SS AVANTURA - 15mm Pulp Tramp Steamer Build

[frd]

*** INTRO ***

Custom Tramp Steamer inspired by the SS Venture from 2005 King Kong

I have been working on and off (mainly off ) on a 15mm tramp steamer model for my 15mm Pulp games for quite some time now. Recently the topic of "suitably pulpy ships" came up, and it made me think that I should share some stuff about it. Not wanting to derail the original topic, I decided to add it all here. Originally I thought I'll post about it once it's all finished, but as it has been a while since I worked on it, it might be a better idea to turn it more into a "build log." Especially because talking about a build makes me want to build more!

Anyway, the model is (loosely) based on the SS Venture from 2005 King Kong, and uses a combination of 3D printing and scratch building techniques. The plan is to make it look relatively realistic, but tweak it in ways to make it suitable for wargaming. This mostly translates to making areas bigger to let miniatures on bases have plenty of place to stand. I also change/make up things as I go, depending on what feels right - so there isn't really any master plan I stick to.

Finally, this topic is me grabbing old pictures and posts and trying to remember the important bits. This means the write-up might be a little disjointed. I'll happily clarify things and/or answer any questions.

I'm storing the pics in this thread on imgur, so they shouldn't disapear any time soon. If they do, they are all taken from my original build log on the model ship forum (where some of the text is also coming from). Between those two sources, images should be recoverable in the future

[frd]

*** THE HULL ***

This was my first ship model, so it came to me as a surprise that hull is more complex than it looks! Not being either a skilled 3d modeller, nor versed in nautical engineering, I thought the best course of action was to use an existing hull.

Fortunately I found a 3d printable model of SS Venture from the 2005 version of King Kong, then modified it to fit my needs. Apart from scaling it up (it comes in 1/200 scale "out of the box") I changed the shape a bit. I made it a little wider and a little shorter - first to fit minis better, second to fit my cheap 3d printer better for printing. I want it to be a playable "terrain" piece that can also work as a half-decent display piece.  What I want the most of this project is to give the ship a "character" worthy of pulp adventures it hails from.

The above pic is from after I printed, glued and filled (first with spackle, and after it didn't work that well on some of the deeper lines - greenstuff) the hull and planked its two decks with coffee stirrers. The only thing I wish I had done (which I have learned later on) is to split the coffee stirrers in half lengthwise to make more scale accurate planks. What I think paid off is to smear graphite on the edges of the planks before gluing them - I think it really paid off once the home-made stain reacted with the graphite.

The paint job was nothing special so far: just black coat, followed by some drybrushing with light grey to bring out some of the detail (photos don't really do it justice, it "pops" a bit more in person). This is what I would call a first pass on the outside hull. Washing, weathering and all that fun stuff will be done near the end.
 
For the wooden decks, I remembered that I had some Boiled Linseed Oil (BLO), so I applied a thin coat of that. The color wasn't right so I used some of my home made weathering powders to mix a color closer to what I was looking for. I then sprinkled some of that powder directly on each deck and went over with some more BLO to mix it all in. This "home made stain" reactivated the graphite at the edges of the planks giving them a really nice depth. The color is much closer to what I was looking for, if a little too saturated... but it faded a bit over time as BLO cured.

[frd]

*** THE SUPERSTRUCTURE ***

If you look closely, you can see where the hull was cut for 3d printing. This image is still from the time when I was considering adding the bottom to the model (so it can work both as wargaming terrain and a display model). I abandoned this idea - I'm perfectly happy to only have a "waterline" model.

At this point I decided to design my own superstructure in a CAD program (the green bits in the image above). The original superstructure was all in a single piece, which would make the model much less playable. More so, I wanted the pieces to be removable, and it felt like less work to design my own than to tweak the one included. I designed it with playability in mind (enough open space to fit a mini) and around the limits of my 3d printer (e.g. the wall thickness is in multiplies of my nozzle size 0.4mm).

I wanted to mimic the look of the 2005 movie with a weathered and tired looking ship, but I didn't like the really yellow color for walls. Instead, I opted for off-white, which got a yellowish overbrush followed by drybrush in the original off-white. The extra weathering is from home made weathering powders applied both wet (either in water or alcohol) or dry in layers.

I have also changed how the railing looks. Instead of that 3d printed "bump" I unfolded and painted some coated paperclips, to make something closer to the movie version.

[frd]

*** THE SUPERSTRUCTURE GOES UP ***

...but can be taken down!

I followed the same 3d printing and weathering technique for the next two superstructure floors I designed. My painting definitely improved as I got more familiar how the paints react with each other (I'm using cheap craft paint, so there's a bit of fiddling with them to make them look ok on 3d printed parts). Making the roof covers out of some fine sandpaper was also a good call - it keeps with the "color palette" of the model and adds interesting texture. My cutting was far from perfect, but I will add some details to those roofs and hope those will hide the most jarring mistakes.

To make it more suitable for wargames the decks and roofs are removable and held in place using tiny magnets. At first I wanted to hide all the magnets using some detail that makes sense for the room, but I soon discovered that I'm basically pushing the limits of my printer too hard so I can only make very basic details if I want them to be that small and it also requires designing it with clean multiplies of the nozzle size. My efforts can be seen in the smallest building which I decided would be an armory and maybe a med bay. Seeing the effect compared to the amount of time it takes to actually print decently I decided to just incorporate the magnets into the structure when possible, and when not - use small tabs.

