Let's Build a Pirate Sloop Part V Darker Paths.........

    Several people had expressed concerns about the sturdiness of the blue board, I find a couple of coats of latex house paint is more than enough to stabilize the surface against all but the clumsiest fellow gamers. Still, there are ways to make the surface more resistant to damage; auto body filler or Durham's Water Putty instead of the wallboard compound will result in a tougher surface. Another approach that I often use is the cover the model in cardstock and wood glue. This got me to thinking that I should examine just how practical it would be to use on a sailing ship rather than an ironclad.
At dfirst I just thought of covering the model with sheets of the cardstock, but, on further consideration, I decided to plank the model with strips of cardstock.


Madness, you say! But what a wonderful madness it is!


Behold!

simple tools, but set to a dark and insane purpose they look sinister indeed

Let's Build a Pirate Sloop Part IV Complexion Issues

If your model has a nice smooth finish, or you are going to use my other method of cover hulls (index card and glue see here for an example of how I approach that technique) you can skip this step and move on to the next.

she sure is pretty with her upper works installed

and the hull lightly sanded to even off the rough bits

Let's Build a Pirate Sloop Part III Upperworks

Having got the hull in order let us turn our attentions to the shape and style of the upperworks. With wide range of time and the different local traditions of construction you have vast latitude when it come top your choice for the model's upperworks. At a very basic level you could put a low railing around the stern and forecastles and call it a day, at the other extreme you have the option for fully enclosing both castles. I will show you both and you can decide. Let us begin.

 

the straight ends of the first model seemed too plain so I grabbed a paint jar and traced it onto the plank that I was going to use for the side of the sterncastle

NOTE: THIS POST IS VERY PHOTO INTENSIVE AND MIGHT TAKE A WHILE TO LOAD

Let's Build a Pirate Sloop Part II

Thus step we will see real progress to a completed boat with the attachment of the castles and the long planks that form the sides of the hull;

that is if I don't burn myself horribly with the hot-glue gun

(don't ask, we have a long adversarial relationship....it is ugly)

Let's build a Pirate Sloop Part I wherein we sand a lot

Given the various shipping times that the Post Office suggested to me some of you may have already gotten your kits others will very soon (six unfortunate souls will have to wait a bit...I failed to get to the Post Office in time on Saturday to get them in the mail over the weekend) so I figured that I should start the step-by-step assembly instructions.



the contents of the box may vary slightly but it should look like this

Fun with cross-stitch plastic mats

I am not really sure that is what they are really called, but I found these plastic mats that are grids with tiny square opening. To my fevered wargamer/modeler's mind they looked like grating of some sort and so I bought a couple of sheets. They have laid around the workshop for some time now but I saw that many ships had gratings rather than solid lids to the opening into the hold, this made a connection in the dim recesses of my head and I dug them out when I got home from work today.

the plastic grid

Pirate Sloop Update

I got the first nine models out yesterday, lack of shipping containers has stopped proceedings until more boxes can be found.

After I get the rest of them shipped (hopefully by Saturday) I will post a tutorial that gives a step-by-step of me building another one.

The Madness Continues OR On the Flexibility of Blue Board

       Again I found myself watching the paint dry on a different project and my eye wandered over to the Accidental Galleon. It looked lonely and in need of some detail work to make it look snappy.
I dove into the project with my usual total lack of a plan and started slicing blue board thin enough that I could explore the inherent flexibility of the medium.

Here is the result;

she looks a lot better with some railings and such

A Truly Great Resource

I stumbled across this in the TMP forums, someone had thoughtfully linked to the Royal Museums Greenwich  they have some really amazing stuff there particularly ship plans some thing that I wish I had found a few weeks ago!

The other collections have lots of interesting things as well, be prepared to spend some time. No really, grab a cup of coffee and get comfortable....this could take a while.

Further acts of Madness

I was finishing up the Pirate Sloops that I had offered to cut for anyone wishing to have one when I sneezed  as I was cutting one of the hulls. This caused my hand to slip and cut a large notch ion the bows of the hull. I put it to the side as I completed the rest of the work. Not wanting to throw away an otherwise OK hull I sat and contemplated what could be done to save the ship. I decided on a narrower shape as that would remove some of the width and, with it, the unwanted notch. What emerged was a sleek narrow hull. In my usual manner I just started cutting foam until I had something that looked likely.

This is what emerged.

I really gotta stop this kind of thing!

First test of battle for the new fort

We decided to take the new fort out for  spin, and the new sloop got involved as well.

Scenario;

SPANISH    In a small coastal town the local governor has been building a sloop that he hopes will help deter the troublesome pirates that have plagued his shores. He has not been able to afford guns for his little project just yet so the ship sit unarmed at this time.

