VASA 490 Build Log - Billing Boats, 1:75 [Completed Build]

Thank you Heinrich. Walnut is special, I made a tv stand out of years ago and found out then depth of its beauty. I'm somewhat curious about oak as a model material. It is probably difficult to work with because of its hardness. If you know of someone on this forum who has used it in their log I would be interested to know.
Hardness of not the problem with oak. Walnut is also hard. Oak has a very open grain. The grain is too large to represent wood well on a model because it is far out of scale. It would look very coarse on a model and fine grained woods are a better choice. That is not to say that it was not ever used on models. Red oak is the worst because there are veins of very course wood which are so course that they appear like micro-straws to the eye. Below you can see the grain. I have milled cannon carriages and parrel parts from red oak, and these veins have cause the parts to easily break. Better to use cherry or maple for small parts. The grain appears too large appearance wise for hull planking also.

end grain shows the pores from the course veins
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Hardness of not the problem with oak. Walnut is also hard. Oak has a very open grain. The grain is too large to represent wood well on a model because it is far out of scale. It would look very coarse on a model and fine grained woods are a better choice. That is not to say that it was not ever used on models. Red oak is the worst because there are veins of very course wood which are so course that they appear like micro-straws to the eye. Below you can see the grain. I have milled cannon carriages and parrel parts from red oak, and these veins have cause the parts to easily break. Better to use cherry or maple for small parts. The grain appears too large appearance wise for hull planking also.

end grain shows the pores from the course veins
View attachment 303144
Hi Kurt. Thank you for this information, makes better sense to stay with the tighter grain hardwoods then.
 
Good morning, everyone.
It's been about 3 weeks since my last update. I have not made a lot of progress but did want to show what I have done. I've added the fore and main topsail mast along with their shroud lines. Note I have not started the rat lines yet. I'm developing a rat line rope of approx. 0.35mm. Still experimenting with this. I've also set up the fore stays associated with the mast but have not yet anchored them.

View attachment 303049View attachment 303050

Below you see a close up of the dead eyes going thru the foretop, again for all those I used black coated wire for the stropping which I welded the ends and painted. For the benefit of those who have not done this before, I attached all the tops and blocks to the top of the mast prior to installing the mast itself.

View attachment 303051

This last photo is an offset alignment shot. I don't know why but these angles and top-down shots are the most fascinating to me. One of the things on my to do list is come up with a better place to photograph this ship. It takes up all my available work space and I know there is a lot of background clutter that can be distracting.

View attachment 303052

I hope you all enjoy the photos, I'll try for greater progress next update and as always thanks for looking in on me.
Happy modeling!
Not even complete yet and she already looks like the real beauty she is. Good job.
 
Concerning speed, some have said I build fast. But I point out, that I always work the same speed... I just work a lot of hours in a day, on average.
Therefore my fast progress is achieved by increasing average time spent in a week. Most of it occurring on the weekend, or a sleepless night! ;)
Truth be known I probably spend an inordinate amount of time staring, thinking at my ship yard than most. One reason being trying to figure out where to run rigging line and how to terminate it.
 
Truth be known I probably spend an inordinate amount of time staring, thinking at my ship yard than most. One reason being trying to figure out where to run rigging line and how to terminate it.
Yes research and thinking is part of time spent. I usually do that at night before bed, doing online searches and saving images, etc. Then I use that for the next time I am working on my model.
I have entire folders with reference images of models I worked on, past and present. For example, the Sopwith Camel folder has around 100 images from online pictures. ;)
 
Yes research and thinking is part of time spent. I usually do that at night before bed, doing online searches and saving images, etc. Then I use that for the next time I am working on my model.
I have entire folders with reference images of models I worked on, past and present. For example, the Sopwith Camel folder has around 100 images from online pictures. ;)
Hello Dean. Hey Dean- 100 pages on a little airplane which could land on HMS victory deck...RedfaceROTFROTF. Maybe crash land. Seriously tho, I am with Daniel and yourself here- probably spend more time looking at other Builds and online material than building .For my next ship tho I do believe a complete historically accurate reference is a must.

PS is there a log somewhere of your Sopwith. I would love to have a look. If not post some Pics on my Victory log- don’t want to hijack Daniels. Cheers Grant
 
Hi Daniel - you asked earlier about oak for planking a hull. It may take some time, but I will be doing just that in the foreseeable future.
 
Hi Daniel - you asked earlier about oak for planking a hull. It may take some time, but I will be doing just that in the foreseeable future.
Hello Heinrich,

I will be looking forward to your project. A possible word of caution from Kurt @DARIVS ARCHITECTVS, take a look at post #621 in my build. He states the grain in oak is too large for the scales we work at and suggest cherry or maple. So, for the time being I will wait till I can see someone's example in a hull application.
 
Hello Heinrich,

I will be looking forward to your project. A possible word of caution from Kurt @DARIVS ARCHITECTVS, take a look at post #621 in my build. He states the grain in oak is too large for the scales we work at and suggest cherry or maple. So, for the time being I will wait till I can see someone's example in a hull application.
Just check out my build log! :)
 
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