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The Merchant vessel.



I simply start with a big picture of the ship so we know what this is all about. I guess when you are not to keen on reading articles then all the info is right there in this one picture. I discovered that I did not documented this project in a way I did with the Buccaneer ship. So I can give you an impression of the development of the ship.

The start:

March 2006; The start of a new and bigger boat.
There was not an actual example for this boat. At a certain moment the rough form was drawn on a foam sheet and from that form the ship slowly got shaped. The foam ship was build up step by step and during this stage, more and more ideas came rolling in.

merchant01 merchant02 merchant03

At a certain point the foam ship got its final shape with as much as possible details on it. The mold was made and the first plaster cast was made. A long session, that took up to 2 weeks, of sculpting started. The sculpting in plaster is a difficult process and a creative one also. In these stages decisions are mostly irreversible. If you decide to make carvings a in a certain direction or with a certain depth, they can not be undone.

merchant04 boat 007

This larger boat has the following statistics:

Long : 27.0 centimetres (10.6 inch)
Wide : 10.8 centimetres (4.25 inch)
High : 7.0 centimetres (2.76 inch)


20 Miniatures that stand on basic square bases can be placed on it.

Different from the earlier smaller models, we now have a ship with true multiple decks. A slightly higher front deck where you can place 5 miniatures, a higher rear deck where you can place 5 or 6 miniatures and the middle deck where you can place up to 12 miniatures depending if you decide to place the mast yes or no. The mast is optional and can simply be placed by drilling a hole in the deck. I used an plain wood drill of 10mm wide (0.4 inch). If I decide to remove the mast I simply place a barrel or some crates on that spot.

Again I managed to make some more detail on this vessel. - The ropes around the masts
- The wooden frame that suggests a cargo space below (grid in front of mast)
- The window beside the door
- The wooden stairs on to the rear deck
- The little extra wooden step on the outside hull of the boat on both sides
- The series of support beams that sick out of the deck alongside the entire inside of the boat
- The hinges on the rudder
- The combination of smooth polished wooden elements combined with the rougher wooden grained hull and decks


Finally a picture of the merchant vessel lying next to a dock section.


merchant05



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