For a long time I was searching for a suitable medieval ship for our adventures. Unfortunately none of the found options turned out to be quite right. However there was a break through when I found some plans from a hanseatic cog on the internet. If I could manage to understand them, I might be able to use them for crafting my own medieval ship. The quest has just begun…
Planning and a plan
Below you can find the plans from the hanseatic ship.
Being proficient in civil engineering I am used to read plans. However ships are not my usual expertise. Therefore I did a quick reseach how to read ship plans. I found a nice explanation here. (It is in written in german. Unfortunately the english version of the article doesn’t include the respective section. I guess you can try to run it through an online translator.)
I printed them and scaled the printout to match the model’s dimensions. My plan was to build the hull from slices of styrofoam.
Building the hull
Then I started to cut the slices. It is important that you start with the larger stencil per slice. After all the slices were cut I turned them around and applied the smaller stencil. Then I carved the sides. For better understanding I attached an example of the finished slice 10-11.
I used a tape to put the slices loosly together. Afterwards it was sanding time.
I am pretty happy about the results so far.
