A pirate ship

So, my painting and modelling-mojo's been burning low as of late...

Several reasons, overfull family, social and work agenda being the biggest culprit.
But I found a remedy : I 'accidentally' left my Freebooters' Fate rulesbook in the smallest room of the house.
I couple of hours later my eldest son (6 and a half) had found it and was eagerly browsing through the picture-pages.

Minutes later he asks me 'daddy, can we build a pirate town like the one in the book?'

Me : brings little finger to corner of mouth

But daddy's already got a large pirate town, I'll show you in a minute, but tell you what, how about we make us a nice pirate ship?

Warre : oh yes please!

It didn't take me too long to convince the youngest son either, with the joint forces of Warre, me and all of my pirate rulebooks (Freebooter's I, II and III and LotHS)

So we started out with washing the Megabloks ship I have and then we got seated around the table...
And that's where I noticed my first error : removing the little lego-style buttons with a sharp exacto whilst having an excited 4 and 6 year old around the table is a bad idea...
So we only planked up two bits and I found an excuse to stop.

Spent yesterday evening with a dremel in stead of an exacto-knife happily removing button upon button upon button.
That way, next weekend, I can concentrate fully on adding coffe-stirrers and glueing the ship together with my sons.

Only, there's quite a large amount of buttons still to remove but hey, Porto Pulpo wasn't built in a day either

Here's a (rather bad I'm afraid) shot of what I've cleaned up for the moment


Also need to think about how I'll be doing the part of the inside which 'll be visible when you open the cage on the deck...

No idea on how long this project is going ton take, but I'm enjoying

• spending quality modelling time with the two mini-me's
  
• making a very cool expansion for Porto Pulpo
  
• finally tackling this beast of a ship which I got a couple of months ago
  
• getting my modelling-mojo back on track
  
• having an excuse for modelling which SWMBO cannot counter  
  

Stay tuned for future updates  

Nothing lasts forever; SO enjoy Life's blessings while you may...thus endth the Sermon of the Day; say Amen. The Plan sounds good & the ship looks COOL. Have FUN with it all!   

Oh, I've had this ship for several years now.


Got the pesky nubs cut off and then got stopped by what to do next. Looking forward to your progress.

    

Thanks for that piccie!

It shows me which parts I'm missing and what goes where...

I don't have the part which holds the middle mast, and the top section of the rear of the ship is entirely missing.
Oh well, nothing that can't be fixed with plasticard, balsa, greenstuff, PVA and spit

Also nice to see that those hatches on the side open up.... I'm going to try and see whether mine can still open, and if I can make some cannons come out of 'm!

Oh gosh, that's a HUGE ship! Look at the amount of models it can take!!

Joao

I don't remember the points value, but I had 80 models on the decks and 15 handgunners manning the fighting tops (which turned out to be a bad idea, because the masts are so tall.)

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Also nice to see that those hatches on the side open up.... I'm going to try and see whether mine can still open, and if I can make some cannons come out of 'm!

Only 4 per side open. I intended to have magnetized cannon barrels for when they opened, but like I said, its been years...

Hahaha, I hope I'll inspire you to take this beauty up again, after all of these years.

Managed to de-nub a couple of extra pieces, two to go and we're ready for assembly and embellishments (but apparently not this weekend as we'll be going on a trip to holland)

I have also already located 8 barrels I can use for the cannons, nothing fancy but it'll get the idea across. No magnetisation planned though, I intend on keeping the hatches open permanently.
Oh, and I've located a bit which 'll allow me to hold the middle mast in place. Fit very snugly and will allow me not to glue the mast in place for ease of transportation...

Great project.

I also have two Megabloks ships at home.
i have not yet planked them but I do not like to cut all those small buttons.

Do you think it is possible to just glue the planks over them?

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Do you think it is possible to just glue the planks over them?

No.

Allow me to elaborate...

Would it be possible?
Yes

Would it be a sturdy, good looking and game-wear-and-tear resistant option?
No

Glueing the planks on top of the nubs gives a you very, very small bonding surface...
Get rid of the nubs and you'll have the entire plank as a bonding surface for your glue to adhere to.
On top of that, you'll get weired empty spaces when seen from the side, where your planks 'll look like they're hovering on thin air.

So, all in all, the answer to your question is 42; oh, wait, that's another universe, the answer you are looking for is "No"

I removed 'm with a dremel, and three evening sessions of in between 2 and 3 hours did the trick.
The 'problem' with the dremel is that you're melting your plastic whils removing it, so you need to thoroughly clean your surfaces of all bits that stay melted on...

My ship is all de-nubbed now.
Still need to make the inside structure, for when someone wants to put figs in the cage, and apply my mast-holdin solution.

Then it's awaiting until I've got time to work with my kids on the ship, as I promised myself I wouldn't do anything alone with which my kids can help me out without running the risk of cutting themselves up.

