Scratch Building the Portuguese Carrack in 1/700th Scale

[ARH]

Thats what modelings all about, one big learning curve, I still find new things after 30 years, keep up the good work,

[Nieuport]

Great build
The way you do your ratline is very interesting.

All the very best

[Tom L.]

Neal, you have to get Bjorn Landstrom, period. Have to...

Seeing your interest in the full history of ships, this book will become a favorite, if not the favorite.
His artwork is clear, detailed, and very well researched for the time in which he was writing. A lot of the old Pyro/Life-Like sailing ship kits are apparently based on his work, but fall short of it. I've seen it mentioned *somewhere* that he's still the standard introduction to ancient Egyptian boatbuilding in college courses today.

As to my "theory" (idle rumination is more like it!), I've often wondered if those temporarily slung spritsails couldn't have been lateen-rigged, or at least cut triangular. Carppacio's painting of St. George shows a very small, very hard to make out ship in the upper right hand, and it's under full sail, including what appears to be a triangular spritsail.

On to the goods:
Love the knight-posts. Awesome, authentic detail.

Your gun carriages are spot-on! I winced for you reading about trying to squeeze them underneath the anti-boarding net frame.

Love the ratlines, seeing them reminds me of building Combrig's Imperator Aleksandr II back in 2004. I had to go with Atlantic Model's PE ratlines with that build eventually. I tried making a jig, and looming stretched sprue onto it.
While it worked, the slightest flex (like in removing them from the jig!) destroyed them.
All very frustrating; Peter Hall came to the rescue with Atlantic Models just in the nick of time.

[MichelB]

How about the guns in the forecastle facing aft? What would be the purpose of those?

[maxim]

Neal, you have to get Bjorn Landstrom, period. Have to...

This is certainly a nice book, but it does not represent the current knowledge, e.g. the depictions of cogs are wrong.

[j.mahieux]

Hello All,
Do not forget that the last edition of the book of Bjorn Landstrom dates 1969 !!!
Since, many discoveries were realized, but the book of Bjorn stays an extraordinary milestone in the knowledge of ships.
Jean

[callen]

Thats what modelings all about, one big learning curve, I still find new things after 30 years, keep up the good work,

Yes indeed. I think towards that end it's good to share one's 'oopses' as well as one's successes, don't you? Thanks for stopping by Ron.

Great build

Thank you sir.

The way you do your ratline is very interesting.

And tedious too! I'm sure there's a better way. I will be attempting to create a jig soon. We'll see what happens.

Neal, you have to get Bjorn Landstrom, period. Have to...

Actually, as it turns out, I already have it... and I didn't even know it. It's in French though. And you're right the illustrations are superb. I can't explain exactly why I didn't know I already had it but... well, certain parties who shall remain nameless were very kind in sending me a wealth of documentation last year, including a number of publications entirely converted to PDF... just about tripled my Age of Sail References...

Seeing your interest in the full history of ships, this book will become a favorite, if not the favorite.
His artwork is clear, detailed, and very well researched for the time in which he was writing. A lot of the old Pyro/Life-Like sailing ship kits are apparently based on his work, but fall short of it. I've seen it mentioned *somewhere* that he's still the standard introduction to ancient Egyptian boatbuilding in college courses today.

I didn't know this information. That is very good to know.

As to my "theory" (idle rumination is more like it!), I've often wondered if those temporarily slung spritsails couldn't have been lateen-rigged, or at least cut triangular. Carppacio's painting of St. George shows a very small, very hard to make out ship in the upper right hand, and it's under full sail, including what appears to be a triangular spritsail.

That is an interesting notion! I wonder if we can find out more about that. A lateen would definitely help to pull the head over one way or another, the question is, how easily could one tack with it if necessary?

On to the goods:
Love the knight-posts. Awesome, authentic detail.

Thank you! Would I be correct in saying that these are where the lifts for the yard arms are secured? Is that right?

Your gun carriages are spot-on! I winced for you reading about trying to squeeze them underneath the anti-boarding net frame.

Yes... one of those situations where hindsight is 20/20 as they say... I'm afraid those lovely little carriages are almost completely obscured...

Love the ratlines, seeing them reminds me of building Combrig's Imperator Aleksandr II back in 2004. I had to go with Atlantic Model's PE ratlines with that build eventually.

I think I have some of those... but you know... I'm always looking for a way to fab things.

I tried making a jig, and looming stretched sprue onto it.
While it worked, the slightest flex (like in removing them from the jig!) destroyed them.
All very frustrating; Peter Hall came to the rescue with Atlantic Models just in the nick of time.

