Toy Boat Conversions

I was in a mind to run age of sail era naval games, perhaps a mini-campaign involving pirates. One way or another (either on the Naval Wargaming or Super Cheap Wargaming FB group, I forgot which) I found this big load of Risk replacement toy ships just suitable for the task.

The package arrived from Amazon US in a good time and I started sorting the contents out. The ships have two tiers of gunports, so are suitable for third and fourth rates, but what I needed for specific scenarios were first/second rates, frigates, indiamen, and ships laid up in ordinary. 

Thus I took out my rotary tool, some glue and plasticard and started on some conversions. 

For the 1st rate ship, I put a 2mm plasticard spacer at the bottom and smoothed the gaps out with some epoxy resin. At this scale I did not care much about the lowest tier of gunports, I just painted on a third bright brown stripe.

The frigate had the bottom of the hull sanded up to the top of the second tier of gunports. I also added a spritsail to the mizzen.

For the indiaman I filled the bottom gunports and sanded the hull to shape.

The vessel in ordinary retained the original hull, but the masts were chopped off and replaced with a toothpick.

Each ship besides the last one received a plastic hairbrush bristle to place ensigns on.

Further down the line I'm thinking of adding clear plasticard bases, but for now they are good 'as is'. I'll paint some third rates in brighter colours next.

1/1200 Naval Additions

Continuing on the naval front, here's a sampler of 1/1200 scale vessels completed recently. The sailing ships in the background are Ark Royal casts, except for the 2nd rate to the front, which is a resin recast, made by yours truly, of the Ark Royal 80-gun Indiaman. It's not very pretty but suffices to balance my two fledgling fleets.

The larger galleys are of my earlier stash, the small ones are the refined thing which look more to scale. I upgraded the earlier two-mast large galleys to be capitanas or squadron flagships, and these new ones are considered to be galee sottili, that is, standard size galleys.

With this many ships completed, perhaps some gaming is also due. I am keen to try out some house modifications for Galleys & Galleons.

New Galleys and Sea Mat

Here's the first group shot of my 1/1200 scratchbuilt/homecast galleys, on a piece of dark blue cotton cloth (size 140x100cm) I got from a haberdashery. I also included an Ark Royal Indiaman for scale, and a pair of stones from Corfu Island - I'll use these as islands or barren sea rocks for my games.

From left to right, the vessels are the following:

• Standard galley with Imperial Habsburg/Spanish flags, sails up, inspired by romanticized paintings where the two sails are looking at the opposite directions for maximum wind power. This is a resin copy.
• Turkish galley of the 'Old' hull type, a bit more diminutive than the standard hull, sails furled. She's got balsa oars instead of resin ones.
• Standard galley of the Knights of Malta, there is a Maltese cross on the other side of the sail
• Venetian Galeass, as you can see she's on a larger base too. This is the master model, I made four more casts.
• French galley of the 'old' hull type, with added balsa superstructure (forecastle and oar banks), and a single mast.
• Another Turkish vessel, standard type, sails furled.

As you can see there is plenty of space for customization. Next I will do galiots, lanternas and ships with striped sails. There is also a larger (1/300ish) version in the pipeline with removable parts when damaged.

I'm not really content with the rigging, but for 1/1200 scale I will give them a pass.

In case you are interested, I also made amendments to my Block Galleys rules - you can find them under the Rules page of the blog.

The Armada of Venice

While my main interest is in the Age of Sail, recently my fascination with Renaissance galley warfare increased. Due to changing from larger scales to 1/1200, and other, more economical projects in the foreground, I thought I could scratchbuild some, to complement my Ark Royal ADW ships.

Fortunately I have Blue Stuff at my disposal, so my thought process was to create some masters from balsa, then a bunch of resin copies using magic sculpt. On the image above you can sort of see the evolution of the idea, from left to right.

A Couple More ADW ships

 

I've completed two more Ark Royal 1/1200 scale Anglo-Dutch Wars era ships, and a press mould copy I made of their generic 70-gun model. 

The ships were easy to assemble, paint and rig, the frigate causing some grief as despite the two layers of varnish I managed to rub some of the paint off when applying the standing rigging. Never mind, I corrected that.

The large one is obviously of a lesser quality, but it's only there to add to the numbers. I will most likely expand the project as I really like these models and the period, so I can downgrade the three resin hulls I made as I progress onward.

I'm going to stick with the basing configuration you see on the picture - 60x30 pill bases for ships of the line, 60x30 oval for frigates and smaller rated ships (also indiamen), and 20x45 (I think) for even smaller vessels such as this fluyt. 

