My Pirate Ship (30 April Update)

[Operator5]

I started work on the boat that I received from Gerard Boom (http://www.shiftinglands.com/resin%20boats.htm) last night. Though not historically acurate, it is a beautiful resin piece and will work great for Under the Black Flag because it will easily fit on the 2' x 2' board (as well as being able to fit and island/dock/town in).

So, here is what I did last night. I spent most of the night looking up pictures of ships and their masts. Shifting Lands shows pictures of theirs with the mast set in the hatches to the lower decks. None of the pictures I found showed them that way, so I shifted the masts to etiher side of it (taking one off the upper deck as well).



In the two close up shots, you can see in the upper photo that I have used floral wire to attach a round chopstick as the Gaff on the Fore Mast. I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with the wire or not. I may switch to a thick sewing thread. But the wire worked for getting it in place and holding it. I drilled a tiny whole in the gaff and slid the wire through that first, then wrapped it a few times around the Fore Mast.

In the lower picture, you'll see that I have inserted a brass rod into the Fore Mast as well as into the deck of the ship. I drilled a deep hole into the mast and a slightly less deep hole into the deck (there is extra resin beneath the ship at this point so I could do a deep hole---this didn't work for the Mizzen Mast). Because I will be transporting my ship, I wanted to be able to remove the masts if necessary. I'll glue the brass rod in place and just pop the mast off for transport and storage.

The Mizzen Mast proved a little more difficult. The deck resin is very thin so my hole would have to go all the way through. Once I had the mast set in place, I mixed up some green stuff and created a thick block which I attached to the underside of the ship and sunk the mast support into that.

That's it so far. Hopefully more updates soon.

[KeyanSark]

A thing of beauty!!  :love:  :love:

[fatgoblin]

I use something called a cloth wire (I think?)  can't recall the exact name, I picked it up at the craft section of the local arts supply store.  Its a wire wrapped in string looks like.  So it looks like a thick string but behaves like a wire.  Its great for this, I wrap it around then super glue the end down.

Have a look at a WIP of my flagship ship I'm working on at the moment.  I took the photo with a reel of that wire thing for you.  Almost done, just two more sails and a flag to go!  (as you can see, I didn't even bother to paint the mast.... lazy git that I am...)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/213/447227558_d2038ae5ab_b.jpg

btw, any of you land lubbers want to play around with masts and sails, here is a nice simple resource.  Helped me tremedously!
http://www.burningsea.com/shipguide/Frames.htm

[Operator5]

Nice work! Did you use paper for your sails?

And I'll have to look into that cloth wire. I have to head out at lunch today anyway so a trip to the local crafts store is in order.

[fatgoblin]

yup, I used paper.  I used two layers of paper sandwiching normal sewing string to tie onto the mast.  I gave it a few blast with the spray cans which is why it looks like that.

[Operator5]

Excellent. I wanted to use paper bu had not figured out what I was going to do. A craft store trip will hopefully be very fruitfull.  

[dominic]

Nice work.  Gotta start doing something to mine

[Westfalia Chris]

Excellent. I wanted to use paper bu had not figured out what I was going to do. A craft store trip will hopefully be very fruitfull.  

I can recommend "Büttenpapier", which roughly translates to "hand-made paper". I´ve used it for a number of ships and am very happy with the results, since it has a "cloth-like" structure, but is nonetheless thin and workable like normal paper. Have a look at the "Lady Luck" in my Pirates Gallery for some "finished" shots, the sails having been painted with red-brown acrylics.

http://www.dminis.com/Scratchbuilder_Christian/images.html?galleryId=1735&from=Swashbucklers

@Topic: Looks nice already. Having seen the ships "In the flesh" at Hamburg Tactica, I have to say that Photos don´t really do them justice - they are far better models than the pics suggest.

[Operator5]

That's a great looking ship WChris. Yours was all scratch-built correct?

And I found what I think fatgoblin was talking about. IN the "beading" section they had nylon coated wire. It looks like robe, but it's actually wire. They only had silver and gold at the craft store near me so I picked up silver. I'll be priming anyway so no big deal.

[Westfalia Chris]

That's a great looking ship WChris. Yours was all scratch-built correct?

Yup.

[fatgoblin]

thats a lovely ship WChris!

[geboom]

Good to read that you got the ships.
I am anxious to see what you come up with.
It is time for me to start working on a next vessel within this range so now you have the set of ships you might give me some feedback on what could be next.
I am not aiming for larger ships, more in the range of the merchant vessel (the second larger ship)
Besides that I am working like crazy to get some new stuff done that I want to reveal at Crisis 2007 in Antwerp.
After that I will join the Tactica for sure again.

Thanks for sharing.

Geboom

[Operator5]

I've started to apply some paint to the ship, so I took a shot of it in progress. The spars at the top of each mast are chopsticks.

http://rattrap-productions.com/ImageGallery/main.php?g2_itemId=391

[vikotnik]

Really looks good so far, please carry on posting pictures of this...

[Operator5]

Okay, latest update. The ship is painted. I've left making sails for it later.

I've also got a bank of the canons on one side and some Brigade Games swashbucklers on deck.

I'll probably futz with adding details for the next 6 months. ::