fit their size.



Last few bits of caging finishing off the roof...



And here she is with the other two current Galley WIPS, the Phoenician Galley, circa 850 B.C. and the Argo of Argonautika fame. (Jason, Hercules, the Golden Fleece, etc.) More on that tomorrow. In the mean time, happy modeling!

_________________
Pessimists see the world as it truly is...
Optimists change the world.

Yes, Callen is back on the job!
Your models are always as impressing finesse and precision!
Go take this dio on the "colossus of Rhodes"?
I will follow closely this new subject,
Sincerely,
Jean

Beautiful work. Absolutely love it!

_________________
-- Scott

Jean Mahieux my friend!

It is Sooooo Goood to hear from you again! I have this folder full of beautiful PDFs...and it's called 'Livres du Jean' and every time I open it I think of you! I hope you are well, and modeling and enjoying life!


About the Colossus...again, very strange...I set it aside for years... I wasn't happy with the figure, but just recently I have begun a new figure...it's not exactly front-burner, but I am going to work on it this year. We'll see how it goes. If I can create a convincing human figure, then the Colossus Dio is a go...Otherwise, I may go with a Pharos dio instead.






Thanks, man! More coming soon!

Ok! So, now I need to talk about Galley # 2!

Have you heard of the Phoenicians?




If you've read your Bible, you've probably heard about the cities 'Tyre and Sidon,' headquarters of the Canaanites of the latter part of the Old Testament.


'Canaanites' is the Biblical term for these people, 'Phoenicians' is the Archaological term. The Phoenicians were the first sea-traders in the Med, and also the first pirates. Sometimes they combined the two. Lacking a compass and weather radar, they generally sailed close to shore, but that didn't stop them from going a very long ways indeed. There is even legends that say the Phoenicians were the first to circumnavigate Africa...



The Phoenicians were the most intrepid sailors of the ancient Mediterranean Basin. They built ships, and they sailed them. They sailed them farther than anyone had sailed before. And with these ships they founded colonies, including in Sicily and North Africa. Ethnically and linguistically we're talking about Semitic people, speaking a language very close, if not identical, to Biblical Hebrew.

There is a good deal of evidence to indicate that the Mycenaean Greeks (that branch of the Greek-speaking peoples that eventually became Classical Greece) learned everything they knew, including the alphabet, from the Phoenicians. The Carthaginians, who later came to dominate the Western Mediterranean were an offshoot of the original Phoenician colonists.

So, in seafaring terms, the Phoenicians were a pretty hip group of guys. It is said the Lebanese Cedar, which grows straight as an arrow and is rot-resistant, served as the basis for the masts of their ships. Modern Lebanon corresponds roughly to ancient Phoenicia, both geographically and genetically.

So, I've thought about the Phoenicians for a long time, and have wanted to build models of their ships for a long time. There are many depictions of Phoenician ships, and there's no doubt they built many, and these changed greatly over time, but there is one particular design, which originates from an Assyrian Bas-Relief circa 850 B.C. I've always liked this shape, very business-like and no-nonsense. A bank of oars, a rowing deck surmounted by a light superstructure of sorts, and a long pointed ram at the front.






Here's another depiction of it. The design I'm interested is the top right one.
With any of these ancient galleys, there's a good deal of guesswork, and a good deal of leeway (no pun intended) in regards to what precisely these ships looked like, how big they were, how many oars, crewmen, etc. Ideally, as a modeler, one wants to base the build on _something_, while still retaining some freedom for rationalizing and creative license. But for me, with all of these ships, I wanted to do something nobody had ever done before. That's the real fun, and to have something PHOENICIAN on my shelf! That was a big draw for me.

So...I took the plunge last July...



A little bit different approach than my usual method. Instead of starting with a waterline baseplate, I started with a sort of vertical silhouette...

_________________
Pessimists see the world as it truly is...
Optimists change the world.

I then combined the vertical centerpiece with a baseplate.

Which I then began to add square rods to. These would eventually be the benches for the rowers on the Oar Deck.






Bulking out the lower hull, I decided to simply glue some strips down and then free-hand sand to shape. I was surprised how easy (and fun) this was. A bit like sculpting. There would be a lot more sculpting in this build as I went along, and not all of it fun.







But at this point, it seemed like things were going pretty well. And I was building a Phoenician Galley in 700th Scale! Am I the first? I dunno, but it was a lot of fun to think about!





Large ram-bow with 3D curves? How am I going to do that? Well...how about we just stick a bunch of rod stock on the front of this thing and start sanding? Why not! And you know what? It wasn't that hard to do. Uneven on that side, give it a little more sanding... Start big, work gradual, keep going till it looks right...





So far so good...

_________________
Pessimists see the world as it truly is...
Optimists change the world.

Ok! The bow was no problem at all! Let's get to work on the stern. I should also add that working on these subjects in this scale has another advantage, they're so small, the work goes really quickly. And even major sanding doesn't take long. I think it took me about ten minutes, maybe twenty, to shape the bow.

