"Scratch building pre-dreadnought miniatures" Topic

Howdy folks! I've recently caught the naval wargaming bug again after a few years. A friend of mine and I have started building up navies for WWII (his era of interest), however when it comes to pre-dreads (my era of interest) we're a bit conflicted as to what to do. I've already picked up some 1/2400 ships from WTJ and Panzerschiffe, but the scale is a little too small for us. We'd like to do 1/600 since playing space isn't a problem for us, but Old Glory's selection is not diverse enough to let us play anything that's not Japan, Russia, or the US, and even then we'd be missing a lot of the ships we want to use. So I've decided to scratch build our fleets for us. What building materials and techniques would you recommend using for naval miniatures of this era? I'm looking for something relatively cheap compared to resin, but able to withstand being transported between my dorm and our gaming shop. Thanks in advance!

I've had good results in that scale using Evergreen and Plastruct strips and sheets to construct basic hulls and deck furniture for ships of the War of the Triple Alliance. Various sizes of brass wire for masts and plastic or brass tubing for funnels, etc.

It is also possible to scratchbuild in the smaller scales-- I've done some acceptable (I think) 1/3000 French submarines and gunboats for 1905 using the same materials. Just requires a little more patience than the larger scales.

Paul Hague's "Sea Battles in Miniature" describes the basic techniques for scratchbuilding.

Basswood.

@khanscom thanks for the recommendation! I've just ordered a copy off of Amazon. Just so I can get an idea, how do you form the hulls? Is it a process of layering styrene?

Black Smoke Blue Water produces 1/1000 scale late 1880's to 1907-08 Pre-Dreadnoughts for USA, Japan, Russia, France, Italy, Austria, Spain, Germany and Britain in a wide selection at lower pricing than most for this size of gaming model.

blacksmokebluewater.miiduu.com

You might get some ideas if you Google "Virtualscratchbuilder". He's on TMP and usually answers these inquiries.

Basswood is good as it has extremly fine grain, or so my father said. Here is the Chen Yuen he made.

I would not recommend basswood for beginners. It needs to be cut with a jigsaw and is very difficult to work with. I only use it when I am making a master for molding.

@TenCents: The "bread and butter" or layering technique is the best to use since thinner sheets are easier to cut. For hulls with complex armament arrangements it also makes it easier to represent cutaway areas.

I have also used basswood for hulls on larger ships (post- RJW); this CAN be worked without power tools. I've found the availability of assorted shapes from the plastic manufacturers makes it easier for me to get the level of detail that I want.

Here's an example of a 1/600 ship in styrene; you may have to browse the brief slide presentation, but there are a few views (and some other interesting modeling stuff, too).

link

Brazilian warship Amazonas from the War of the Triple Alliance: wargaming model, not finescale. Others can probably do better, but I hope it provides some inspiration.