Khufu 3 and Oseberg. 2 old buried ships.

by John

The Khufu pyramid ship model is almost finished. I assembled the cabin and baldechin and glued them to the deck, and very soon I will paint the hull and “eye of Horus”.

Then, inexplicably, I found a New Zealand site which was advertising Black Friday deals on their 3D printed files of scary figurines and monsters etc, I explored their offerings and found a model of the Viking ship Oseberg, which I liked the look of, and purchased. Then spent a weekend printing the hull and assembling it.

The hull was in 3 pieces, each which took 10-13 hours to print, then many hours trying to fit them together.

Some tidying of mating edges, considerable force, and Cleko aircraft clamps held the sections together long enough for the glue ( CA and Gorilla) to hold the 3 sections together.
The model Oseberg ship is 500mm long.
The deck is yet to be made and installed. I could 3D print that too, but intend to make it and the mast and spars and oars etc from wood. And a sail.
The hull has been rough sanded, but quite a bit more is required. The detail in the file is intricate. Each 1/3rd of the model hull has 3.5million triangles! I am planning to paint the PLA.

The 3D printing was done on my QIDI X max3 printer, in Rapido PLA. 0.12mm layers. The stl files were purchased from blackforgegames.co.nz Black Friday 50% discount reduced the cost to $USD17.

The superb Oseberg ship was discovered in 1902. It had been buried 1200 years ago in CE820, in Norway, along with other funeral objects for a wealthy woman, whose skeleton was found along with another female. The ship has been repaired/rebuilt and until recently was on display in a museum. Visitors exhaled breath has caused deterioration, so the ship has been removed for more remediation works. 1200 years old is incredible, but it is recent compared with the 4500 years age of the Khufu ship.

Wikipedia contributors. (2025, September 24). Oseberg ship. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 21:32, December 5, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oseberg_ship&oldid=1313171454

Just magnificent!