Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Nemesis, decision time

Well I have settled on two paint schemes to choose from, both are legitimate historical patterns and different enough from the yellow/black patter that the other ships are painted in to ensure there is no confusion. To test the schemes I painted one side of the ship in one pattern and the other side of the ship in the alternate pattern. I then flipped the images in Paint so that they looked more alike. Below you will find the pictures;







     Comments welcomed, other paint schemes still an option right now, but this project will be put to rest by Thursday night. Thanks to everybody who have provided comments, suggestions and links, here and over at TMP.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Nemesis Advances, UPDATED

     After sleeping on it, and reading the input from comments here and on TMP I decided to go with three slightly shorter funnels. I had realized that the six-funnel monsters were all armored cruisers and that many lighter cruisers had between two and four. Rather than cut down the Epipen tubes that I was using for funnels earlier I determined to make my own from rolled paper. I used the pen tubes as a form and slid the paper tube off when the glue had dried.

 I decided to add the rivets while waiting for the glue to fully dry

Monday, January 28, 2013

Nemesis Proceeds

     Frustrated by the whole funnel situation I decided to do the job with the highest level of tedium: rivets For me this is a Zen thing, I lose myself in the process and can clear my mind. I had covered the model in card last night so she was ready for rivets. Mind you, I am no hero like Col O"Truth, who hand-cuts his rivets from plastic rod. I cheat and use T-Shirt paint, applying tiny dots of it to the model in lieu of gluing individual rivets down. Someday I hope to grow up and join the ranks of Truly Manly Men who are capable of such feats, but for now T-Shirt paint it is.

there she sits, ready for rivets

On Funnels

     The reason for the forest of funnels on the latest model is simply this; that is how they built them "back in the day". Review the funnely glory of these beasts! All pictures are from the delightful Big Bad Battleships website.

count 'em, SIX funnels, Yikes!

Nemesis Arises Redux

     After failing to build a torpedoe boat I decided to upgrade Nemesis to a light cruiser sized vessels. This allows me to fit all four torpedoe tubes onto the hull and fit an array of guns as well.  Turning to the French idea of a commerce raider, heavily enough armed to defeat anything fast enough to catch it and fast enough to outrun any thing that can out-gun it she will sport a pair of eight inch guns as well as four each five inch guns and torpedoe-launchers.


the foam hull was pretty uneven and I used 60grit sandpaper to smooth the shape,
 keep a shop-vac handy if you are going to do this, it is very messy

Friday, January 25, 2013

Alas!....Nemesis no more...Panther instead

   

      As I applied the rivets to the model I was busy thinking about just how I wanted this model armed. The size and number of the torpedo tubes seemed to overwhelm the tiny hull, and the hull seemed to lack the sleek lines of a fast torpedo craft so I decided to re-direct the construction toward a colonial gunboat. This seemed much more in keeping with both the size and hull-form that I had made.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The Rise of Nemesis

      So what are you supposed to do when your neighbor builds a huge and powerful Armored Cruiser and you would rather spend money on a new palace? You find an inexpensive way to deal with that nasty cruiser at nominal cost. Actually, that was the answer for countries that didn't have the naval budget of powerhouses like Great Britian or Russia; torpedoe-boats (yes that IS the way they spelled torpedoe back in the day, like the whole potato/potatoe thing). Cheap, easy to build and keep up and fully capable of sinking even the largest of battleships they were instantly popular with any nation seeking to defend their coastline on a constrained budget.

    Having built a few larger vessels and looking to try out a couple of different ideas I chose to build one myself. It will belong to whatever navy I choose to oppose my current fleet of Ironclad warships and it's name will be Nemesis.

the hull was made like the previous boats, blue board with card cladding, 
for details on this see the "Adventures in Blueboard and Foamcore" page above

an old Revell PT-109 kit that I picked up at a garage sale for fifty cents 
gave up it's torpedo tubes for the cause

Monday, January 21, 2013

The Colonel undertakes an astounding Project!!

    Col O'Truth  has embarked on another one of his madly rivetty projects and it looks to be his biggest yet; pop by and take a look but start at the bottom of the page to fully grasp the magnificent enormity of it all.

   I am humbled by his breadth of vision and his capacity for applying rivets (particularly the rivets).

Thursday, January 3, 2013

28mm Foot Knights from Eccentric Miniatures

    The things you can stumble across when wasting time on the interwebs never cease to amaze me (or is it that I am easily amazed????). I was searching for pictures of dismounted knights from the Teutonic Crusades when this popped up. Intrigued by the idea that somebody was selling weapons for 28mm knights (and promptly forgetting my quest for original artwork as the basis for uniform colors) I clicked the home button to find that they also produce complete knights to go with the weapons, in sets even. Most intriguing!

image1 (9K)
image of assembled and painted figures
 that I shamelessly lifted from the Eccentric Miniatures website

I right away imagined sticking the extra heads from other manufacturers on them to produce dismounted sergeants, then I frantically searched the site for crossbows (sadly, there are none) hoping to produce crossbow armed Norman footmen. Maybe if we all send them an email (or twenty or so....) they would be kind enough to produce a sprue of of crossbows, or bows even, and then a set of arms holding a decent length spear. That would be very nice indeed! Priced at $16.00US for sixteen figures these are very competitive. If you are thinking 13th century these could fill a spot in your army.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Plastic Soldier Company and Zvezda builds

    My old pal Gary over at oldSarges Wargame and Model Blog clearly had more free time over the holidays than I did. He has posted a number of  photos covering the Zvezda T-70 and the Plastic Soldier Company Tiger I kits, beautiful work indeed! 

      He also has a post covering the future releases from Zvezda. Among them a 1/100 T-35, a KV-II and a 1/144 Polikarpov PO-2 recon plane (eyes in the sky for Soviets!) as well as a bunch of 1/72 scale infantry including Partisans. I must say that I am excited that Zvezda continues to expand this range as all of their work thus far has been top-notch and inexpensive to boot.

    Take a look at Gary's other posts, he is a much better modeler than I am, and whiz with an airbrush to boot.