Airfix HMS Prince WIP

Wow, an actual hobby post you say? With pictures?

Let me start by saying I'm not a sucker for vintage plastic model kits. I know some people like to torment themselves specialize in such things, but I'm not one of them.

However, Baroque warship kits in general have always been very appealing to me. I like their looks - and history - better than the later periods. So once I learned of this Airfix produce, I was constantly on the lookout for it.

If you are familiar with the Airfix HMS Prince kit (said variously to be 1/138, 1/150 and 1/180 scale), you might know that the secondary market price for it is, as can be deducted from the name, princely. So I was rather surprised one day when I found it on a local Facebook buy&sell group for about the tenth of the price it goes on ebay. Needless to say, I struck like a hawk and grabbed it. 

Used to Love Her, But Now I Have to Rig Her

I'm on a roller lately with pop culture references in my titles, for which I apologise.

Anyway, my labours on the Zvezda 1/350 Revenge model slowly come to fruition. I put this project off and on for a while now, but seeing the finish line is always satisfying. This is a snap-fit kit originally with plastic masts, sails and shrouds. But of course I had to do it the complicated way.

The High and the Mighty

I missed the date for the Battle of the Denmark Strait with my scratchbuilt 1/2000 project, mainly because I have been working on other things.

However I just managed to complete the build for my version of the HMS Hood, and when I showed the Prince of Wales in its unpainted state the last time it gathered some interest, so here's the model before any primer is being added.

This time instead of PVA I used successive layers of acrylic paste and paint to make surfaces smooth. The ship is mainly built out of balsa and plasticard, and then some bamboo skewers, paperclips, broom bristles and Magic Sculpt. I also found a small decorative rubber ring that is just the right size for the turret rings.

I think most people know the story of the Hood, so I won't bother anyone with that. I won't say anything more than I just like the design.

 Off she sails to the painting table and then to join the already completed PoW.

Block Galleys WIP

 

No posts in a while, but that's only because after last month's painting frenzy I took a step back and started focusing on smaller scratchbuilding projects, mainly revolving around terrain pieces.

I showed a completed 1/350 scale 'Block' galley a while back, these are the follow-ups on the slipway. I completed the main parts of the hulls and started adding the rowing benches. (They are called Block galleys because I would simulate damage to the ship by removing parts from the model during gameplay.)

The one in the middle is a large 15cm long Capitana or Lanterna, that is a flagship with more rowers and soldiers aboard. You can see one of my printed templates doing its job on the oar banks.

The last bunch of balsa I got is from a producer named Santiago, so obviously these are going to be Spanish...

Worry not if you aren't the Duke of Porpoises...

 

... you can still be the Prince of Wales! (pun intended)

Here's a rare WIP shot of a 1/2000 scale scratchbuilt HMS Prince of Wales. I usually post completed products on the blog, but this one looked kind of nice the way it is, and it highlights some of the methods I use for tiny ships.

My main components for this build were: balsa wood, bamboo skewers, Magic Sculpt, 0.5mm plasticard, push pins and broom bristles. First I shaped the hull, and did the rest in five main sub-assemblies (that is the three turrets and two main parts of the superstructure).

Balsa wood has very large grain and soaks up paint/glue like a sponge, so I learned to harden its outer surface with either mopping on liquid superglue or acrylic medium, and then after many passes with sandpaper some PVA. For the quad turrets I also added some magic sculpt for detail.

I made an attempt to sculpt each of the quad barrels, but in the end I just went with my usual solution of using a single slab of bamboo and painting the detail on.

The occasion for this build is that I want to refight the Battle of the Denmark Strait in the near future, so after painting this one, next up is the Mighty Hood.

During the build I came to appreciate the no-nonsense approach of the King George V class design. Everything has its place and works, and that's about all a fighting ship needs. However, I anticipate building Hood for her excellent looks for a change.

