Building a Quadrireme / Tetrere

[Frankzett]

A long time ago I had the plan to build an ancient oared warship. I was investigating for plans where ever I could and was refering to several essays and books. The best I think are J.S. Morrison: „Greek and Roman oared Warships“ Oxford 1996 and his documentation „The Athenian Trireme“ about the archaeological experiment with the Trireme Olympias, both with contributions of J.F.Coates. You can find a lot of interesting details of ancient warship building there. I decided to build a Quadrireme because it's simple construction and whide use in ancient times. here we see the graffito of Alba Fucens of the 1st cent. A.D.

I used the midship reconstruction an several construction features of other reconstruction plans of J.F. Coates and made a blueprint of the quadrireme.


After thinking about several different materials for my ship modelling, I decided to take a high quality stiff, grossy papercard.
With the first building trials, I was constructing and cutting a prototype pattern. Then I was fitting it together with tape at the glossy side. In this step I had to do some improvements by modifying some of the curvatures. I did it for the bow and the stern, then I measure the lengh of the whole and fit it together and so I had the stencil for my ship.



The next thing was, to transfer this stencil on papercard, to cut and to glue it together. I use paperstripes in the inner ship body to get fine joints at the outer side. With this method I was puting together three ship bodies.




After that my fellow of „modellfiguren online“ Jens (Najewitz Lasermodellbau) offer me to cut the ribs with his laser cutter and I save a lot of sweat, tears and time.




You see the midship ribs glued in with a plywood keel.At the outside I fix the wales out of polystyrene strips. I was fix them midship first , and then bending them to the characteristical stempost. The ram structure is a lengthen keel, the waterline wale and a curved edge, covered with papercard sheets. The latticework is a cellar plastic sheet fixed together with doublesided tape and cut in an angle of 45°.

My latest works are the drilling of the oarports and the beams in the stern and the bow.

I hope we'll see progress soon

Greetings
Frank

[Paul]

Amazing!!

[The Observer]

....AMAZING...leaves me speechless

[k.b.]

Unbelievable work Frank!!! Congratulations on this amazing labour of love Can't wait to see how this thread develops

[Ben90]

What the...

[dutchboyinohio]

WOW!!!!!

[luchs]

massive work and impressive..

[sberry]

Hi Frank,
this really looks fantastic! Since you have invested so much work into this project, have you ever thought about getting your model produced commercially? Nowadays, with people doing all this laser cutting and 3D CAD modeling and things, it might be feasible. And I'm pretty sure there would be a number of customers who appreciate this level of historical accuracy.
Best regards
Stephan

[Samuel Alonso]

What a fine and difficult work ! I'm waiting for what's coming next !

[Frankzett]

Thank you all for the comments.
@sberry
It would be hard to make a fixed kit of all the Parts you need to build this ship. Well I do the body without any CAD, the curvatures made by a little experience and a lot of instinct. The next factors are the transfer from the stencil there you can have little variations because the pencil point; then cutting along the line; then some torsion by gluing it together; then you have to fix and bend the polystyrene stripes for the wales by eye .... You need some background to fix some Parts in the right way. There is to much unprecision (I have to confess!) and it's a mix of to much different materials to create a commercial scale kit in this way.
May be one day I make a scan of the stencil and create a construction plan how to build such a ship.....

Greetings
Frank

[Lazy Hedgehog]

Great!!!
I like oared warships since my childhood. I think, the final result will be fantastic!

[Peter]

Very impressive work I like it

[lewton]

Amazing work!
I cant wait to see it finished

[KenzoSato]

Fantastic , great job.

[Frankzett]

I made some progress with my shipbuilding.
I need some rowers because you can look inside though the latticework at the sides at an angle with 45° from behind. But it is a very limited, narrow perspective. So I decided to make strings of coluored silouettes of rowing men, for cutting them out of papercard, which I can fit inside.
Have a look...



Greetings
Frank

[Paul]

What a great idea!!!!!

[Frankzett]

Here again … rowers.
I made a very long break with my shipbuilding project. It stucks because the rowers. To cut them out of paper wasn't a satisfying solution. So i though it would be better to have real figures.

Here they are. O.k. the anatomy doesn't look well balanced – the legs of an aethiopian maraton ace, the body like an ambigious body builder …and they're looking rough a bit. Because I sculpted body – shoulder – arms in one working operation to articulate the proportions with the whole smooth putty. Well, I think the definition of the muscles ain't incorrect at all.
On the other hand, what will be visible after fixing them in an oared battleship,under the protecting deck, through the slits and spaces beween the stanchions? - Not one single body styled man, - a mass of working bodies, working like one single muscle of the ship.
The grip is close at one point, the arms and body are at the maximum pull, so they can be used for each side and the compact pose will be comfortable for making moulds, I hope.
There are six individuals to create some variety. The rowers are fixed with a longitudinal beam with the seat, so it should be possible to cast them as strings of rowers but we'll see what's practical with making moulds....
Greetings
Frank

[daikaigan]

GREAT! Frank
ciao Massimo

[Beano Boy]

A Big Thumbs up from Me. Splendid Project well worth the Time & Money spent on it. BB

[Frankzett]

For the time it will be my own pleasure to have a bunch of casted oarsmen for my shipbuilding projects -once. Well, to be honest - I wish that there will be any demand for it to have low costs with them.
There are the trireme from Zvezda and the bireme/hemiole from Academy and there will be some work to open the middle slit in the deck and insert some 50-100 (or more) such rowers at the visible areas of the ship. Neverthless that would be of worthy, of course for me too - once.

Greetings
Frank