So, again, bulk up the stern, and then sand it down...







OoopS!


The stern turned out to be both more bulky and weaker than the bow. It took longer and as I sanded away at it, the hull beneath gradually weakened, already softened by the recent gluing of additional material to the vertical fishtail...until it just broke.



But, it was a clean break, so I glued it back and kept going.



It was only at this point that I began to realize I had a problem...specifically two different stern curves on the same boat. This was more serious than just a matter of sanding things down. I couldn't sand too far, or I'd break through the bulwarks and hull-side I'd already created.



The solution would involve both cutting and adding material, in the hopes of blending the two separate sets of curves into a single unified stern. I really felt like an idiot at this point. Why did I make the waterline plate to taper short of the fishtail? That wasn't smart!

It's a learning curve...several, actually, compounded.

_________________
Pessimists see the world as it truly is...
Optimists change the world.

I felt like a doofus, sanding and adding...sanding and adding... clearly I had underestimated the difficulty of this hull shape.





Sure enough, I sanded right through the hull side where it joined to the tailpiece. This would require a patch, but as I prepared the patch, I began to realize this might actually work as a detail feature of the hull, anyway... since this area would be occupied by the steering oars and associated platform. A little bit of that ancient ambiguity leeway playing in my favor?








Ok! Out of the weeds with the stern finally!




And then the whole build took a tumble. As you may have guessed, I have a tendency to work on multiple builds simultaneously. Each night that I would sit down to work on the Phoenician, I also put a few cross-beams in on the Khufu Sun Ship...so that I could keep both builds going. At this point, I began work on several new carrack models as well, among these the Mary Rose, which is also still a WIP, and which I will be featuring in a separate thread. But in all of this busyness the Phoenician got lost in the shuffle one night...fell off the workspace on to the floor, and later...got stepped on.



I'm not saying who did it. There's no direct evidence linking any specific person to the incident in question...but...

Yeah, that was a first for me.

Ah well, I didn't really like the stern and stemposts anyway...

_________________
Pessimists see the world as it truly is...
Optimists change the world.

So, I had originally kind of just thrown the original bank of benches in, without thinking much about spacing, but, actually, as it is, the ship would need a second bank of benches interspersed with the first to create a 'Bireme.' Measuring out the scale space, it would be tight, but Oar Decks generally were in those days anyway...





Now it was time to start thinking about the upper deck, and how the structure would come together. This little ship is a bit like an aircraft carrier in that it has what I call 'interiority'—openings that allow you to peer into the internal areas of the vessel. That's one thing I really like about carriers, and galleys both, actually. In a way the two types have a lot in common, both are conveyances for smaller subjects that do the actual fighting...But my peer-into-the-ship plan created a problem....how am I going to paint this whole deal? I realized the solution was to create the upper deck as a separate piece that would be painted and added later. So that gave me my marching orders for how to proceed with the Oar Deck.



The spacing of the benches gave me a nice basis for mounting the uprights for the upper deck. I could simply glue each upright at the same point in the pattern of upper and lower benches, obviating the need to measure and place each individual post.







With this sturdy framework, I could use the curves I'd created to rough out the upper deck, and when the time came, I'd glue the upper deck to the framework. I was starting to get that 'I know what I'm doing' feeling back, finally...

_________________
Pessimists see the world as it truly is...
Optimists change the world.

Great stuff.

Can you share more on techniques used as well? Are you using standard sizes of Evergreen and Plastruct stock, or thinning them down, and if so how? What glues do you like? Wet sand or dry sand your shapes, etc.?

Also any tools or techniques you've discovered? Example, I've found that removable double-sided Scotch tape is invaluable for holding styrene bits together in position as they are glued, since it has just the right grip, and is unaffected by liquid cement.

Very clean work!

_________________
-- Scott

Hello Callen,
I believe you are the first (and only!) "Plastic" model maker to create a 1/700 model of a Phoenician galley!
In my opinion, you have to be crazy!
Your work is always so dazzling, it's beautiful!
For my part I work on the old kit "Arsenal" Béarn, the first French aircraft carrier.
I will post some photos soon in the section "works in progress".
Jean

Some people are out there for a real challenge !

_________________
Eberhard

Former chairman Arbeitskreis historischer Schiffbau e.V. (German Association for Shipbuilding History)

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I thought that might be the case! Kinda crazy. How many plastic ship modelers are there in the world? I do a lot of model-blogging on Facebook as well, and I can tell you there are a LOT of modelers out there.

But, I guess modeling is one thing, scratch-building modeling is something else. The impression I get here on MW is that Scratch Builders tend to work in larger scales...which makes me a special case. I have neither the house space nor the funds for big giant scratch-built models that require power-tools, etc. Nor do I have the time to devote to that kind of work. I'm a slow builder as it is, so this situation, scratch-building in 700th Scale is pretty much a perfect fit for my life, given my situation.



