A Dutch Fluyt in shell first, reconstructing the "Ghost ship" scale 1:36
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Hi Rodolphe,
Thx for the feed back.
I am well aware of these but they still don't show that it was common practise that drawings were used for the build of a standard ship, which was the majority.
The phrase of Nicolas " Never would I have dared to undertake this Work of the new Ship-building, if not had fallen into my hands, some ground-rules and drawings, designed by my late father Cornelis Witsen." Actually shows to me these drawings were an exception. As if drawings were used in every shipyard he would have been stumbling over these as Amsterdam in his time was the world center of ship building.
To me the drawings in Witsens book are used as an illustration and are not full plan construction drawings.
At last if you work with proportions and you can draw critical parts on a mould floor with plain caulk, why would you draw a complete design on something as expensive as paper. Maybe when you build a speeljacht for a king but not when you build the 100th fluyt for a wood trader.
Thx for the feed back.
I am well aware of these but they still don't show that it was common practise that drawings were used for the build of a standard ship, which was the majority.
The phrase of Nicolas " Never would I have dared to undertake this Work of the new Ship-building, if not had fallen into my hands, some ground-rules and drawings, designed by my late father Cornelis Witsen." Actually shows to me these drawings were an exception. As if drawings were used in every shipyard he would have been stumbling over these as Amsterdam in his time was the world center of ship building.
To me the drawings in Witsens book are used as an illustration and are not full plan construction drawings.
At last if you work with proportions and you can draw critical parts on a mould floor with plain caulk, why would you draw a complete design on something as expensive as paper. Maybe when you build a speeljacht for a king but not when you build the 100th fluyt for a wood trader.
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To me this almost looks like we're talking different languages. Personally, I like to make a distinction between sketches and drawings.
Sketches are mainly for illustration purposes, to support descriptions. Drawings are fully dimensioned (Full Scale drawings also belong to that category) and are accompanied by a bill of materials or a material specification, enabling parts to be made from said drawings. The picture with @Rodolphe's latest post is in my opinion a sketch, illustrating a description. No parts can be reliably fabricated from that sketch. In the current age, drawings are more and more being replaced with 3D definitions, with ever in complexity increasing product data- and configuration management systems. We've come a long way since the 17th century...
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To me it's not semantics: the illustrations in this post underlines my point exactly, there's no way to extract sufficient information from these illustrations to accurately build (a model of) the sloep, depicted in these illustrations. So I would still consider those to be sketches.
I am not knowledgeable enough on the topic of whether or not drawings were available and used in the 17th century, I'll leave that to thise with a more profound knowledge of the subject.
To answer your last question, they are, in your terminology, sketches on paper.
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I expect Rodolphe already has a geometric interpretation of the design lines of this boat ready. Or at least he should have it and I would love to see such a presentation.
He may even already have a complete reconstruction of the hull shape. For this, one needs knowledge of the procedures for modifying the shape of the master frame according to the methods used at the time (which are not adequately described in Witsen's and van Yk's works and have to be derived from other sources), as well as the co-ordinates for the tracing and correct positioning of all the necessary frames, which are taken from the main, longitudinal design lines.
These co-ordinates can essentially be obtained in three ways: 1) by means of various geometric transformations, for example of the mezzaluna kind, immediately at full scale in the yard, 2) mathematically, and 3) by measuring them on a previously made drawing at a smaller scale and multiplying accordingly. And, of course, their mixes.
Personally I am becoming more and more certain that all these methods were employed in designs à la hollandaise, just as in any other, maybe only the refining of the projects with additional design tools, like (smoothing or control) waterlines, came a bit later. Just a reminder here that in order to apply these smoothing waterlines, a full draught on paper is already a must, that is, containing at least the contours of all the leading frames (bends).
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Hi Rodolphe,
I thought it was obvious, but I'll explain as simply as I can. If you were to carry out an analysis of this plan, and as a result you could prove that the lines of this boat were drawn using regular geometric curves, and not in the haphazard manner proper to an artistic sketch, you would gain an additional strong argument for your point. I don't know why you don't want to take advantage of this fantastic opportunity. Nor do I know how you can fail to see the relevance of such an examination of specific contemporary evidence to this general issue.
Instead, you post Otte Blom's reconstruction, worthless from the point of view of a factual discussion, because it essentially proves nothing. Quite the same way that building models by eye proves nothing either, doesn't it?
Reproducing Blom's reconstruction here is worthless even for a couple of reasons — firstly, the way it was done by Blom is not demonstrated, only the final result. Secondly, its correspondence to the original drawing is also not demonstrated. Last, but not least, Blom's reconstruction contains errors in itself, it is enough to look at the run of its lines.
So once again, I suggest you make the effort, instead of engaging in struggles of a rhetorical nature that will lead to nothing but a dialogue of the kind: ‘– it's a sketch’, “– no, it's a design drawing”, “– no, it's a sketch”, “– no, it's a design drawing” [...].
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Gentlemen @-Waldemar- and @Rodolphe Don't you realize that you have hijacked Maarten's build log? I suggest you to create a new thread and continue this interesting discussion.
Please let me know if help require to move some of your posts to a neaw thread. I will be more than happy to help.
Please let me know if help require to move some of your posts to a neaw thread. I will be more than happy to help.
Agreed. However, for the sake of avoiding similar situations in the future, it would be useful to warn in advance which threads are in the domain of the public forum, being open to any posting, and which are not.
