Allies and Enemies of Zinqagur

Finished a few more 1/2000 scale scratchbuilt ships - most of these are ReReRe, which means repaired, repainted and rebased older ones.

First, the remainder of the Asansmati sea-going force, the ships which survived the defeat by the Klagimir fleet at the Battle of Tunova Atoll. Three USN pre-dreadnought battleships, one armored cruiser and a large-ish TBD force. These are all old models.

Asansmat is going the way of least resistance and would try to overcome the Zinqaguri squadron on the eastern seaboard of the Cape.

Aoshima 1/700 IJN Nagato 1927, a.k.a. Ole Grimey

I got this model kit for last Christmas from my wife. As usual, I built it with some gaps in between certain tasks. First I assembled the hull and turrrets, and then continued with other projects. Some time later I did the rest of the subassemblies, then it again took a while to paint them. 

The Nagato-class is perhaps the most powerful of all pre-treaty battleships, and their heptapodal main mast is a trademark feature - also more ergonomical in design than the restructured Fuso-class for example. In the far future I plan to build a Tosa using pieces from a Nagato and a Kaga kit, but that prospect is yet very distant.

The weird slanted funnel was also a focus point when choosing this version instead of the WW2 era rig.

All in all, the build was enjoyable, apart from the casual matter of things getting lost or broken off. I lost an AA gun on the aft platform, and all of the boat davits forward. I replicated these from scratch or turned to my spares box for solutions. 

When in Vienna...

On the first week of June my wife and I took a train to Vienna as part of my birthday trip. Instead of Schönbrunn and Wienerschnitzl I selected two museums as our programme for the day: the Royal Armouries and the Military History Museum. Both are within 20mins of the main train station, although in opposite directions.

We started with the Royal Armouries (Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer), which houses many fancy artefacts of the Renaissance, starting from the 1490s all the way to the middle of the 17th century. There are many halls full of arms and armour, a fine choice if you are into stuff like that.

I took a multitude of photos, but here are the highlights of the day, starting with a big bunch of two-handed swords.

The Royal Zinqaguri Navy in 1/2000

I might have mentioned earlier that I switched over from 1000 to 1/2000 scale for my 'Trashy Fleets' project. The decision was based on space and time constraints, in order to get a few games played over a short period.

By this time I managed to complete my imaginary Zinqaguri navy's two battle squadrons, one for the country's east and one for the west coast. They have different paint jobs because why not? 

Also each squadron has a TBD detachment, but being deployed on separate stations and not very likely to operate together, I only completed one base of TBDs in total.

Would you Duke it out with someone made of Iron?

(For the title I apologize to fans of the real Iron Duke.)

I painted these back in October 2025 but then just shelved the project, and only got to base them this weekend. They are 1/2000 scale scratchbuilt ships of the WW1 vintage Iron Duke class superdreadnoughts.

Construction, as per usual, was done with various thicknesses of balsa wood, plasticard, bamboo kebab sticks and toothpicks, and steel wire for the masts.

I don't know how long the revival of the project will last, but I aim to complete a few more hulls and play some games.

Trashy Fleets - When Life Gives You Lemnos...

I started working on the USS Mississippi-class pre-dreadnought battleship that later became the RHN Lemnos a while before the Hood and I managed to complete both at about the same time.

My main concern with US-made warships was, of course, modelling the lattice masts. This is not a problem at smaller scales as I just make a tapered conical rod and paint on the detail. However, in 1/1000 scale this was not feasible.

Delving into the internet somebody on some forum mentioned plastic nets in which they stored fruit in supermarkets as lattice mast material, so I first got some oranges and tried to use the net they were stored in, but it proved too big. Next I bought some garlic in a similar package albeit with smaller gaps in the netting, and it worked just fine!

So I know technically the Lemnos had her main mast switched to a traditional battle mast later, but for experimental purposes (and to make the pun in the title) I had mine retain both.

The Mighty ZS Lakardo (Not Quite Charles Martel)

As part of my ongoing 1/1000 scale Trashy Fleets exploits, I'm finally done with the almost Charles Martel, she is joining the Zinqaguri Navy, a peripheral minor power in my world of imagi-nations. Being quite fancy AND a battleship, she is going to bear the fleet admiral's flag.

Steaming alongside the Charles Martel, or as she will be known in Zinqagur, the ZS Lakardo, is the small torpedo boat destroyer TB-1 Marsal, modelled after the real world Claymore-class French ship, so they are kind of matching.

The only ahistorical element of the battleship is the fact that I left a tier of the main deck out, so the fore and aft main turrets are on the same level, while in fact the rear one should be placed a bit lower.

Trashy Fleets WIP #2

Inspired by, among other things, Archduke Piccolo's recent posting about his scratchbuilt pre-dreadnought battleships, I dug out my own work-in-progress hulls and proceeded a good deal with building them.

The Swedish coastal defence ship Äran got a full paintjob, all she needs now is a layer of gloss acrylic medium and finish on her base (and gluing the hull to said base).

