"XVIII Century 1:450 Galleys" Topic

During confinement, I home made 3 galleys, from scratch;

They are 1: 450 scale, the model has 10,5 cm long, and represent ordinary galleys from the beginning of the 18th century or the end of the 17th.

They are missing adding some crews that I hope to receive soon, but the final result is defined.

The flagpole they have free is to add removable flags. As the galleys of different nations at this time were very similar to each other, they can represent either side.

Some things are not realistic: they should have been painted in red, and they are in different colors for better identification on the table. The boat should be on top of the "xusma", on one side, a row bank should have been removed, to make room for the stove … I need to make a patrona galley, perhaps I will take all these details into account for her. At the moment, I have preferred the solidity and ease of construction and look at the table, than following academic accuracy.

I hope you like them!

Thank you for the inspiration, I have a dozen plus models of the "La Reale" by Heller and Pyro awaiting building.

They look really impressive – well done!

They look fantastic. Well done.

wwwwaaaaaatttttt! Way too cool. Great work there.

Wow

Wow, really nice work.

Very, very nicely done!!

Jim

SANTA MADRE DEL MARE!!! Those are nice!

You did a beautiful job on the proportions, the rake, the curves, everything. I have so many questions…

How did you make the hulls? Are they layered pieces, or a single piece, or something else? I'm especially curious how you got the planking around the rowing pits so nicely cut on those angled inside lines.

How long did this take you?

How did you make the lanterns?

How did you make the ciurmas? Are they just rows of beads…?

The oar banks look like an immense amount of fiddly labor, so I'll forgive you for leaving out 3-6 oars per side. They look really good. The oars all point the right way, they line up with the benches, and the rowing benches are even full of bodies! That's a beautiful touch. So many of our wargaming ships are empty ghost ships, but galleys should be packed, and you aced that detail.

I have only one suggestion: if you make any more of these, complete the hull, make some molds of it and cast galleys in resin. You'll still have to add rails and oars and masts and awnings and stuff, but it would be that much easier to make enough galleys for a sizeable scrum.

Congratulazioni, signore! Very well done. I don't just like them, I love them.

- Ix

PS: Maybe my exclamations should be in Swedish or Russian. These could also serve as Baltic galleys.

Another question that just occurred to me: how do you store these? I would be terrified about transporting them anywhere, with all those little pieces glued together.

I've had the chance to have a close look at the real ones, and believe me that pictures do'nt do justice to the real thing!!

He's made them at 1/450th scale to make them compatible to Peter Pig ships. My own ships are 1/600th, but at this size they still can stand reasonably well together with those superb galleys.

I have only one suggestion: if you make any more of these, complete the hull, make some molds of it and cast galleys in resin.

You're inspiring really evil ideas to me…

Thank you all for such appreciative comments. Hopefully I can show them soon at some convention; It would be good news if you could come here to the Catalan coast to also enjoy the real sea and sun, and it would also mean that the love for miniatures grows in my land! Of course, I would also like to see you near your homes and enjoy our hobby, in addition to writing these long posts.

Yellow Admiral:
You have a lot of questions!

Precisely, I concentrated on getting the proportions. They are not admiralty models, they are pieces to play with, so the most important thing is that they look beautiful and at a glance it is clear what and how they are. From there, the more detail, the better, naturally.

It's going to be difficult for me to explain the process, because I also don't know English, but I think I can try.

