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Vasa 1628 - Billing Boats 1:75 Modified

Krister_L

Krister_L

Joined
Oct 14, 2023
Messages
146
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Location
Norra Unnaryd, South of Sweden
Vasa 1628 skala 1:75. Couldn't hold my horses, got an idea a while ago about adding the gun decks to the Vasa kit. Started the layot in the drawings from Billing Boats, but realised that I have to put the real bulkheads in place and mark the location of the decks on each one of them. I also realize that some of the bulkheads will cover a gunport, but I think that's a problem which can be solved. Biggest problem will probaly be to get the canons in there and make them stay. Now I'm trying to get bulkheads in place, so I can mark them this week and do the drawings next month while I'm in Poland again.

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Krister_L said:
Vasa 1628 skala 1:75. Couldn't hold my horses, got an idea a while ago about adding the gun decks to the Vasa kit. Started the layot in the drawings from Billing Boats, but realised that I have to put the real bulkheads in place and mark the location of the decks on each one of them. I also realize that some of the bulkheads will cover a gunport, but I think that's a problem which can be solved. Biggest problem will probaly be to get the canons in there and make them stay. Now I'm trying to get bulkheads in place, so I can mark them this week and do the drawings next month while I'm in Poland again.

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Very interesting project
 
Vasa 1628, Billing Boats Modified: I am now trying to determine the position of the two gun decks. At a first glance they appears to follow a more curved line than the main deck, however this could be an optical illusion, possibly the distance from the bottom edge of the gun port to the top surface of the deck is longer on the rearmost gun ports. My first thought was that it would be the same distance everywhere from the deck up to the bottom edge of the gun port, but that needs to be investigated a little more closely. I get that the distance from the surface of the upper gun deck down to the surface of the lower gun deck is approx. 2.25m (30mm on my model) and maybe a little more between the main deck and the upper gun deck. I also understand that the lower gun ports appear to be larger than the upper ones. I am starting to think that a visit to the museum must take place before I start sawing in the bulkheads.

Gunports Vasa KL.jpg

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The Museum is so impressive - had the luck of visiting twice - once in the mid 90s then again in 2018 - many more displays the second time around.
I also had the pleasure of spending 1/1 time with Fred Hocker (I was also invited into the research area) who mentioned that they are still investigating the wreck sight and finding new items as well (that was in 2018)

Will follow along great start. I used the Billings sheets for rigging the sails on my very poor Corel example (bad kit IMO) did not know any better back then.....

Regards,
 
Hej Krister,
Let me know when you are coming, would like to hear more about your build.

The run of the gundecks follows the run of the wales on the exterior of the hull, and the gunports are more or less equally spaced above the deck, except for the last port on the lower gundeck. It is in the gunroom, which has a raised deck and the gunport is smaller than the others on the lower gundeck.

You are correct, the lower deck ports are larger (by about 10 cm) than the upper gundeck ports; they anticipate an armament scheme discussed in 1627, of 24-pounders on the lower deck and 12-pounders on the upper gundeck, which was not enacted. So the 24-pounders actually mounted on the upper gundeck were firing through undersized ports, which limited their traverse a little.

If you really want to go all out, the gunports on the port side do not line up with those on the starboard side! They are off by up to a full port width in some locations.

Fred
 
Hi Fred

Thank's a lot, it would be really interersting to have a chat with you. I think my visit will be sometime during the second half of August, I'm off to Poland tomorrow for a month's work and will be back at the end of July. Do you have a rough estimation about the measurement from deck surface up to the lower edge of the gunports? I will try to draw up the bulkheads coming month, now when I know where the gundecks should be located.

Looking forward to see You

// Krister
 
Still struggling a bit with location of the gundecks. I took a few of the pdf drawings that Fred Hocker uploaded to "warshipsvasa.freeforums.net" some 10 years ago, and used them as sketchpictures in SolidWorks. I then tested the drawings from Billing Boats and they fits quite good, both main deck, wales and gunports. Fred mentioned in the forum that these drawings were old and that they were working on a new set of drawings at that time. It looks like Billing might have used these drawings for their model, but if Fred is correct about the run of the gundecks following the run of the wales, then these drawings are for sure not correct. I'll keep on digging for more info

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Krister_L said:
Vasa 1628, Billing Boats Modified: I am now trying to determine the position of the two gun decks. At a first glance they appears to follow a more curved line than the main deck, however this could be an optical illusion, possibly the distance from the bottom edge of the gun port to the top surface of the deck is longer on the rearmost gun ports. My first thought was that it would be the same distance everywhere from the deck up to the bottom edge of the gun port, but that needs to be investigated a little more closely. I get that the distance from the surface of the upper gun deck down to the surface of the lower gun deck is approx. 2.25m (30mm on my model) and maybe a little more between the main deck and the upper gun deck. I also understand that the lower gun ports appear to be larger than the upper ones. I am starting to think that a visit to the museum must take place before I start sawing in the bulkheads.

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From my recent visit

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Hi Frankie

Yes, I have a few pictures myself like this from av visit back in 2008. But my problem started with the drawings I found on the Internet, uploaded to a forum by Fred Hocker. According to what he states here in this thread, the curve of the gundecks pretty much follows the curve of the outside wales. In the drawings they looks differerent, but I have decided now to let them follow the wales, and to have the same measurement up to the gunports all over each deck. It might be so that the crossection in the drawing shows the center of the deck and when the deck is getting narrower the further aft you go, this may be the cause of this optical illusion. A closer look at another drawing seems to verify this.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm going to take a trip up to Stockholm to visit the museum later on this summer, to see if I can dig up some more facts before I start cutting out the bulkheads. To be extra sure I have bought material so I can copy the original bulkheads from the Billing Boats kit.
 
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Hi Krister

Once you get to the artillery, I can provide you with decent and reliable reconstruction drawings of “stormstycken” of Polish origin. Strictly speaking, this concerns three guns of the Lithuanian (royal) artillery. The fourth “stormstycke”, originally belonging to the private artillery of one of the Lithuanian magnates, is already more difficult to reconstruct, but here too I think I can suggest some reasonable, approximating clues. The latter gun in particular must have been a masterpiece in its class, especially in terms of workmanship and ornamentation.

You may, of course, choose to build on other, previous suggestions or simply use the barrels from the kit, yet it is fair to say that all attempts so far to recreate the appearance of these particular guns are, unfortunately, hopelessly misguided. On the other hand, with a model of relatively such small scale, it may indeed not matter much...

Cheers
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-Waldemar- said:
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Hi Krister

Once you get to the artillery, I can provide you with decent and reliable reconstruction drawings of “stormstycken” of Polish origin. Strictly speaking, this concerns three guns of the Lithuanian (royal) artillery. The fourth “stormstycke”, originally belonging to the private artillery of one of the Lithuanian magnates, is already more difficult to reconstruct, but here too I think I can suggest some reasonable, approximating clues. The latter gun in particular must have been a masterpiece in its class, especially in terms of workmanship and ornamentation.

You may, of course, choose to build on other, previous suggestions or simply use the barrels from the kit, yet it is fair to say that all attempts so far to recreate the appearance of these particular guns are, unfortunately, hopelessly misguided. On the other hand, with a model of relatively such small scale, it may indeed not matter much...

Cheers
.​
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Thanks Waldemar, I'll bear that in mind once I get that far in this build
 
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