Viking Drakkar Warship - Heller 1/180

After finishing the Bentley, I thought I'd get my feet wet (pun intended) with a ship model.  When my LHS was going out of business, he had a final massive sale.  I picked up a lot of stuff I thought I'd never build.  This had an old price of $3.49 on it and had been repriced to $7.50 on the cello - so it had to have been in inventory for some time.  The closeout price was $2.00.



This is a Viking Drakkar warship by Heller in 1/180 scale.  Only one oar handle was broken off - easy fix.





The deck was painted Tamiya Sand and then gone over with a black acrylic wash.





The oar assembly is very delicate to handle - seems like touching it bends the oars.



The hull is painted Vallejo Brown.  Not a lot of paint schemes exist so I'll use the boxart for guidance.  The shields are painted gloss white to accept the colorful shield decals.



The fit of the deck in the hull was a little spacey.  I'll try to squeeze the sides and glue.  Hopefully, a lot of that will be covered up by the oars and the tarp covering.



Seems like a fun little quickie build.  Hope you enjoy looking in.

Mike

Now that's different Mike. Good luck with it.

I built a Viking ship when I was a nipper, may even have been this one for all I know.

Unbelievable! I HAVE that kit, unbuilt in my stash! I thought nobody else had one. Ha, in a world where anything is possible, anything IS possible! Good work so far!

Looking good Mike     An unusual ship that you don't see built  

Could we get a size reference picture, please ??

First time seeing one of these built. I am following right along.

different and cool at the same time.. Liking it

A little update on this one.

Got the shield decals on - have to touch up a bit around the edges.  Oars are attached and tarp is painted.  Looking at the pictures, I'll have to put a little color back in the tarp over the supports and rewash.


Instructions had the anchor just laying there by itself, so I made up a coil of rope using fishing line.


Here's the reference shot you asked for, John.  At 1/180 scale, it works out to about 75 ft long in real life.


Still having great fun handpainting this one.
I'll probably do the other boat I got at the LHS closeout, next - La Reale, a French Galley.

Thanks for looking.
Mike
Thanks for looking

Love things like this,  coming on a treat.

How pedantic are you Mike?
The anchor would probably look like this looking at the design,  therefore the era of the boat.
Wooden yoke, iron cross bar and a stone trapped between them for weight.

Man that is looking so cool Mike. I love it. And so tiny. The one I built as a kid was much bigger I seem to remember!!

Colin is right about the anchor but they could also be like this:



It has a wooden crossbeam that slides up the shank of the anchor to a point where the anchor has round in section, where it could be rotated to either lie flat for storage on deck, or crosswise to ensure that the flukes dug in on the sea bed.

But I like Colins better. Go for it Mike.

Looking it up online, I see you're both correct. The people at Heller may have molded it this way after seeing the anchor shown for the Oseberg boat (which this supposedly is). Since that entry is from a museum article, it may be the recovered anchor with the wood rotted away. Joke's on them. LOL


I would change it if it weren't already glued to the deck. Thanks for the info guys.

T

The sail is on, some rigging done and tarp support staffs in.  I was going to add some lacing from the staffs to the tarp as on the boxart, but the angles and location points are different between the two.  I added two small pieces of crossbracing on the fore and aft uprights to secure the ends of additional sail rigging.  Main mast rigging is 4 lb fishing line painted light brown.







BTW The handpainted purple on the sail looks splotchy in the photo with the lighting, but under normal lighting to the eye, you don't see it. I chose not to airbrush it because the red lines are very thin, recessed 'panel lines'.

The end is near on this one.
Thanks for the comments and for looking.

Mike

I was a little confused as to the name drakkar, unusual spelling, should be drekar / drekkar.... And this would have had a stone anchor by all accounts.

The long boats normally had a dragon head sprit and this is where I got confused (although didn't say I was lol).... Now you state this was based on the well preserved oseberg example I can see why they went the way they did due to finding allsorts in and around the salvage area, still not being sure what went where in all they found.

As to your build, now I've bored you senseless, what a tidy little model, I really like this...... Well inside my interest area.

Great little boat, I like it a lot

That is a smart little model Mike. I like it a lot.

This fun little build is finished.  I really enjoyed getting back to hand painting little bits.  Which reminds me that the birds have made a slum of my last batch of birdhouses, so I'll have to make up some more before spring.

I added some rigging, a bit of touchup and painted the base.



A completed post will follow soon.

Thanks for looking and for your comments and support,
Mike

That's a cool ship and very well done with rigging too