New Project: Pre-Dreadnoughts

 I have hinted several times now that I am diving into a new project. The new project is pre-dreadnought naval warfare set in an ImagiNation world. I will have a future post on the various opponents and fictional-historical background, but first a look at what's being built in the shipyard.

The basis for my hulls and superstructures are various-sized popsicle and coffee stirring sticks.

Here are couple of hulls: 

Generic torpedo boat destroyer hull

Light or Protected Cruiser hull

Many years ago, I built a fleet of US, British, and Japanese WWII ships for gaming. From a time and quality control standpoint, its a lot better to make copies of at least the hulls than to try to carve out each one individually. So, I played around with make molds out of my initial wooden hull.  Back then, there were little options for making molds of hulls. Now there are a lot more mold making choices that are more easy, health and environment friendly, and probably cheaper than back in the 80s. One of which is this transparent material that comes in rectangular sticks. It is listed on Amazon as reusable mold clay, but it has the Japanese name Oyumaru. It softens quickly in hot water. You have to work with it rather quickly but it makes nice push molds that hold a lot of detail and doesn't shrink. They suggest to avoid any casting material that will give off heat as it will remelt the mold, but I have yet to experience that. 

Once I made my mold, I tried an number of different materials to to cast ship hulls. 

From left to right of the above picture is the original wood hull, the next three are green polymer clay, the white one is Milliput, next is from multiple layers of clear UV resin, next is from moldable plastic beads, and the last two are from cheap fast drying two part epoxy clay. The one on the end hasn't been cleaned up yet. 
The winner would be the moldable plastic beads. Like the Oyumaru, they melt in hot water and can be pressed into a mold. HOWEVER, its made of High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) plastic is the same stuff that milk jugs are made out of. There is no glue I know of that will stick to the stuff! So, the winner ends up being this two part clay that you can buy at any hardware or home improvement store in the US. You have to work fast, but so long as you press it in well, you get a very good reproduction. It is mushier than Milliput, but that is an advantage as it gets into crevasses better, not to mention its a lot cheaper. Its other advantage is that you can use super glue on it and even though its impregnated with iron, you can drill holes in it. I was surprised how difficult it was to drill a hole in the HDPE plastic. 

Once I made the hulls, I then started building the ships. 

Torpedo boat destroyers with their conning tower and forward gun

Here is the finished but unpainted destroyers. 

I used a combination of wire, thin cardstock, and dowel rods to build them. I ended up using that HDPE plastic hull, but I roughed up its surface a lot, glued things down with the superglue, and then flooded it with the thin UV glue. Fingers crossed that things will hold. 

Here is an early pre-dread battleship:

Battleship in progress. Along side is a destroyer. Its seems that
there is a fire erupting on the dock in the background! I hope
that freighter is not loaded with explosives!

Finished battleship. Now it needs to be painted and based. 

The mighty battleship Curmudgeon leaves port followed by the torpedo boat destroyers Swiftly, Speedily, Quickly, and Hurriedly.