The Design Accuracy Delimma

Building ships from four manufactures who produce the same named ships always brings up the question "Who's ship design is the accurate one for this vessel?" I have asked this question many times on different  chat sites like The Miniatures Page and Sails of Glory Anchorage. The answer I usually get is "Go with Rod Langton". One of the responses argued Rod Langton lives in the UK and has access to all of the original ship plan drawings. This settled my mind at the time.....until yesterday!

As anyone who follows this blog knows, I have been working on a Spanish fleet for the game I love, Kiss Me Hardy. I had previously posted that I had a Montanes Langton model and four Montanes GHQ models. They don't look anything alike! I built the Langton first and named it Neptuno, one of the 80 gun sister ships to Montanes. Then, because I was assuming the Langton was the accurate design for the class, I landed on another class of 74 gun ships for the GHQs. Yesterday I was looking through a great Spanish Navio website http://www.todoababor.es/listado/index.htm and found a good article about the Montanes design with excellent graphics. Immediately I recognized that the GHQ Montanes model was a dead on exact duplicate of the actual ship! Compare:





From: http://www.todoababor.es/vida_barcos/nav_74can.htm

 

As you can see, the GHQ model matches the graphic on the Spanish Navio site to an impressive degree IMO.

 

From: http://www.todoababor.es/vida_barcos/nav_74can.htm

As you can see from the photo of the completed Langton Montanes below, it doesn't match the design.

I don't have photos, but the deck detail is not even close. So what am I to think? All of this time I have relied on the accuracy of Rod Langton's sculpts to set my standards. I guess from now on GHQ will be my standard.

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?

1:1200 Island Frenzy

Back in September I was trying to decide what to work on next. I was just sitting in my chair in the shop and my wandering eyes stopped on the stack of Styrofoam in the corner. I grabbed a few pieces and glued them together.

The next day I drew some basic lines on the stack.

Then I sort of forgot about it for the next couple of months while I was building ships. In early December I got out the hot knife and roughed out a few shapes and gave them a spray coat of paint then forgot about them again while I built another ship.

Over the last couple of days I finished them. I also added an additional island with Martello tower, signal station, and gun emplacement.

Here are the individual islands:
The little island

The Big Island

I call this one Boot Island

This one is Cave Island

And finally the fortified island

 

And some more scenic shots

So I have accomplished my self required annual terrain piece, albeit a few days late for 2013. I don't know what the 2014 piece will be, but hey, I have all year to think of something! Now.....back to the shipyard!