"Houston's 1/1000 ships" Topic

Hello all, I found an archived version of the old Great Endeavours website on the Wayback Machine (last stable site was about 2013) and reached out to Dale Kemper.

He's sending me catalogues for the Houston's ships and what's left of the Ral Parthia colonials range (super excited that he's still around).

I'm curious if anyone has ordered any ships from him recently and what they look like? I last ordered in 2012 or so, I think, and was about to when the website went belly-up (I think he intimated that his webmaster went AWOL and the site went down) and I was wanting to get more but never got around to it. I know he's not able to or not willing to refresh moulds as they die so was curious how they look if anyone still has them or has ordered from Mr. Kemper recently.

Thanks!

Michael

Those ships are also for sale from Stone Mountain Miniatures.
wargamingminiatures.com

Go to the figures tab. They are listed as 1/1200 there, but I don't think they have been remastered.

Hi Brian, I think the Stone Mountain ones are only ACW and that's not my period. Dale/Great Endeavours had all the German, Chinese, British, etc… ships from the foreign ships range, I think but some of those Stone Mountain ships would still be fun to build! Bookmarked!

Oops, you're right! He has the foreign flags, but not the ships.

I tried collecting the Houston's range from Great Endeavors, but there were too many missing components, and substitutions didn't work. I decided I was better off scratch building (or better: hiring Virtualscratchbuilder to scratch build for me).

Since I gave up on Great Endeavors, WTJ and Brown Water Navies have made most of what I want in 1/1250 scale, and Red Eagle Miniatures still produces the old Triton 1/1250 range containing most of the early British ironclads, so I have gone that way. I also bought the Spithead fleets of Lissa while they were available. I now officially have Too Many Ironclads®™.

I'm still missing almost all of the 1870s French ironclads, but M.G. Lawson said he'd do them, so…. fingers crossed.

Yellow Admiral: Thanks, Yellow Admiral, will check our Virtualscratchbuilder.

I have some of the old Triton ships (HMS Devastation and Thunderer) from way back when and finally finished painting them last week after building them in my dorm room in London in 2003. Better late than never, though! :)

I'll see how the Houston's ships from GE go. I always had a good experience with Mr. Kemper and hopefully what I order will not need subs or have few enough I can live with them. I've tried WTJ but they don't always have the ranges I need but they're super useful and really like Brown Water Navies but he's not super responsive when I've had questions (and one model I've tried, the Chinese Kuang Chia apparently had an issue and waiting the obligatory 7 days before they remove it from my order). But most of the time they work but I don't want to mix and match 1/1250 and 1/1000 if I don't have to.

I was going to ask about 1870s French ironclads but you answered my question!

BrianW: No sweat, still need the flags so you still helped me out! :)