SteamSewnEmpire

RIP wig. I'll never forget those times we shared together - especially when your got your top cut off and died. That was some shenanigan. You trickster, you.

Hi all. I'm working on a new (much larger) ship, and while it will likely wind up being impossible to build given my limited resources, I like to do these things 'right' the first time, with all the little headaches worked out, just in case I ever come into money much later (and thus don't need to remember that there's XYZ that still needs to be sorted). One minor issue I am running into is with the cannons on the lower deck. While I am planning to use brick-built guns on the upper levels, I wanted to use Lego cannons just above the waterline to simulate a larger-bored weapon. The problem is pairing these with closing gunports - I'd like my gunports to actually be able to lower, and this means that the cannons, in turn, need to actually recoil slightly inside. With brick-built guns, this isn't that big a problem - if they wind up being too long, I can just pull the last piece off and close the gunport. You cannot do that with the stock cannons. I know about using 2653 + 32028, but this design isn't just stupidly bulky, it also sacrifices any hope of prototypical wheels. Since I want to be able to open the model and see display the guns, this isn't really a good solution. Similarly, I suppose I could just do free-rolling cannons, but then any time you'd even slightly move the ship, they'd be rolling all over the place. My guess is that someone over the years has come up with an ingenious solution to this problem, and rather than squandering 2-3 hours trying to reinvent the wheel, I was wondering if anyone had anything to share that would help? Thanks. ****edit**** Nevermind... I managed to combine the two. This isn't the world's greatest solution, but I think it will at least work in this instance:

Hmm. The 4th rate is closest to mine in terms of era... Thanks.

I'm not one hundred percent satisfied with the stern (something about the design just looks off to me), so I will probably be redoing it. And no, this isn't the other ship just cut down - it's completely new from the stern up. If anyone has any artwork or models to share of mid 17th century frigates, I'd be much obliged. I don't have any stern-on references for a ship of this size.

Uhm, it probably took about 5 hours, if I recall. I did it all during the morning.

I wish it had some scenery, but my God is that a nice, classy looking castle.

Okay that's like early-to-mid 18th Century. There are a few. *Edit* One more: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/174150-esl-class-8-princesse-margot-a-74-gun-third-rate/

So more like a galleon? Here are three: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/6e8ac19b-d7d7-4052-ac65-f6f9448a5b02 https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/93668-gilded-crow-22-gun-galleon/

Are you looking for a specific era? Sailing ships changed a ton over time - the amount of sheer (the curvature in the hull) they had, the amount of sternwork, how many guns, sail arrangements, etc. There's a huge difference between a man-of-war from, say, 1640 (when they had only just begun to evolve into their own from previous galleons) and 1815.

Thanks! The only reason I went with the windowless stern is because the real La Belle didn't have them, either. She was designed as a kit to be shipped to North America and then hauled overland to the Mississippi (my guess is they didn't expect glass would handle that journey well). But, on the urging of the King, she was assembled in France and sailed directly for the Gulf - a voyage some doubted the tiny La Belle would survive. I bet nobody was sleeping in that cabin on those tropical nights, though! Blech! Thanks, man. I'm humbled by your kindness.

On the plus side, it's still an amazing locomotive. But... dog... c'mon. This is forum decorum everywhere. Although based on your name, I'm guessing you're just trolling.

A few comparison shots, too:

Based heavily on La Salle's La Belle. About 1,400 pieces. The lower hull is designed to be easily removed to produce a waterline version.

Super sleek.

Provocative thread. Here's some more kerosene: I grew up with Lego Space and, aside from Blacktron, found it to be completely vanilla and largely uninspired (even as a little kid). Unlike Lego Castle and Pirates, which are (or were) rooted in compelling history, Space was always just generic sci-fi. The fact that the vast majority of large sets were all designed as unimaginative rectangular ships with the same cockpit, moon monorails, or starbases set on repetitively desolate cratered baseplates just drives this home - Space was always the weakest major theme by a longshot, due entirely to passionless management by Lego. What should have been a vibrant, optimistic theme populated by ever-changing ship designs, and visits to alien worlds was instead sullen, storyless, and bereft of vision. The shift to Star Wars was - and remains - welcome, and I never want to go back. I'd happily welcome the return of Castle and Pirates to the yearly rotation, but Space can stay dead.

Eh. All it does in that movie is crash.

Awesome. Christ I wish Lego would do more LOTR stuff :/.