The not-quite Charles Martel (forgot an extra layer of superstructure) also starts to look like herself, finished all twele turrets (the French designers just got a little bit overboard with that aspect) and installed the cabin windows, stacks and upper platform. As you can see I also did a little bit of pre-painting on hard to reach areas. Her main hull will be finished in dark grey, upper structure yellow ochre and the deck a linoleum color.

There are also a few hulls of Tordenskjold-class monitors in the background, more on them at a later time.

Trashy Fleets WIP - HSwMS Äran and MNF Charles Martel

 

I try to post regularly these days (usually on Mondays because then I would have time to gather materials durink the weekend), but these past two weeks were our - now seemingly regular - holiday to close off the summer, including a trip to Greece, and a 4 hour delay followed by a return trip through a nasty storm on our way back home.

Anyway, after making some resin galleys (see previous post) I quickly got distracted, and as I've had these two hulls lying around, I decided to do some work on them for my 1/1000 scale Trashy Fleets project.

On the left is the assembled coastal defence ship HSwMS Äran, a utilitarian Swedish Navy vessel. I like these ships a lot, as they pack quite a punch compared to their size. She and the rest of her class would supposedly play a part in an upcoming Zinqaguri-Nordsburian naval conflict set in my imagi-world in the future.

On the right is proof that I sort of managed to master creating tumblehome hulls using balsa wood, the French pre-dreadnought Charles Martel, with its main hull complete and secondary (tertiary?) turrets attached. The four larger turrets are in the making - the two main ones are complete and await attachment, pictured right next to the hull. 

I mainly used balsa wood, plastic rods and spare 1/700 bits (like the secondary battery of a Kongo class for the Äran and main barrels of a USS Arizona for the Charles Martel) to get this far. The turrets on the Charles Martel are rods of magic sculpt kneaded to shape, then sanded, as the fibers in the balsa wood would be just too rough for such intricate work. Just as with my previous pre-dreadnought, I'm going to build bases for these ships as well.

D6 Naval War: Battle of the White Sea

I've never before celebrated International Naval Wargaming Day. However, after our last move, I've still had the large-ish remainder of my 1/2000 scale scratchbuilt WW1 fleets hidden in my wardrobe, so I thought I could take some of them for an outing.

Proud of PE

This is just a short post to let you know I'm working on the Snowman Model 1/700 scale SMS Derfflinger (post-Jutland full hull version), and I think I'm starting to get the gist of properly placing photoetched parts.

Most of the ship is going to be built straight out of the box, but the three bar rails around the bridge are third party, first shaped, then primed and painted, glued in place, and finally touched up a bit.

The fun thing is I'm going to cover all of that in canvas, as per the reference image I posted earlier on this blog, but it's still satisfying to know that all that brass is there.

I'm going to add a few more ladders and staircases once this subassembly is placed on the hull (as some of those connect it to the aft funnel, there is no point in doing them right now).

So no, PE this time does not mean physical education.

Derfflinger Details

I'm building a Snowman Model 1/700 SMS Derfflinger, the post-Jutland version. Here are some reference pictures - mostly so I could find them, but it might interest others.

I'm not sure of the images' sources as I've collected way too many of them to keep track, but being period photos more than a hundred years old, I don't believe that would cause any copyright hassle.

This is an aerial photo made just after Jutland I believe. It is important for two things: this is the only period photo I could find where the aerial recognition rings on all the turrets are visible, and the damage made to the aft section can also be seen (this was planked over later, but the new boards used for the job remained dark for a while). I can safely extrapolate and say that A and D turret had a narrower, B and C a thicker white ring, and this remained in use later.

This is the image I'm mostly after, except I added magic sculpt blast bags to the main battery, because the brass barrels did not quite fit snugly so I had to cover their ends. Photos made later (with the much more pronounced tripod), especially those during her internment show blast bags, but none before, so it must have been added later, but I will overlook this inaccuracy for aesthetic reasons.

Also, the kit has torpedo booms and nets, but it is very obvious that by the time of this photo it fell completely out of use.

Here's a thing that is not shown on period pictures and is rather hard to decide. The painting instructions that came with the kit, and also most non-period references (of other models also) show a boot top (the black band near the waterline, above the anti-fouling red). However, here's a picture of Seydlitz which is rather clear on the fact that she drew a lot deeper than the level of the anti-fouling paint (see the line of chipped off grey above it), and had no boot top. It is safe to assume that belonging to the same unit within the Hochseeflotte, the Derfflinger was painted using the same method - or at least that 's what I will do with mine. Dark red and black are pretty difficult to discern from black and white photos anyway.

Photo report of the Greek warship Averof

My wife and I took a four day trip to Athens, which we mostly spent in the southern districts near the sea (besides a mandatory trip downtown). The highlight of the journey, of course, was visiting the armored cruiser / battleship Georgios Averof.

The ship is moored in Faliro harbor, is maintained by the Hellenic Navy, entrance is 5EUR per adult. We arrived early Tuesday morning and were the only visitors at that time besides a guided school tour. 