See I have a problematic relationship with Stretched Sprue. I don't think it's very strong. That's why I got turned on to Nylon Monofilament and now this fly tying thread... Another issue is uniformity of thickness, although to look at Jim Baumann's builds, he doesn't seem to have any issues with that. I always had a hard time creating and judging uniform thickness. The problem with NM is that it's so dang curly, it's hard to deal with some times, although it can be straightened with effort.

How about the guns in the forecastle facing aft? What would be the purpose of those?

Looks pretty crazy, huh? This is based on the Anthony Roll illustrations of the Mary Rose and other carracks. I have seen others as well where there were guns both fore and aft facing into the area of the waist. I've often thought that looked nonsensical myself, but thinking about the Carrack as a 'Hand-to-hand Combat Stage' rather than a 'warship-sinking-warship,' which is the normal way for us to think about warships these days, I remember reading that the waist was the 'funnel' where the enemy boarders would be forced to mass as they attempted to take the ship. From this position, these inward facing cannons actually make sense. If, further you were to fill them with some sort of light grape shot or the equivalent, you might be able to massacre your enemies with a minimum of damage to your own ship, particularly if the inboard faces of the fore and aft castles were reinforced. Another option in this regard would be using reduced charges in combination with the grape shot to minimize damage to one's own ship.

Neal, you have to get Bjorn Landstrom, period. Have to...

This is certainly a nice book, but it does not represent the current knowledge, e.g. the depictions of cogs are wrong.

Hello All,
Do not forget that the last edition of the book of Bjorn Landstrom dates 1969 !!!
Since, many discoveries were realized, but the book of Bjorn stays an extraordinary milestone in the knowledge of ships.
Jean

Much good information from both of you. Thank you very much.

[callen]

Hello Model Warship!

I thought I would post my progress here on the Beja Carrack. She is rapidly nearing completion now, which is very exciting for me, my very first successful scratch build. I think I will also take her for a spin around the contest circuit this summer. Soonercon here in Oklahoma is only 3 weeks away and I think I will be able to finish her in time. So here is the latest.

Now that she is starting to look the part, I thought I would take some comparison shots with some of the other 1/700th scale denizens that lurk on my shelves. Here she is with the Tamiya KGV in the background (sorry, the light in my studio is not very good.)

With a (still awaiting completion) Tamiya Tama, one of my favorite old-mold kits. I am used to thinking of the Tama as a rather sleek and dainty light cruiser, but next to the Beja she suddenly looks massive and powerful. It's amazing what context will do to a build.

Am I the only one who likes to put disparate subjects together and compare them? I think it's fascinating to compare such different ship types side by side.
With the USS Vermont, my first resin build. These shots make me sad. About a week after they were taken we had a major Tornado come through the City. My wife and I took our three kids and fled the house in anticipation of a possible disaster. In the rush I only had time to grab a few things before we had to head for shelter from the oncoming storm. One of the things I took with me was this Niko Vermont build which had done very well for me last year. Fortunately the tornado passed about six miles north of our house and did little more than tear up some fields, but the Vermont got left in the car overnight and became heated in the sun the following morning, resulting in the destruction of much of the rigging... Not a total loss, but she will need repair which I don't have time for at the moment.

Hmm... Picked this up at Hobby Lobby. Am I right in thinking that these bits of glitter are uniform in shape? This could be interesting...

Here is the shape. Very tiny hexagon. Just about the perfect size for a 1/700th scale greek shield... very useful for triremes over on the Colossus build. Might also be interesting as a decorative element for Age of Sail subjects as well.

Some smaller glitter pieces. Still mulling over their potential uses...

[callen]

Wouldn't you know it? Despite my best efforts, I was unable to find the original decal swatches I used to make the decorative blue and green triangles. As you can see from the above pics, I never did complete the triangle patterns. In addition, some of them have fallen off over time due to wear, despite my efforts to seal them in with flat clear coat. Oh well... Time to break out my precious decal paper and make some more. But what color did I use exactly?

After laying down a layer of paint (which, by the way did NOT match the original blue and green colors... ) I decided while I was in 'decal mode' I would create some other swatches for some of the other Resin Carracks that are currently awaiting brass from France. Like the purple pearl? How bout that? Not a color you see very often on a ship model. I bought it originally to create 'oil-effects' on black HO scale steam locomotives back when I was in the train hobby, and have kept it in my paint stash ever since. Fortunately the metallic purple effect is reduced by a coat of MM flat clear. I laid the Flat Clear on quite heavy, in order to make the decals stronger. Despite the fact that I did not match the original blue and green colors, the difference is not great. I did not record the effort, but suffice it to say I finally completed the triangle patterns on the fore and aft castles. Now we can move on to more important things... like livery shields!

