"Masts on 1/6000 ships" Topic

I have a fairly extensive collection of Figurehead 1/6000 ships, covering the British and German fleet in WWI. You can see some pics here:

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I am now considering adding some French and Italian vessels, but I find myself torn about masts. I have never worried about masts before, thinking that at the 1/6000 scale it was not worth bothering. Yet, I feel I am missing something, visually: masts seem to make a big difference at larger scales, and on the 1/6000 yahoo group I was told that GQ rules include a picture of Figurehead miniatures with masts. Unfortunately I do not own those rules, but I wonder whether anyone has pictures to show. Do you make masts for your ships? How? Is there any technique or suggestion you can share?

Thanks in advance!

I always added masts to my fleets, and they were always out of scale…..but IMHO added a lot to the appearance of the ships.

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Use nylon bristle (from a hand brush) rather than wire as it is flexible and resists handling better. What would bend/break a thin wire will only push aside a nylon bristle which then bounces back into shape/place.

Hi DestoFante,

I am the guy from the Yahoo 1/6000th group with the banjo string idea.

I just had a chance to examine one of them. The thinnest type of banjo string is the 5th string, which is some sort of steel alloy with a diameter of 1/100 inch. Banjo strings come in different gauges, and possibly the light gauge types would be even thinner. These strings are quite strong, as you would imagine given what they are used for. Any gaming accident which would bend a mast made from this material would probably destroy the model. They can be bent to make tripod masts, if the modeler uses 2 pairs of needle-nosed pliers to hold them. After cleaning banjo strings, I have been able to both epoxy and solder them. Obviously, avoid wound strings, although the 5th string is never wound.

The bristle idea sounds interesting, but I don't know what their diameter is. As RobH says, anything we do is likely to be way overscale.

MH

My ships are a bit bigger at 1/2400, but I am a big fan of adding masts using various diameter piano wire that I purchase at the hobby shop.

With 1/6000 my guess is a single wire will do the trick.

Using a pin vise I drill a small hole in the deck dip the wire in glue and fit it into the hole. I then cut the wire using small wire cutter to the desired height as the longer wire is easier to handle and fit to the ship before cutting.

HTH,

Aaron