Ship building Templates

 To start to see what the various scales would physically look like, I found some deck plans for the USS Monitor and printed them out at various scales. I chose the Monitor because its so simple. Shown below. I can use these as a template. I will glue them onto balsa wood and cut them out.  Once I have decided which scale I like, further ships that I build will have a single plan. 

For some reason, I can't seem to get
sharp pictures when I make something
in Adobe Illustrator anymore.

I Can't seem to Decide on a Scale

Model of Océan on display at the Musée de la Marine, Paris.
Photo by Rémi Kaupp. I wish I had known about this museum
when I was in Paris this summer. Something tells me the rest of 
the family would have vetoed a visit this museum!

In my last post, I decided to build some ships to host a game with colleagues here at work. I said that I going to follow a scale as opposed to the ships I currently make. The question is which scale? And no, it will not be the scale that the above models in the photograph is. 

The chart below compares the various scales among several ships of around the 1860s. I apologize for the fuzziness of the chart but I could not seem to upload the text directly from Excel. Click on the table to see a less-fuzzy, more complete view of the ships. 

Originally, I was going to build them at 1/1000. There is a fellow on The Gridded Naval Wargame Facebook group that builds these beautiful ironclads at that scale. But lately I keep going back and forth  between 1/900 and the 1/700. I want the ships to have a little more visual appeal. I have found that when hosting games in the past with non-wargamers, larger-sized miniatures helps to hold their interest longer. 

Once I figure out the scale, I will then need to decide both ship types and numbers. I want to get going on this project soon, so that it is ready by early spring of next year at the latest. 

Kind of New Project Planned

Capture of the ironclad Huáscar
by Thomas Somerscales

I am both an optimist and a pessimist. I come up with these optimistic plans for gaming with other people and then they crash and I go into pessimist (depressed) mode. However, I have polled a few of my colleagues at work and they seemed to be willing to have a game. Maybe I can convince Will to join us. 

The plan is to have a one off, beer & pretzels naval battle taking place around the later 1860s to early 1870s. I initially was just going to do a straight up American Civil War game, but I didn't feel 100% going historical. I teach at a Southern college that has been trying to rebrand its image, and there is a lot of potential issues that I could face with administrators if they here about this, even thought this will be purely under the table. The fact that I totally understand is why I am hesitant concerning a civil war battle. Second, I don't want to be constrained by what ships will be involved in the battle. Third, if you have not figured it out by now, I really Imagi-nation scenarios. I can see the Huascar battling it out with a Union monitor...I guess that is how my brain is wired!

So, the plan is to build more ships (!). I am going to make them a little bigger than what I currently do. Somewhere between 1/800 to 1/1000 scale. Currently, my ships don't really have a scale. I am going to build about 10 ships maximum, roughly five per side. There will be a combination of monitors, casemate ironclads like the CSS Virginia, and various others particularly maybe smaller ships armed with spar torpedoes.  I will try to make them simple (he says knowing full well that he probably won't).

The scenario will be the mouth of a major river. One side must get their ships up a certain point of the river, the other side needs to keep them from doing so. Depending on how many people I get to play, will determine how many ships per person. We have some pretty large tables in labs and conference rooms in which to lay a blue plastic tarp on and I can fashion the shore lines with either those wooden hexes I have or cut out felt. 

I have not decided yet on rules but they need to be pretty playable. I might even throw together my own rules. The game probably can't last for much more than two hours. 

That is the plan. Like everything else, I will post my progress on this blog. 

Bit of a Slump

I have not had much energy in terms of the hobby lately. Part of it is that school has started again for both the boy and me. I have been getting prepared for classes and Daddy's Taxi Service is already racking up the miles. But even when I get to sit down at my hobby work bench at night, I just stare at things on the table. 

I might have said this before, but I think a big part of the issue is that I cannot make my projects simple. For example, I keep trying to add more and more details onto my little pre-dreadnought ships. I spend a lot of time fussing over how to build a better model. The same goes with painting figures. I should, but I can't be satisfied with table top ready figures. One of the main reasons why I switched from 25/28mm to 15mm was to speed up painting armies. If I look at the 15s that I did 20-25 years ago, they are fairly basic in the level of painting. No shading or highlighting. Now, they are far more detailed, even the rank-and-file troops. I think pumping in a lot energy into detail causes burn out. 

I know I sound like a broken record (can people still relate to this metaphor?), but I need to just start gaming with what I have.  

