1/450 USS Constellation

Summer is a busy time for us, with all of the outdoor yard and field work required to maintain our acreage. That being said, I started working on these four 1\450 scale 3D printed ships back in early May. Three of the four ships are the US privateer Prince de Neufchatel (18 carronades), a US 8 gun schooner, and the 20-gun snow brig USS Niagara, by Henry Turner Miniatures. The remaining ship is the USS Constellation 38 gun frigate, by Simon Mann. 

Left to Right: Niagara, Constellation, Prince de Neufchatel, US Schooner

Working on the masts, showing fighting tops stencils

Tracing the sails on cloth

Sorting the formed cloth sails

Constellation

Mounting the sails

The finished USS Constellation beauty shots:

Three more to finish now. Niagara next.

I was fortunate to get invited over to Jonathan Freitag's house for a face to face game last month. The War of the Roses Battle of Mortimer's Cross. I took Pembroke and the Lancastrian army, and Jon commanded Edward and his Yorkists. It was a resounding defeat for Lancaster, imitating the historical outcome. The battle report can be found on Jon's Palouse Wargaming Journal at https://palousewargamingjournal.blogspot.com/2025/06/battle-of-mortimers-cross.html

It appears that Edward has lost the field a couple of times now in successive remote gaming refights.

Hopefully it won't be another year before we get the opportunity to play another face to face game.

Vintage Card Ships

This time of year is pretty busy for me and I don't have a lot of time to spend in the hobby room like I do in the winter months. But I still try to spend at least an hour or two on some fun project each evening for relaxation.

Over this last week I have been playing around with some vintage card ships that I found on Pinterest with a generic "paper card model" search.

These are just a few that I downloaded

I downloaded several models. I then imported the JPG files into Microsoft Word, then resized each one to what I wanted. Once printed and cut out, I have to calculate the shape and size of the waterline footprint. I trace that footprint onto balsawood as a base to glue the hull halves and deck to. These models have multiple elevated decks so I cut more balsa shapes to support the various decks. I've only finished four so far, each one taking about four hours of time, including rigging and banners.

Two sizes of the Mayflower on the right. On the left an unidentified galleon made from the print below the model.

This one is the Ark Royal

These are fun for me. They involve almost no painting and no cyanoacrylate glue. Since it is all paper, wood, and thread, PVA does a great job.

Another Birthday

Our youngest turned 25 this past week and I made her a Diagon Alley book nook. She has been asking for one ever since the first one that I made for her older sister a few years ago. It is pretty close to the same nook, but with a couple of different shops.