"Home made torpedo markers" Topic

Hi guys, just thought I'd share these in case anyone fancies doing something similar.

I quite liked the torpedo markers included in Cruel Seas, but obviously for 1/3000 they're way too big so I decided to make some myself.

They are simply a short bit of brass wire attached to a base. I then paint the whole thing blue, add a stream of white (which I'll try doing differently next time – I'm used to surface ships, after all). I then paint the 'torpedo' steel with a yellow tip.

I will use them to mark the firing point of a spread of torpedoes, not to track their progress and one marker represents any number fired.

Nick

Good idea. I would cut a slot in the base so that the torp is a bit more submerged. What is the matter with the wake? I rather like it.

BJ, I like 'em too!

Good post! And I did enjoy the title of your deleted thread

Dave

I've done a few iterations of things like this, and just used paint to show the torpedo tracks. The wire looks better than I expected. I might have to steal that idea. For a few years I've been toying with starting a coastal action collection, and the wire torps would probably be an awesome visual in 1/600 or 1/1200 scale.

Torpedo markers get bumped and knocked around, so I've taken to using heavy, thin markers made from precut sheet metal miniature bases. The weight and thinness makes them harder to bump accidentally, and the sharp corners tend to catch on the sea surface material, which is really annoying when trying to move them and pick them up, but turn out to be a huge help in keeping torpedo markers stationary. They're also thin enough that moving ships can steam right over the top of them without looking too funny.

I'm still on the lookout for something sticky to add. GQ3 got everyone using tiny post-its to solve the bump-aiming problem, and while they work great, I really don't like the aesthetics of post-its on my table. Even crappy hand-made miniature stuff looks better than office supplies.

- Ix

I would cut a slot in the base so that the torp is a bit more submerged.

Or another idea: use really thin plastic rod. It's kinda difficult to sand or file wire, but it would be fairly easy to sand one side of a plastic rod flat, and round off the tip like a real torp warhead. Also, if you glue them to polystyrene bases, you can use plastic model glue that holds better than CA adhering dissimilar materials.

I suppose one could also carve this kind of thing out of a layer of putty spread on a basing material. I suck at carving, so not me.

- Ix

Evergreen makes half round styrene rod as small as 1mm:

link

Lots of great ideas here. Those pictures look good – the one of the three torpedoes heading towards the cruiser is really quite scary!

Looks great! What scale?

Cheers guys, I certainly prefer them to the counters or dice I was using previously to mark launch points.

Miniatures are 1/3000 Navwar; the torpedoes are obviously out of scale but not (for me) gratingly so and, as Yellow Admiral says, they certainly look better than office supplies!

Nick

p.s. – Dave, re the deleted thread – yup! No idea what happened there apart from I was typing when my wrist must have brushed the touchpad half way through a sentence and moved the cursor to the subject line. I pressed 'undo', but no idea why it posted. Funny all the same :-D