My pleasure
HMS Sovereign of the Seas - Bashing DeAgostini Beyond Believable Boundaries
- Thread starter DARIVS ARCHITECTVS
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I like the look. Can still see the wood, but has the appropriate color.
Thanks so much for your help, HH. If you look at van de Velde's drawing, you see the middle deck gun ports painted what appears to be English flag colors, white with a red cross. This would look good alongside bulwarks that were whitewashed, but also look good alongside natural wood. Not sure which way to go here. The lower gun ports may have been red or plain wood, but have lion's faces on them. These details will look great on the model. My lower gun deck is all natural wood, so perhaps having natural wood lids with lions would look good. I'm not sure if the upper gun deck would be whitewashed or not, but red ochre bulwarks on the weather deck seem correct, and look good.I began with a look at Richard Endsor’s excellent book on the reconstruction of the third-rate Anne of 1678:
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Within, there are contract specifications for the Yarmouth of 1677. While there is some general mention of the paint and gilt work to be done, there are no specifics mentioned.
Interestingly, Richard draws a cutaway of the ship where only the weather deck bulwarks are painted red, as suggested by Nigel:
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Why, then, do most contemporary dockyard models show the interior of port lids painted a bright red? Wouldn’t that also presume that the interior planking is painted red to match?
Well, next, I looked at Frank Fox’s hugely important book “Great Ships..”
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Note the red port lids on the frontispiece, a Van de Velde portrait showing the HMS Prince. Inside, are pictures of the Science Museum model of the Prince:
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What I found really interesting, here, is that only the lid interiors, here, are painted red, but not the port framing, itself.
Although, as modelers we tend to presume that the interior bulwarks are painted this bright red (myself included), perhaps this is not so. Perhaps the lid interiors were painted such, so as to provide a striking backdrop to whatever port ornaments were painted or affixed to them.
Perhaps, the red is a color-code psyche-out toward the enemy as the ships prepare to engage; a reminder that all of these guns are about to extract a huge price in blood.
I can’t say for certain. I did find a few interesting discussions on the subject, both here and on MSW:
would this be a crime?
Good afternoon, beautiful day in Florida today. I am getting ready to start the Occre Albatross and looking at all the pictures of this ship i have decided that I would like the bulwarks painted dark green. Would this be a no no ? Would this take a mid 1800 ship out of that time period? This...shipsofscale.com
Red bulwarks
Does anyone know when the practice of painting bulwarks red began? Would it be appropriate for ships during the Armada? Kurtmodelshipworld.com
There is a particularly interesting discussion of the cheap to produce and readily available “Spanish Brown.”
All of this considered, I don’t think one can go too far wrong by painting a lime, whitewash to their bulwark interiors, even if your port lid interiors are painted red.
From a practical standpoint, it makes considerable sense to use a light color that is reflective in a dark dingy environment. That this lime wash has some value as an anti-microbial surface also supports its use, although I’d have to wonder whether that was common knowledge in the 17th C. Chief among all considerations is that whitewash would have been very cheap.
I think you will be in good company with these choices, Kurt!
I remember Chris Watton's Gold medal winning model in a UK magazine many moons ago, long before he did it for a living.He represented the port lids as white with red George cross and red surround.The port lining was also red.It looked stunning!
Kind Regards
Nigel
I plan on making those ports like that too from Willem van de Velde.
Kurt,the question is, are they lions or Satyrs?
Chris took the easier option of George crosses to both levels of lids.
Kind Regards
Nigel
Chris took the easier option of George crosses to both levels of lids.
Kind Regards
Nigel
Being properly British and all, my guess is they are lions. I have the perfect brass stampings of lion's heads for the gun ports, found them on Etsy a year ago.
The stained bamboo on the inside of the transom looked ugly, so I layered in with mahogany planks. A demi culverin drake, one of the stern chase guns, was chosen and wet black paint applied to the muzzle. This was used to mark four gun ports for the middle deck stern chasers on the transom. pilot holes were then drilled, then larger holes. The angle and shape of the gun ports was adjusted with a rat tail file, and some more final adjustment needs to be done before I am satisfied with their shape and position. The demi culverin drakes were test fit in position. Also, blackened etched brass eyebolts were installed for each broadside gun port using holes previously drilled using a jig.
All four chasers on this deck will face aft, and the rear most broadside gun port lids will be closed. Using Payne as the source for gunport placement made it too cramped in the stern corners for two guns to be in place, facing aft and side. Before I forget, I'm going to have to fashion semi circular doors from scratch for these round ports, hinges internally on the vertical and install them.
The new mahogany looks a lot better.
The eyebolts are small, 1mm inner diameter.
All four chasers on this deck will face aft, and the rear most broadside gun port lids will be closed. Using Payne as the source for gunport placement made it too cramped in the stern corners for two guns to be in place, facing aft and side. Before I forget, I'm going to have to fashion semi circular doors from scratch for these round ports, hinges internally on the vertical and install them.
The new mahogany looks a lot better.
The eyebolts are small, 1mm inner diameter.
