Dawn of the Lead

Work on the ship (see previous post) is progressing at a steady rate, or actually much quicker than I’d anticipated. I’m really starting to get the hang of cutting up coffee stirrers (which I picked up a box of 1000 for 4 EUR) and gluing them in place. I rather feel like a teeny tiny carpenter.

Anyway, here are some pictures of my progress at the moment, with explanations. The picture quality is somewhat poorer than usual, as these are mostly quick progress shots. There is still a lot of work to be done, dremeling, detailing and such.

First up is one of the two crow’s nests. While the original was nice and big, it posed a serious risk of miniatures taking a major fall down to the deck. I remedied this with some stick planking and card. It still needs smoothing over as it was my first attempt, but I think it’s still nice enough and I believe painting will hide the more obvious rough spots. It can easily accommodate a few minis and they’re quite safe from falling.

Click for a larger version

Next up is the poop deck (which always makes me snigger, I’m twelve after all). It was originally nice enough, but there was a lot of blank, untextured plastic that I wanted to hide, and the doorway was scaled for larger action figures.

Click for a larger version

I covered the doorway area with plasticard and built a new wall out of coffee stirrers. I then chopped up a Playmobil basket for a door and built a doorframe around it. I liked the steps, but added more detail in the form of planking. As this will be a gaming piece, I added little stands made from plasticard and stirrers halfway between each staircase so that models can be placed there to indicate they’re on the stairs.

Click for a larger version

I added planking to the insides of the ship’s railing as well. It was somewhat awful work but looks decent.

Click for a larger version

For some reason, one side of the cabin’s outside wall – or rather its roof – was left untextured. Of course, I could’ve left it as it was, but there was a nice fish scale pattern to the roof and all…so of course I had to fix it using a lot of small paper discs from a hole puncher. Silly work, but I think the end result was well worth it. This was the sort of crazy stuff that’s always had me going “who does that?” before.

Click for a larger version

There was also an oversized balustrade on the edge of the poop deck. I cut this down to a more suitable size.

Click for a larger version

So there’s my progress at the moment. A lot of the hardest and most intricate work is actually already done. There’s still plenty to do, but I’m really motivated at the moment. I love working on this, and the visible progress really helps. I’m also genuinely surprised about how good it actually looks, as my hopes really weren’t that high. It will receive a dark brown paint job, that will hopefully work wonders in hiding some of the gaps between wood and plastic and so on.

Comments are welcome! Next up is the inside of the poop deck as well as cabin wall and door detailing. Actually looking forward to it!