To his surprise during a recent storm one of the Treasure Floita grounded on a nearby shoal and broke its keel. This represented a huge opportunity for the Governor who rescued the crew and has been running daily salvage operations to gather the treasure. He has had his divers carefully noting the location of the cannons in the shallow wreck and plans to arm his new sloop as soon as the authorities gather the silver (well, most of it, some got "lost" and now resides in the Governor's personal vault).

The recovered silver has been stored in the Customs House in the care of the King's Agent and guarded by a company of the garrison's soldiers. Pirates were shadowing the Flota and the Governor is worried about an attack on his little town.

PIRATES: A recent storm has wrecked your one good ship and cast you and your crew ashore near a small Spanish outpost. The Treasure Flota that you were shadowing has disappeared over the horizon. You and your men are in a desperate situation, the two remaining boats only stay afloat by way of prodigious bailing and can only carry twenty-four men between them.

Your are about six miles south of the Spanish town, just far enough away to have gone unnoticed thus far. The one bright spot on your horizon is that it appears that there is a shiny new sloop in the port, it sails out each day at dawn and returns heavily laden, you assume it is a fishing boat but it will do nicely as a Pirate vessel as well.

You have drawn up a plan to send some hardy souls into the harbor just before dawn in the two leaky boats to distract the garrison while the rest of the force attacks from landward. Your objective is the capture of the sloop which you can then sail down the coast and arm by recovering the guns from your wrecked ship.

despite repeated opportunities to spot the incoming Pirates the sentry in the fort failed to notice them until they were disembarking (lousy dice rolling or a very thick fog, hard to tell)

28mm Pirate Sloop, Decks, or Watch Anton lose his mind

There are indeed times when I think I might be completely mad. The most troubling times are those in which I look at a project and think to myself "That would be completely daft" and then go ahead and do exactly the daft thing.

I had decided to put deck planking in mt Pirate sloop, at first I took the high road and drew it in, then I planked a portion and finally I free-hand drew the last bit. Having done all three I can say that the planking wasn't as bad as the free-hand work (it also looks much better). Judge for yourself but in the future I will be drawing the planks on with a straight-edge.

 before I can add a deck I had to raise the level of the well-deck, 

I took this opportunity to add a balsa wood layer so that the mast 

would have something sturdier than blue-board to attach to

a thick layer of Tite-bond carpenter's glue was the first step

28mm Pirate Sloop nears completion

I have a couple of hours of time today so I got some work done on the sloop; gunwales, railings etc.

  

entirely blue-board so far, aside from the glue that is

 

the mast, sails and guns will have to be in a different medium I do believe

 

the  way that it is shaping up this will be a ten-gun vessel

     Having gone so far down the blue-board only rabbit hole I am now trying to make all of the significant parts from insulation board only. No real point; just a thing to amuse myself by.

And Sometimes Things Just Happen 2nd Edition 28mm pirate sloop

They say that idle hands are the Devil's workshop, I would have to say that idle hands in the workshop lead to altogether unexpected things. Yesterday, while quite literally watching some glue dry, I decided upon a little practice with my Proxxon foam cutter in preparation to the post I plan on doing on working with blue foam.

Well, one thing lead to another and the next thing I know this happened:

I was practicing curves (my worst skill) and the hull emerged 

 

28mm Spanish Lace Wars fort Part IV Paint at Last!!!

Well I finally got all the surface work done a threw a coat of light tan house paint on the model, I then gave it a heavy dry-brushing with white. After that had dried I cut in the red trim, I resisted the urge to paint the door jambs and window frames red as well. I may do so in the future.....time will tell.

 a few Foundry Camerone French Foreign Legionnaires, 

lost in both time and space they are there mostly to show scale

OK, Now I am REALLY mad !!!!

I was rambling around on the web after paying bills this morning and I stumbled across THIS LINK.  Full of detailed drawings like this:

They also had a complete set for the Fort at Mantanzas, it appears I got a few things wrong.

All the drawings I ever needed, and tons of photos as well. I downloaded the drawings for the Castillo de San Marcos. Now I have no excuses

They cover lots of other stuff as well. take some time and take a look at the main page as well.

Fort Mantanzas Part III card cladding, Stucco and some details

     Further work on the Fort. I covered it with cardstock (actually index cards) this covered the gaps and lends a surprising amount of strength to the blue board. Even though the model consists entirely of flat surfaces (aside from the watchtower)  this took quite some time as I decided to cover the inside of the base. After the card had dried overnight I then applied a coat of wallboard compound and then added some details.

 

the base unit gets a covering of card