Three more ships are varnished as I make more rigging line (which involves running the thread through some glue and hanging it out with a weight on one end to make it straighter and stiffer), and the opposing fleet's hulls are also primed, so the project is well on the way and I expect I can play a few games in the near future.

A Fluyt

You might remember that last time I was thinking about 17th/early 18th century naval gaming, I chose to stick with the current scale (about 1/500) as I had the necessary amount of hulls. In the end I reversed my decision and bit the bullet, switching to 1/1200 scale, the primary reason being the relative ease of building the models and storing them. Thus, for starters, I made an order with Warfare Miniatures for an economy pack of their Ark Royal ADW Dutch ships, this first complete vessel being one of them.

The order arrived in due time and the castings are great, splendid little vessels with lots of individual character. I chose to build a smaller one to see how challenging it is to paint and rig, thinking that the larger ships won't prove such a hassle once I mastered this.

I'll divide my ships to Red and Blue squadrons to be able to field them against each other until reinforcements arrive. I also made some resin copies of the 70-gun large Indiaman, using Blue Stuff (for strictly personal use, mind you) to boost the firepower of each of the two squadrons. Of course the copies are nothing compared to the crisp detail of the original, but they will suffice.

I used acrylics (notably VMC Flat Brown on the hull, AK Flat Flesh and Cream White on the sails) for the base colors, followed by a raw umber oil wash and highlights to paint the ship. The rigging was made with thread, using the same method as with the 1/500 scale ships, albeit with some simplification.

The base is a Renedra 20x40 plastic one from the spares box, with rounded off corners. For the sea effect I used artist's acrylic paste, stippled on with a stiff brush, and some acrylic medium, painted with Prussian Blue, followed by a grey drybrush, a dark green glaze, another glaze of Prussian Brown and a white drybrush for the wave crests. Once the paint dried, I added a single layer of gloss varnish.

For now I'll up-rate the vessels I have: the fluyts will become fifth and sixth rates, the frigates and smaller Indiamen fourth rates. I'm very contended with the quality of the models, so I will most likely purchase some more.

Revell 1/1200 USS Missouri Restoration

As I've mentioned earlier, I have a stash of 1/1200 scale WW2 era ships that I should be refurbishing. These include a diecast Yamato, and a Revell Missouri, Bismarck and Enterprise. I started with this one for no particular reason.

First I cleaned all the dust off the upper part, then sanded the bottom because it was glued to a paper painting stand and thus the flat bottom was not level with the base all the way. Then I took off the secondary turrets, cut their barrels and replaced them with broom bristles. They were also turned outwards, which is a hazard when handling the ship as they are quite brittle, so I turned the turrets facing the direction of travel. I did not bother doing the same with the main armament, it looks cool as it is. 

The base will entirely be made of wood this time, no fussing about with toilet paper. You can see the beginnings on the image. 

The next step is to shape the base and start painting the ship properly. I'll need to do something about the broken seaplane catapult though.

Revell 1/1200 HMS King George V

What a surprise, another naval-related post, this time a 1/1200 scale Revell kit.

Not many good things to say about it, on the box it says it was re-tooled, but some parts don't fit very well, and there is a lot of filing and scraping involved. The friction fit on the turrets is especially bad, it doesn't take into account any layers of paint that might get in there. 

The Arms Race Begins

Fleet Grey's magazine, Big Grey Walrus reports about a giant carrier being made for Fleet Green.

Project 'In the Navy': 1/1200 Aircraft

This is the Revell 1/1200 USS Enterprise kit. It has 21 fighter planes to put on the two decks. Hint: you won't find any on this shot... well, maybe one.

Instead of fixing the planes on the carrier I put some GS on coins, painted them blue and glued the aircraft via their little pegs which would otherwise fit in the small holes in the Enterprise's deck.

Revell 1/1200 Yamato + Loki's Great Hall giveaway

The Yamato was a huge Japanese battleship in the Second World War constructed to bring fear to the opposing fleet. It was 263 metres long, 36 metres wide, larger than any other unit including the German twin battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz. Main armament was 9x46cm guns. It was sunk by US aircraft. They were not so much afraid of it.

This Revell representation of the ship was not easy to assemble. The mold's age is shown, miscasts and lines and flash everywhere. As it usually goes with ships, however, painting have been rather easy.

The kit comes with 5 main gun turrets, either with AA guns on their top or not. The Yamato had more than 250 AA guns on deck, yet it was not enough to stop it being destroyed. Compared to the ships I've worked on earlier, it has a very interesting silhouette.

Before continuing with more photos, please check the very generous Andrew's (Loki's) Great Hall blog which has passed its 2nd birthday and has a nice giveaway, it is really worth joining in.

Picture deliberately stolen from Andrew's place. Now that the slideshow is back you can't even miss it.