Progress! And lessons Learned.

I have finally something to show for my 3d printing efforts. I have made a number of prints but these are the first that I have gotten assembled and painted. I have learned quite a bit while doing this. I will not be adding masts and sails until after painting the components. Anyway, I have three built and painted if not rigged vessels.

Unlike my previous efforts, these are all in 1/700th scale. They come from 3 different places. The one on the left is not a print. It is a schooner from Warlord Games' Black Seas. I really like the vessel and have 6 more to do. I have painted the decks of two others.

The middle one is a model from Ash and Stone on Wargaming3d.com. The original was a 28mm model and absolutely huge. I rescaled it and built the masts and sails. The rigging was an attempt. The foresail was not put on correctly but I just let it go. It is tiny and fragile. I really need to consider basing my 1/700th models. Especially this one. I like how it turned out. I want to print a few more. Ultimately I think I want at least five of these.

Lastly we have a ship sloop. I am not 100% sure whose model it is. It might be one of Henry Turners or Saturnalia studios. It was one of the first vessels that I got a good print on the sails for. I made the mistake of gluing the sails in place before painting. In the process of painting, I broke off the main mast right below the sails. It is glued back but will need the rigging to hold it together firmly. I am not confident on how that will go.

IN printing smaller vessels (schooners, brigs and even small ship sloops) from Henry Turner, I am struggling with the sails. The masts tend to be bigger than the holes for them end up. I have a pin vise to drill them back out. But the dry fitting of the parts have led to multiple sails breaking. The detail of the Henry Turner figures is fantastic. But they are much more fiddly. The Saturnalia ones are good but the masts are chunkier which makes them great for gaming but less so as scale models. I have successfully printed a couple of bomb ketches from Saturnalia now. What I have found helpful is using warm or hot water to rinse the models. I am using a water washable resin. This helps in removing the supports. I am also letting the model air dry after that before putting them under UV lights. This has prevented some odd looking blobs showing up on the model.

This is how I spent my Memorial day. I am putting off further rigging. I will go ahead and prime some of the Saturnalia models that I have and paint them this week to get a good comparison point. I have 3 hulls printed for the HSM Pickle from Henry Turner. The sails that I have printed haven't worked yet. I have not been able to get the bowspirit to fit at all.

As such, I am concentrating on the Saturnalia figures. After printing, the mast holes are still too small. I am drilling them out to get them to fit properly. I have painted up a pair of bomb ketches so far. I have to glue the masts in place still. Should finish that tonight.

I did finish a second Black Seas Schooner as well. I used a painting guide I found online and painted it in more French like colors. I'm not sure I like it. I will get pictures tonight.

I also have an update on my AWI scenario book for To Covet Glory. I have finished with the ship list for brigs of the Royal Navy. I have also added another scenario to the book. I am working on the Brigs of captured French, Spanish and Dutch navies now. This leaves Cutters and schooners left to stat out. This puts the book in at 115 pages thus far. Of which, 45 pages are scenarios and campaigns. The ship list will be over 100 pages detailing Royal Navy vessels under the rate from Ship Sloops (3 masted ships smaller than frigates), to Brig sloops (two masted vessels with a square rig), to Schooners (two masted fore and aft rigged vessels) and cutters (single masted vessels). I will have partial lists of US Navy and State navy vessels. Some data changes the ship types from the To Covet Glory rulebook. Lastly, there is a single page of some gunnery changes that are optional. This was a thought I had to further differentiate between the smaller cannons. This section might get dropped.

3d Printing & Black Seas

One thing I am having issues with in 3d Printing ships are the holes for the masts being too small for the masts. I am not sure what I am doing wrong there. Sanding down the mast bases seems to help.

I have started to actually paint some 1/700th scale miniatures. I printed a small bermuda sloop that I scaled down from 28mm of all things.I also have a shop sloop of 18 guns that I have printed up. Both of these are on the painting bench. I need to do some rigging on the small bermuda sloop to get the rest of the sails on. The ship sloop has its deck painted. I am still deciding on a scheme.

I ended up buying the Black Seas Schooner Squadron. The ships are really nicely detailed. I have them primed and have painted one of them. The one thing I noticed is that some work with plyers is needed to get the sails lined up with the bowspirit. I have one that is painted and I am waiting on the glue to dry on the thread to being rigging it. Will see how it goes.

I am very interested in picking up the Black Seas Cutter Squadron. the problem is, I can't find any retailer in the US that carries it. Shipping for it from Warlord directly is $20. No one seems to be selling it on eBay at the moment. I would like to experiment with some different sail plans for them to give them different looks. I think it would be worth it.