Santa Claus to the Rescue

I've long wanted some wheeled pieces of scatter terrain to decorate my gaming table. The main trouble is, wheels in the proper scale are hard to come by. When I was at the Vasa Museum in March I contemplated buying some 25mm pewter cannon sold at the museum shop for such a purpose, then put the idea off. Later, when I received a plastic Warlord Marlburian WSS gun, I tried to make copies of the wheels, but the space between spokes of the copies was too narrow, even for my sharp needle files.

In the meantime I built some barricades and other scatter terrain which I posted here, and then, come pre-Christmas sales of decorations, my wife and I went to a local Interspar and she pointed out this lasercut Santa Claus train which was at half price and had no less than eighteen wheels per set, all well scaled for 28mm figures!

I promptly bought two sets for the total princely sum of about five Euros, so now I have all the wheels for a lot of hand and horse carts, even perhaps a Gulay-Gorod for my Cossacks.

You can see the first three items built of my newly found resources, a wheelbarrow, a small hand cart and one with a resin barrel attached, assembled, placed on 30mm round bases and coated with PVA.

Cossack Pikeman Master Sculpt

 

Here's a short WIP post to show what I'm working on. This is the master for a Cossack warrior, intended to hold a pole weapon, which I will replicate using a two-piece press mould, something I'm quite proficient at by now.

The figure itself uses the body of a Warlord WSS artillerist, and head and arms from the Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago plastic crewmen set. The rest (including moustache and hair) I sculpted with Magic Sculpt, making the original torso a bit bulkier and lengthening the bottom of the overcoat. 

Floyet House WIP #1

On my 'auxiliary' Battle Campaigns blog I hinted at a mini-campaign, comprising five scenarios, which would culminate in the siege of a fortified house. 

Thus I've started building the house in question, a distant relative of the Hungarian hussar fort, the Romanian cula and the English/Scottish borderland bastle house. This will be the most ambitious of my cardboard buildings so far, being quite large in 28mm scale, with a playable interior, LED lights, and many other features.

WIP - G-93 Kontot Kombatot Armored Company for Jazygia 1919

I recently found out that I have a bunch of WW1-era vehicles and figures hidden in various parts of my stash, so as a side project, I began building suitable vehicles for an early 20th century Jazygian conflict.

You might remember the Kontot Kombatot G-93 from my earlier posts, a handsome and utilitarian vehicle I originally designed for toy soldiers - well, this is the 1/72 version of that very same.

On the left is a G-93c Astaba version with a one-man turret and auxiliary MG. It has additional track links on the front and rear for extra armor protection, a stowage bin on the right side and a pair of logs on the left (mostly to cross ditches).

The other one is the G-93b Ozmot, which will be the company commander's vehicle, the commander being the driver in one person, one further crew member servicing the 3pdr anti-tank gun, and a third one manning the hull-mounted LMG. I converted two spare Napoleonic figures for the crew, and also have a Zvezda female partisan somewhere, she will be the company commander. 

The large pointy things on the front are not factory spec, they were added by the crew to tread down hedges and barbed wire.

A standard Jazygian armored company consists of four vehicles, the rest of which I'll build to be a standard version, and the anti-armor hardtop variant, the G-93b Korkodil.

Takar Chalun's Mercenary Army

Takar Chalun* is a mercenary warlord, currently employed by the Cities of Bandar Tuk, serving with High General Leuha Taton's Army of the Eastern Approaches. His warband is small but effective; the War God Judha Puduganur had smiled on him many times, and he became wealthy and influential in the court of Rehemana. 

Further Naval Thoughts

While thinking about the logical execution of my plans about upgrading my 1/500ish scale sailing warships, I came to some conclusions. This is entertaining for me in an odd way, because a real-world 17th to 18th century naval power would be scraping for resources much the same way as I do now, I believe. So, although there are projections to buy new hulls into the fleet, there is much to do to re-work and re-rig old ones.

Upping My Naval Game

As mentioned in the previous post, until I can purchase more ships, I'll start upgrading my current collection with more elaborate rigging and textured sea bases. The first experiments in both are on the image above.

