So last night I started to lay down some of the read base coat on the rear of the ship. While that was drying I decided to dry fit the hull and deck. Much to my surprise there was some extreme warping between the 3 pieces. So I decided to halt the painting and put the hull together becuase there was going to be plenty of puttying and sanding to do. I was originally just going to paint the hull peices then put it all together, bad idea. Rookie mistakes I guess. On the rear of the ship there is gaps every where. I’m hoping to smooth those out and fill this weekend. I also did some pre-shading in and around the gun ports. And the intructions for these are pretty awful.
Very intricate paint detail. It looks great , must have been a painstaking effort. If the rest of the build looks that good , you will have a display case model . Thanks for showing and for the updates.
I manged to get almost all of seams taken care of over the weekend and was able to get the final coat put on the hull. The pic of the transom isn’t that clear I was messing with the settings on my Camera. I’ll post a better one tomorrow. Enjoy!
My little home computer took intolerably long to download all those pictures but on the basis of the hundred or so that I looked at in five minutes this seems to be one of the most spectacular websites I’ve ever seen. Just about everything about this project - from the ship herself to the building to the conservation methods to the models in the museum to those spectacular drawings - is first-class.
The website says the new books series is to have five volumes; I thought it was four, but the more the merrier. I’ve got Vol. I; my only criticism of it is that I have to wait for the other three (or four) before I can see all the pictures and read all the text. Many thanks indeed, enemeink, for the link. When I have the necessary time to let the computer download the whole thing I’ll make a printout.
About the fo’c’sle; from everything I’ve read and seen of the ship it never had one. The articles I’ve read on the ship say she was built during a time of transition in ship warfare between mainly boarding to mainly shooting the other ship to bits. The Wasa was built with characteristics of both types of warfare. One of the main purposes of the “fore castle” was to provide a raised platform to fire small arms down onto the other ship. Maybe this was left off in compromise since she still had the raised aft and poop deck for small arms fire.
That word “forecastle” is extremely generic, and has been used to mean different things during different periods - and, I suppose, in different places. A nineteenth-century British or American merchant seaman might, for instance, call the place where his quarters were located the forecastle - even if it consisted of a deckhouse aft of the foremast. I imagine the crew of the Wasa used the term (or rather its Swedish equivalent) to refer in general to the forward, upper portion of the ship.
So far as I’m aware, there’s no doubt that the Wasa’s current deck configuration is the one she had originally. In modern English-language parlance she’d be labeled “flush decked” from the bow to the break of the quarterdeck. The Airfix kit certainly seems to match the ship.
I believe there has been some discussion about the original configuration of the bow - specifically the rather odd (to non-Scandinavian eyes) “bulge” above the beakhead, where the beakhead bulkhead would be in an English ship. As I understand it, that part of the ship was damaged when she was brought up (various people started bashing the wreck with grappling irons shortly after the sinking), and there’s been some argument about how it looked originally.
The grappling irons were what was used to try to raise the ship after she sank correct? i can see how dropping those repeatedly on the wreck to try to get it grab could cause so much damage.
It’s probably also worth noting that ships and their anchors, fishing nets and all sorts of other debris was likely to cause damage over the centuries. It is just amazing to me how well-preserved the whole thing is after such a long time on the bottom! As for the fo’c’sle issue, I refer to an elevated deck, either fully enclosed, or open towards the back (as in its original usage ‘fore-CASTLE’). Tall enclosed fo’c’sles were very popular prior to the Spanish Armada, and even most of the larger English ships of the Elizabethans had very prominent fo’c’sles too (check out the contemporary paintings of the Dutchman artist, Vroom). From my understanding, it was actually the Dutch who first popularized the ‘race-built’ or essentially flush-decked ships during their war of independence against Spain, mostly because this improved the sailing characteristics of the ship (less windage). This is important to note, because it marks a definite transition in strategy from dependence on boarding operations (in which case a tall fo’c’sle is of very positive benefit), to a much greater dependence on cannon and gunfire to achieve victory. Oddly, or perhaps not, when tactics changed to ‘line ahead’ and other battle formations (i.e. instead of an individual ship melee), the fo’c’sle appears to have made a definite comeback among all ship-builders, including the Dutch.
In the Wasa report it also make note of some of warping of the decks being caused by blast rubble being dumped on the site when there was a new ship yard being built. with that said. it’s amazing that they were able to raise most of it in one piece.
Remarkably enough, the Swedes did make a serious attempt to raise her within a few months after she sank. That probably did some damage. When it didn’t work, various people did succeed in hauling up some of the guns - expensive objects that could be raised with the available technology and cleaned up for use on other ships. Anytime a warship sank in the seventeenth or eighteenth century somebody tried to bring up the guns - usually without worrying much about what damage he did to the rest of the ship in the process.
It’s really surprising that, given the efforts of the early salvors and the amount of traffic in Stockholm Harbor, the ship survived in such good shape for as long as she did.
ok so far the most time consuming part of this build is painting the hull. There are so many details that it Just boggles the mind. since there are no detailed drawings at the moment of how the bow of the ship is supposed to look I made assumptions as to how some of the figures would look. Not historically accurate I don’t think, but close enough I guess. I’m going to start placing the guns this week. enjoy!
so here is the latest update on the Wasa. the assembly is completed and all I have left is the rigging, which I started for a minute but didn’t get very far. in the inturctions it doesn’t say how to secure the long boat to the deck. It just shows it sitting there. so I clipped 2 link out of some cheap chain that I had and used that to secure the line for the boat.
Looks great. The paint job is a spectacular success.
I’ll take the liberty of makinig one small suggestion - which I wouldn’t make if it wasn’t easy deal with at this point in the process. The topsail and topgallant yards appear to be in their raised positions. They’d only be there when the sails were set. So if you’re going to use the vac-formed sails from the kit, the yards are in the right places. But if you’re going to have furled sails, or omit them altogether, the topsail and topgallant yards should be lowered to within a couple of feet above the caps on the masts below them.
As I remember, some Airfix kits provid alternative mounting holes for the yards in their raised and lowered positions. I don’t remember whether this kit does or not.
Yes I intend to show her with her sails raised, but i don’t think that i’m going to use the vac-formed ones this time. I’ve read an article on how you can use the vac-formed sails as a mold for paper sails so i think i’m going to try that first. And there are only one position for the sails. there’s only a block mating surface so the sails and yards are set square and can’t be set at an angle, unless i want to get real creative.
greetings ! I’m following your Vasa build up with keenest interest. You are quite inspiring ! thank you and bless your skill [:)] May I ask if you can provide us with that article too ? sails for plastic kits is an issue that annoys most serious modelers and any innovation towards accuracy is more than welcome.
I read this at modelingmadness.com. The author was building the lindberg “la flore” kit and mentioned how he made the sails out of paper and I thought that I would also try this since it turned out so well for him. Here is the link it is under colors and markings and the 4th paragraph down from there. enjoy.
For what it’s worth, here’s a link to a discussion about sails that we had here in the Forum some time ago: /forums/350912/ShowPost.aspx
The whole subject is guaranteed to get a discussion going among ship modelers - and almost all of them have strong opinions one way or another about it. As can be seen in that thread, my own personal tastes run against “set” sails under most circumstances. But here’s a link to the work of a gentleman who, over an extremely long and productive career, has learned how to make “set” sails as effectively as anybody I’ve encountered: http://www.donaldmcnarryshipmodels.com/menu.html
I always hesitate a little before pointing people in the direction of Mr. McNarry. His work is inspirational, but (to me at least) also intimidating. Be sure to note the scales and sizes of the models in the pictures. To this gentleman, that Airfix Wasa is big.