The buildings were pretty easy to design and print, but one thing that was not as fun was the post processing. When printing straight lines with FDM the layer lines are quite visible and are even more visible when you think of painting it in something different than just solid color. So for all of the buildings I had to do decent amount of sanding to smooth it out. This is the best photo I took trying to show it, and while it doesn't look too bad here, it really does in person and even more so once painted.

[frd]

*** CARGO COVER ***

I spent way too much time on making the cargo cover.

I couldn't find any good reference photos for early XX century cargo ships, but I found something from late XIX century ships that looked interesting and tried that. I made two of them and I wasn't quite happy with either.

So, I spent bunch of time on research. Mainly because I realized that I know very little about the minutia of how those cargo covers "work." I mean, I knew that under those tarps there's an opening leading to the hold, but not how it's constructed to be both solid enough to be walked on yet allow of loading of huge cargo... and sources explaining it in detail were few and far between.

So I went on a research spree. Eventually, after combing through any and all photos, diagrams and videos I could get my hands on I found a glimpse of workers opening a cargo hold in some archival footage from the late 30s! It showed a metal frame covered with large wooden planks that were being removed by workers. I also assume the metal frame could be disassembled and removed as later in the same footage the opening didn't have the frame when they were loading large pallets of cargo with a crane. I wish I had saved the video, because I can't find it anymore and it was the only bit of media I've seen showing "what's under that tarp" on a pre WW2 steamer.

Anyway, equipped with this knowledge I decided to try to recreate that style of cargo cover for my model.

The frame is a single 3d printed piece (so you can remove it from the cargo "hole" and have a large opening without worrying about how the frame is actually constructed in real life). It took some trial and error to get everything just right as I needed it to fit the existing opening, work well with the size of wood I'm using (coffee stirrers) and allow me to add the "handrails" for the rope. The handrails are actually staples, as my entry level 3d printer can't print any thinner than .4mm, but I think they work pretty well.

I painted the frame to match the other metal parts of the ship, then cut and stained the planks to look aged (it's supposed to be pretty "well loved" working vessel after all). For the tarp, I remembered seeing some train modeller using painted parchment paper with good success. Unfortunately it seems the key to his success was using lacquer paint, as my attempts with acrylic flaked like crazy. So there was another period of trial and error of using different papers for the tarp. In the end a black art paper had the right mix of fine texture, and being both rigid and flexible enough to simulate tarp being removed. Oh yeah, I decided to uncover a bit of the cargo cover, showing what's underneath. After all, I did all this research, I should show it off Also, I wanted the cargo cover to be a bit of a focal point for the ship. A bit of scale rope (a little oversized, but I wanted to see the rope texture) tied the whole thing together (pun intended).

Oh yeah, and in the end I decided to paint the tarp burgundy, keeping with my existing color palette. I tested some other colors, but they were either standing out or blending in too much... and I've seen this kind of burgundy cover on tramp steamers photos (from mid XX century, but still), so I used that to convince myself that it's ok

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out:

[frd]

*** ALL CAUGHT UP! ***
That's where the model is right now.

Life got in the way and I stopped working on hobby stuff for a long while. Fortunately I'm now in a place where I can slowly get back to it, and working on this steamer is my high priority!

There's still plenty to do, but I'm looking forward to adding details and weathering. I should probably focus on the foredeck next, as it's looking pretty barren over there.

Anyway, time to dust-off my 3d printer, get the paints shaken, and finally continue this model.

Hopefully I'll have something more to show before Christmas

[anevilgiraffe]

outstanding stuff

[Vis Bellica]

Thanks for taking the time to post all that: really interesting and inspirational.

[mikedemana]

That is one amazing build! I love all the research you did, but how you are willing to go for playability as the primary goal.

Mike Demana

[Pattus Magnus]

I agree with the others, that’s a great model and really works for both visual appeal and playability. Very inspiring!

[Gunbird]

She's a real gem

[marianas_gamer]

Nice work! It has been a long time since we had a tramp steamer build on LAF and this is a great one!

[FifteensAway]

WOW!  Love it.  And in 15 mm.  I will be borrowing some of your ideas and research for certain for my own tramp steamers waiting work - but I'm cheating and using plastic models as the basis for my work.

Very cool.

[frd]

Thank you all for the kind words! It's an honor to join the ranks of all the other LAF tramp steamer builders!

I'm traveling this week, so I'm only able to do research right now, but I already got some ideas for what to do with the forecastle. I decided to redo the mast/loading crane (I should learn the proper word for it) that came with the ship to make it removable (like in my Innsmouth boat model) and more sturdy. Then I'll need to design a new winch, as the original is too simple and too small, and the XIX century style one I made before (attached below) too big... I guess I need something juuuuust right

@FifteensAway - there's no cheating in model-making - only creative use of materials! I was considering using a plastic model myself, but couldn't find anything in close enough scale to work. What model will you be using?

[CapnJim]

WOW! indeed!  Those look great!