Building two Martian Sky Galleons part 1

I made some more progress in my Barsoom project. Inspired by the magnificent models by Tre Games I decided to build my own. The TG models are 15mm scale (except for one, heftily priced and sport a LOT of deck buildings that severely restrict the playing space on the decks.

As usual I started with some sketches.

Based on my experience with the Aphid class gunboat I would build the entire hull and wings out of MDF.

The outer hull would be made out of thinner MDF or foamcore to save weight without sacrificing the sturdiness of the hull. This mainly because the paper outer hullskin of the Aphid obliges you to think before you pick it up to prevent crushing the hull.

I proceeded with many sketches, struggling particularly with the wings and the bridge.

I wanted as much deck surface as possible to move figures around, but still enough detail to look impressive. And of course there would have to be guns on the deck, railings and other fittings that you would expect on a ship's deck.

Then I drew all the parts on MDF plates and started sawing away with the electric saw.

That provided me with A LOT of parts....

After sawing and sanding the fitting and glueing could start. Here the underside of the decks is shown with the ribs for the outer hull sticking upwards.

The tailpieces as well as the bows were supposed to be able to come off. This would greatly shorten the model's length and would ease storage (and painting). Below is one of the two tailpieces I made showing the fit.

 Below is the other tailpiece, which also slots into the rear hull.

Below is the pipe that will eventually hold the entire ship suspended on the steel rod of the standard. This way, the model can "fly" over the tabletop and easily adjust height as per my skyship rules.

Here are the two hulls, clearly showing most of the wooden parts in place and showing the hole in the hull to fit the standard. 

The first fit after glueing however showed a serious flaw in my designs. You can clearly see the ships tilt backwards, because the weight of the wings, bridge and tail drags the rear part down. Not only put this great strain on the standard fitting in the hull, but also permantenly tilted the deck. Darn.....

So a re-design was in order. The bridge was removed, the standard hole moved some 10cms to the rear (after carefully figuring out where the balance actually was, like I should have done in the first place....) and everything was glued in place again. Leaving me with a great big hole sitting in the middle of the deck....

What to do about that? Time would tell. But as you can see the balance was greatly improved!

Below the hull is covered with foamcore parts and bits of ye olde coffeestirrer. 

The railings were made by Pat's Laser Cuttings, as no electric saw can rival a fine detail laser cutter. Ordered to length they fit perfectly!

The bridge will be covered by a dome made of unbreakable Barsoomian sun-crystal (blablabla) which started its existence as the transparent part of a big plastic Easter egg. The 28mm figure is showed for scale.

The model so far scored approving looks of my better half

Then I started on the many details that were to cover the decks. The bit box yielded more than enough futuristic stuff to make some convincing cannon. Can you already guess what I will do with that surpluss hole in the deck? Here are the heavy Shock Cannon. Each ship will carry one.

Something that is apparently a Dark Eldar Star Cannon (who ever knew?) provided the lighter Pulse Guns of which each ship will carry four. 

The gun mount was made from those little triangles that came in abundance with the railings and were meant to prop those up for sturdiness. There were so many however, that I just had to put them to some more use.

That's all so far folks. Keep posted for part 2!!

Battles on Barsoom!!!! Pictures!!!!!!!!

Some action pictures of an En Garde! game taking place on Barsoom:

Building HMS Scarab, a Martian skyship

Finally, with PolderCon 2017 on the (far) horizon I decided to re-animate the John Carter Project. With almnost all figures painted the few things left to build were the famous skyships and some impressive terrain. 

I decided to start small with a 28mm version of the diminiutive Aphid class gunboat from the Space 1889 game. Not canon as far as John Carter concerns, but not too hard to start with and well suited to try out some thing I had found and thought up in the meantime. 

As a basis I use a half-finished papercraft kit made by Wayne Peters that I found on this link.

While not finished, the thread provided me with templates for decks and hull, gear box and rear engine cowling and more than enough inspiration to finish it myself. 

The basis for the hull is a sawed out deck shape based on the templates. 10mm MDF was at hand and very sturdy, but for future ships I think I will get some thinner stuff. 

The templates were printed, cut and glued to the deck, reinforced with some MDF "ribs" to enable the ship to stand on the ground without pushing in the paper outer hull.

Since the skyship rules I wrote for this project require models to be able to gain and lose altitude, I needed to build a standard as well. I used 20mm MDF and 15mm steel pipe for the standard and 20mm PVC pipe for the funnel. 

The PVC pipe is attached to the hull and fits over/slides along the steel pipe. Pins hold the ship in place at the desired altitude.  The ship is able to rise some 90cm above the tabletop. More than enough. 

The rest of the papercraft kit was missing but plans for Aphid class ships are available in abundance so devising the upper hull works and such was no problem.

The rest was straightforward scratchbuilding. Boiler and deck house were made of cardstock, reinforced with foamboard -and in case of the second ship (I built two) MDF ribs.

Thick cardboard provided the material for the tail fins and nails-and-string produced an adequate railing. Sinbce the ship rests on the tail fins while standing on the table I will use MDF in future builds.

A plastic wineglass sacrificed its base for the greater good and voila! HMS Scarab had a screw!

Stairs were made from plasticard and some bits and pieces from the bitbox became bolders, mast and a compass house on the bridge.

The portholes were punched out cardboard using a 25mm and a 20mm punch with some clear packaging material glued to the back. The "rivets" are punched in from the back with a pointy tool.

And here she is painted. After painting I added some more details like decals on the fins, a manufacturer's plate on the boiler (a shrunk picture found on the internet and printed) and of course a nameplate on the bridge. The naval ensign is of course a given!

Next build will be a larger Martian ship. Stay tuned!