Hi Gang,
Been awhile since I had anything to post. I decided to dig out the Revell Viking Longboat and attempt to build and detail the kit using the best know rigging and other items that have been attributed to the discovered vessels. It has been at least 25 years since I’ve built this kit (lost it to Hurricane Katrina, I dug this one out of the muck and cleaned it for building. Revell did an excellent job in designing the mold and added a lot of detail, including a very little seen detail under the top rail which the Osberg ship had. I also wanted to really add to and improve the rigging on this one based on the best know research as well as some artifacts found at the various sites discovered.
While folks tend to focus on the ‘shields’ being colorful, based on recovered shields, many were very plain in markings and most were the same color, Revell provided a set of colorful decals, which saves the modeler time from hand painting different patterns on the shield, but not much is correct unfortunately
Another thing that Revell missed as some of the details on the benches, deck cargo, (buckets and other stuff found in the burial mounds) and rigging, such as the stay horns, these were used to strike the mast quickly, if bad weather or if they were sailing into a tight space. A friend of mine in Norway who is an expert on the real boats did some 3D printing for me and printed out a set of benches/boxes as well as the horns. I included a pic of the real parts for reference. He also printed a more correct set of prow figureheads.
I treated the deck to a base coat of Testors flat black followed by a coat of Testors Armor Sand (I still have the bottles) The hull is Testors Rubber Brown as black would have been too dark, this also gave me a good contrast to drybrush highlights in a light shade of tan.
I am discarding the sail and having one sewed to replicate the cross-hatch pattern of the vacuum form one that comes in the kit. I may paint it or not, I have not decided, I’m trying to locate a few figures in 1/50th scale to give a sense of reference for scale. I’ll have one side with oars out and one without
I’ll be watching!