Entrance is from the stern via a staircase - as we went up and down the length of the ship I organised the pictures from aft to fore instead of chronological order.

Most of the spar deck and upper deck are free to move around, and so are some of the internal areas. The bow is accessible via the enclosed superstructure above the spar deck.

Research on the MNF Bretagne that might be useful for somebody

Some of my readers might have followed the adventures with the 1/1000 scale waterline model of the Bretagne during Spring 2020 on this blog. That model was broken and thrown out to the trash, but the interest remained. The Bretagne-class, just like most dreadnoughts designed before or during WW1 and continuing to serve in WW2, are an interesting topic, and they are probably one of my favourite ships despite their obvious flaws.

Chilean Steel

Here's the next bit in my 1/2000 scratchbuilding venture, the pair of the Almirante Latorre class. Pretty handy ships, and the first British-built SDs completed after the Orions waaaaay before. Unfortunately I could only paint the straw of the deck with a glossy piece of Heller acrylic paint, so it's not completely to my taste, but at 1/2000, no one should really care.

1/500 SMS Seydlitz WIP #2

Since the last post way back when, I've completed some improvements over this build. 

Shapin' the Seydlitz

I've had some more free time recently, so I delved into this build. I worked a little on the core of the ship's hull, which should be 22mm tall with an added 2mm deck. It is a composite of 2x10mm and 1x2mm layers. I roughly shaped the bottom and sides, but more should be done once higher tiers of the hull (the casemate gundeck and the upper deck) are built. 

You can see the steel slabs installed for ballast; she must be back-weighted a little because the forward superstructure sits a lot higher and is more crammed.

It's time to get more rough sandpaper, because currently I'm not very content with how the fore and aft parts of the hull are looking.

Bringing the Balance

Here are the next eight ships in my growing 1/2000 scale fleet. The front row is made up of the Brazilian Minas Geraes-class, which would serve with the Quisobian Royal Navy, and the Dante Alighieri-class, if they can be called that, belonging to the navy of Cartelucia. The rear row consists of the four Courbet-class battleships, which might alternatively be used by Dorrosean or Crontaineville. This greatly enhances the power of the anti-Friegland alliance, but not nearly well enough. 

The construction of these ships was made available by finding a bit of stained 3mm balsa that I repurposed, and some dense corkboard. The ships in the front row were made from this material, and besides some warping when the PVA was applied, and having to coat the hulls in a layer of 80g paper, there was not much difficulty in building them. 

I'm still experimenting with the camera, so please bear with me while I figure it all out.

...And Justice for All

The title is not extremely correct, as these are the six Republique/Liberté-class French pre-dreadnought battleships, accidentally including one that is named Justice, but suits the theme well.

I've used up my last bit of 2mm balsa, so the hull of the ships is made from corrugated cardboard, and covered in paper. The upper half where the superstructure sits is a piece of 1mm balsa. Cardboard is a rather difficult material to sand, so the ships are a bit over-sized, especially at their beam, but this is actually somewhat beneficial: they look like stocky little things, just like they supposed to.

Construction was otherwise problem-free: lately I prefer to show my ships in a state of battle readiness, deck clutter, including boats removed, which eases the building process. 

Once I finished the German battlecruisers, I felt that although in true WW1 terms the Kaiserliche Marine does not really overwhelm the Entente fleets, in my imaginary world there is a huge advantage to the Jackewlinese - Frieglander axis. This is mainly because I made Jackewline proprietor of both the Royal and US Navy ships. It is only reasonable that without proper allies on the continent, Jackewline attempts to out-build her enemies, the Island Kingdoms (IJN) and Veuden (Imperial Russian Navy). 

The tables are turning on the Frieglander side of things though, as they have 'built' all four large battleship classes sans the Bayerns now, which means 17 ships at full fighting capacity, plus the very capable armoured cruiser Blücher and seven battlecruisers. Facing them, the Cartelucian fleet (Italy) counts five dreadnoughts, the Quisobians (Spain and South American countries) another six, four of which are the Espana-class ships of dubious quality, and the Crontaineville fleet (France) can only put five Danton-class pre-dreadnoughts to sea, sixteen ships in total. This should be somewhat remedied by the pre-dreadnought spam which these six ships here are only a forebear of.

Looking for suitable materials to replace balsa, I came across a piece of dense corkboard, and now I'm using it to build the Minas Geraes-class and a pair of Dante Alighieris (I know, there has been only one, but this is why playing with imagi-nations is sometimes better than the real world), to have at least a semblance of fair play between Friegland and her enemies. They should either be followed by the Edgar Quinets or the Italian armored cruisers (Pisa and San Giorgo-classes).

Battlecruisers Operational

 

This is the last few pieces of my balsa, the first four Imperial German battlecruisers, from top to bottom: Von der Tann, Moltke, Goeben and Seydlitz. VdT and Seydlitz have composite hulls of 1mm and 2mm balsa layers. They are fierce looking ships and assembling them was a great experience, grinding away some quarantine time. I'd like to do an 1/500 scale swimming model of the Seydlitz in the near future, so this was good practice as well.