I bought the new transport-thingy from Galaxy's end. I hate Disney; I Ioathe Disney Star Wars... but the ship is a neat design, so I can't hold those two things against it. However, overall my Star Wars purchasing is at it lowest ebb in a decade.

The problem I run into is that this is kind of the place where the (in)flexibility of Lego (and the payoff of being true to life) bump up against cost (and practicality). On real ships of this era, the hulls were constructed first, followed by internal decking (this is why the majority of the gun ports don't really follow the sheer of the hull, but are largely horizontal down its length). The weather decks, however, did curl distinctly upwards with the hullform: Ideally, this would mean that the decks on my model would follow the sheer of the side rails upwards. But... is it really worth it to do that? For starters, I am pretty sure that I can never replicate the kind of graceful upwards sweep of the railings in the places where they don't step upwards (there aren't any parts in Lego to really accomplish this sort of thing at this size), which means that the hull would always wind up with that kind of 'bumpy' look to it as you went astern. Secondly, this would mean all the plated top decks would need an internal structure to facilitate their angling up, with each one assuming a more pronounced grade the further astern I went. This would be complex, part intensive, potentially ugly in its own way, and would compel minifigures positioned on the deck to "lean backwards" to remain upright (one potential fix would be to use a kind of terraced approach, where the deck 'stepped up' one plate at a time in decreasing intervals as you went aft. My beef with this is that it, too, isn't really prototypical, would be very part intensive, and probably wouldn't look all that great [by the time you reached the last quarter of the hull, the deck would more closely resemble stairs than a flat surface]). I'm not saying you're wrong about this - you're quite right. It's just that, at this scale, are the solutions either feasible or practical? And I lean towards no. Were I building at a prototypical scale instead of playscale, then a stepped deck, for example, probably wouldn't be that noticeable... but you're talking about, like, a 30,000 piece model compared of a 4,500 piece toy. And that's the root of the issue, really: the whole thing is already massively wrong in terms of proportions*** - some things I can still get right. Others I just have to shrug and let go. *** For example, the stern and the bow really aren't significantly 'meatier' than the midships on these older men-of-war - the hull itself is so banana-shaped, and rests in the water in such a way as to give that impression... but it's really not true. Were this an accurate model, the hull would need to replicate this effect - curling upwards as it went fore and aft. It doesn't - I just use an enhanced version of Lego's own cop-out method of using the sides to do a bad imitation of sheer. With a brick-built model in the tens of thousands of parts, you could legitimately reproduce that crescent shape. At this scale - at the size I might conceivably be able to build - I don't even know where I'd begin. *Edit* I'm not trying to rant at you - just explain the illogical way my mind creaks along.

I decided to spend about 4 hours today significantly reworking this ship. I realized shortly after I had finished it that the whole thing was just too darned tall - especially considering that it was just a 2-decker. This had been done mostly to incorporate a) the very high stern art, and b) the method I had used to mount the life preserver gun ports. After redesigning both of these elements, I was able to lower the entire top and stern about 8 plates. This has made an enormous difference and is - I believe - a big improvement, dramatically decreasing the un-protypical stern height, exaggerated sheer, high part count (it's down about 500 pieces), and (perhaps most happily) how narrow she looked from the bow and stern.

If you're willing to make small changes, my only advice (to echo others) would be sail alterations - namely, heightening the fore mast a bit, the main mast more, and then adding additional yards to both. Ships with a full level rig weren't really introduced until the 19th Century (clipper ships, for example, had all masts of roughly equal height). Introducing significant variations in mast height would make this look more like its own creation. Now, as you said, this would likely require redesigning the masts a fair amount, but it probably wouldn't be more than about $10 USD on Bricklink to accomplish this.

Lol, I juuuust received the last two yesterday. I like the New Vanguard stuff, even though they're basically fancy magazines in terms of length. Will look into the others - thank you!

So even during the height of piracy ca. 1700 wheels would have either been uncommon or unheard of? Huh. Learn something new every day. I've only just recently begun reading about 17th Century ships - most of my knowledge is based around Napoleonic stuff. But it's amazing how many truly immense full fleet actions occurred 1600-1700... in fact, it really puts the period of post-revolutionary French expansionism to shame. The Nile and even Trafalgar can hardly compare to several of the 100 vs. 100 battles from earlier (granted, Trafalgar had larger ships, so an outright 1-for-1 equivalence isn't really fair). Unrelated: I am considering doing a companion ship, albeit much smaller - potentially based on the Harderwijk, a frigate forerunner.

Interesting stuff!

It's missing the requisite shark. You know... a menacing fin or something.