Gratuitous Domestic Posting (TM) - Shipwright Division UPDATE

Many thanks to all of you who dropped suggestions the other day as to how the Llama-ettes and I could best go about constructing a model Viking longboat. The plans linked by Zendo Deb were particularly useful.

I went over to Michael's this morning and spent a childishly delightful time wandering about and scheming. Among other loot, I discovered a packet of wooden dowels that will do perfectly for oar handles, a packet of wooden circles that will make excellent shields, some nice black yarn that will do quite well for the rigging and a decorative painting kit that includes some nice sail-sized pieces of canvas.

After all my fretting about how to plank the hull the other day, I realized I was going about it in the wrong way. Instead of fiddling about with framing and the like, instead I'm simply going to cut a piece of basswood to represent the hull at the waterline. Then I'm going to use balsa to build a series of horizontal cross-sections above it. (I'll do all the cutting, but the gels can glue the pieces together.) As for recreating the upward sweep of the bow and stern, I reckon that once we've glued and painted, we can use a thin black marker to simply draw in the appropriate seams. I will leave it to the gels to design a suitable figurehead and to decorate the sail and shields (subject to Dad's veto on the grounds of preposterousness, of course).

If the thing turns out half-way decently, I'll put up a pic or two.