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Sunday, January 12, 2014

The End of the Holidays, Back to the Arctic

Well the holidays are over for me. I'll be travelling back to the Arctic shore this afternoon for my two week rotation. This year's holiday time off hasn't been as productive in the shipyard as past years. Only 5 islands and 3 SOLs were completed. It should have been 10! Currently in the shipyard are 3 GHQ 74's and 2 Davco gunboats. The ships are from the GHQ Montanes class models, but since I have already built the Langton Montanes class and it doesn't look anything like the GHQ model of the same class, I have decided to use them as a different class of 74's. They are now the San Augustin, the San Francisco de Asisi, and the San Juan Nepomuceno.










The other quick project I started was inspired by James White. He has started working on a fleet of smaller gunboats that look really good. We were discussing on The Miniatures Page (TMP) how to put a crew in the Langton boats with sails like the rowed boats. While looking through my small boats I found a package of Davco boats my SOG Anchorage shipmate Gunner sent me. They had crews and sails! So I painted two of them up and put them together to see what they could look like. Not too bad, but the next couple I amd going to change out the stock masts and white metal sails for music wire and brass sails. The stock set is just too massive for such a small craft. When I open the yard again in two weeks I will break out the stiff horse hair to rig them.






As you can see the larger gunboat has a compliment of 13 sailors, officers, and marines. The smaller boat has 10. By contrast the largest Langton rowed boat only has a maximum of 8. Now if I can only figure out how to put crews in all of the other boats??? Does anyone have any good ideas or suggestions?
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3 comments:

  1. Richard NaylorJanuary 12, 2014 at 2:27 PM

    Those 74's look fantastic, look forward to seeing them completed when you return.

    You're right about the masts and sails on the small boats, cast ones always look far too thick to me. Could you model the crews in green stuff or milliput? Might take a bit of practice to get right but at least you'd have some control over what the crew end up looking like.

    Have a good trip up North.

    Cheers
    Richard

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  2. TangarexJanuary 13, 2014 at 2:15 PM

    You may use greenstaff or similar putty to make little balls(1mm), then put in boat one ball for every person on his place(it will body) and after that one on each one(head), prime it and paint it. I think that will be enough in this scale.

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  3. A Miniatures Hobby RoomJanuary 14, 2014 at 5:23 AM

    Thanks Richard and Tangarex. I will try the milliput.

    Regards,
    Vol

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