NavWar's 1:1200 Dutch 64 gun Revolutie

(I note that this post gets viewed frequently so I want to point out that the rigging is incorrect, done before I had a good reference to go by.)

A fellow shipmate at Sails of Glory Anchorage shipped me 10 NavWar/Devco 1:1200 ships he had laying around. This is what he sent:

Looking through them I found two Dutch 64 Gun Revolutie Ships of the line, so I decided to build one and see how it went.

The Revolutie was a Dutch 3rd rate ship of the line carrying a nominal 68 carriage guns. It was launched June 15th, 1779 at Rotterdam. It was captured by the British on August 17th, 1796 and renamed the  HMS Prince Frederick.

These NavWar ships are no where near as crisp molds as the Langton and GHQ ships, but I just couldn't beat the price at only $4 a ship. I had no idea how much work would be involved to make this a decent model that could take it's place on the same game table as my other ships. The hull required removing sprue stubs and adding missing gun hatches. The ports on one side don't match the ports on the other. The guns on the quarter deck don't line up with the ports, etc. but with some creative modification and painting, it ended up OK. Rather than the classic yellow stripe along the gun ports, I chose a black strip along the gun ports and yelow port hatches with a yellow hull (wales).

 The sails were the most work. They are solid, flat with no billow at all, and no openings between the sails and the spar below. This would make it near impossiple to rig. I considered just scratchbuilding the masts, spars and sails, but decided to see if I could modify them enough to work by drilling holes between the bottom of the sails and the spar below, then carving an opening out with a xacto knife. I also had to carve out the poor excuse for spars molded into the sails and make some new ones to glue in place.

The spanker and sprit sails were just total losses, so thick I think they weighed as much as the hull. I scratchbuilt these out of wire and brass sheet. I also added the clew lines on the lower main, fore, mizzen and spanker sails. I thought at first I could make the jibs work but ended up making sails out of brass.

The mizzen went on first:

After setting the mizzen shrouds and stay rigging, the main was next.

The main shrouds and stay rigging done, the foremast was set and the process repeated.

Next was the running rigging:

Next was the base. As always I used matt board and common spackle to form the waves.

Here is the finished ship:

 And here is a comparison shot with Langton's HMS Glatton.