Things have gone completely to Hull!!!

     I was monkeying around with a few ideas and decided to give one a try; templates. If I could attach a template to the blue board it would get rid of a lot of the issues with trying to cut a consistent shape with the hot-wire free-hand. There were a couple of false-starts but I think I have gotten a grasp on things so I will walk through this step-by-step.

the first step is to decide on your hull-form and then sketch it onto some stiff card

(a thin piece of plywood or masonite would be even better) get the edges as smooth as possible

Distractions from the past

     Having finished the Armored Cruiser and looking for something that would go quicker and require less thought I grabbed a couple of models that had been used in a recent game that were in need of paint. The Wild West Town  by Gamcraft Miniatures that my son had given me for Christmas had escaped painting thus far. I now intended to remedy that issue. While building the models was easy and quick I had noticed that the laser-cut edges were markedly darker than the rest of the wood check the old post and see what I mean link . I had solved the problen by adding trim peices made of balsa, which worked out pretty well, see the pictures below:

the trim pieces did the job pretty well,

but these buildings were painted in pretty wild colors in the Good Old Days

Armored Cruiser: commissioned at last

     Between the dozen different things that occupied my time over the last weekend I managed to squeeze in a few hours of work on the cruiser. I got the bridge equipment painted and installed and finally decided on an arrangement for the smokestacks and cranes. There is a ton of little details and a bit of touch-up painting to do but she is ready for service as she stands.

that is a lot of yellow, I might still paint the upper deck black

Armored Cruiser: Deck guns and portholes

 Deck Guns and Portholes.......

 

the Captain is impressed with his additional firepower

All Star Service from Reverisco

     A little while ago I was concerned that the Armored Cruiser project would run into a slow spot as I waited for some parts that I had ordered from Reverisco to arrive (the web-site said that it could take a week to ten days for arrival). I ordered the parts on Tuesday 5JUN12 and got them on Saturday 9JUN12. That is pretty amazing servive and should be brought to people's attention!

    Now the only hold-up is that I am in a stretch of time where I will be very busy and will have little time to devote to this project. So, in the meantime, I will show you some of their handiwork instead of mine;

I ordered these on Teusday night and they were here on Saturday morning,

that is great turnaround time for a small company!

 

New Feature, look up above!

I have added a new Page to the space up at the top of the blog, it brings together all of the posts on terrain and buildings and shows them in chronological order (makes them a bit easier to follow that way).

Enjoy

Book Review Osprey Vanguard Series #183 Warships of the Anglo-Dutch War and #188 Great Lakes Warships 1812-1815

     Continuing the Naval theme that has taken over the blog in the last week or so I present these two works. Conforming to the usual Vanguard format of a little bit of history and a LOT of technical stuff and data both of these books fulfill what they set out to do in grand style. Both the writers and the artists are masters of their craft and it shows well here.

Armored Cruiser, railings and rivets

     My earlier efforts at creating embossed rivets having failed I tried the idea put forward by a commenter on TMP and used fabric paint. At first I was not hopeful that this would lead to success as my first efforts were, well, let us say uneven. Practice makes perfect they say, and as I got the hang of things the results improved markedly; then I had a thought. Why put the rivets directly onto the model when I could create strips of rivets that could be applied all at once. The results you see below;

the yellow was my choice, the pink was my granddaughter's

even spacing was achieved by using a spare 3x5 card for a guide

Armored Cruiser, further details.....

     Having assembled a few details I decided to take a look at them in the altogether and see where else I could go without impairing the playability of the model.

the smokestacks, cranes and ship's boats really crowd the top of the superstructure

28mm Armored Cruiser, detail, details.......

    Now that all the big stuff was done I had to set about providing some of the eye-candy that makes bigger scale models fun, details. This includes stuff like doors with handles, ship's boats, cranes for the ship's boats, smokestacks, and so on. Knowing that this isn't a true scale model but rather a caricature of one, a lot of fussy little details got swept aside or reduced to incidental appearances and I had to go for playability over delicacy of detail.

I started out with the easiest one; doors, I cut about a dozen out of thin card

Arming the Armored Cruiser

     Having plated the hull with armor it was now time to provide some offensive power to the vessel. At first I was tempted to just buy some gun barrels but the desire to stay as true to the "scratchbuilt" claim as possible I took a trip to Hobby Lobby and went to the "small wood things" aisle (not\, that is not what they call it, it IS what I call it however). I spotted some Tie Rack Pins which, to me at least, looked a lot like gun barrels so I grabbed them and a few other things that might be handy as well.

tie rack pins, just the ticket

sponsons fitted into place and their positions marked