Tuesday, February 21, 2017

On the workbench - Hearts of Foamcore

Over the last week or so I've been gradually building a generic WW1 cruiser in 20mm scale.  It will serve in April's Crisis Point game.  I'm not going to reveal yet whose ship it will be!


The hull is made from two pieces of foamcore sandwiched together.  I glued a plan downloaded from the internet to one piece to give me a cutting guide for a suitable ship-shape.

The superstructure is two foamcore boxes with artist's mounting board tops.  The funnel is a piece of half-inch copper pipe. It's just balanced in place in the photo above.

The gun will eventually be in a partly enclosed turret.


It's the gun from the Matchbox Wespe with the muzzle break cut off.  I've built the turret floor and the gun mount out of 1mm plasticard.  A white metal hand wheel from the spares box added a nice piece of detail.  The turntable under the turret is a 30mm MDF base and a slice of cocktail stick forms a pivot.

Since the above photos were taken I've painted the gun prior to building the sides and top of the turret (it'll have an open rear).


The funnel is glued down.  I packed the bottom of the tube with Green Stuff whilst it was standing on a piece of polythene.  This gave me a flat surface onto which I could apply glue. There was no way simply running glue around the rim of the tube was going to provide a secure attachment.

You'll see that I've plated the outside of the hull with thin card.  I've also added a bit of detail to the deck at the stern.

Next up, build up the turret and work out how to do hatches and portholes.  I may also add some anchor chain detail to the foredeck.  Then painting!

2 comments:

Tales from Shed HQ said...

This is brilliant! Will that be on the lighthouse table?

Counterpane said...

That will be down to the players who take on the relevant command roles. I'm not saying which navy this belongs to!