| There's very little here right
now, as I am in the process of building small fleets of British and French,
to be followed by Spanish. As of 23 August 2004, I have completed one Langton
Miniatures 32 gun British frigate, which shows below. |
First, let's put these small ship models
into perspective. Here is the frigate alongside a 1:72 British company
commander stand (based for Crossfire).
Let's hope that radioman is not calling for naval gunnery support
- his CO is going to be pretty disappointed with the result from a firepower
perspective, at least. |
The starboard view. This was
my first rigging job and was murder for the first time. Hopefully
the next ones will go easier.
I did not use the paint brush bristle
approach I have done for my 1:600
scale ACW ships. First of all, the bristles were too thick (the
very thin thread purchased from Langton is a bit over thick with regards
to scale as it is, though it doesn't look as bad as this in real life -
somehow, the picture seems to emphasize the thread - this may well be the
result of a couple of sharpening filters I passed over the raw picture
before publishing it here). I experimented with spliting bristles
and got some really nice thin ones, but the rigging scheme I followed in
Langton's book on assembling and rigging these models was very complex
in that there was so much of it (the instructions were easy to follow after
careful study) that I found it easier to go with the thread. |
Although my 1:600 ACW ships are not
based, and I'd prefer to see unbased ships on my water terrain, I chose
to base this genre because of the small size, delicate rigging and the
top heavy nature of these sailing ships. Given these considerations,
I think I'd be foolish not to protect them from handling. |
I didn't want the nice appearance of
my method of sea scaping to be "broken" by a seascape base, no matter how
nicely the base itself was done. I therefore settle on clear bases
so the terrain could show through (when looking down on the models at least).
It was my wife's idea to buy a clear plastic photo frame (the kind that
stands up on its own) and cut it up - in fact, she brought one home for
me after we discussed what material to use for basing. I scored the
shape with a knife and then used a fine toothed coping saw. I added
waves with glue gun glue and dry brushed them. I think the appearance
will improve with experience. |
Another stern shot. Hmmm, the
things photos reveal! There are a couple of tufts of thread that
are not cut flush with the respective yards.... |
