Batten down the hatches!
May 31, 2015Work on the pirate ship continues after a short lull spent painting the crew and watching Black Sails (watch it if you haven’t!). Rough work in progress photos as usual.
The poop deck is pretty much finished, apart from the possible addition of a small lantern next to the door. I decided not to work on the interior, as it would be extra work for little added value. I added a ship’s wheel from Eureka Miniatures that I ordered from Fighting 15s. The door got hinges cut from a cocktail stick to cover some rough cuts in the plastic. I also added a door handle of sorts, cut off the end of a WHFB orc weapon. Two holes left from removing the ship’s original wheel were filled with ProCreate and sculpted to match the decking.
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With the poop deck more or less done, I went to work on the main deck. While there already was a hatch with grating, it was far too big in terms of scale. Also, the removal of a fighting functionality (pull a lever, and two disks in the deck rotate, making two action figures fence if they’re stuck to the disks) left me with two large holes in the middle of my deck. After spending a lot of time thinking and trying out various materials, I whipped out the good old combination of plasticard and coffee stirrers and got to work. Here’s a before and after shot:
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This is some of my favourite work on the ship so far. I’m slowly getting to be a little more proficient with all the cutting and gluing, and I think it shows! I have no idea on whether you’d find a setup like that on an actual ship, but hey, this is my pirate fantasy.
The lines you can see in the deck are from another toy functionality that I removed – you could press on one end of the grating piece to make the other end launch up. That wasn’t something I wanted happening with miniatures, so I just glued it shut. I’m not sure if I’m going to fix the gaps it left, probably not.
Somewhat surprisingly there’s not much work on the main deck. I still need to add planking detail to the insides of the railings, but that’s it!
Praise, constructive criticism and general rambling in the comments welcome as always!
Dawn of the Lead 
Your coffee stirrer modification skills are noticeably improving.
Keep it up.
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Cheers! Repetition, repetition and repetition seems to be the key.
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The coffee stirrer panels look great. I have a toy pirate ship that will get modified one day, this project is inspiring and I will use it as a reference.
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Thanks! It really warms my heart to think that this provides inspiration.
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Great work dude! It’s looking better every time.
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Thanks Bob! I’m starting to look forward to seeing it finished…
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