Painting Boats

I managed to finish two more of the Hagen Miniatures boats that I had purchased. One is a small sloop that still needs paper sails. The other is a small gun boat with a gaff sail. These came out well. I also managed to dinish the repairs on the two damaged ship-sloops that I broke trying to move them. According to USPS, I might get my clear bases today. I will need to figure out what the right glue is to use on these. I will be basing all of my 1/700th ships from now on. The bases from Litko arrived. I think they are large enough for most of my 1/700 vessels. Some of the larger ones would not fit.

Current State of the AWI Supplement

I was able to get some writing and editing done yesterday. I changed around the headings and now have it trimmed down to 187 pages. There is still significant work needed for the Virgina State Navy section that is left. I have names of ships and that is about it. I decided to limit the work to not include the vessels of the Northern Colonies at this point in time. I will probably pick back up with that with another supplement. I keep finding more scenarios that interest me and need to hold off on expanding this any more.

As far as ships go, I am not doing badly. I am experimenting with printing to try to get the masts to fit better in the mast holes without significant drilling being needed. Hopefully that will help. My printer needs a new sheet of FEB for the printer tub and I am looking to get a magnetic flexible print platform to make removing prints easier. I have them in my Amazon cart and am waiting to place the order.

This puts me at a place where I am getting pretty close to being ready. I will work on some more terrain items to complete some scenarios. I need scale trees. The nice part is that these can be shrubs for my other miniatures (15mm). I am still looking to use a layered approach for naval terrain. A blue felt sheet for the bottom layer. Some sandy patches to lay on top for sand bars. A clear plastic sheet for the surface and then other terrain on top of that for islands, rocks and the like. It should work well.

I can use this with both my 1/300 miniatures and the 1/650 or 1/700 scale minis. For ships that I print, I am liking the 1/650 more and more. They are chunkier but easy to print and paint.

I still have to finish the repairs on the ships I shattered. As you can see from the picture, The masts didn't fair well in the fall. I have some clamps that will help but I am not sure how much longer this will take.

I did get a shore battery completed recently. It came out OK. I also painted up a sinking 3rd rate. Both of these were from Hagen Miniatures. I really like these models. I painted up a Lugger from their line as well but I need sails and rigging as they do not come with it. I will probably do paper sails.

Here is the fleet thus far, minus the two shattered vessels.

You can see the sinking third rate and the shore battery in this shot as well as the lugger in the bottom right corner. These are Hagen Miniatures. The flatboats are ones I created in tinkercad. i will put them up on my PayHip for free. The three bomb vessels on the bottom left are all Saturnalia miniatures. The Cutter in the center is from Daitra productions. I may have that spelled wrong. The small bermuda sloop is one I created from a 28mm miniature that I shrunk down. The sails are paper. In the top center are more Saturnalia brigs and to the right of them are a pair of Black seas schooners.

Everything needs more work. I need rigging for the most part. But at least it feels like it is coming together. I have plans to print a few more ships and they I will look to print some ratlines for the vessels that I have.

Bad end to the weekend

started to move the minis that i have painted. in doing so, I managed to drop two ship sloops that shattered on hitting the ground. very frustrated. I have started the repair work but it will take a while.

I need to base these ships to help them stand up better.