A little more work was done tonight. The middle deck stern chaser gun port frames were filed to final shape and painted black. Eyebolts for the stern chase guns were installed for the gun tackles. Holes were drilled to accept the shanks of the breech line eyebolts for the guns.
Little by little. What patience!
, now this takes patience. The middle deck stern chase guns were installed and rigged, and it was very slow and careful tweezer work hooking the gun tackles, especially on the carriages in the corners. I had to rediscover the order to rig everything since it was a while since guns in corners were rigged.The corner guns are installed first, then the ones nearer the centerline.
First, the gun tackles are loosened up to about 2" and hooked onto the eyebolts on the bulwarks. A tad of CA is applied to the hooks/eyebolts so they don't come unhooked.
Then, the carriage is moved into place and the shanks of the breech line eyebolts are glued into holes into the bulwark.
A stick of wood is inserted in the muzzle of the gun to act as a handle to help maneuver it. The stick is used to lift the carriage off the deck with the rear deck being high in the air, exposing the bottoms of the trucks. CA glue was applied with a long stick to the bottom of each truck and the carriage is lowered and glued to the deck. The position of the carriage is checked and adjusted before the glue takes hold.
The rear end of the gun tackles are hooked onto the carriage eyebolts and some CA glue is applied to the hook/eyebolt once the blocks are rotating to the correct angle. This is the hardest step because of lack view and access.
Tweezers are used to take the slack out of the gun tackles, and the bitter ends are glued to the deck behind the carriages to hold them down.
Once the tackle lines have dried, a chisel razor knife is used to trim the excess line of the gun tackle line.
Coils of line are wrapped around a rubber coated handle of one of the diamond files which was first wetted with Weldbond PVA, which is more pasty and thicker than Elmer's Glue, and dried clear.
Once ALMOST dry, the coils are slipped off the file handle and place in a vice and squeezed into a flatter shape, because line coiled on a deck doesn't naturally stack up edge to edge in a cylinder shape.
After 4 minutes in the vice, the glue has fully set. The ends of the coil are trimmed to length, on leaving a slight tail and the other flush with the coil. For each carriage , you need a left hand coil and a right hand coil.
The coils are then glued to the deck, just over the end of the gun tackle line that this glued to the deck. This creates the illusion that the coils are extensions of the gun tackle line. This is a preferable method over trying to coil uncooperative thread of the gun tackle into a neat coil and gluing it to the deck. Ask me how I know this.
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Great job on the little(they look tiny) cannon blocks, very realistic proportions as many I see look very overscale.
The corner guns are installed first, then the ones nearer the centerline.
First, the gun tackles are loosened up to about 2" and hooked onto the eyebolts on the bulwarks. A tad of CA is applied to the hooks/eyebolts so they don't come unhooked.
Then, the carriage is moved into place and the shanks of the breech line eyebolts are glued into holes into the bulwark.
A stick of wood is inserted in the muzzle of the gun to act as a handle to help maneuver it. The stick is used to lift the carriage off the deck with the rear deck being high in the air, exposing the bottoms of the trucks. CA glue was applied with a long stick to the bottom of each truck and the carriage is lowered and glued to the deck. The position of the carriage is checked and adjusted before the glue takes hold.
The rear end of the gun tackles are hooked onto the carriage eyebolts and some CA glue is applied to the hook/eyebolt once the blocks are rotating to the correct angle. This is the hardest step because of lack view and access.
Tweezers are used to take the slack out of the gun tackles, and the bitter ends are glued to the deck behind the carriages to hold them down.
Once the tackle lines have dried, a chisel razor knife is used to trim the excess line of the gun tackle line.
Coils of line are wrapped around a rubber coated handle of one of the diamond files which was first wetted with Weldbond PVA, which is more pasty and thicker than Elmer's Glue, and dried clear.
Once ALMOST dry, the coils are slipped off the file handle and place in a vice and squeezed into a flatter shape, because line coiled on a deck doesn't naturally stack up edge to edge in a cylinder shape.
After 4 minutes in the vice, the glue has fully set. The ends of the coil are trimmed to length, on leaving a slight tail and the other flush with the coil. For each carriage , you need a left hand coil and a right hand coil.
The coils are then glued to the deck, just over the end of the gun tackle line that this glued to the deck. This creates the illusion that the coils are extensions of the gun tackle line. This is a preferable method over trying to coil uncooperative thread of the gun tackle into a neat coil and gluing it to the deck. Ask me how I know this.
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Would they be able to aim through those little ports? Or change elevation?
The ports are small, but some elevation is possible.
The blocks on most models are always far too large. The ones I used are 2mm blocks, and even they are twice as large as they should be. I bought out The Dockyard's whole supply of 1.5mm blocks, which will be used on the upper deck and all carriages on visible on the foc'sle and stern quarterdeck.
Most of the upper deck gun ports were roughly cut out. Lots of filing is required to get them to their final dimensions. These are smaller than the ports on the decks below. Four holes were drilled with a Dremel tool in the corners of each port, then the center was removed by cutting them out with a small saw blade in a razor knife handle by hand. A portable vacuum cleaner was used to remove all the sawdust.
Thanks for depleting the resources, there, Kurt!
Sorry about that... couldn't resist.
