kurigan

I've though about this and I have thoughts. My assessment is that it's Lego's influence. There's the same amount of customizers out there as 10 or so years ago, nut few new ones. Of those new to the craft they tend to have a more technological approach, incorporating things like 3D design and printing rather than sculpting and painting. The rest is because the community is saturated with purists, people who are fans of Lego and licensed products before the system and what they can do with it themselves. It's just symptomatic of Lego becoming less about creativity under the guise of being more accessible. I think a lot of us are just giving up,on sharing if not customizing entirely. There just isn't a community for it anymore because of prevailing attitudes towards purism and a desire to have rather than make. Heck; I shared the result of a afternoon's distraction, tickled that it came out as well as it did and hoping other here would share my amusement. The post went largely ignored but to be told I should have just ordered an after market part from a third party or not bothered at all if I wasn't going to 3D print it, or what ever. Seriously, some user actually DMed me a link to their store. This is the first time I've checked this forum in months and while I'm not surprised to see that the first offering is purists, I am to see this topic broached. Oh well, I'm used to being the black sheep at this point. I'm sure I'm in the minority and completely out of line and will likely be told so, but I'm betting my file transfer on the other system is done so I'll log back for another few months and get back to what I was doing. Cheers!

Well now I have a mold problem and I'm ashamed. Marvelous! Thanks for the link.

I came looking for a definitive guide to cleaning the sails from the Classic Pirate ships (BSB, CB, SES, etc.) and was surprised to not find it. I really thought there was one pinned years ago, but I never yet needed it. A few months ago, my sump pump failed and my basement, where my office/craft space is with all my Lego, flooded several times. Now there's a mold problem I only starting to get ahead and I noticed spots on the sails of my precious originals. What can I do?

Neat! I feel a certain personal responsibility to chime in and show support here. Not everything needs to be hyper accurate or intricately detailed. I've been tempted in the past to just lop the bell-ends off the old muskets but could never bring myself to do it. These are a great compromise! Cheers!

He's missing an epaulette... on his left... Edit: I've actually thought about this. If you took and cut one side of a 2526 nice and round, it might not look terrible.

I’m having a bit of a bad day today and I thought “Lego used to make me feel better…” So, I sat down to try and build something, just something, anything, just to do it. There sitting in the way, though, where she’s been for, literally, years, Chaser. Unfinished, dusty and neglected. Not what I want to work on. I don’t know if I’ll ever want to work on any of my ships again. I just can’t care; I can’t find that love in my heart anymore. They just sit there collecting dust in this state. I actually worked on Chaser a little bit late last year, but I couldn’t tell you where that motivation came from. Here they are, then, in their current and perhaps final state. I don’t know what to do with them anymore or why I bothered.

Here's what I've come up with. Cheers

Cool! Love the custom sword. Custom mini-figs are always neat. Took a peek at your Flickr, lotta cool ones there to. Thanks for sharing!

https://modelshipworld.com/ Enjoy the rabbit hole! Ships to consider referencing would be USS Ontario, HMS Speedy/Sophie, Badger and Supply as well as the Cruizer and Cherokee class brig sloops of the Royal Navy. There's a lot mire, but that's what I can think if off the top of my head right now. All those mentioned are well documented and often modeled as commercial kits and plans are available from a number of companies. Cheers!

I didn't have a particular problem with the font that started this thread, but I do rather like what I'm seeing right now.

The first thing you need is reference material. Not, necessarily for accuracy or realism, but for a clear vision and example of what you which to achieve. Don't get me wrong, I always say "When in doubt, do it the way they did it back then." But, even if you say you want to make a Black Pearl, even though she'd sail about as well as a brick in a real-world setting, she's great choice in that there is so much reference material available. From the movies to other media from the franchise to other builder's efforts, there's no need to re-invent anything you don't feel a creative itch to do so about. In the same vane, if you do go real-world, starting small is a good idea. I'd suggest one of the popularly modeled naval cutters, like Alert, for much the same reason as Black Pearl. Once you pick a design, technique starts to solve it's self. Cheers!

Tried it out, wound-up going a very different way with it Look here!

