HMS Lion Rampant 2

Here are some shots of the Rampant, my 28mm Napoleonic wargaming ship of the line, as she is now.  She's not finished yet, but I needed her in respectable condition for a big boat fight that I did for the RPG club at school.  Unfortunately, whilst sitting outside in my hot car all day, some of the deck planking warped.  I'm still looking for a good way to fix that.  Nonetheless, here are the current picks.  There have, obviously, been several changes:

• She's been painted, mostly (I still have touch-ups and details to do).
• She has masts and sails (though the sails are too big and have to be taken down and cut).
• The whole bow of the ship was cut off with a jig saw, and the headrails were rebuilt with curve-edges and bits of craft wood. 

HMS Lion Rampant Part 1

Here are the production shots of the massive ship of the line that I'm building for my 25/28mm scale figurines. She's a tad oversized, I know (four decker?), but she's been very fun to work on.

Basic Hull Structure:
This shot shows the foam slabs that make up the Rampant's hull.All of theses pieces were cut out with a jigsaw.












Shaping the Hull:

After the foam slabs were cut out with a jig saw, they were hot-glued together and sanded with an electric hand sander in order to give the sides of the hull a gentle curve. The black stains on the sides of the ship come from the tar-paper rooftop where I did the sanding. You can just see the slight curve of the ship tapering off towards the top of the forecastle.






Deck Planking:

Once the hull was sanded, basswood was fitted to the exposed hull sections. The deck planking is made of textured basswood, the vertical walls are made of standard basswood. In the left-hand shot, you can see where the foam hull is built up with Sculpy where I got a little overzealous with the sander.





The two basswood walkways over the gun-deck are supported by foam slabs cut to shape. Had I to do this over again, I would have run a firmer piece of wood, maybe 1/8 inch particle board under the basswood planking, and left out the supports. Ah well, live and learn.





 
Adding Doors:



















 While I had initially decided to have solid-wall railings on the ship (because, let's face it, they're easy to make), I eventually decided against it and cut away the wall sections around the quarter-deck and gundeck. Doors were added to the walls, four sets of double doors going into and out of the gundeck, single doors on the forecastle and off the quarterdeck. The doors are made from rectangles of scored basswood, small craft sticks are then glued around them as frames. The door handles are small cuts of the same craft sticks, and the hinges are cut out of cardstock (my old business cards, actually).

Adding the Sides:

Next, I cut single piece sides for the hull out of poster sized cardstock. While the sides of all of my previous ships have been made out of basswood, that just seemed silly for a task this large.











Glued into place and taped across the top to dry, the cardstock held the curved shape of the hull very nicely. The downside was, of course, that the cardstock was relatively flimsy. This was fixed by cutting a second set of hull sides and gluing them over the first in exactly the same manner. The double-thick cardstock hull turned out to be just as durable as basswood, especially after the hull stripping was added.








The Stern:

The stern was made from a shaped piece of foamcore glued over the rather jagged rear edge of the model. The quarter galleries are made from shaped and sanded pieces of pink insulation foam glued into place.









It is important to note that the stern piece shown in these images is the backing piece of a two part structure. Two identical stern pieces were cut and eventually glued one on top of the other in order to give depth to the stern windows.








Detailing the Hull:

Ok, several steps were taken here without pictures after each one:

1. Firstly, two poster-sized cardstock sheets were cut into 1/2 inch strips.
2. The 1/2 inch strips were glued to the sides of the ship to represent wood planking.
3. Gunports were made (see below) and glued on at 2 inch intervals.
4. Chainplates were crafted from basswood and glued on for each mast.
5. The entryway door was made from basswood, craft sticks and cardstock and glued into place. The entryway ladder is simply craft stick sections glued to the hull.
6. Long, 1/2 inch basswood strips were cut and glued to the top of the hull as railings.

Making Gunports:

On my first few ships, I cut pieces of basswood for each gunport, then carved hinges out of cardstock with scissors. For the 120 gunports on the HMS Rampant, that was simply impractical. To solve my problem, I hit the Michael's and picked up one of my new favorite products: Square Woodsies.






 A bag of square Woodsies comes with little wooden squares in three sizes, roughly 2 inches, 1 inch, and quarter inch. The quarter inch Woodsies are perfect for gunports. For the rampant, I think I used 3 bags worth. The next time saving tool was purchased at a stationary store: it's a set of multi-scissors that cuts paper into thin ribbons.








Using the multi-scissors, I cut my old business cards into thin ribbons. Then I cut them to the appropriate length and glued them to the Woodsies to make hinges.

The process is quick and simple, which is good, because the Rampant has about 120 gunports.






 

The Detailed Hull:


Here are some shots of the hull with all of the details in place.
























Detailing the Decks:
I constructed railings from craft sticks (the popsicle stick variety, not the square sticks that I used for the door frames). They are mounted on sections of thin dowel. The stairs are also constructed out of the popsicle-style craft sticks. I purchased gratings from an online model ship supply company and framed them with the squared craft sticks. The capstan came from the same online retailer, as did the ship's wheel. The wheel is mounted on two sections of popsicle stick with a hole drilled through them. A section of paperclip runs through the actual wheel and is hidden by runnels cut in the smaller craft sticks affixed to the wheel-structure. This allows the wheel to actually spin. After all of that, I added pinrails in front of each mast, and ladders, made of square craft sticks and sections of toothpick, to the gundeck (see left side of the right hand image).

The Bow:

The bow is probably the section of the ship that I like the least. In short, it's too long and pointy, and the headrails kind of suck. Unfortunately, I was unable to come up with a better way to create the headrails, given the amount of curvature needed. Wood was simply too difficult to work with for what is essentially a large terrain piece for wargaming.




 The knee of the head is a cut piece of quarter inch foamcore affixed to the bow with glue and two nails. The headrails are double thick cardstock (same material as the hull sides). The figurehead (visible in the left image) is a Dreamblade figurine. The midshipman's heads (the round bits in front) are made from a bifurcated wine cork. The catheads are made from two sections of thick square basswood stick. Holes were cut in the hull siding to let them through, and they are affixed to the deck of the forecastle.

 
Detailing the Stern:
On the other hand, I'm very happy with the way the stern turned out. You remember the shaped piece of foamcore that I used to make the stern? To create depth for the stern galleries, I cut the window shapes out of a second piece of foamcore and glued it over the top of the first. I then soaked small square craft sticks in warm water before bending them and gluing them into place along the insides of the window holes in the outer sheet of foamcore. That created the window frames in such a way that they actually stick out past the wall of the stern.

The central window pane frame is also made from bent craft wood glued directly to the back of the window (the first piece of foamcore). The rest of the window pane frames are likewise made of small sections of square craft sticks glued directly to back of the inner sheet of foamcore. The scrollwork design is cut from cardstock, with holes punched out with an ordinary hole punch.



Side Galleries:

The side galleries were made by laying down business cards for window backing, then overlaying the whole gallery with specially cut cardstock covers. Square craft sticks were then used to create window frames and window panes. Later, cardstock scrollwork was also added, but it cannot be seen here.