I devoted this weekend to shipwrithing, I've begun to build a pair of ships for use with the general's compendium rules, wich will be used in Warhammer Fantasy or in Mordheim.
The work beagan in Saturday, the first step was drawing the plant of the ship in thick cardboard, after that I drew the different decks upon the insulation board, each ship would have an aft and prow castles also in insulation board.
Size compariosn with Francesco, a tilean explorer
Three layers 3cmt tick for each ship
The next step was cutting pits for the masts, 1cmt square and one layer deep
Masts in place
Each mast has two perpendicular yards, the top one houses a square sail, while the lower one a longer and rectangular one, in the fashion of the men o war of the XVIII century. The main mast has a top in the middle and a masthead for affixing flags/pennants.
The fore mast has a crow's nest to watch the seas and a top. This mast's yards and sails are slightly smaller and lower than the ones in the main
The main mast also has a diagonal yard to house the spanker, this is removable to ease storing
Both ships with sails
I glued the decks and left them to stick for an entire night under some (musical) weight
Sunday saw the planking of the ships, I used thin cardboard strips 2,5 cmt tick, wood glue and office neddles to keep them in place
The board is tall enough to provide cover while allowing the deployment of cannons
Then I wooded the decks using the plants in cardboard to draw the outline in the balsa wood, I had to cut holes in the balsa over the mast pits.
I used tick cardboard with a grille of thin one to make some ventilation hatches, the acess hatches were made with thicker balsa wood.
I planked the edges of the castles with more balsa wood, nailing them in place with three needles and glue.
The brown ship has a hatch in the forecastle because it will have forward firing cannons under it, wich would need some ventilation to allow the gunners to breathe
Then I cutted sideboards in thick cardboard, and glued them to the planking using clamps, I left them in place for a night to assure that the planking would be solidly fixed to give a straight appearance to the board.
Then I added the bases to the castle's edges, they will have rails made with pins, an idea that I picked up from a post in Tom's boring mordheim forum.
The fore castle has a lower base to give an ascending impression towards the bow
I then cutted the profiles for the lower decks in balsa wood and glued them to the plants
A nice bell housing made from cardboard
Lower decks ready
It then came to making the gun ports, two per board on the green ship
And four in the brown, wich allow it to fire forwards or diseways at will
That's all for this weekend, next more!
Coming along very nicely. Well done.
ReplyDeleteThey come in quite handy those pins don't they? I've used them recently as bosses to locate hydraulic ram's on a kitbashing model.
ReplyDeleteVery versatile.
Cheers.
Yep the pins are handy, and cheap too.
ReplyDeleteHopefully next weekend I'll finish them.