Boat Comparisons

I am in the process of cleaning my workbench. Its gotten to the point where I work off of about a 3 inch space in front of me. I want to get it clean before half of my family returns from China. Then, I will have no time to do it as the Little Boss Man will demand much of my time.

What does this have to do with boats? While cleaning, I found three in various stages of completion, so I thought I'd take a picture of them before I put them somewhere out of harms way. All three are 6mm-1/285 scale and will be used for my Gambusia campaign.

Top: In-shore patrol craft; Middle: Soviet BK1125 River monitor; Bottom: SOC-R assault craft

The patrol boat looks enormous next to the other two. However, the SOC-R is just larger than the rubber boat that is on the back of the patrol boat, so it seems to be in scale.  When I stick a 6mm infantry man onto the patrol boat, he seems to fit right. The Soviet river monitor is the one that seems out of scale. I am pretty sure I did the math correctly when I did the scaling. It could be that those Soviet river monitors were just not that big.

The inshore patrol boat was featured in an early series of postings, so I am not going to comment on that.  I decided that the monitor needed some updating. I cut off the machine gun turrets that were in front of the 76mm tank turret, on top of the pilot house, and aft. The detail on them wasn't all that much. I added a tripod mast with two radar mounts. Where the pilot house machine gun turret was, I added an electro-opitic system. In the rear, I scratch built a M2-3 turret with two 25mm AA guns. It didn't turn out very well as it is larger than it should be. Originally, I tried to make it out of paper, but that ended in complete failure. The guns are too thick as well. These turrets, common on smaller Soviet ships from the 50s to the 70s, were very small. Only a single gunner could fit in them. I am thinking about adding railings around the monitor, but it depends how motivated I am.

The SOC-R assault craft is made by P.T. Dockyard. I have been eying the various small ships that he has to offer for quite awhile. In addition to some 1/700 missile boats, I got two SOC-R river assault crafts that are 1/300 scale. They are cast in white resin. It was very difficult to remove the flash successfully from the guns. I had to replace the barrel of one of the forward mini-guns with a thin rod, and will have to do the same for one of the bow machine guns. I added two antennae made out of plastic filament in the back. Despite these issues, I am pretty happy with it. I will mount it onto a thin base. I modified a GHQ WWII US artilleryman to pilot the boat. The assault craft will be part of the small Southern Chalupastan river fleet unlike the large patrol boat and river monitor, which belongs to Northern Chalupistan.