This is actually a print I had not shown before, originally an 1/700 scale model of the 18th century Intrepid-class 74 purchased from Wargaming3D, which serves, in its up-scaled form, the Kingdom of Insolencia in my interpretation, with red hull stripes. 

Once I learned enough of running rigging to add more stuff, I followed the advice in this tutorial, mainly about coating some pieces of rigging in PVA to make them heftier and easier to shape, especially the mainsail braces and ratlines. 

I think the desired effect is achieved, especially if one compares the amount of rigging to my earlier exploits - these old ships look just a bit threadbare in comparison. This is about 3yds of thread used for a ~5" long model by the way.

This is not for the Insolencian ship but the old Worcester, which will be radically reconstructed soon (I'll shorten the hull, lengthen the prow and add more stren galleries, which in turn will necessitate re-positioning the masts as well).

I tested two methods for sea effects, this one is acrylic medium over a rougher layer of liquid putty, the other is two layers of acrylic medium. I used multiple layers of white and grey drybrushing and green and blue glazing to achieve this effect. Once it dries, I'll add the shiny varnish. I found that waiting at least a week before varnishing makes everything look better.

 

USS Arizona '36 Edition WIP #3 - Life Signs Edition

 

First of all, a Happy New Year to everyone.

It just occurred to me that although blog posting is sparse, I actually did a lot more hobby-related things during the past year - more available free time I guess, because of less commuting. I hope that in time I'll be able to catch up with my painting output and post on this blog more frequently.

Among other things, some progress had been made on the Arizona. The bottom of the hull was painted red, and some sub-assemblies completed. After repositioning all the barrels, I painted and varnished the turrets. My homemade PE bender turned out to be faulty, but two scalpel blades helped me out in completing the first larger (1/700 scale so ther term is up to debate) PE part I ever did, the turret-mounted catapult in these images. I'm really proud of the result. The catapult is five or six pieces and includes multiple 90° bends. The good-lookin Seagull mounted on it is made out of another five pieces. It was not frustrating at all to put together.

I could bore you further with details about how horrible everything is on the Hobby Boss kit, but let's just be happy for a little while.

Welcome to the Future

The beginnings of an 18th century naval campaign are currently on my mind. The basic premises are that it is centered around an Ottoman force running the blockade at the Pirate Bay, and then trying to capture as many merchantmen as possible.

For this, harbor defenses for creative use were necessary, and I began constructing a medium-sized ship "in ordinary". However, scratchbuilding such things, while cost-effective, is very time-consuming. I started looking for alternatives, and thought that even with the worst possible results, a 3D print of an old semi-derelict vessel of war could be a good start.

While I don't own a 3D printer myself, by the suggestion of my wife, I found an on demand 3D printing service nearby. You just upload the .stl file to the website, scale it up or down, get a quote and in a few days you receive the final product by courier.

It was kind of hit or miss, but worth a try. I downloaded a free .stl template of a 1/700 scale large frigate from Wargaming3D, blew up the model to a 150% scale (to better match my own fleet of 1/500-ish ships), and made an order worth about 7 Euros including p&p for the pair.

You can see the results above. I went over the models with a lighter to remove most of the fine threads sticking out, but overall I think they look pretty fine, and there is not a lot more prep work to do on them than on some old injection-moulded stuff. Some filling and sanding required here and there. One will be the Böhnstadt flagship SMS Jagdhund, and the other an Ottoman/Tekirdag razée of 40 guns, without masts or sails, ready to be towed to battle (or not).

 

USS Arizona '36 Edition WIP #2

 

Some progress was made during the long weekend with the Arizona build. I sanded the hull to a better shape and corrected the torpedo bulge at the bow. The gun shields were trimmed off the deck above the secondary casemates. And finally, the metal barrels were glued to the turrets which were more or less corrected.

There are obvious mould lines and marks all across, which makes the process, erm, interesting. I'm glad I don't have to work with the plastic barrels. I'll salvage those for another project.