Neat! Thanks I'm gonna have to try this, and I may even have all the parts

So cool Please show us a break-down of your gun's construction

Well I do like to keep comments like this generalized so they're useful to the boarder audience as well, but there is advice in there for you, even if I did glaze over it a bit. Go for a mottled effect of different browns (like I did with gray on Nonesuch) and then you get both the run-down look and can match whatever parts in what ever brown is most handy. Thanks, it gives me a chuckle too

It's something of a modern misconception that ships decks, of the period, where of a dark, rich, brown color. Sealing a large deck area wasn't, really, a practical solution before the late 19th-early 20th c. When the industrial production of the needed chemicals made them more affordable. Even then, it was a expensive proposition to chemically seal the deck of a larger vessels, particularly as they would regularly need refreshing, even during transit. Also, many of the available sealants change consistency under the heat of the sun, leaving the deck sticky or slick, on top of the inconvenience if having to work the ship around areas of the deck, which are undergoing maintenance. It may have looked great on the pleasure yachts of the earlier part of the last century and, with even better coatings, on replicas and preserved vessels in the 21st c. but, during the age of sail the go-to method for deck preservation was to simply resurface it. That's what swabbing a holy-stoning are. Rub the entire deck down with abrasive blocks, stem to stern then mop away the debris. After beating it dry with rags you get a bright, clean and smooth surface again; which is handy as sailors preferred to climb the rigging bare foot and deck splinters can be a real bother. Great, but what's that mean for Lego? Well it means our best color for something more realistic is tan (Which is actually beige, dark tan is tan. That drives me nuts, but I digress). On my own builds I've used several different colors for different effects, though. Going way back on my Green Schooner, Nonesuch, I used a mottling "50 shades of gray" effect for a neglected, worn and patched look. On my proper men of war, like Reckless, Scorpion and Snake, I use tan for that freshly holy-stoned look on a well disciplined ship. On my latest build, which I have yet to reveal, but plant to soon, Chaser, I used up a whole bunch of damaged, discolored and off-brand plates, in white, which were not suitable for sale in my store. I again got a mottled effect, but with a less weathered look, suggesting a dutiful crew but an older ship. Now that's just what I'm about. You do you. This is just what was, what the wisdom of ages suggests. If brown 'looks' better to you, by all means. Cheers!

Cute.

Cheers mate!

Looking good, as always I honestly don't know, and its been bugging me all week. The only thing I can think of is, they may be for running cables to the bits, but why bother and not just go over the rail or through a port? I agree, they are in a terrible place and off axis for sweeps. The shrouds would limit their throw and proximity to the masts and rails wouldn't allow enough men to work them from deck, but I couldn't find any reference to them. Isn't there a comprehensive book on Speedy, like Anatomy of the Ship series (I don't have any of those), perhaps the answer is in there. I'll keep thinking and wondering, see if I can dig anything up, but I never thought about it before you brought it up, so I'm lost. Dave

Ok, initially, I just wanted to show some encouragement and get he ball rolling. Any one who knows me of old, know this tickles me. @Pizzasemmel you've done a great job here, wonderful attention to detail and scaling. A couple of stand out things would be the brick built blocks and gaskets and of course the UCS tag is a nice touch. The problem I've found with conflicting sources, as such, is that either is rarely, entirely, wrong. Rather, they are presenting a different moment in the life of the ship. One, pretty much, has to do what you've done, and just pick one and go. To you guy's saying a whole SotL should be built at this scale, well wouldn't that be SHIPLOVER's Poseidon? I mean, there's nothing saying there can't be more than one, mini-fig scale first rate. That's just a big ask, and don't forget, that worthy already shared one with ya. alright, Cheers! Dave

hehe, yeah. Bit of polyester fill pinched under his hat, that. It's an old ninja torso I found in a job lot.

Nice

So I'm sitting around with more work to do than I have energy, scrolling through old stuff on a lark when I saw this again and thought "Man, that's really complicated... I know!" and scrounged up some bricks to put this together. I would have used three 30137 but I only found the one so I used four 30136 instead of the other two and put the one 30137 I did find down the middle so it was plenty stable. I even went and threw on a mast with a sail and my old sig-fig for S&Gs (Don't worry about him, out on the high seas in a raft though, it's not the least sea worthy thing he's ever had to sail ) Cheers! Dave

Interesting, but it would be better with a bit of explanation of each, or at least some links back to the original threads. Like, what's the chronology here? What did you learn along the way that inspired you to change this or that? This could really be a helpful thing for the community. Dave