Boatbuilding For Hippos.

The week before last the esteemed woodwork teacher of my school announced he would open the mighty workshops of the trades wing every tuesday evening for staff to pursue some projects and spend some social time hitting nails together. That is, the staff would come together to hit nails. Although I guess we could just get a few nails and whack them together. Might not be that interesting...
So naturally, I started thinking about making wooden toys. To be specific, a mighty battle flotilla to use playing floor games. A project which, startlingly, turned out to be so simple even a hippo could do it. Although a hippo was not on hand to record the events. I'll try to get step-by-step pics next week.

Anyway, here are some pretty pictures of potent naval units, rendered in pine with cunning.

There are two 'fleets' - the 'High Fo'c'sle' fleet and the 'Forward Battery' fleet. I wanted the two fleets to be visually distinct, so the shapes are very different and they have various common styling cues. I'm also planning on staining them different colours.

A High Fo'c'sle destroyer showing the characteristic turtle-deck. Yes, I know real Torpedo Boat Destroyers had shorter turtle decks, but they look so cool I wanted a bigger one

One of two High Fo'c'sle Cruisers. The turrets still need some work, and the bridge has not yet been fitted.

The same from the rear with guns trained to port.

These are the two freighters I have made for escort scenarios. They are affectionately known as the Bootle Bum Trinket and Boaty McBoatface.

The Forward Battery cruiser. As with the others, the turrets still need work.

These are the Forward Battery destroyers. Since destroyers don't have turrets in my rules (they fire torpedoes instead) there's no obvious battery. The double funnels are a characteristic of the fleet, and these will be stained to match the rest of the Forward Battery ships.

This is the High Fo'c'sle battleship. I have to trim the turret pins and then add the super structure.

Forward Battery battleship.

Note the twin gun read turret - I wanted four guns, but was running out of space. I realise that real battleships always have at least twin turrts, and range up to quad turrets, but at this size it's harder to get mutli-barrel turrets to work. Getting the barrel holes drilled in alignment is a pain.

Here we see the Forward Battery fleet steaming to action. I have not yet built the second cruiser.

And here's the High Fo'c'sle fleet. Note that I only have six turrets which have barrels at the moment, I ran out of time to drill the gun holes. And yes, I know you can see a hole there - it's the wrong size. I need to re-drill them.

Well, there you are. That's what I've been doing.

Although it's not. I'm also working on the next ishoo (incidentally also a comission piece) and an exciting project which will be featured in the next issue of The Campaigner Magazine AND debuted at Little Wars.

Such business.