The hull and oars benches are made in the two ways you suggest; With the red and the clear green I first pasted a photocopy of the plan onto a foamed PVC block, and cut the top view with a hobby knife, then cut lengthwise to give it the bow high, low in the center, highest in the Stern. With the dark green the cut came out so clean that I could take advantage of the upper part of the cut, I only had to file to remove the excess. You need to have a very good hand with the knife to do that, but if it doesn't go well, it can be done as I did with the other two galleys; I used a 1 mm thick PVC sheet to remake the top. Before gluing them, I drew with a ruler and a punch the outer sides of the oars benches, the points where the heads of the rowers would go, the oars part on the hull, and some perpendicular line here and there to insinuate arms and bodies. I sculpted the hull at the bottom, added walls to the carrossa (the stern piece) also with 1 mm PVC, and the corulla (the structure in the bow) with 2mm PVC, and placed the guns, in wire. With thread I made the railings, and highlighted lines. Once everything was united, polished with a file, I drilled holes to drive the oars afterwards, and glued the heads of the oarsmen; They are tiny beads, so small that I handle them with the tip of a damp brush. It sounds terribly complicated, but in reality you only need patience, because there are many oars and rowers, and the whole galley have as many decorations and details as you want! but it's easy. The roof of the carrossa is made separately, as well as the masts and sails. I paint it with primer, I put it all together, I paint it, and only then do I put the oars on. This is difficult! They are very close to each other and there is hardly anywhere to hold the model, until I put the base they are not well attached, and that's why there are not as many as there should be …, but there are enough to give the effect. After that, all that remains is varnishing, laying the base and rigging, which is very simple in the galleys. The last thing I do is put the lanterns on; They are made by cutting the tip of a transparent plastic food stick, with beads on the ends. With gold paint, the drawings have just been made, taking advantage of the fact that it has a tendency to make lumps. With other models I have taken advantage of this effect to make the paddles of the oars, which I have not done here because I do not see it as essential and it is quite a lot of work.

The whole process is about 10-12 hours, with drying of glues and paints and living life, one week each piece.

I was only trying to make a handful of figures, so I have not made molds; I see it feasible, yes, but I have no experience with resin and silicone molding, although I do know the plaster casting. I find it difficult to be able to make a mold that includes the oars.

They are not as delicate as they seem; in fact, the light green as you can see it has been rebuilt, because it fell on the floor in a display case move! I just had to reattach the sails, rigging, and roof, but they were fairly clean fractures, no damage to oars or hull. The same thing that would have happened with any figure. To travel in a metal box, they have a small magnetic strip under the base, hidden by the hull.

Thanks for typing all that! I really appreciate the inside knowledge. The process sounds just as complicated and intense as I expected.

I've tried making galleys like this myself, in 1/1200 and 1/600 scale, using craft sticks and polystyrene sheet for the hull. I got stuck on a few things:

• What to use for lanterns;
  
• How to make the oarsmen;
  
• How to make a bank of oars. I balked at gluing on 50ish oars per ship; I wanted to make dozens, so I really preferred some way to glue on a whole bank of oars together (rather than individually), but I never found a way to do that.

The whole project has been sitting in a box for years, waiting for fresh ideas to get me unstuck. A few years ago I decided I was better off just waiting for Lluis to make something so I could hand Minairons a lot of money.

You may have inspired me to try again. There is something really charming about handmade toys, and you may have just shown me how to solve some of my problems, and inspired a few innovations besides. I am especially impressed by the pole arrangements over your galley sterns. I wasn't going to do anything nearly that fancy, but you make it look easy.

I still have no idea how to make a row of oars in one piece, so I'll never get all the way to a full Lepanto-scale fleet, but I should be able to cut brush bristles to consistent length and tweezer oars onto 1-2 dozen galleys to fight my 1/600 galleons and carracks.

FWIW, making a silicone mold and casting resin in it is pretty easy, once you know what materials to get. I bought all the components at a local store named Tap Plastics, in sets with clear instructions. It must be possible to do this over the Internet by now.

I wouldn't try to cast the oars with the rest of the ship. The end result would look like the Skytrex galleys, which are quite a bit less charming than your work. I have a few of those already, and I never found a way to make the oars look nice. Cutting them off, carving ship's sides into the lead, and gluing on new oars would send me outside the bounds of sanity…

- Ix

It seems that you have experience with silicone molds … How about this:

Do you know how removable sheet notebooks are made? Like Post-It, for example; the paper sheets are held with a press, and the paper is then glued on one side. Ready.

You can make a resin mold to do the same, but instead of sheets of paper, oars.

It would have to be a mold to give it the curve of the hull, and the proper inclination to each oar, with a groove for each oar and a top cover to hold it all while the glue dries. Since the oars do not touch each other well, you should use a tin or plastic strip at the end as a base to glue the oars and then glue the entire row of oars to the hull.

Once done, you could easily replicate as many as you need.

I think the plastic bristles of a broom, or a brush, would be good material to make the oars light enough for this work, easy to cut and not too thick for the 1: 1200 scale. Even for the 600. The advantage that they were made of plastic is also that you can cut them to size all at once with scissors, like someone who cuts bangs.

Not that it seems very very easy, but what incentive would have if it were?