After the neat builds I have seen here on this kit, and the fact that I am in the middle of a course in Viking history, I couldn’t wait any longer to get the kit on the bench. I want to not duplicate any of the previous models presented already, so I will be trying other options whenever I can. I decided first off I would not gild the figurehead or the sternpost carving, depicting these figures as bronze. I have seen pictures of bronze figureheads, and decided that the Vikings were after plunder, and wouldn’t waste gold instead of steal it. So I used my technique of starting with Alclad copper, followed by a very light coat of a dark brown, Then medium gray and zinc chromate washes. I felt the artwork on the shield decals was a bit intricate, so hopefully I will be able to do some simpler inkjet shields with a bit less fancy design.
My latest thinking on the shields is that they were really thin. I’ve got the info somewhere, but they were only about 10mm thick at the rim and maybe twice that in the middle. The ideas seems to be, and how re-enacters fight, was to absorb the first blow, probably shatter, and then the warrior could attack and kill his asailant before they could recover from swinging their own weapon. 10mm at 1/60th or so would be less than 0.20 mm. Thin.
Diameter maybe 800mm, also small.
Really the only shields ever found related to a longboat were the ones at Gokstad, which were arranged in a circle around the ship if I recall. They all had the same paint job. No doubt the guy that was buried there’s logo.
Apparently, in later centuries some Vikings adapted a taller shield, like the Normans were using. Round ones look better, though. The prof doing my lectures believed that when used on the bulwarks, they were mainly a defense against arrows. In sea battles arrows were used a lot.
I haven’t gotten to 1066 yet, but if I remember right, William waited for a major Scandinavian raid up north in Yorkshire to make his raid. Never heard whether there was cooperation or not- maybe my prof will get into that.
Hi Don - the ship’s looking good, I like the idea of bronze instead of gold - makes sense to me. From my schooldays, I recall the account of the battle of Stamford Bridge is stirring stuff, but I won’t spoil it for you!
Found some pictures yesterday from that museum in Australia that shows what they believe the sea chests looked like. Thinking I will add some. What do you think- would they remain on deck during sailing, or would they be stored below deck?
Is there really a ‘below deck?’ My understanding was that, with the shallow draft these vessels had, aside from storage wells of a sort at bow and stern, the area below the deck planking was largely devoted to stone ballast.
Of course, I could be wrong… (I’ve been wrong before. [:$])
i don’t know but I will look through some books I have, although I doubt there’s much. The term “room” is important. A room was the space fore and aft between the oar holes. Ships were often described in size using the term, i.e. the Gokstad ship was a 16 room ship.
Then in some sagas, the crew are described as having “half room” chests. There would also be a chest for weapons, and in one of the ships, I think Oseberg’s, a chest was found with grain seed.
With 16 -18 foot oars which have been found, optimal leverage would suggest 10-12 feet outside the ship and 6-7 feet inboard. So each rower had an area of maybe two feet by three or four feet to sit in, and the inner ends of the oars were about 2- 2 1/2 feet above the deck. That means the chests were fairly small and pretty flat, probably wrapped up in something somewhat waterproof and tied up with rope.
The oar holes had a neat detail (the whole ships are a collection of neat details) where a slot was carved up from the round part, for slipping the oar blade-first out from inside the ship.
One thing for sure. whatever space was under the deck would have had a lot of water in it. No baler was found at Gokstad, but a very conventional looking one was found at Oseberg.
Yes, the picture I have of the chest on that Aussie Museum build shows chests in place and they do look approximately a half room.
I suspect much of the deck planking was removable for storage. Some of their raids took a fair amount of time. Although they beached ships at night, I would doubt they could count on food and water at every stop.
Got some more work done over weekend. Since I intend to showship rigged for sail, oars stowed, I punched out 32 disks from0.020 styrene to act as oar port covers. These were glued inside hull and painted.
I have started the rigging. I found a couple of diagrams of viking ships, and several pictures, graphics, and pictures of rigged models. No two were the same. I have read about the variability of Viking ships so I feel free to rig with the conbination I chose, as long as things would provide the functions ofthe lines shown in these references.
Also shown are the completed 24 shields using the kit decals. There will be eight more using homemade decals with common Viking graphics.
Decided to redo the forestay. Several problems- the tensioning area was too high up, and the serving was pretty crude. Havent done much rigging for a few months and need time to recover my rigging mojo.
Have a question on rigging fittings. There are two rigging fittings I have seen only on viking ship rigging, and I have no idea what they are called. The first are the ones included in the kit, which look kind of like a ref signalling a field goal;
The second is something I see on some shrouds, sort of a lever/clamp to tension the shrouds and provide a quick release for stowing the mast (this is the fitting I will use on my shrouds.
Sort of looks like it could be made from an animal horn! In this shot the stay is served but not tarred. I have also seen pictures of this fitting tarred above and below fitting. Anyway, anyone know what it is called?
Got the shrouds rigged now. Here is a closeup of my take on that fitting that looks like it may be made from an animal horn. Looks like it is a quick-disconnect that also gives a bit of additional tension when it is clamped. Since the Vikings frequently stepped and lowered the mast, this looks like a neat fitting.
Here is a shot of the simple jig for serving parts of the lines near ends.
I have seen pictures of rigging with entire lines tarred, and some with only the fitting and serving tarred. I have elected to go with the latter. Here is picture with running rigging complete.
I am starting on the sail next. This is going to be a lot of work. I don’t particularly like the kit sail- I believe it is molded with too much depth. But I am not a great tailer, and didn’t want to put in the effort to sew one from scratch, so I’ll do the best I can with the kit sail.
Finally discarded the kit’s plastic sail, and made one from paper, a pretty simple, with inkjet coloring. I got it wet in a few spots and it made a slight stain. But I figured Viking sails must have gotten wet at times, and it looked weathered, so I left it. Working on the running rigging now. Not much to it, be done soon. Then will be stowed spars and oars, followed by the shields. Also gave the base a couple of coats of glosscoat- it will be ready soon.
I am doing the rigging on my rigging stand. It is a simple stand made of two sort of telescoping pieces of PVC pipe with a swivel tray on top. The height is adjustable in one inch incraments. The bottom pipe is fastened to a simple plywood square with L brackets. I find it very handy.
I’m enjoying this build. Your taking a class which touches on this subject is interesting. I hope you let us know more about what you learn.
I think your build plan is much more representative of the bulk of Viking vessels than what’s depicted on the box art. That’s just a guess on my part but like your plan.
