New-Old Project

For reasons I still can’t fathom (no pun here), I decided to finish off my sailing ship project.  As with most everything else, its genesis occurred somewhere in the distant past, in this case as an adjunct to my East African Renaissance project.    After all, a coastal campaign should have ships.

I already had a couple of the old “Limeys and Slimeys” ships, but fabricating and fitting the various bits and sails needed to give the hulls some semblance of realism was just too difficult.

Some time ago, I found a Weapons and Warrior Pirate Battle Game that looked promising.  This Pressman kit boasts having “over 100 pieces.”  It came with plastic pirates (worthless), two ships, two pinnaces, a fort,  a small stockade (semi-worthless), along with cannons and mortars (all too large, and therefore worthless). Everything (except ships) was designed to explode if hit with cannon shot from the oversize guns.  While 17th century vessels, they are close enough to the period and had the advantage of fully rigged plastic sails.  The ships can be used with both 15mm and 25mm figures.

Not content with one box, I later bought another.  Both languished in The Shed for a few years.

I started painting one of the ships last Fall.   Things did not go smoothly.  I just couldn’t get the hull colors right, and must have primed and re-primed the damn thing four times.  Finally, things came together and, with the help of some photos of others’ work found on the net, I finished one.  The second followed shortly thereafter.

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Here’s the basic hull out of the box, along with a hull that I literally ripped the deck “prongs” from, and put down new decking.  While it looks bad, when painted and with a grate added, it works quite well.

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Speaking of painted, the next bad photo shows the rough first coats of my latest efforts.  This will be “Red Boat”.  The others are green and blue.  I just slop the paint on at this point, especially red.  For some reason, red has never covered well.  Not even when ingesting PBR.  I’ll use crimson for the second coat.

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Hopefully, this one will be finished off in a week or so – multiple projects going on.  The fourth boat will be a little problematic since it is missing some important bits.

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