Well, I'm almost completely finished with a project.
I know. Shocking. But what project could that be?
Time to let the cat out of the bag....
Okay, maybe not THIS cat, but Miss Fiddles is just oozing cuteness, so I couldn't resist
How about this cat instead? HMS Leopard from the Cod Wars
My friend Willz served aboard her during the Cod Wars as a young matelot, before going to epic career in bouncing HM's submarines off underwater objects and as a junior PO, planning and executing a pre-deployment party for the ratings that landed some in hospital unfit for the trip.
Anyway, I wanted to paint up a model of his ship. Sadly the stern is all wrong, but it was printed up at work on a new 3D printer the IT boys just got and wanted to run some test prints on. They were more than happy to oblige. The STL files came from Decapod on Thingyverse.
But being the Cod Wars pitting trawlers against the Icelandic version of the Garda Costas, I needed a way to represent the trawl portion of the fishing vessel. Numerous searches and such later, I came up with these...
I snipped the heads of pins off and glued them to bits of wood, the same paint stirring battens I used for the ships' bases. A bit of paint and a coating of glossy Mod Podge and Bob's your uncle.
Trawl stands in action. Side trawler on the left, stern trawler on the right.
Where I grew up, we used to call stern trawlers "draggers", due to the way the trawls were hauled through the water and a couple of college classmates of mine were working on them during college breaks and such.
Anyway, I've got three trawl markers and another three in the work queue. The last of the vessels, HMS Gurkha, HMS Exmouth, and HMS Scylla are finished and just need to have their bases painted and the Mod Podge applied.
The completed fleets, less the three RN warships and the three trawl markers mentioned above.
I am looking forward to maybe doing a trial run of David Manley's fine rules "Cod Wars" at OttoCon. This will be one of the "reserve" games to play if we need an extra game. And if not, well, I'll be playing it when we get back from Carlisle.
"There's something wrong with out bloody fish today!"
These look fantastic. Never knew that about Willz.
ReplyDeleteWe were on a meeting of the VWC and mentioned something and I said, "hang on....you were THERE?" and that's when he mentioned it was maybe his first assignment, on short notice too.
DeleteEric
Congratulations on finishing a project.....
ReplyDeleteLet's hope it doesn't spend the next 10 years in a box! ☺
Neil
Cheers, Neil! I hope so too. At least it won't this week. Can't be sure about next month, though.
DeleteEric
Fantastic modelling Eric, take me back to the Cod War 1975, JS - OS.
ReplyDeleteBuffers mate, mate, mate, mate fwd port tiller flat, in charge of seamanship and cleaning gear store on port tiller flat.
Not as glamorous as it sounds.
Willz.