Hmm... 1/700th scale floater net baskets bought for the USS Washington Build I had been working on a couple of years ago. As it turned out I didn't need them for that build. Interesting. The shape of the end-pieces of the larger baskets are exactly the right size and shape for a livery shield for the carrack's bulwarks. Is it worth it to sacrifice these very valuable 20th century details for my little conjectural carrack?

Yes!

Swatches drying after application of clear flat. The variations in brush strokes are un-noticeable on the final decals once cut.

Trimming the edges of the decal swatch. From experience I have learned that the paint will seep into the paper fibers when it gets over the edge of the decal during painting. This results in decals that tear away rather than coming off cleanly from the paper. For this reason the edges of the completed swatch must be trimmed and thrown away.

Further experiments with shield making. Bruno will be sending me some custom decals, but for the Beja, which is a 'test bed' for the various ideas and techniques we are hoping to develop to model these kinds of ships, I wanted to have a more generalized representation of livery shields, simple bare metal sheilds, alternating steel and brass colors, hopefully to add some 'glint' to the build. Why not?

The foil shown here was taken from chocolate coin candy the girls got for Christmas. I'm smoothing it and burnishing it here to see if shields can be made from it. The nice thing is, it's silver on the other side, so you have two different colors to choose from.

[Filipe Ramires]

Am I the only one who likes to put disparate subjects together and compare them?

You're not the only one doing sailing ships and put them next to a different kind of ship. One of my in-progress projects...

[callen]

Installing the livery shields on the bulwarks. Tedious. Also difficult to photograph. They're actually quite difficult to see, if they don't catch the light and glint they seem almost invisible. Each shield required a backing pole that brought it out from the canopy sides to make it flush with the gunwales. These were made from pre-painted 0.010 square rod. I had to do this because when I tried attaching the shields directly to the canopy vertical elements they were both too high and angled up, looking very odd.

Beginning the ratlines for the mainmast. This time instead of using the thread material I did it all from nylon monofilament, and cut to shape rather than attempting to glue them after the fact.

Right! Off they go! I will redo the foremast shrouds/ratlines with the new technique. The results, as you can see are far superior to my efforts with the thread.Right! Off they go! I will redo the foremast shrouds/ratlines with the new technique.

My wife had been saying: 'You'd better mount that thing permanently while you still can... She was right, of course. This was a somewhat scary moment for me, but she came away without damage.

[callen]

Beja 'homeless.' I think you can see the mounting rods for the shields here. I decided to see if I could mount the ship in a cheap plastic case I bought from Hobby Lobby, intended originally for collector's matchbox toy cars. Will she fit? (worried about the masts.)

Good. But with or without plastic mirror base?

Let's go with the mirror.

This is not a high quality case but there are three reasons I chose it.
1. I can't afford to have any made custom at the moment...
2. This ship will be mounted alone, where as the Resin Carracks will probably be in multi ship dios, and will thus work well in some of my more 'standard' cases.
3. I've learned a lot from the guys at the club (aircraft modelers) about restoring and improving clarity in plastic using polishers and fillers, etc.
4. This build is not as important or valuable as the ones that will follow.

Green first, and then blue, with some green showing through. I wanted very pristine water, in keeping with the notion of a pre-polution era.

High Gloss Gel Medium on top of the paint. Ship is now permanently mounted. I did not use any glue, but used the Gel Medium to act as a glue for the hull. Seems to work well.

Gel is drying now...

[callen]

Shields on the stbd fore-castle. I did wind up making some from foil, but found it very difficult to control size and shape when cutting them free hand. I prefer the PE shields.

Overhead shot with reflection...

...and without.

Stbd livery shields completed.

Port livery shields completed.

These are the ends of the smaller floater net baskets. They are not quite the right shape for livery shields, and, at any rate, smaller and different from the other pieces. But I was thinking about putting shields up in the crow's nests... This might work...

One of the appeals of modeling these ships is the degree of freedom one has in detailing. This is due to the uncertainty of sources from the era, of course, but also to the freedom and non-standardized nature of the ships themselves. It is an interesting alternative to bureau-designed 20th century warships.

Beja in her current state. Hoping very much to get more done on her tonight, so stay tuned. There will be more pics. God willing I will finish her this week! That's all for now.

[callen]

Am I the only one who likes to put disparate subjects together and compare them?

You're not the only one doing sailing ships and put them next to a different kind of ship. One of my in-progress projects...

Goodness gracious! Are you blogging that Filipe? Please post a link here. I want to see more! If you're not blogging it you should. Wow!!!!!!!
What is it btw?

