A very useful addition to the scratch building material pile - and at a cost I could not argue with!
I have mentioned previously of my intention to follow in the footsteps of both myself and Bob Cordery and to scratch build some ‘cartoon’ style ship models for the American Civil War project. These models will be larger than my previous scratch builds and will also be a lot more generic in nature. In fact I shall not be modelling any specific historical ship, rather my efforts will focus on types instead. This also means that the resultant models will be getting fictional names. They will also be larger than previously as I am using a 5.5” hexed grid in the shape of the Peter Pig gaming mat I own.
As yet I have not done anything other than think about the types I shall be modelling and starting to stockpile building material. As monitors will feature in the building program I have given much thought to a good way to make turrets - Bob Cordery has a good method that is demonstrated in his book Gridded Naval Wargames - and had more or less settled on a technique when a chance visit to our local boot sale threw me a welcome curve ball in the shape of the contents of the picture above.
At the very last stall of a very mediocre boot sale a lady had a bag of plastic cotton reels. I was looking at them and thinking about the modelling potential when she said I could take them. I was about to ask her how much but before I could she told me I could have them as she was about to throw them away.
These will be very useful as aside from the obvious turret sized spools there is also a good selection of much thinner types which are ideal for funnels. Being hard plastic they can be sawn and worked quite easily so in one fell swoop I have added sufficient raw material for around a dozen or so ships.
6 comments:
That's very cool and quite entertaining David!
Great haul. I use them to make pillars for temples and monuments too.
Hi Fran,
In my experience most gamers look at odd bits and pieces from the perspective of what can I use that for? Most of us have drawers full of what, on the the face of it, could best be described as 'junk'. These will be very useful for what I have in mind and I am hoping to start work on a couple of models fairly soon.
All the best,
DC
Hi Tradgardmastare,
I hadn't thought of that but it is certainly a good idea! I had been looking at buying some wooden version but these will do very nicely and were at a price I liked - free!
All the best,
DC
I was thinking of making the bigger empty cotton reels into "wind up tanks"?
Elastic band, matchstick (steering rudder), wax candle washer and pin or half a matchstick to stop the elastic coming out from the other end
Am I making sense to anyone?
Distant memories of my childhood are coming flooding back to me!
Hi Geordie,
I remember cobbling up something similar many years ago! Seriously though, the selection I have will be enough for all the ships I am planning on building in support of the ACW project. I have reverted to the original plan though as Initially I think around a dozen models will be more than sufficient - especially as I plan to make some that can be used for either side merely by a flag change.
More to follow in due course.
All the best,
DC
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