The problem with both the Warlord Games models and the ones I am 3D printing is that they are light and tend toward being top heavy. I had not based any of my 1/300th ships. That wasn't an issue with them. With these, I think I will need to base them to have them stay upright on the table. Once I have some more of Henry Turner's models printed and painted up, I should be in good shape to complete the scenario book. That is something I am looking forward to.

Sailing into Revolution

So currently the working title of my To Covet Glory supplement is Sailing into Revolution. I am not sure I like it yet. There are 10 historical actions detailed. Some have multiple scenarios in each one. There is a generator for creating convoy actions. The scenario portion is standing currently at 45 pages. Then I am detailing the ships of the Royal Navy by providing stats for Royal Navy vessels below the rate. There are hundreds of vessels detailed. Most are complete stats that can be used in your own games.

I have been tinkering with my 3d printer. I have managed to get some better prints by lowering the support density. I was having trouble getting reliable prints on sails. I was breaking the print attempting to remove the supports. I think I have this fixed. I am hoping to get some painting in soon.

January's Almost Over

As January comes to a close, I am happy to report that I have completed 9 scenarios for my AWI book for To Covet Glory. The scenarios are not just single actions in many cases. The one on Convoys gives a template for making convoy attack scenarios for for various theaters giving the player the ability to create random forces to the scenarios with sample merchant vessels. Others include small campaigns following the actions of a particular privateer.

The part still in progress is working through the stats for the vessels of the Royal Navy for the period. Thus far I have seventy-nine ship sloops sorted out based on the books by Winfield on the Royal Navy. I have started work on the Brigs but have much more work to do. There are still Schooners and Cutters to start.

I just started to 3D printing again. I have started on a small Bermuda Sloop and a skiff that I have scaled down from the original 28mm models down to 1/700th scale. I am experimenting with the support density as I previously had too many and the models broke when removing supports from the models. Hopefully this will be successful. In Chitubox, the models looked like they would work.

Happy New Year

2023 has come to a close and 2024 has started. I had a good Christmas that netted me some new books. I picked up British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793-1817 by Rif Winfield. While it is outside of the period that I am working on for the AWI scenarios, it is actually a significant help. It has shed some light on ships from the AWI as there were numbers of veterans of the AWI that continued service into the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. I also picked up James Henderson's Frigates - Sloops & Brigs. It is two books published together and was a great read. It gave me some ideas about the use of tenders. The British had armed tenders serving larger vessels to expand their reach. I have previously looked at examples around Charelston in the early stages of the AWI. These two have given me additional information to push forward on the AWI scenarios.

I also picked up Sacrifice on the Steppe: The Italian Alpine Corps in the Stalingrad Campaign, 1942–1943 by Hope Hamilton. This could become a follow up to In the Name of Roma.

Santa left me two new jugs of water washable rein under the tree this year. I have already used it to print out some 1/700th scale ships for a convoy scenario for To Covet Glory. With 1/700th scale, I find that I can get more than one complete ship on the build plate unlike 1/300th scale. I am trying to find out how to print out some smaller vessels than what are currently available. I am having fun with the resin printer. It seems to be much more straight forward than the filament printer I was using earlier.

I have found a figure to convert for my 1982 Israelis for Lebanon. I plan on printing a few and seeing how they look when I match them with my exising Peter Pig miniatures. I printed a Merkava Mk2 that came out rather well. I need to sand the barrel a bit to fit with the turret. Somehow I lost the turret hatch cover and need to print that.

------- 15 days later ---------

Somehow I forgot to hit the publish button here. I found out that even with water washable resin, you MUST wear gloves. The resin gave me a bad rash and swelling around both eyes when printing. It took about a week to heal. I am going to invest in lots of gloves. Will probably wear a mask and goggles as well.

I did purchase a 3d Model for a Bermuda Sloop from Wargaming3d. The model is very nice and the producer was more than willing to talk to me. I am shrinking the hull down to 1/700the scale. I am printing it with and without guns. For a mast and spars set, I had tinkered with some for a cutter a while back and I am going to try to reuse that even though the topsail will be too large for a Bermuda sloop.

I had done some more work on my AWI book for To Covet Glory. I am having great fun going through Winfield's book on the Royal Navy in the Age of Sail. He has a vast amount of information on ships below the rate. Thus far I have been making ship stats for all of the Ship Sloops of the Royal Navy. It has shown me a few mistakes in the original To Covet Glory. I will have to update the book at somepoint.