Very kind words, mon ami. Thank you.



That's fantastic! I love the Béarn! Yes, please post pics and show us your progress. There is a strange all PE kit of the Béarn floating around ebay now. It gives you the hull-sections in PE, and then parts to glue to the side of the hull...but it looks a bit dodgy to me. I think it's coming out of Russia. I don't know why someone would go to the trouble of making such a model without bothering to create a resin hull.

At any rate, I very much look forward to your Béarn!



Thank you, reigels.



Great questions! I use standard evergreen stock, mostly strips and square rods. I also use Plastruct, as you saw with the Khufu Sun Ship. Plastruct makes the smallest styrene rods available, at 0.01 inches, in both round and square. I use both kinds of rods. I'll also be using stretched sprue, not only for rigging but for super-thin construction elements.

I don't thin anything down. I use Testors non-toxic liquid cement. The stuff that comes in a black bottle with a blue label. Occasionally I will use the Testors gel non-toxic. I do my modeling in my living room with my family around me, so fumes is generally a no-no.

Unless it's a large component, I will often resort to the 'glue puddle + applicator' method of construction. I pour some glue out on a paint bottle lid or other convenient surface, and then dip a toothpick in the puddle and apply the glue with that. This seems to work well for me.

I dry-sand everything.



Yes! I use double-sided scotch tape EXTENSIVELY! If you scroll back to my discussion about oars, you'll see that I mention that. Any time I have to create a large symmetrical object I will use the double-sided tape. And yes, it is useful for anchoring objects. Most of these hulls were taped down with double sided on a base while I worked them. They're too delicate to hold in the hand.

As for techniques...I'm trying to emphasize here that my techniques on these first two builds kinda sucked! But I will be more specific on Galley #3, which I'm very excited to share. That's where I finally got wise about how to build these ships. I built the entire hull of #3 in four days, a record for me. These are all still WIPs, and I hope to finish all three of them within a week or so, so there's more coming.

_________________
Pessimists see the world as it truly is...
Optimists change the world.

The 'wraparound wale' you see in the previous shots formed an upper edge for the open galleries of the Oar Deck, as well as a foundation for the coming upper deck. I believe I used 0.02 square rod for this piece. I glued the uprights to the wraparound wale, but then I found that the wale, being under tension (despite preshaping) had a tendency to bow outwards and pull the uprights with it, giving a more rounded shape to the plan-view of the whole hull assembly. This wasn't a major problem, and I could have left it as is, but it wasn't what I intended, so I carefully applied pressure with my fingers and bent the framework inwards to the vertical once again, so that it would conform to the lines of the hull.





Having blithely begun the model by just throwing some rods on top of the waterline plate thinking 'yeah, that looks ok...' only later did I realize that the spacing between rowing benches is probably the single most important measurement in a galley model. Later I realized I had spaced the original benches too far apart, so much so that there was actually room for an _upper_ row of benches between them, which would make my little galley a Bireme. I got lucky with this, but all of this guesswork had me worried about dimensions.

So, I decided to take a 700th scale figure and mount it to a piece of plastic as an aid for sizing. This is the sort of thing one doesn't worry much about in kit-building, but which can be an issue when scratch building a ship. You can see the figure in the above photo. Although it appears that the figure is glued to the plastic base, in fact, I countersunk it into the base. He measures out right at about 5 ft 6 " in 700th Scale. I call him 'Brass Bob." He was a great help with all of these builds as my work progressed.



Here is Brass Bob checking out the steering platform at the stern.



If you look at this shot you will notice another issue with this build (problem # 45 in a continuing series...) And that is that the top of the oar gallery doesn't line up with the level of the steering platform at the stern. Once again, when I began this build I simply shaped the stern on the basis of 'hey, that looks good!' without thinking things through. I had the option at this point of remodeling the stern a 3rd time ( ) or continuing as is. I decided that, for this particular Phoenician Galley, the steering platform would be raised from the height of the upper deck slightly, to give the helmsmen and commanders a better view of the ship's progress.

Historically accurate?
Not sure about that, but not completely implausible.



Ok! Time to start the upper deck!

Rather than making a split-piece and trimming it to shape as was my usual practice, I decided this time to simply lay a bit of scribed sheet down on the model and use the lower hull assembly as a guide to trim to shape. In the end it took me about as much time as it would have if I had made a split-piece.





This Evergreen scribed sheet styrene, intended for N-scale boxcars and shed siding works great as decking. But many scholars have surmised that the shape of these upper decks on ancient Mediterranean galleys was open in the middle, which meant I had to trim according to the scribed lines in the sheet, a bit tricky, as I had never attempted such a thing before, but it turned out fine.



Et Voilá! So far so good...



Next step: adding some decking to the stern platform.

_________________
Pessimists see the world as it truly is...
Optimists change the world.