1/1000 Scale Alamo Terrain

I have always been fascinated by the Texas struggle for independence and the last stand at the Alamo. beginning with Disney's 1955 "Davey Crocket at the Alamo" and Republic Pictures' "The Last Command" the same year. Then came my favorite, John Wayne's "The Alamo" in 1960! I will never forget that experience, sitting in a lounge chair in the back of a pickup truck at the Bordertown Drive In Theater, freezing my little 8 year old butt off in November! But I didn't care because I was mesmerized! A month later I was ecstatic to find the Marx Alamo Playset under the Christmas tree! Wow!  

Then along came the 2004 "The Alamo" movie with a bit less mythic depiction of the events, albeit more realistic. It was still good and I enjoyed it thoroughly. But it just doesn't hold the magic for me that the 1960 version does. While working on this project, I watched every one of these movies again in the order they came out and I still like them all.

To start with, I found a free 3D STL file on Thingyverse.com for the Alamo compound. I reduced and printed it out at 1/1000 scale. It wasn't very accurate so I cut it up to rebuild it. There are so many drawings and artist renditions of the original 1836 compound, and few of them match! so it was difficult to determine which was correct. Even the San Antonia mission park website has conflicting illustrations. I ended up taking what I considered to be the most consistent elements from all of them to configure my Alamo compound.

I started with a 10"x12"x1/4" foam sheet. Then I glued the modified compound to it and carved the arroyos and irrigation ditches. I then coated the whole thing with diluted black paint and ModPodge. I used vinyl spackle to contour and coat the foam, and another ModPodge coat over that. I used a base coat of earth brown, followed by successive dry brushing of brown tan, trail tan, and desert dune. The trees are twisted strand wire frames coated with white modeling putty, and PVA glued foam flock leaves. The sage and mesquite are pieces of painted lichen. The abatis are made of dried weeds from the yard as well as the represented cut stumps the defenders obtained them from. The palisade wall portions are reduced printed photos, glued together back to back over heavy bond card. I also had to add additional gun platforms and stairs or ramps in places. The cannon were difficult at this scale and I did the best I could using bits of card and monofilament fishing line. They are a bit large for the scale. The defenders are all 1/800 scale Eduard photo-etched naval figures painted as Texicans. Their guns are all bristles from a shoe brush. I could not find any troops to represent the massed Mexican army attackers that satisfied what I was looking for, so I decided to stop here and move on to other projects. Sometime in the future I may find the perfect solution. I hope you like it.

Working on the impossibly small field pieces 

The 18 pounder

Playing around with the thought of framing it....Nah!

Overhead shot with all of the defenders in place

Strings of horses in the coral area

Travis's blue regulars on this north end

Hung on the wall

   

1/700 British 22-gun Snow HMS Ontario

Ontario was built on Carleton Island in the St Lawrence River during the American Revolutionary War. Launched 10 May 1780, she operated under the Provincial Marine as an armed transport. At the time, Ontario was the largest British warship on the Great Lakes. She was use to ferry troops, supplies and prisoners from one remote part of New York to another until she sank in a storm on 31 October 1780. Ontario never saw battle. Her fame is due to being found in remarkably good shape at a depth of 500 feet or 150 meters in June of 2008.

• Class sixth rate two masted snow
• Length 80'
• Beam 25'
• 226 tons burthen
• Complement 130
• Armament 22 cannon

This model is another one of Henry Turner Miniatures 3D sculpts printed on my Creality Ender 5 Pro. Everything but the hull and boat is scratch built.

Original Plan Drawing of Ontario

Inspiration Painting

Ares USS Constitution

Here is the last Sails of Glory ship for Gunner. The Ares version of the USS Constitution included some funky looking boats glued to the sides, in the wrong place covering up two cannon per side. I removed them and installed davits in the proper position bracketing the mizzen shrouds. There are now four cannon with stubbed barrels where the boats were glued. Ares does some really weird stuff. At least on this one they have the stay sails and spanker billowing in the same direction. I repainted the deck and the deck furniture. As with the others, sails were cut away and dressed, and new masts were inserted.

The Original Toy Ship

I had more trouble fitting the rigged ship back into the packaging it came with, so I had to make several modifications. I used a larger 1st rate box I had stored to fit the packaging in.