A Long-Neglected Project! (was Wirelizard Goes Yachting)

[Wirelizard]

I think I have a plan. At least, I plan on having an actual plan soon enough. Or something like that.  

I've been meaning to build a small bridge to go along with the CD-based dirt roads that I made earlier this year, so I think a multiple-CD set of new road sections, a bridge, and some matching creek sections is the order of the day.

Not as spectacular or as large as some of the proposed contest entries, but it's both buildable and storable with my current lack of both working and storage space, and it will go along nicely with my current scenery.

[Wirelizard]

OK, I have a new plan. After spending a while in a bit of a creative slump over this whole Build Something contest, tonight the rum spoke to me, and said, "Build a boat!"

Something a bit like this:


or possibly like this:



and inspired by one of Bob Murch's pulp-era boats, visible in the lower-left corner of this photo from Trumpeter Salute 2008:

(Flickr Photo Link for bigger and notes, etc.

So, a gentleman's yacht type of thing, suitable for a bit of genteel rumrunning, perhaps, or getting into exotic sorts of trouble in ports all over the world. (or right at home in the harbours of New York, San Francisco or New Commerce, naturally.)

I'm thinking it'll be about 8-10 inches long, 3 inches wide or so. Flying bridge, back deck, possibly a lift-off roof for access to some sort of main cabin under the flying bridge. White hull, dark glossy wooden brightwork, brass, etc. I have some Company B searchlights that will go nicely on the corners of the flying bridge... and some light machine guns likewise from CoyB, should that sort of non-brass fitting be required!

Also, this is apparently my 500th post to LAF. You people are a bad habit. (so is Appleton's rum. I don't intend to quit either.)

[odd duck]

Good choice! very usefull bit of gaming kit you'll get lots of use of after the contest.Glad to see someones pictures of that game and Bob's layout came out mine were all blurry,I played Dr.koo in that game(rather badly)got stuck on the far side of the table with the "on the road" characters. Bob's layout was one of the inspirations for my choice of contest entry. You played the american sailors did'nt you?

[OSHIROmodels]

What a good idea. You might want to have a little google for the Italian lakes, there are plenty of this sort of thing floating around (too much money if you ask me   ).

Keep it shiny dark wood but paint a stripe around it, an off white should do the trick  

cheers

James

[Wirelizard]

Good choice! very usefull bit of gaming kit you'll get lots of use of after the contest.Glad to see someones pictures of that game and Bob's layout came out mine were all blurry,I played Dr.koo in that game(rather badly)got stuck on the far side of the table with the "on the road" characters. Bob's layout was one of the inspirations for my choice of contest entry. You played the american sailors did'nt you?

I played the Germans mit zher half-track, anachronistically marching in and threatening everyone and being vain, in proper pulpen-Deutsch style. You rammed the US Navy's patrol boat with a steamer, I recall, and didn't Dr. Koo teleport all over the board casuing mayhem?

I've got a whole set of photos from Trumpeter Salute '08 over on Flickr, including a few more of Bob's awesome China Station table.

I didn't get any photos of his funny hats, though. The funny hats help complete Mr. Murch's awesome pulp games. Pity my Prussian sunhelmet didn't fit...

Slightly closer to back on topic, the smaller of the two ships I'm using for inspiration had real dimensions of 38' LOA by 9'9" beam, which in 1/56th roughly translates to 8" by 2". I'll probably nudge the beam out to 2.5" for playability; the cabin/bridge will occupy the full width of the hull - you can't fit a figure on the narrow side decks anyway, so they might as well go to make room inside the cabin. Length overall will be somewhere between 8-10"; most of the construction is going to be cardstock and mattboard. I'll probably do a partial mockup this afternoon of paper, just to get a feel for proportions and fit of figures inside and around the thing.

One nice thing about these 1920s-30s yachts is that the fashion was for mostly-vertical bows and vertical transoms (sterns), which are much easier to fabricate, especially working in sheet materials instead of the real thing's planks!

[gamer Mac]

Good idea
Looking forward to seeing how you get on.
I am dead jealous of you for getting to play on that board. I would love to have a board like that.