I'll take this opportunity to ask if you could also help remove some of the posts from my threads that contribute nothing of substance to them? I would prepare a set.
All threads are in the public forum domain; we don't have private forums or threads (except for PMs, which are private to participants only).
This thread's topic is 'A Dutch Fluyt in shell first...' Why divert to Duch's general building discussion if it is unrelated to the subject?
Start a new thread on Duch ship construction, and we can continue the discussion there
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Agreed in principle, I don't intend to make any more entries here, although I would be concerned that Maarten might be a bit uncomfortable about giving just such a specific reason. But maybe not, I don't know.
Rodolphe, I think you should continue to convince the sceptics (preferably in another thread as suggested), rather than me. As it happens, I have even already found and shown how Dutch ships were designed by presenting otherwise demanding analyses of quite a number of surviving artifacts from the period, and as a result I personally no longer have the slightest doubt on the matter. All presentations to date relating to Dutch design methods are on this forum and readily accessible.
Once again, I encourage you to make a similar attempt based on the plan of this boat you reproduce here, because, as you can see for yourself, even the words of a classic like Witsen are consistently rejected by readers of his work in favour of today's (mis)concepts.
If you decide to do so, I promise to undertake a study (and show if successful) of the design of another Dutch frigate from around 1700 by Hendrik Bindem. Hopefully this will uncover an as yet unknown design method. But that in the further future, as we are now working with Alexander Ivanov on another project. Sadly, outside the forum, as he has been successfully chased away from here despite my attempt to prevent this from happening
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Hear me, Waldemar. I think there is nothing wrong with adding and discussing all the information related to Flyit, which is exactly what Maarten is building. But all of a sudden, the discussion diverted and became a discussion between you and Rodolphe on a different subject. This is why I suggested starting a brand new thread and continuing. it is a Win-Win resolution.
Hi gents,
No worries I don't mind to have some other Dutch related ship building topics in this thread.
Currently I am on holidays so thanks for keeping my thread active
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Discussions are always welcome even if we not always agree with each other.
No worries I don't mind to have some other Dutch related ship building topics in this thread.
Currently I am on holidays so thanks for keeping my thread active
.Discussions are always welcome even if we not always agree with each other.
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It seems to me that both of you guys could be right. The easiest things for scholars to study are those of well organized organizations, like governments because they have left records. Thus we have books explaining “how things were done.” In the case of British and French shipbuilding it’s shipwrights preparing draughts, and lines lofted in a mould loft. Or in the case of the Netherlands, Whitsen and Van Yik.
In the Western World, ships were built in all sorts of environments from large, well organized shipyards to frontier communities. These diverse environments required diverse approaches to building watercraft. A couple of examples: A book in my library describes “lofting” of an 1850’s era Great Lakes Schooner of sophisticated design by drawing lines in the diirt. No,I believe that this beautifully moulded hull required a real mound loft. On the other hand, there’s “The Ship That Held Up Wall Street,” the Princess Caroline built in the American Colony of South Carolina in 1717. The remains of this ship excavated in New York City have been extensively studied. Framing was found to be shaped with circular arcs with radii of multiples of four. Followed exactly this does not produce a fair hull. The erected frames would have required extensive dubbing.
The methods used by artisans to shape fair hulls before the extensive use of fully lofted frame shapes has only been extensively studied in the recent past. There is still much to be learned.
Anyhow, regardless of how the original vessel was designed, your shell first model is well done!
Roger
In the Western World, ships were built in all sorts of environments from large, well organized shipyards to frontier communities. These diverse environments required diverse approaches to building watercraft. A couple of examples: A book in my library describes “lofting” of an 1850’s era Great Lakes Schooner of sophisticated design by drawing lines in the diirt. No,I believe that this beautifully moulded hull required a real mound loft. On the other hand, there’s “The Ship That Held Up Wall Street,” the Princess Caroline built in the American Colony of South Carolina in 1717. The remains of this ship excavated in New York City have been extensively studied. Framing was found to be shaped with circular arcs with radii of multiples of four. Followed exactly this does not produce a fair hull. The erected frames would have required extensive dubbing.
The methods used by artisans to shape fair hulls before the extensive use of fully lofted frame shapes has only been extensively studied in the recent past. There is still much to be learned.
Anyhow, regardless of how the original vessel was designed, your shell first model is well done!
Roger
Finally back at work on the fluyt.
Today a start on the PS forward side fitting the first "oplangen" (second futtocks).
These oplangen will be fitted with treenails to the bilge planks and temporary fitted to the "scheerstrook" which is just a temporary mould to shape the line of greatest breadth.
And yes again the shape and size of these oplangen are all different in width and length. The thickness of them will be made identical to fit the planking.
The hull profile of all these oplangen is identical and taken from the center frame design. Only in bow and stern of the ship this will change, but more on that later.
Today a start on the PS forward side fitting the first "oplangen" (second futtocks).
These oplangen will be fitted with treenails to the bilge planks and temporary fitted to the "scheerstrook" which is just a temporary mould to shape the line of greatest breadth.
And yes again the shape and size of these oplangen are all different in width and length. The thickness of them will be made identical to fit the planking.
The hull profile of all these oplangen is identical and taken from the center frame design. Only in bow and stern of the ship this will change, but more on that later.