The Becky Boo

Arr, ship mates, I welcomes you on board the Becky Boo, as fine a sloop as you could hope to sail in the Spanish Main.

Custom sailing rig, and two small cannon.

A little fun with Photoshop helped me get the name 'painted' on... Named for the captains sweet-heart
... ( Actually the shipwrights daughter!)

And with her salty sea dog crew.

She fits eight crew, with the two cannon. Two more perhaps at a push...

Arr, keep a weather eye open and bring that horizon towards me... Yo ho me hearties, and really bad eggs! ;-)

Update: 13/6/11 - clever work with photoshop:

Thanks to Rodger!

Pirate progress pictures

Some more pictures of progress as promised after tonight's work:

The second small sloop, just showing the card sides being added, and then the balsa being added, strip by strip. Its actually thinner than I originally thought, it's 0.8mm thick, cut into roughly 5mm wide strips.

The Metal figure is just for scale - it is a LOTR dunlending 28mm. Still he looks wildly pirate like in his own way perhaps?

Here's the first small sloop, now pretty much finished, just awaiting painting. I cut the holes for the cannons, added the deck grate and pinned into position the wheel. I am probably going to leave the wheel removable to allow movement of figures on deck as it's quite a cramped little sloop. With the two cannon present I may struggle to stand 8 Pirate crew on deck.

Here's the Brig, starting to get decked out as it were. All interior planking done, ladders added, windows added, cannon holes cut, doors added, deck grate added. Just now awaiting the masts to be added.

I am sorry this shot is sideways on, I think blogger has had one of its 'moments' or perhaps my gimp software is playing up? Anyway you can see how the stern windows look for the captains quarters.

I'll try and continue work this week and get some more colourful shots up this weekend. Fingers crossed.

Pirate port takes shape

Over the past week I have made some progress on my pirate port and shipping.

In regards my small pirate sloop, I have attached the sails by 'stitching' them with yarn to the masts, and gluing over this with thinned PVA. The sails are made from cartridge paper, which is a thicker heavy gauge paper, sort of mid way between paper and thin card if I can put it that way. Its a bit stronger than regular paper, so you can pull it about a bit without it tearing, yet its still flexible as paper, rather than card.

I am awaiting the cannons, so I can get a feel for how much deck space they will take up before I add other detail, like ships wheel, and grated cargo hold cover.

I have also started assembling the medium brig from the Gary Chalk ship plans, here's the decks glued together.

I've also got some more work done on the buildings for the port. I added windows using a plastic mesh grid available from haberdashery stores, and 2mm thick balsa cut to strips for timber beams effects.

Finally the roof was clad with 1cm square thin card roof tiles. This was the lengthiest part of project by far. It took me all Saturday evening to clad the two small houses, and about 6 hours on Sunday to do the L-shaped house. That angle, was a real B*tch to work with!

Still they are done now and ready for paint.

I'd still like to make more general dock warehouse buildings, tavern(s) of course, shops and apothecary. A grander, 'Governors mansion' will also be required. And some sort of pirate hideout, and jail/fort type structure.

After chatting with Roly over a coffee on Saturday night, we came up with several ideas for developing land forms to go on to the sea area I have created;
'Treasure Island', pirate hideaway, dock/port with bridge over river mouth to extended town area, etc etc...

Its going to be a lot of work, but I hope the end result will be worth it.

It was interesting watching Sky TV tonight as they had a program on NatGeo, about Port Royal. Nice to see the costumes and more importantly the look of the buildings and town from 3d computer creation. Very interesting also to learn that they had shipped across large amounts of redbrick building materials from UK to Jamaica, and the town would have looked very much like Georgian England of the period.

Here are some pictures courtesy of SKY TVs Nat Geo program "Wicked Pirate City"

So many periods, so little time...

A bit of a divergence from my normal style of blog posting.

After a recent and fortunate chance to get to play a fun and simple cowboys skirmish game on Joe Harrison's wonderful "Leadwood", and then seeing online a very impressive Napoleonic Naval and land game, I have become inspired once again to set to and start making terrain again...

A number of thoughts have come together; the quality and scale of Joe's town construction, the expanse of sea, as seen in the naval game with the glorious ships, the fact that the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie is due out shortly and my past enjoyment playing Legends of the High Seas, the Corsairs ship I made for Lord of the Rings, and a desire to recreate Osgiliath, and other Gondorian locations near water; Harlond, Cair Andros, and Pelargir...


What I came to realize is, if I cover my games table which is 12' x 6', with a new flat surface and paint this as the sea, I can then overlay various land areas to represent coastlines, island, docks and the like. This will allow for some wonderful pirate skirmish war-gaming, and assaults against the various coastal areas of Gondor.

So where there's a will, there's a way, and I have set to once again with scalpel, balsa, card and foamcard and have churned out several constructions over the last week or so.

I have converted a building I originally made as a church for ECW gaming, into a Gondorian style dock warehouse.

I have followed the template guide and made the basic small sloop from the back of the Legends of the High Seas rulebook. The hull and deck was relatively straight forward to do, and I had a browse through internet images of sloops to get an idea of how the masts and sails should look.

Obviously still a work in progress. I need to properly attach the sails with string, and finish rigging and add the wheel, and paint it up. Its fairly small, the hull is only 6" long, but it is perfect for a small starting-out pirate crew for the game.

I have made a start on 3 pirate style buildings, to go towards my Port Royal / Tortuga.

Much work still to do here. Add windows and doors, clad with balsa beams, add roof tiles, and paint.

And I have just finished cutting out the materials from the plans from the Gary Chalk pirate brigantine.

Oh and of course I have made the sea base for the games table.

It just needs a coat of varnish to finish off.

Here's my corsairs themed ship looking the part on its new sea. I must get the LOTR corsair crew fast tracked to the painting table!

I have also put together the three flat packed glass display cases I ordered from Barrie at NZIW Ltd.

This is them just assembled, they still need to have all the glass and mirrors cleaned and polished up, and lightbulbs added. I still have to figure out the best way to wire these up for the lighting, and secure them to the wall, to make them at least slightly 'quake proof.

Lets just say I think I am going to be rather busy over the coming year putting all this together.

Oh and I still have to finish the ACW confederates sitting on my painting table!

So many periods, so little time!