Next up is sanding the second deck tier to a smooth finish, and doing something about those nasty porthole-looking things. I'll probably fill them up, add some card on the outside and drill proper holes.

USS Arizona '36 Edition WIP #1

 

I might have mentioned previously that I'm on the lookout for the Takom 1/700 scale Derfflinger kit. Well it was made available in local model stores recently, so, to clear the queue and do some practice, I started working on the 1/700 scale Hobby Boss USS Arizona.

The Dark Gate of Trashburgh

We enjoyed a meal of Aldi puddings and I really liked the shape of their packaging. Thought followed thought, and, since I had not done anything major terrain-wise since our move to the new place, I scavenged around and came up with the idea of making a small gate for the adequately named city of Trashburgh. On the image above, you can see the beginning stages of the build.

His Grace the Duke of Rotstein decides the build is proceeding well enough for a personal inspection. The gates will mostly be used for him and his pals to run around in an urban environment, sticking rapiers into each other.

As humidity builds up inside when PVA and the secret ingredient cures on the sides of the things, I had to drill them through at a few points, but this shall not detract from the overall effect.

The base is a piece of foamcore from the stock Dad used to renovate their bathroom. You know where the pudding jugs are from; the tower tops are 2mm balsa, around which I glued some EVA foam and decorated it with 1mm balsa strips. The bulwark is made from the same type of foam, and the gate and main wall piece are corrugated cardboard. And, of course, we must not forget about the secret ingredient.

Why yes, the secret ingredient! It's an artist's acrylic medium called "heavy body gel". It can be used to fill in large gaps and dries to a hard finish. It's great for texturing as well. It can be shaped with a spatula or fingertip for the less sophisticated like myself.

Once I added a few more bits and pieces, I'll cover the walls in a stone effect plaster and paint the thing to an eggshell colour, or some similar shade. 

WIP - G-93 'Kontot Kombatot' Light Tank Platoon

Now that I had the prototype and did not need to think much on the specifications, it was easy to assemble two more G-93 tankettes for the Jazygian armed forces. This time, instead of corrugated cardboard, I used 2mm balsa wood and two types of cardstock (a thicker one for the undercarriage and thinner ones for the horizontal upper surfaces and rear, much alike real tanks). Due to their simple shape, they are rather easy to put together, and needed filling only in a few places.

The platoon of three vehicles is going to be the standard combat element of the Jazygian light tank arm. This can be any variant of the G-93, with the restriction that at least one vehicle must have anti-tank capability. There are enough spare parts to retrofit all vehicles with at least a hull-mounted 3pdr gun. 

You can see that two vehicles of this platoon are going to have some field modifications, either storage boxes, extra track links or sandbags to boast their fighting capability. The platoon can have two hardtop versions or two turreted vehicles. The latter models will also look a bit more rough - war with Roxolania looming, they are put together hurriedly.

There is a fourth vehicle in the making at the back of the picture, of which I will tell you more in a following post.

 

1/500 SMS Seydlitz WIP #2

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

WIP - Jazygian 'Kontot Kombatot' G-93 tankette

 

The problem with vehicles that come with toy soldier sets is twofold: they are usually way too tiny compared to the army men, and they completely lack functionality.

To solve both of these problems, the Jazygian Armed Forces developed this rather handsome vehicle, basically a cardboard box on tracks, which can house two or three crew members and can lead the Jazygian spearhead into enemy territory.

The R&D process was relatively trouble free. I took a piece of cardboard, drew the shape of the hull, cut it out, scored and glued it together. The front mantle received a piece of strengthening stainless steel, and one of the windows were cut out to house a HMG or a 3pdr anti-tank gun (sold separately, also known as a piece of 2mm copper rod with a counterweight). There are going to be experiments with bolting a mortar to the underside as well. I covered the edges with strips of paper to make painting easier and protect them somewhat. The tracks were placed under the hull, otherwise it would have been too wide, and a pair of 2mm balsa skirts were added.

Once the glue dries, I'll paint it in the traditional Jazygian war colours - green, brown, grey and pink.