Ever Expanding Fleet

Having some ships on my desk has been great. I managed to paint up one of the dinghy's and my tripoli gunboat. I am tempted to add the lanteen sail to the Tripoli gunboat. I think that might look pretty good. And it would still be removable with the main mast.

I am really happy with the deck of the tripoli gunboat. I used a buff paint and washed it with a Vallejo wash. Granted, it looks good to my color blind eyes and may be hideous to everyone else. I think the benches on the dinghy are too light. They received the same wash and still stand out too much, I think. But they are ready for some crew.

Interestingly, the dinghy from Sea Dog Miniatures is the PERFECt size for a ships boat for the Buccaneer Sloop! It fits perfectly behind the mast.

I have an armed pinnace on the desk as well as two Old Glory sailed rowboats. I am really appreciating the Sea Dog Miniatures ships. They are a joy to paint. They are simple to build and the guns for the armed pinnace and the tripoli gunboat are interchangeable! They look more robust than the Old Glory stuff I have to compare them with. Now if I only had time to paint my sailors rowing from Peter Pig, I could really get moving. But there are not enough hours in the day.

Just finished a couple more small boats.

Buccaneer Sloop - Sea Dog Game Studios

I finally got around to work on my Buccaneer Sloop. The ship is beautiful. It is however bigger, scale wise, to my 26 gun frigate. This is not that big of a deal at the moment. I intend to get a few more 15mm ships from Sea Dog to round out my 15mm fleet. Probably the 12 gun Brig.

I just finished with the masts. The instructions were printed on a sheet of paper that was folded. So 1/4th of the page was the mast assembly. I hate to admit it, but I had to put on readers in order to make out what the measurements were. The next problem was finding a rules with measurements in metric. Every tape measure and ruler I could find in the house was in inches. I finally found a paper cutter with centimeters on it and used it.

What I like about this kit is that it comes with a special bracket to assemble the booms. It makes the attachment to the main mast so much simpler and sturdier than just super gluing them together. I wish they had something similar for the two spars. Those are just raw super glue joins. Speaking of the spars, I seem to have run out of dowel to complete the build. My largest leftover piece only measured 40mm and I need 70mm for the uppermost yard. I will work on that later tonight.

The hull itself was very clean. There were a few lines that needed to be trimmed around the gun ports. All in all, I am very impressed with the ship so far. The lack of spar is most likely poor planning on my part. That is all now sorted and the ship is ready for painting.

Which, I went ahead and did. Sorry for the poor picture of my messy desk. I painted the deck a beige Brown and the hull a chocolate Brown. The gunport area is a blue. I went with a lighter color for the gun carriages and ships wheel. The masts are a yellow ochre. The hull received a black wash to dirty it up. For a quick and dirty paint job, its not too bad. Also felt great to get something done.

I hope to work on the Tripoli gunship and some of the row boats next. The row boats are on my desk as I type. Maybe sometime this year, it will see the table in a game.

Games Room Update

I have unpacked all of my miniatures and had the cabinets installed. I have placed all of the doors on the lower cabinets. I still have to put the doors on some of the upper cabinets that line the wall. The opposite wall has some great windows that let in light. I still have cabinets to do something with. I have a bookshelf that I need to move down to the game room but am unable to carry it by myself.

I have had only one casualty from the move. The table that I was going to use as my games table broke. Now I need to build something. My initial thought is to get a sheet of plywood and cut it in half to make a fold away table. That is possibly a project for next week if I am able to do it.

The biggest find is a label maker. I can now label my miniatures drawers in order to know what is in them. I have about a dozen drawers that have no labels on them.

The games room build it taking forever as I am only managing a few minutes a day to work on it. Mostly because there is so much work to do in unpacking in the new house. But progress is still being made. I will post pictures once I get all of the doors on the cabinets.

For those of you who have made your own gaming tables, what suggestion would you offer for table height?

Move Complete

We finally have all of our stuff in the new house. I have managed to get most of my miniatures into the game room. Only able to get in an odd minute here and there to straighten up but it is going well. I now have all of my 6mm and 15mm navies organized and sorted out. I thought I had lost some of these ships in the move but just uncovered them this afternoon.

Now I just need to get some free time to paint something.

Bloody Bucket and Pirate Ships

Just picked up the new Ardennes supplement from TooFatlardies. It looks great from the initial glance. Rich really makes nice supplements.

Also received my 15mm and 6mm Buccaneer sloop from Sea Dog Studios. It looks fantastic. I need to do a tiny bit of cleanup in the gun ports but other than that, it is perfect. I can't wait till I can start work on it.