Hot Glue Stick Turrets

As I have mentioned previously, I struggle with making ship turrets and especially gun shields for my pre-dreadnought project. I have not been happy with the material used to make them. Rubber erasers sort of work, but even these are not perfect. 

Facebook posts these short videos (I assume they come from Tik Tock, or maybe segments from YouTube videos) that show people making tiny pieces of furniture, bicycles, and other objects out of scrap material. There is one guy in particular who uses hot glue sticks to make things. He isn't using them to glue things together but as material for when he needs a circular base. I started playing around with the glue sticks. It seemed to have similar properties to an eraser, but better. What I noticed was that its solid but not that hard to cut.  It seems harder than an eraser but is a little easier to slice. I can poke holes in it and it won't potentially tear, and when stuck a piece of wire into a hole to make a gun, the glue stick didn't deform as much as an eraser. This is particularly important when using thin slices to make gun shields. 

Results of my experiments 

First up is a basic cylindrical turret. One of the advantages of the glue stick over wood and cardboard is that I can line up the wires better so that they are more parallel. Very often the guns will not be parallel next to each other when using other other material. The translucent stick makes it easy to watch and control the angle of the needle as I poke holes in. 

The next type is a oval turret. After cutting consistent cylinders, I sliced off the edges on either side of the cylinder and then angled the end where the guns went into. One of the advantages of the glue stick over the eraser is that you can push and pull on the wire guns to help line them up better. An advantage of both the eraser and the glue stick is that you don't need to apply any glue to hold the guns in place. I doused the turret closest to the camera with superglue, but it didn't help one way or another. I think I was pretty consistent with slicing off the edges of the cylinder, but I think I can do better if I use a razor blade rather than my craft knife. 

Finally, I made some gun shields using the cut offs from the turrets above. I still need to practice but I think they are a big step up from what I have experimented with up to this point. The "carvibility" is equal to an eraser and there was much less distortion the shield when I pushed the wire through to make the gun.  

Final thoughts

I used mini glue sticks that have a diameter of 0.7mm. Standard glue sticks have a diameter of 12mm. I will probably buy a pack of the standard. It will give me a little more area in which to carve different shapes and give a little more surface area to build triple turrets or use slightly heavier gauged wire. I wish there was an even smaller diameter of glue stick. That would be useful for smaller turrets and things like sponsons. 

I have not glued the turrets to anything yet and was a little worried about whether superglue will stick to solid hot glue. However, the people making their little objects use superglue all the time to glue them in place so it should not be an issue. I do not expect painting to be an issue either. I think paint will hold to the glue fine. 

Fleet Review: Part Two, Krackovia

 Again, I've posted many of these in previous posts, but I decided to put them all together. 

Kracovia is the current rival to Avalonia. Their surprising naval victory over Avalonia has emboldened them to embark on a major ship building campaign.

First type of battleships. I was ambitious in adding secondary turrets. 

Second type of battleships. Secondary guns in casemates.

A coastal defense battleship that I posted awhile back. It is based loosely on the Turkish Mesudiye that was a central battery ironclad that underwent a major reconstruction. I classified it as a coastal defense battleship because it has two rather than four main guns. 

Protected cruiser. I would make a lot more cruisers but making mounted guns in gun shields is a real pain. I have earlier posts showing various experiments in making these. If anyone has any suggestions on how to make them efficiently and look reasonably well, please comment.

A gunboat based on a based on the imperial Russian gunboat Khrabri. Building masts are still a bit of challenge as can be seen in that stern mast. I use UV resin as glue to put together parts of masts, but sometimes, it gets to be a mess. 

Finally, torpedo boats. These were pretty quick to build. I have three more of these hulls and will complete those with an added torpedo tube sticking out of its bow. 

Fleet Review: Part One, Avalonia

Some of these I posted in the past, but I thought I'd present them all together. First up is the Commonwealth of Avalonia. Avalonia is made up of various sized islands. I have been working on a post on the various fictional nations. Some day, I'll get it posted. 

I am in the process of building some protected cruisers and armored cruisers. 

These two are near sisters. Both have 12" main guns. The difference between the two is the secondary armament. The right one has 6" guns in casemates. The one of the left is armed in 8"guns in turrets.

These two are armed with 14" main guns exposed in barbettes. 

I've already posted these two but these are older warships. Both are armed with 10" main guns.

This is an auxiliary cruiser converted from a ocean liner. It is armed with two 6" guns and four 4" guns.

I've also posted these destroyers, but I thought I'd repost them.

Last, here are some generic freighters and a liner. I built another one, but it seems to have disappeared. 

Next up, Avalonia's rival Kracovia.