Bireme - Greek Warship, Amati, scale 1/35 [COMPLETED BUILD]

[moreplovac]

Completed a bit of a work yesterday. Noticed that i put two extra fake hatches where the main mast and other fittings needs to go so had to do some "open-deck surgery" and remove two of them. The bad part is those hatches were glued to the deck so a small drop of acetone was required to assist with removal.

Two hatches removed and the damaged area sanded and cleaned.






Small work done at the begging of the hatches' row to secure the place where one of the sail rope will be ending. First two hatches were modified to accommodate the new dimensions and position. Small fake handle was also removed and re-positioned on hatches. Tiny wood strips were applied on the edges of the opening..




Since i decided not to do anything with wales at this moment i started to work on design for a ram. This going to be interesting process since there is no quite good documentation about this mighty devices used to ram (smash) opponent's ship.. There are few pictures available on the internet and some other fellow builders were attacking this problem as well so i think, combining all efforts will result in a good end product.


For now i started to build a ram from paper and tape..










That should be all for today..

 

[moreplovac]

Today i can work 1 hr longer; 2 am will magically become 1am so woohoo, extra hour for modeling..


Did a work on steering oars, a pair of oars made from 3mm kit stock wood. Cut the to the length, cut the groove for a paddle. The paddle that comes with the kit are made of 1mm plywood. First needed to clean up laser cut remains on the wood and then i decided to give them a quick bath in mahogany-color stain. After not more than a minute, i wiped out remains of the stain and got a nice color. Forgot to take picture, it will be seen on the oar..









Then i started to work on a handle for these oars. I made them out of two peaces of plank, leftover from the oarsman' sits making exercise. Glued two parts together, roughly put some shape markings and start working on it.










End result is like this..






Dry fitting on the ship reveals that it is not quite to scale so need to shape it a bit. Challenge is to get it into right scale (or as close as possible) without assistance from the plan..





Shaped it a bit to much so now need to get a new one..




Tomorrow will continue on this task and continue building the ram, from the paper for now.

 

[Aussie048]

moreplovac

That is excellent work.

The thing I also like in your post is the educational factor in the photos of how you achieved a result.

Cheers
Geoff

 

[moreplovac]

moreplovac

That is excellent work.

The thing I also like in your post is the educational factor in the photos of how you achieved a result.

Cheers
Geoff

Thanks Geoff
Tying to make it as educational as possible since i prefer the blogs of that type anyway... No one is perfect and the learning never ends..

 

[moreplovac]

Yesterday i was puzzled with the scale of steering oar handle i made and tried to calculate the correct size of it so it will be acceptable for the model. Not sure is it just me but i think that scale noted on the ship does not quite match the real ship size. There were no that much documents about those mighty machines but i came across the fact that approximate length of this ship would be about 38 m. With the model size of 55 cm this basically calculates to the app scale of 1/72 and not 1/35 which will be 19 m in real life.. Just by having 22 oarsmen in the ship and each would need roughly 1m space to do its work, the ship length will be more than 22 m.




Even if i change the real length to 35 m, it will not make big of a difference in scale.

Then i decided to make a small figure that will assist in scaling the handle, not quite eager to make a great carving masterpiece but something that can give me, at least visually the human body size in app scale.
Scale of 1/72 would give me a a size of an ancient Greek basketball player (2m) of a 2.7cm.. It should be manageable..

Thanks for following.

 

[moreplovac]

"Repetitio mater studiorum est" in my case makes perfect sense.

One handle completed and second handle marked for work.




Starting to shape it with a small rasp..











Done with a rasp, now it is time for more sophisticated tools. Here is picture showing different tools used to make the handle. I do have some power tools but my shipyard is still not ready yet, missing some shelving so my power tools are still in the boxes..





Testing the fitting on the ship. Looks ok even without ancient Greek basketball player




Started to collect a bit of a dust left after rasping and sanding. It will be used to fill out some imperfections on the ship itself.




And with one coat of danish oil, it looks very decent. It will not be this shiny, it is just lights that is playing with our eyes and my phone' camera..

 

[moreplovac]

Today, the work was concentrated on making a captain' chair (or throne) and finishing up building a ram out of the paper, for now.
For captain's chair i started by building a chair model out out packing material, to get it to the right shape and size.







Following the plan suggestion i made a chair out of a soft wood.. Did not have much available so i glued two peaces of balsa and carved the chair out of it.
After some thoughts i decided to drop a balsa chair since i would need to glue some other parts on it and balsa is not quite know by longevity when it comes to keeping glued part to itself, at least not in my experience. So the decision is to made a seat out of poplar, which i have kicking around from some other house work i have done. With a help of a rasp in different shapes, this was done to the satisfactory level..
Here are seats made from balsa and poplar...




Straightening up the front edge of poplar seat and testing on the ship.. Looks acceptable.



Now i will start working on a ram. After some research i decided to try replicating the ram from Israel's national museum..







Challenge accepted , will see what outcome will be.






Ordered some copper sheets and wires from Amazon. This will be interesting part.

More to come..

 

[moreplovac]

No much time for shipyard work during this long weekend; managed to work on ram a bit and to transfer basic templates to the more stiffer cardboard. This will be final template for a copper sheets..

 

[Graham]

This is looking great. Having had to make six oars for my current build I do not envy you the task - how many will you have to make?

 

[moreplovac]

Hi Graham, i already finished making all of them; 44 in total..
It is a task that involves repetition but with good ipod play list it is one accomplishing tasks.

