My Method for Raising Navwar Hulls

Recently in a couple of posts on the Naval Wargaming Facebook site (https://www.facebook.com/groups/171377469665350/) I was in a discussion with a couple of gamers over in Kent about the size of Navwar Napoleonic 1/1200 scale ships and them not mixing well on the table with other brands. They were using Navwar exclusively because of the low cost for these models compared with the other brands. My position was that Navwar hulls can easily be modified to play on the table with any other Manufacturer's ships.

Here are some comparison shots of modified Navwar ships with other brands of similar ratings.

Left to Right: Navwar 112 gun Santa Ana, Langton 112 gun Santa Ana, Davco 112 gun Salvador del Mundo, GHQ 120 gun L' Ocean. In this case no modification was necessary because the Navwar hull was larger than any of the others.

Same ships as above

Navwar Santa Ana and Langton Santa Anna

Top to Bottom: Navwar 64 gun Dutch, Davco 64 gun Dutch, Langton 68 gun Dutch.

Left to Right: Modified Navwar 64, Davco 64, Langton 68.

Modified Navwar 64 and Langton 68.

Raised Navwar 14 gun cutter and Langton 14 gun cutter.

Navwar and Langton, virtually no difference now.

So I thought I would modify some of my as yet unbuilt Navwar hulls and show how I do it.

Two Navwar 64 gun HMS Africa hulls, 1/16" balsa sheet, Xacto hobby knife, super glue, flat needle file.

Glue the hulls to the balsa wood, then cut around them with the knife. Fine trimming is done with a flat needle file until the balsa blends with the hull.

 Then I coat the soft wood with the same thing I coat my bases with, Americana Triple Thick Gloss Glaze. This dries rock hard and seriously strengthens the soft balsa. Any decoupage product will work for this.

Comparison with Langton 64 gun Agamemnon

Raised Navwar Africa 64 and Langton Agamemnon 64

Navwar in front, Langton behind.

Here is the process again with a Navwar 50 gun HMS Centurion. First a comparison shot with GHQ and Langton 50 gun hulls. Note the GHQ hull has previously been modified/raised slightly to match the Langton.

Front to Back: Navwar 50 gun HMS Centurion, GHQ Centurion (raised), and Langton 50 gun ship.

Glue the hull to the balsa sheet.

Cut out around the hull with a knife.

Clean and trim with needle file until the extension matches the hull. The wood is so soft this just takes a second.

Done!

Close enough!

So that is how I do it.