[Filipe Ramires]

Not blogging it for the time being because other project took priority over it (usual from me ). In any case when I get to work on it again I will either blog it or send a full photo-report to the gallery. Anyway, it represents a late 1920's scene of Royal Navy experimental-cruiser-submarine HMS X-1 anchored at Malta with a coaster next to it and a Maltese schooner (Gozo boat) passing by. The original display is has follows, yet, it will most certainly suffer some minor changes due to a sudden light in my head not more then a few days ago.

[Filipe Ramires]

About Beja I guess you only miss the sails and some crew on deck correct? Don't forget to put a couple of blokes on watch on top of the masts and a few seagulls circling around!!!

[callen]

Not blogging it for the time being because other project took priority over it (usual from me ). In any case when I get to work on it again I will either blog it or send a full photo-report to the gallery. Anyway, it represents a late 1920's scene of Royal Navy experimental-cruiser-submarine HMS X-1 anchored at Malta with a coaster next to it and a Maltese schooner (Gozo boat) passing by. The original display is has follows, yet, it will most certainly suffer some minor changes due to a sudden light in my head not more then a few days ago.

After reading this I just had to look up 'Gozo Boat.' It took a little doing, but I was finally able to find some information. Very nice work. I noticed that there seems to be more progress on the boat in the first pic than in the group photo. Concerning the sub, is that a scratch build or a kit? Very nice work Filipe.

About Beja I guess you only miss the sails and some crew on deck correct? Don't forget to put a couple of blokes on watch on top of the masts and a few seagulls circling around!!!

Yes. Sails are still an open issue. The guys in the club, particularly Rusty White encouraged me to not do sails, as they felt it would detract from the rigging, but since this is a test-bed, I am thinking of adding them. Haven't decided for sure one way or the other. As far as crewmen go... yeah... oops... too late really to be thinking about that, but I think my friend Bruno is going to provide me with some 1/700th scale Hidalgos (or the Portuguese equivalent) soon, so the other carracks should be propperly populated. As far as seagulls go... hmmm... we'll see.

[callen]

A quick update. Everything you see here is from a single session yesterday lasting the length of the film 'Cyrano de-Bergerac.' (Depardieu) If you haven't seen it you should. It's excellent, though not ship-related...

I had the idea, after adding all of those livery shields to actually do a proper shield actually connected to Beja in Portugal. This is what I found on Wikipedia:

150px-Armas_Inf_Luis_Duque_de_Beja.jpg (10.01 KiB) Viewed 1723 times

This is the coat of arms of Luis, the fifth Duke of Beja (1506-1555) and given the general shape of my little ship, I fancied it might have been built at his request, or for his use, etc. I don't really know how plausible this is, and to my Portuguese friends, feel free to correct me if this is a crazy notion, but I thought that tying the ship to Luis de Beja would add some plausibility to it. At any rate, attempting to make the shield would be a fun exercise...
Do you remember the bottles of glitter?

It gave me an idea...
Let's cut a shield out of our decal paper...

Then place a stainless steel water tight door modified to the shape of a shield on it...

et voila!

This one was the first attempt, which I wasn't happy with and was lost anyway to the 'carpet monster.' But I knew I was on the right track and made another one. The small gold crowns in the red border could be represented by single pieces of gold glitter, while the blue devices (what are they?) in the shape of a cross in the center field could be represented by blue bits of glitter...

Here is the stern. Notice the decorative triangles are uneven in shape... one more reason for me to cover them up...

I added a purple bit of glitter in the upper left corner to represent the device placed there, although, in hindsight, I regretted it, as it appears in this scale to be a mistake. Adding flanking 'gold' shields on either side, and suddenly the stern looked 'right.' Putting this device on my little inaccurate carrack changed the whole character of the build for me. Up to this point it was sort of a 'flight of fancy' just trying to get a plausible looking shape, but this device, from Portuguese history suddenly made it look like something substantial to me. Having successfully made the shield this once, I may do another 'Beja Carrack' from a more accurate and informed basis at some point.

Ok. That's all for now. Cheers!

[Timmy C]

*whimper* it's miraculous!


In regards to Cyrano, the Turkish symphonic metal band Almora made a song for it, if you're interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yuhAV9HkWE

[JIM BAUMANN]

definitely add sails!-- however-- have the wind coming from a quarter-so that the yards are braced around 25 deg from the centreline-this will show the rigging even more effectively--as the rigging will show against the light background of the sails.

You do not need much ' wind'...( your flat sea and lack of heel precludes this currently) just enough to give steergae....


the shield's aft--very innovative and well carried out!


JIM B