 

[moreplovac]

Was working on main mast (actually the only one) today and here are some highlights.
First, following Amati's plan i draw the template for a mast.



I started to work on mast; protected the end of the mast and here is my setup..





Looking at the template and actual mast provided by Amati. Something was not quite right..





The size of the mast from a plan looked to me a bit bigger than the pole that comes within the kit..

So, digging up on some left overs from another project was able to find out an pole that might be better in diameter than the one form the kit..
Started to work on it and end result was quite satisfactory..







Worked on the top peace of the mast which will hold rigging by gluing 4 small left overs together, spare parts from the exercise of making oarsman sits.
Sanding them to the shape and to correct size, drilled a 3mm hole in the center and two small holes, as indicated on the plan plan. The diameter of those two holes is 1mm. Looked like Thor's hammer but in small scale..







Then i noticed at the back two holes are not as accurate as in the front. They do not line up correctly as they should; i will go back to make another version of mast top. Not today, i stayed late tonight, it will be interesting tomorrow when clock rings...



More to come.

 

[moreplovac]

Back to the shipyard after some time dedicated to real work and daily routines..
Today i attacked a part i did not like last time... Cut down a block of poplar, 1cm x 2cm so i have some room to hold the `patient` while drilling ( )



Some old basic geometry skills helped to mark down place for a hole and for pilot hole..



Back to bench drill press and made a hole..






Now this part has to be shaped to the correct size and form..

There are two holes, very tiny and close to each other that are used to hold some rigging so i decided to make them ahead of time and with some extra wood i can use to hold it while drilling.. I ordered few chucks that can hold the small size drill bits but, unfortunately there are not here yet. So. back to basics, i covered a 0.5mm drill bit with plenty of masking tape, make it a big fatter so it can be used with bench press drill. Just to show the perspective..




Managed to make those small holes, here is brief fitting test on the mast..




After some quality time with rasps, different sanding blocks and paper size, here is end result.




Happy with it, glued to the mast and tested on the ship..




At the end, i collected all attempts i was not quite happy with and here they are; some wrong size, some wrong wood, wrong hole, etc..




But they can be reused somewhere else so will keep them in a spare parts box.

Then i was thinking of treenails and what to do with them. The ship kit comes with 200 metal nails that can be used but for my taste they looked a bit out of the scale and too long.









So i decided to either make my own treenails or to fake it with wood filler. Here is my test attempt with wood filler:




Made a few holes, filled them up with wood filler and sand them - the beige colored one is called `natural` (red circle). For my planking it looks a bit to white-ish..
The second is walnut-colored filler (blue circle) and it looks much more acceptable. Since the whole point of treenailing the planking is to just add some details to the model and not for a structural strength, most likely i will go with walnut filler. I also like the fact that walnut colored filler will provide less visible treenails which would not drag attention from the model to treenails. There are few other techniques for making/faking treenails but i think will leave those for some other models.




During research i did not find correct answer how many treenails this ship requires. I still need to make decision how many treenails to install: should i just cover the upper part of the ship including place where oars will be installed or to cover the whole ship, including the complete hull.. Not sure yet, TBD.

This is the one i will go with in case i decide to do the treenails at all..




More to come soon...

 

[moreplovac]

It is time to drill some holes for oars. First i made a copy of a plan, cut it and mark it on the hull.





Make the marks for a drilling...




It is time to do some drilling...




Once the holes are drilled, i used needle file to reshape the hole. It supposed to be in kind of a egg shape as the oar movement is in front-back direction. This process is a bit repetitive but it was completed in a few hours, no problems there..




Holes completed.






Then a test run of setting up oars was done, just to feed curiosity of how it will look at the end.






Tomorrow i will start working on ridding but need to visit local shop to get few roles of good cotton threads. The one that comes with the kit is a bit too shiny and too polyester-ish for my taste..

Happy modeling..

 

[Graham]

Nice work, I am enjoying watching this build come together.

 

[moreplovac]

Thanks Graham, no much to submit, fairly busy at work... Hopefully will slow down during Christmas time...

 

[Graham]

Will you be fitting a spare on your model?

 

[moreplovac]

Looks like this picture is from reputable source so I would definitely try to find a good spot for a spare...

 

[Aginvicta]

It's coming along nicely and the oars certainly add a new dimension to it. Do you get a large drum and a bloke to beat it to keep time for the oarsmen?

Cheers Andy

 

[moreplovac]

Hi Andy, have not get a chance to look for a place for Ian Paice

 

[moreplovac]

A bit of a work happened over past weekend. Was working on yard, preparing it for a sail. Needed to make a call what type of rope (threat) to use...

The second from the bottom appeals the best for me, but the first one is also good.. Will see.. Back to work on yard..






Making a small grove..






Few drops of gel glue..






.. press tight and small amount of sanding make it looks like this





A little bit of a work on ends, and final products is like this:





So now i have to find i way to hold this yard and tight a ropes around it; not sure i can make it with only two hands. Researching some other forums threats, i come across very useful workbench extension i can easily build. So here it is; the purpose of it is to use those two clamps to hold yard or sail when you need to work on them.


While i was in build mode, i completed a small table that will be solely used to work on ridging, sails, masts, and other roping activities.






I will show more about this when times come; again, cannot use credit for this small workbench, it is borrowed from one of the forums on the internet.



Happy modeling.