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New guy - scratch viking ships

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Lionel88

Joined
Apr 10, 2025
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3
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Hi everyone,
I've made a handful of scratch ships (roughly viking longship style) of my own design, going as far as cutting down the trees and collecting pine sap for pitch (didn't go as planned). I was unaware of the vibrant model ship community and your beautiful works of art. I just joined and it's been awe inspiring to see the research and discussions about details. My aim here is to improve in terms of design fidelity and building skills as well as enjoy the comradeship (pun intended). Here you can see my recent ships. I've already got a logbook full of refinements I want to make, but always feel free to offer constructive criticisms and advice! 20250311_174906_02.jpg20240825_161059.jpg
 
Lionel88 said:
going as far as cutting down the trees and collecting pine sap for pitch (didn't go as planned).
Click to expand...
That has to be the BEST attempt I have ever heard! I HAD to look up how to do this when I saw your post (see below) It ain't easy!

Welcome to SoS, Lionel

Pine tar for sealing a boat is a traditional method, often used in conjunction with boiled linseed oil and turpentine. A simpe recipe involves equal parts of these the ingredients with a small amount of Japan drier to speed up the drying process. The pine tar can be extracted from pine wood using a process of destructive distillation or by applying heat and pressure to the wood in a closed container.


Pine tree with sap.PNG
 
Thanks for the warm welcome everyone! I'm in northern NJ.

One part I still struggle with is making tight overlapping scarf joints in strakes (planks in a Viking ship) when the strakes are ~1/16" thick. Can anyone point me to a tool or part of the site that makes this quicker and/or easier? Right now is use a type of leather working tool (skiving tool) and a box cutter. See below for an example of the skiving tool. I was thinking a small powered saw with about a 15 degree jig to hold the strake getting scarfed but my current mini chop saw doesn't have the throat for this and the blade is of course circular. Apologies if i should post this somewhere else!

1747478936930.png
 
AllanKP69 said:
That has to be the BEST attempt I have ever heard! I HAD to look up how to do this when I saw your post (see below) It ain't easy!

Welcome to SoS, Lionel

Pine tar for sealing a boat is a traditional method, often used in conjunction with boiled linseed oil and turpentine. A simpe recipe involves equal parts of these the ingredients with a small amount of Japan drier to speed up the drying process. The pine tar can be extracted from pine wood using a process of destructive distillation or by applying heat and pressure to the wood in a closed container.


View attachment 515749
Click to expand...
Interesting Allan! When i looked it up, the traditional recipe for pine pitch (is tar the same thing??) was harvested pine sap (i think my DIY tree tap was at the wrong time of year which means i extracted almost nothing), heated/boiled with charcoal dust. Regardless, it's too messy of a process to caulk the seams unless I want to tar the whole hull. But it would be mighty tempting to feather it afterwards, lol.
 
how about a shooting board? you can jig the angle and sand it down. nice part is the work is clamped down.

the other way is a scraper, or a plane, which ive used for many situations like yours. again using a shooting board to hold the work in place and have the angle set at the edge.
 
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