Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Going in a Whole New Direction with Blue Board

     Having finally fixed my hot wire cutter (it was the switch, it is always the switch that fails, again I just by-passed it) I was itching to try out an idea that I had; to make a table-saw equivalent using the wire-cutter. A little bit of blue-board, some super-glue and duct-tape and a few bar clamps and I was in business. The results can be seen below, mind you this is a primitive prototype and will be improved upon/replaced as time goes by (probably with stuff from these guys). This set-up allowed me to cut crisp ninety degree angles so I set out to try my hand, first on various bits of scrap that were lying about the shop and then on a couple of larger projects that I had been holding off on.

     First I tried my hand at an ECW star fort (or "sconces", as they called them then) this turned out very well so I moved on to larger projects. For a long time I have been wanting to build another pre-dreadnought style ship for a VSF campaign but was not looking forward to the amount of work involved in the hull assembly. Cutting a hull (and superstructure) out of blue board would save me the bother and greatly speed things along so I sketched out a bow-profile on some board and set to work.

the technology is crude by it does work rather well,
a bar-clamp holds the frame of the wire-cutter firmly

duct-tape and another clamp hold the whole thing down on thew workbench
on the left you can see the star-fort sitting on a pile of off-cuts

the fence keeps the work and the wire in a steady position

and POOF! you have a hull; next to it on the table you can see the guilty party,
Conway's is the source of all my troubles, and a lot of creative ideas

the second layer, the rounded ends will become gun-sponsons

German cruisers had a pronounced front-heavy look

they also had very high superstructures

after the superstructure I added the con.....

....and a couple of turrets

the side-sponsons were cut free-hand, that took a few tries before I got it right

mounted on either side of the superstructure they will add to both broadside and end-on firepower

not a product endorsement,
just an example of unusual sources of shapes

the three skinny funnels add to the unique profile

the Captain-to-be prowls the deck while the vessel is under construction

he seems well pleased with his new ship

     This is my first big experiment with using blue-board to build up a boats hull. I like how things are going and I am getting the hang of using the hot-wire table to cut items at a predictable angle. This method provides a light and sturdy three-dimensional shape to mount details on and is rather quicker than my old method of building up layers of foam-core or wood.

         This could well be the beginnings of a really large convention game!

4 comments:

  1. Really like the set up Anton. Thinking I might do something similar for myself. Keen to see how the ship turns out too.

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  2. Look forward to the end product. Those tubes might make good gun tubes as well, with their taper and all.

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  3. Rodger, take a look at the link. I would avoid the Woodland Scenics device seen in the photos; it is a peice of junk, flimsy and shabbily made, it broke the second time I used it.

    J Womack Esq, It has become a constant thing for me to look at everyday objects with the intention of finding modelling uses for them.

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    1. I just took a look and they don't look like they are up to much. I made my own a year or two back but it is a bit big and can be a pain to use. Maybe time to make another.

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