Ordinarily, I'd get a little bit more done before posting about this project, but I wanted to share this little American on the 4th of July. This is a cutter, the second I've done for this project. She'll be used to model the Trippe, the smallest ship present at the battle.
This is another of the unarmed variety, so I took some 8-pounder individual cannons that I had and stuck a pair of them onto the deck. I left the topsail off on this one, as I liked the sleek look of the fore-and-aft rigging. Other than that, she's the standard cutter you get direct from Warlord Games.
I went for a natural wood look to her coloring, making use of some Wyldwood Contrast paint to make my job easier. Turns out, the little bit of research I did after painting her she had more of the standard black and white color look to her. Ah well. I have about four more cutters left, so I could always paint one of those to match more closely, but for now I have what I need model-wise. For some of the fine detail on the sails I made use of a mechanical pencil, and it works really well so that's going in the tool box.
All that I have left are three schooners: two for the Americans and one for the Royal Navy. There's a total of seven schooners, but they come in boxes of six, so I had to grab another box of schooners. The last time I bought this box, the models were all metal, but I guess at some point Warlord has started to switch to resin. But, in their infinite wisdom, they decided to only make the hulls resin and kept the masts and sails metal. The schooner was already a top heavy model, and this has just made the problem way worse.
So, in an effort to get some weight savings, I'm scratch building a pair of masts. I kept the very topmost spars and connected them to a bit of brass rod. Attaching the booms to the masts was an interesting challenge, and I think I managed pretty well with some very thin brass rod drilled into the thin edge of thick styrene, then a hole drilled into the top and sanded to shape.
Now I just have to add some sails and the whole structure should be much lighter which will help out with the balance issues. In addition, I want to add some weight to the hull, so I'm looking for a metal boat that will fit on the deck, anything to bring the center of mass down. This is a lot of effort and I don't want to do this with the other five resin schooner hulls, so I'll have to figure something out.
Finally, for just a little bit more variation, I've removed the raised bulwarks on the stern of this schooner so she's now flushdecked. I also sanded the prow down to be a little stubbier. We'll see if this is noticeable still when painted and rigged up, but it was really easy to do so either way it works out for me.
Oh, and this will also count towards my first post of Season of Scenery 2025!
-The Space Dinosaur
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