A scratchbuilt pirate ship (work in progress)

[PhilB]

After the small knarr project I posted on here a while back, I finally got round to starting work on a larger ship for our Pathfinder Pirate campaign.

There's a lot of anachronism in fantasy-medieval roleplaying games, but I wanted to shoot for a look of medieval ships like a cog that were in use before canon on shipboard became widespread. I'll just post a couple pics here, but you can see a full write-up tutorial on my blog.

Here is my starting point. Using a 2D ship plan we'd been playing with in early games, I traced the ship outline onto a cardboard template, then onto 20mm-thick foam insulation sheeting (the dense kind - what's that called again?), then eyeballed the angle I wanted to give the hull core for the balsa that would form the outer planking.



After preparing templates for the hull, transfering onto 1mm-thick balsa, hours soaking the balsa so it would bend, pinning it in place, gluing in ribs and deck planking, this is the intermediate result.



There's a lot of work yet to be done: railing along the gunwhales (tricky curved pieces, that!) doors and stairs, a bit more bracing for the forecastle, not to mention the mast, rigging, yardarm and sail. But I think it's off to a good start.

[Cubs]

Niiice. I love stuff like this. I've got a step-by-step on how to build a Viking longship, but it's very complicated and frankly beyond my skillset! Building the solid hull from that insulation stuff is a good idea.

[PhilB]

Please, give us a link to your longship tutorial.

I've got a plastic revell kit of a longship, slated to be built soon, and have thought about embedding it in a seascape to bring it to the waterline, so I can use it on the gaming table. These other projects are all going to be waterline models, and the foam core technique seems to work fairly well for this. But a proper ship model requires lots and lots of detail work: ratlines and rigging, blocks and tackle, cleats for tying off lines, anchors, railing, the list goes on and on.

But, little by little, it will get done. And I'll post it here.

[Elbows]

I've almost purchased the Ziterdes foam ship-core numerous times.  Looks like it would be a fun project (with the hardest bits done for you).

[Cubs]

Please, give us a link to your longship tutorial.

Do you know, I've just searched the computer to find the damn thing and I can't find it. I might have saved it in PDF form on my old computer, I don't know. I remember it was in a Wargames Illustrated issue (10-15 years back) in truncated form, but someone on another board sent a link to the full step-by-step and I had that.

EDIT: Found it, I won't spam Phil's thread with images, but if anyone wants the tute, let me know and I can PM them with it.

[OSHIROmodels]

Great little project 

[beefcake]

Looking cool. I'd love to see a mini in there for scale with the next pic

[PhilB]

Minis? Did you ask for minis?

It's a wild fluke of chance, I know, but I did just recently finish painting a dozen pirates from Wargames Foundry.



Today I've been making another set of stairs, two iron-bound doors for the fore and aft-castles, and thinking about how in the heck I'm going to make the railings. But in the next week or two I hope to have all the fiddly details finished, get some paint on those raw balsa bits, and put a serious dose of grey drybrushing over the whole thing to give it a more weathered look.


More pics soon.

[boneio]

This is great! I know what you mean about the anachronisms, as someone who likes his D&D more medieval than most it's good to see a cog being made!

[PhilB]

The stern of this model was a problem, and I knew I wanted to do a decent job on the rudder. So the old stern post had to come off to make room for a proper rudder and tiller.



BTW, I did not realise that the ubiquitous ship's wheel only came into use in the 18th century, so earlier ships like this one only use a tiller (or even a side rudder, like on a longship).

Next is the railing along the fore and aft-castles. Has anyone tried using a power drill as an improvised lathe and shaping toothpicks or barbecue skewers?

[sundayhero]

Great work


Yes I'm sometimes using my dremel (with special end, I don't know the name in english, it's a screw where you can put any size of tools on it) to shape wood or metal.

I secure some sandpaper to my workbench with tape, I put the bit I want to shape in the dremel head, and then I sand the stuff on the sandpaper.

[Daeothar]

The new stern looks much better; great work!

Also; there are cocktail skewers that have been turned (or more likely; pressed) into a shape very reminiscent of balcony- or stair railings:



Have a look around for these; I've got some stashed away for just such an occasion (but not enough for an entire ship, regrettably...)

[Cubs]

Next is the railing along the fore and aft-castles. Has anyone tried using a power drill as an improvised lathe and shaping toothpicks or barbecue skewers?

A very useful hack (I hate that word) was something I stumbled onto a while back whilst shaping artillery shells from steel wire. If you put your wooden skewer into one mini-drill and have your shaping disc (or whatever) in another mini-drill (maybe borrow one if you don't have two), then you can very easily shape the wood just by touching the shaping disc to it.

[PhilB]

Daeothar! That's perfect!
OK, I'm on for a drive to a large supermarket to scope out their supply of toothpicks/cocktail skewers. Now that you mention it, I've seen those before too. Didn't think of it. But they would be perfect. Especially the first one.

I'll keep you posted.

Then comes the rigging. I need to get some different guages of string... and think up something clever for making block a tackle.

[Brandlin]

You can buy blocks and deadeyes etc from model boat shops and its actually quite fun to rig a ship.

That's what I did for my little boat