SlyOwl

I'm going to be awkward and say 9x9 I always find myself desperately wanting that slight extension to the 8x8 base, but not wanting a 10x10, which feels to spacious. Trust me, when it comes to building a vig, space is tight; it should appear so, whilst not appearing crowded, hey? For reference, Vignette Bricks has some excellent (if slightly dated now) essays on various aspects of vigs, in the links on the right.

She watched the last star falling... Slightly bigger pics here I'm not that happy with the photography - had to do it with tablelamps, as it's snowing

Got round to taking these photos - Muskets - And the cutlasses, with the castle equivalents for reference -

Sure, go for it - I've got the power(s)!

Yup, that's it (and one for Whitefang if you didn't put that on yet). Thanks

Sorry Sinner mate, yours is the sigfig I've got Hands are white; optional hook; legs are black, optional pegleg.

They had the keychains at Bluewater for £2.99, in the far left hand corner.

Happy Birthday, mate! Have you built all those promos yet?

Excellent, +1 for you too! Bit belated mind, but I don't keep tabs on this thread! Now, Shadows, has it got to you? Edit: And it has: +1 for Shadows and I!

The Minifig PaB at Bluewater has quite a lot of turkeys at the moment - I picked up 5. There wasn't much special on the PaB wall itself. I saw a MF Keychain of Max, the character from the Lego magazine - it doesn't appear on Bricklink, though. It had a new hairpiece and face, but I didn't get a photo. Next time anyone's there, it's in the far left corner as you go in. Some Lego on offer there too - Space Skulls for £21 (not worth it, if you caught the £12 on S@H last year, though...) and a fair bit of gear on offer too.

Thanks! It's a dwarf beard, from the castle line, held on by the bubbles.

I believe it's done by an expensive, difficult electroplating process. These two shops do chroming of regular parts - and the latter does requests, I believe. Chromeshop Chromebricks

Same thing by my book! Ah, even better! Red comes out in load of different shades in photos, hence the confusion

Really nice job, Z. I love the roof on the left, and it's good to see red/white on a building. I recall you're a barrister, no?

How Jones is made (sorry for the delay - camera problems...)

Thanks Tom! There was a topic about a similar mechanism back in Summer 2008, which I can't find anymore. Anwyay - Cannons are connected together on a shuttle, which can slide along the tiles. An axle runs down the centre of the ship at the bottom, with prongs sticking out which push the shuttle outwards when the axle rotates. I was going to have the axles coming out in some clever place eg. ship's wheel, hence the cogs, but it didn't work out. 10 normal cannons, 2 carronades It sounds more impressive too!

There's so many different factors that affect the final print size, that the best method is to adjust according to the final printed result. Hence, if we could add dimensions of various sails to the index, it would be helpful. Volunteers? I've done the ones I can. Changing to black and white or just showing the edges would save on printer ink before you get the right size.

There's too many hinges and stepped plates behind the tumblehome to make a decent sized inside... and there's a mechanism under the main deck to make the cannons slide out by turning a knob - so there never will be an interior, as it's demolition day on Sunday or Monday Wonder where I got that from! Thanks for all your help I also tried using 1/2 panels, but there was still too big a gap. Plus it was an excuse to order another 60 black cheese! I've moved the spanker down subsequently, as it was a quick job - but I'm not going to rebuild the bow, as I said above - she's going to be scuttled for parts soon. I hope to get to STEAM this year, and might rebuild it for then. Thanks mate!

126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134.

Gotta love that transparanty goodness and the general coolness of electric sparks!

Woah, thanks everyone! They're actually fixed to the deck behind, but I thought about putting them on like that! Alas, no cabin. Too many hinges etc inside to do that Aye, I meant to build a bit of a fo'castle, but it didn't really come together very well. Thanks for the blog again I did a bit of research about lifeboats. In general they were upside-down, as you suggest (to stop the rain staying in - I thought the inverse studs looked a bit ugly like this...) but on some ships they were upright, with a canvas cover, and chickens lived in the boats! I went for a compromise, an It's scary to me how much I build sometimes I've come on quite a way since that tutorial, and now mainly use different methods of cutting out. In this instance, I pasted the whole ship as a layer, then cut away the background. Then, copy and paste the ship as another layer, darken it, reduce the opacity, skew it, add in a ripple, and send it beneath the original layer. And viola, a shadow! I'm glad I have a vague understanding of ship terminology! a) Yeah, the spanker sits too high on the mast... but I don't really like the look of low booms on a ship, so stuck it high and away! b) I used a cross-section book of the HMS Victory to detail the ship (as a brig-version) - and it had no sprit sail, but I felt like putting one on, after CGH and Bonaparte's Concepcion, and did no additional research; thanks for the heads-up! c) You're right about the catheads - I put them in as one of the first things I built, not knowing the height I would build the tumblehome to at the time. I also thought at one point that I'd run the anchor chains through the holes in the hull, but that came to nothing. d) I tried with another elastic band, and it looked better, but they pulled the flex cables together, and out the sockets... so I couldn't leave it like that. e) It's part of a technic fig's arm - the centre part of the ball joint. The sticky-out bit fits into the inverse stud of a 1x1 plate snugly. Thanks, it felt right once I'd put it on... unlike the alternative figurehead here Captain Greenhair's tutorial on rigging and his build-a-frigate thread were invaluable resources, as was Evil Willy's sail making tutorial. They're similar to this one - technic ball pin in the bottom of a mf head, with a bar coming out the hollow stud. A mf wrench/spanner is the key part, attaching to the outside of the mf head stud, with the handle used to connect it to the ship/cannon base. Technic straight connectors form the barrel, with technic pins in the middle to hold onto the aforementioned bar. Easily - with 4 midsections, it's bigger than the rest. I used Captain Green Hair's tumblehome technique, found in this thread, and discussed here. The only significant change was the use of cheese slopes beneath the angled portions instead of tiles, to hide the slight gap. More parts-intensive, though.

Remember the Fire-escape Kitten? Yeah, The Modular Edge has kinda gone downhill these days...

Gallery Came out well for my first proper ship, I think Of course, Captain Greenhair must be acknowledged for the tumblehome, sails and rigging ideas

Hahaha, that figurehead is great! I love the rest of the ship, especially the fine ratlines. It could do with another colour eg. black or brown in the hull to break up the red/yellow a bit.

In the very first wave of pirate sets, the cutlass was made of the hard ABS that the pistol is made of, which gave it a shinier finish than the later, softer versions in both dark and bluey grey. Bricklink doesn't distinguish between the two, but the cutlass here is the old, harder style - The muskets have also changed: the new ones have a bigger dent in the handle, like so - In the older ones, the dent is shallower.