1/700 Bretagne-1855 scratch The largest wooden wall warship

[mifune]

Funtastic...

You should try building from gold. Sails of pearl...

[JIM BAUMANN]

wefalck wrote;

>>>....- at a distance, rigging tends to look dark regardless, whether its body-colour is dark brown or black; the eye cannot process the high contrast of the dark rigging against the sky and adjusts more to give definition to the sky than to the narrow lines of rigging.

I have considered this aspect in my budding sailing project and think that I will go for either an burnt umbra-wash on black or black toned down with some burnt umbra. However, this is for a scale about four times bigger (1/160 vs. 1/700).

In summary, I would not give these comments too much weight. ...<<<


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Thank you 'wefalck, you explained very eloquently and clearly what I believed... !
............................................................................................................................................

onto the final furlong ....
I wanted to try and emulate the " feel " of the sea of some of the works of Charles Edward Dixon (1872-1934)
a well known British Marine Artist )
In particular this painting

Now 2 -D art and 3-D models are not the same thing; as the viewpoint of the scene of the observer
is not single-point like a painting, but all round and indeed from above and every angle between

The water had x 4 basic coats of lighter and darker washes,
and then followed the tricky conundrum of what I am trying too depict...

Windspeed / sea-state / weather / speed of vessel / point of sail

sea-state and point of sail were already previously decided;
off-shore coastal ( English Channel !) ground-swell of around + / - 1.5 to 2 metres
and the vessel is , on a broad reach with all plain canvas set.

Windspeed for all plain canvas set could , I reckoned, would be fine at Bf Force 5-6 = 20 -25 knots of wind.

The Bretagne was known to be a very good 'sailer , achieving speeds under sail of up to 13 knots ( !! )

On my model-- as she is not trying too hard; with no studding sails set,
I reckon a speed of 8-10 knots is not unreasonable

A ship with a fine entry, ( such as a Destroyer, 'crack Ocean liner or Clipper )
with their very fine lines causes little fuss at the ' cutwater 'when at speed ,

as below

HMS Daring WW2

Normandie at 30 knots

Clipper bow

Cargo vessels, tugs, barges and beamy ships with blunt bows tend to 'push water ahead of them
( also known as the ship ' having-a-bone-in-her-teeth )

Overhead views of 1855 sailing ships are alas ....utopian....

so it can be hard to gauge what it might have looked like./

I can highly recommend the website of http://www.fotoflite.com , a picture library of more than 1 million overhead photos of ships since the mid-1940's

The quite small, watermarked and low res pre-view -images are a good resource to study wake patterns from all angles
-including sailing ships

These 2 images below are of the 4-masted Barque Sedov, ploughing down the English channel at some speed,
( I estimate 15 knots or more ) in a 'capful' of breeze ( I estimate windspeed around 35 knots )
she has a bone in teeth and the wake is clean ...

in this image she seems to have overtaken the wave and has 'dipped into the next wave-- hence the " bone " is massive !

Now Sedov, along with all her contemporaries, were large, fast and weatherly steel hulled cargo vessels
and had relatively fine lines
( not quite a Clipper... but fine ! ) which gives a clean wake.

Bretagne for all her good sailing qualities was no 'Clipper... or a Sedov...

so a fairer comparison / inspiration would be the large Italian 1930 sail training ship Amerigo Vespucci.
Bretagne was slightly shorter but a 1000 tonnes more displacement-- so near enough !

Images below show the 'Vespucci in much more wind but carrying far less canvas, -I estimate her speed at 6-8 knots,
==> note the amount of disturbed water ahead, alongside and astern!

So I am making an amalgam of these images , that seems believable to the observer

( as those gargantuan bones-in-teeth , to the unknowing , would seem unlikely ! )

I am still working on the water, ( tiny bits of spray)

but the overall status quo is as below;

[Sszabi]

Hy Jim!

This ship is a little masterpiece, and with the base is simply beautiful.

[pascalemod]

i can hear the wind looking at that water! Looks very believable!

[wefalck]

Indeed, that looks very believable

Depicting such full-bodied sailing-ship in a sea can be quite a challenge, as the interaction are quite unpredictable, particularly, when wind and sea do not come from the same direction. When I first looked at the model, I had the feeling that there was too much disturbed water in the wake, but comparison with the AMERIGO VESPUCCI images show that it is quite realistic (though the AV seems to run also her engine).

Thanks for the images, I'll file those in my reference folder for ship-sea interaction.

[Rui Matos]

Hi Jim!

Well, you have mastered it again and this will be another jewell-ship in your collection of Masterpieces!
A benchmark to anyone making sailing ships in this wonderful (but dreadful - LOL) scale!

Congrats, my Friend!

[JIM BAUMANN]

Thank you gents!
Herewith some all over distance images on a plain background

for the interim ,....

" proper " ... proper ! images will be in gallery in due course

when I have worked how best to shoot with the new camera !

[Pieter]

Very nice.

[wefalck]

What's up next ?

[bgire]

A FANTASTIC build, as ever!
You did a superb rendition of this huge ship. Thanks for using my 3D parts for this and patience for the looooong delays.

The rigging is another masterpiece of art!
Congratulations!

Now waiting for Ben My Chree and Sagres, hehe

_Bruno

[maxim]

Very impressive!

[Stefano Salesi]

That's amazing. any chanche to see this masterpiece in Versailles WME in July?

[Alexey Nikitin]

before getting involved with head-sails I tuned my attention to bow-sprit netting. I was using Paint filter mesh

Hi Jim!
What mesh sizes do you use for your models and where do you buy them..?
Thanks!

[pascalemod]

Another "baby" is born. Congratulations Jim! Bretagne looks "heavy", but ploughing through nicely. What a sight!

[Frank Spahr]

What a masterpiece! And how atmospheric and credible it all looks, even in the "preliminary" images. The overall look of the sails looks just right, to mention just one qwee aspect. Wow, you really got it nailed.

Congratulations from
Frank

[SG1]

She's a beauty! it's been great to follow and learn from you once again. Congrats on another fantastic achievement!

[Iceman 29]

Very nice job and model.

"The 1,200 hp machine included an �evaporating apparatus� with eight boiler bodies, each with five furnaces, and was capable of making around 13.5 knots (25 km/h) with good operators.
It consumed 150 tonnes of coal every 24 hours. The double-winged propeller could be wound up so as not to interfere with sailing. The engine consisted of two cylinders."

Thank you for keeping us on our toes with this new season in "Bretagne."

The end, rare photo, Brest, France:

[JIM BAUMANN]

Thank you all for your encouraging words !

@ Alexey

I used for my bowsprit netting these paper paint mesh filters 190 microns--can get larger and smaller micron sizes
but these paint filters are cheap....( � 6.00 for x 50 (?!!)

Hope to help photo below

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/135104004943 ... R7bfxqqGZQ

[MartinJQuinn]

Incredible work, as always. The photos almost look like a period painting.

[Alexey Nikitin]

@ Alexey

I used for my bowsprit netting these paper paint mesh filters 190 microns--can get larger and smaller micron sizes
but these paint filters are cheap....( � 6.00 for x 50 (?!!)

Hope to help photo below

Hi, Jim!
Thank you very much!
I'll try to find some on Ali Express...
Your new model is great!!!
I also want to build some kind of sail-steam battleship of the Russian Imperial Navy...I have electronic copies of archival drawings of all such ships and many others from the Russian steam fleet.