[Wirelizard]

We have an actual pen-on-paper plan, with two Pulp Figures sailors for scale, and some sketchs of other common base sizes in the rear deck/cockpit area. Even those insane enough to use oversize 25mm square bases will be able to get figures onboard. Well, one or two, anyway.

I'm happy with the basic plan, and especially with the side-view - too many wargaming models, especially ships, end up looking too tall for their width, and I think I've avoided that here. There's not a lot of headroom in the main cabin, but overall height is slightly smaller than overall width, even counting to the top of the head of a figure standing in the flying bridge.

Details like window placement in the main cabin, exact layout of the flying bridge, etc are obviously TBD. Nevertheless, progress!

[Wirelizard]

I have discovered that white styrene plastic turns into a featureless white blob-thing when you attempt to take pictures with a flash. And that the lighting at my scenery/project bench sucks too much to allow non-flash photography. (the yacht was going to be card, but I switched to styrene as being easier to work, and I had three sheets lurking in one of the boxes'o'stuff, too)

Nevertheless, my yacht has a cabin, and the hull has sides now. It looks kind of boat-shaped, even.

Lots still to do; the transom will be next, then the cabin roof and decking over the forward third of the hull. The flying bridge will be the last major structural piece, then it'll be onto window frames, ship's wheels, and other sorts of detailing.

Actual photos tomorrow, or possibly later this week. So far it looks remarkably close to the plan in the photo above.

[Dewbakuk]

Do you have a desk lamp you can put next to it? If you have the styrene at an angle from the lamp the edges etc should show up. Ideally you want a lamp on either side (bedside lamps work), but one will often do.

[Wirelizard]

Well, in a month exactly since my last post, I've done all sorts of other scenery projects - topiary, buildings, hedges, sidewalks - finished 15 figures, and done exactly squat on the boat.

I'll get back to it in the New Year, probably, but nothing is gonna happen in the next five days. Or not enough, anyway.

If one of our esteemed moderators wants to shunt this thread out to Workshops, that would be excellent.

Now I can relax and spectate properly on all the projects that did get the right amount of inspiration!

[Wirelizard]

Back in the dawn of time, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and such, LAF held a "Build Something" contest upon the theme of "transportation". I was going to build a motor yacht or large powerboat, I claimed. I got as far as a plan, and the plan got as far as a few pieces of styrene glued together and then tucked away on a shelf.

And many years (well, almost exactly four...) passed, comets crossed the heavens, many other things got done, and the barely-started motor yacht gather'd dust. For a while the skeleton of the cabin was used as a storage place for scrap lumber.

And the day came (late last week) when I said to myself, "Self, that damn boat has sat there getting dusty and gathering clutter for too long. Let us get started properly back into this whole wargaming thing, which we have neglected of late, and let us start with that damn boat."

And so the damn boat, which had consisted of the base, the sides of the stern, and the four walls of the cabin but nothing else, has recently acquired a roof. The roof has acquired the basic structure of the flying bridge. The bow has some framework and a deck. It's actually starting to look quite a bit like a boat, finally.

From off the bow quarter:


The last major structural component left to do is the hull sides, which I'm going to do as one long strip of styrene plastic card along each side, and then putty in the bow to form the actual point of the bow.

From off the opposite stern quarter:


Scale provided by a group of Pulp Figures 28mm reporters and newsies.

There's going to be a fair bit of putty work to smooth off rough edges, fill gaps and add details. The whole thing so far is styrene plastic card in various thicknesses, largely because I have heaps of it stashed away, some of which (I wish I was kidding...) has been in the family collections of hobby supplies for two decades by now...

So, it's never too late to dust off an abandoned project!

[El Grego]

Better late than never, Bryan!  I think this will be very nice when finished.

[Braz]

Really nice. Looking forward to seeing it completed.

[Operator5]

Very nice build so far. Find someone to cast it in resin so we can all enjoy! 

[Wirelizard]

Very nice build so far. Find someone to cast it in resin so we can all enjoy! 

As it's currently built, there's no way on Earth it's resin castable. The cabin walls are a single thickness of .030" styrene sheet, the front deck/bow section just has a few styrene struts inside, and the hull and cabin are a single  unit, which would probably be impossible to cast.

Still, it's a thought to file away for the future. About all I know is that casting masters have to be a lot more solid and a lot less bodged-together than this boat is!