Try This At Home: Make a Toy Boat from 100 Year Old Plans
Michael Alm makes beautiful furniture and wood sculptures. In this video he uses scrap wood to create a WWI dazzle camouflage ship that are based on historical diagrams.
It’s a straight forward project that requires basic power tools, glue, tape, and paint. You can find plans for several ships and camouflage patterns for free on the Rhode Island School of Design website.
As mentioned in his build video, the camouflage used on ships in the first world war was very different from the blend in patterns that are typically used. Pre-radar mariners relied on periscopes and other visual tools to survey the battlefield. The goal with dazzle camouflage was to trick the eye with bold patterns with lots of colors – kind of how the stripes of zebras hide individuals in a herd – to make it harder for the enemy to accurately fire torpedoes, which were line-of-sight weapons at the time.
This doc looks at the history and creation of all sorts of camouflage from nature to military use to how it’s being used in art and beyond.