WELL DONE! It sounds like things are coming along SPLENDIDLY without losing any fingers or all that much blood.   

Well now, with the weekend just around the corner, I've just finished the preparatory works so I can start assembling the ship and plank her up with my sons.

First off, as I was missing the piece to put my mast in, I made this hole which fits the mast very snugly. The part is already planked up, as I wanted the hole to overlap the planks


Then I had some fun glueing the interior of the ship together with PVA. Every connecting surface was glued up.

I also milliputted up the holes of the cage-grille in the deck, as this will be painted in metal in stead of planking it up. I also used milliput to hold the grille in place, but still have it open up. This will be reinforced with a coffe-stirrer plank later, just to be safe and not have anything break off.

Oh, and I put milliput in the inside of the grille too, as it was completely hollow. Not too clean, as it will be closed most of the time anyway


Next step was walling up a part of the interior, which will be directly under the grille. This is mainly to prevent anyone whom puts a fig in there to loose it should it fall into the ship.
Granted, doesn't look to good as it's cardboard now, but it will be planked up later.

With the deck-part in place :


And the final step : dry-fit everything to be sure no mistakes were made. A good thing I did this as I did make a mistake actually, one of the blocks holding the ship together was blocking the deck-part that's supposed to go over it. As the glue hadn't dried yet, I was able to relocate the culprit

Oh yeah, the really small fig standing in the ship? D'you see her? She's a Freebooters' Fate pirate (slightly larger scale than GWS 28mm). Is this beauty a big ship or what? WOW!

She is a BEAUTY! When you're finished with all the embellishments, you'll have a centerpiece that is WONDROUS to behold. Have FUN with your boys!   

Nice update. I started to look at my Black Pearl last night and the side of the ship that I reached for came off in my hands, I forgot I hadn't glued it together...

Well well, the weekend has come and, unfortunately, has gone again too

But I did find the time sunday afternoon to start working on the ship. As the sun was shining, I dressed my sons up nice and warm and set to working on the ship in the garden. Quality daddy-sons time in the healthy outdoor air. Bliss...

Both were very excited to get starter, though the eldest asked :
'when are you going to make your whole pirate town daddy? Then we can put some pirates on, and have a game, with dice so they can fight.'
Me : 'what exactly do you mean, son?'
Him : I saw that in your book, I read in it a lot, you roll dice to see how your figures fight
(mind you, apart from Diego/Dora words, his knowledge of english is close tot non-existing, he deduced that all by himself from the pictures. He's hooked all right, now all I need to do is reel him in muhahahahaaaaaa)

Aaaanyways,

Us three planked up the 'prison'


And then glued a couple of the ships' parts in place and we started to plank up the deck


Lots to do still, but nonetheless, very pleased with the results.

Now to await the next weekend so we can continue the work (it was very, very hard for me not to continue yesterday evening when they had gone to bed...)

The ship is coming along SPLENDIDLY; the hold looks TERRIFIC. AND you are a GOOD Daddy. VERY WELL DONE on all counts!   

What with the beautifully sunny weekend we've just had, me and the boys installed ourselves in the garden to make some progress on the ship...

The decks' been completely planked up now, and the rear-end was glued into place and equipped with a sturdy door

You & the Press Gang are making SPLENDID progress...love the door. Keep up the FINE WORK & you'll be revaging the Seven Seas in no time.   

What a great project, it looks fantastic.

You are making great progress    

Well, the easter holidays have been full of action, minitrips and whatnot, but I still found the time to gather my two sons around the table...

Here are the results. We planked up one side entirely :


And the other side, we got halfway through, only to run out of PVA...


Bad news indeed, aspecially as I had two kids psyched up to continue...
So wed decided to attack the side-hatches, fixing them into an open position so we can lenthen (a bit) the cannon-barrels that come peeking out.
The hatches were glued into place using supaglue (handled by me) and milliput (handled by the little monsters)


I hope to get at least a bit of action in tomorrow on this ship, especially since I bought a new pot full of PVA  

Really nice ship! I was a bit sceptical about the idea of using lego but you are really making it work.

She's coming along SPLENDIDLY. You & the Crew are doing some OUTSTANDING WORK!   

Ah the gun ports. I once had plans to magnetize partial cannon barrels to place in them. Then I saw a that some enterprising chap had detailed his gun deck and I waffled about that for awhile. Now I can't find the cannon barrels I was going to use...they are here somewhere...

I did modify the port side so that the hatches that did open, open further than originally designed. Just have to move on to starboard.

Cheers for the comments!

I'm not going to detail the gun deck though...
My cannon-barrel extensions will be 40K Chimera track-wheels, held in place with milliput and pva, no fancy magnetising and whatnot, just simply glue 'm in place