kurigan

I like it better in gray any way. Could we get a view from the opposite side?

"Business Ashore" Whatever business this captain is about with an armed shore party, I’m sure there’s someone in this town who’d rather not be found today. I made this one because I was recently helping a mate out with his ship project and in thanks he sent me a care package with some new crew and that stylish cockade their captain is sporting. In appreciation I threw together a quick lil’ vignette.

That's an impressive build there, would great if we could see more of her though. you can make that happen if you sign up for an image server like Flickr, Photobucket, etc. there are so many so choose from but Flickr seems to be the most popular. then you can just link your images in you posts. Remember to keep them under 600 X 800. You should also check out the links at the bottom of my signature, they can help you out getting started around here.

April’s deadline will be midnight on Sunday April 23rd. Voting will open at the same time and close the following Sunday, the 30th again at midnight. POST YOUR SUBMISSIONS HERE April’s Random Part will be 3297 Simple enough part for our first go, but remember it’s about how creatively you can use it. So, get to clicking those bricks and let’s see what you come up with!

@Ayrlego They look pretty darn good to me.

I know I'm a little late getting to this but I really just noticed. They look pretty good IMO. If the trouble you're having is the paper, I found a descent match at the office supply. If its the print you could try making the white portions an off-white to match. If you're trying to match old, faded torsos and want to get really detailed, take them to the paint store and ask for a laser color match. They can give you a code you can then use to find just the right white. How handy are you with a hobby knife? You could try razoring out the white parts so the plastic shows through. If the Lego design shows through, put your sticker on the back and turn the torso around.

Well they all have their merits and it's a pretty close contest but I gotta say I like Tit! Shame she's not eligible.

Lol I'd be lying if I said the though had never crossed my mind. Make someone up to see how much baring my name had on popular opinion of my work, but no. It's an honest find. They're far from new and I sat on the for a couple weeks myself. I invited Felipe Avelar to come out and offer comment as I do, but who know's if he'll show. They're basically the same technique Henrik used on Cutty Sark et all, but not every builder needs to start from scratch with each build.

To clear I'm not arguing the point, I'm just confused and want to make sure we are all on the same page. It wouldn't be the first time users argued over agreeing around these parts. When we say "scale" we specifically mean: how many times smaller a thing is than the original. Size and scope of a build are two separate things, distinct from one another as well. For instance, although Shiplover's Poseidon is on about the same scale as my Reckless, she is certainly larger in size, and greater in scope, what with her rather complete interior. Put my little cutter along side and it would appear almost small enough for that SotL to hoist her on deck like a launch, but that's realistic. So, my concern earlier was you having enough space, time and bricks to invest into such a large build. Most don't have Shiplover's patience to stick with a build for 5 years. Bowsprit to boom tip, Reckless is about 85 studs long. Doesn't seem like that much until you have to find a safe place to store her. That's not impossible. It's been done to some extent before. I don't know if it was intentional or a happy side effect but Henrik pulled it off on his fishing boats and was likely possible on Cutty Sark as well. It's not common to do both though and I have to wonder how it would affect having an interior. DPW and Shiplover have found success in doing modular sections to that effect. Check out Persephone!

OK, it's time for "Fun Facts with Kurigan": The term to be "sent up river" came to refer to a prison sentence, vocational termination or some other unfortunate fate in the 20th century, but prior to that it referred to the practice of purposely wrecking aging ships in-land, so their licensing could be clandestinely transferred to newer vessels. Left on the river banks they would either be so far out of the way as to be forgotten or broken up by locals for firewood and building materials. The banks of the Maurice and other small rivers here in Southern New Jersey are said to be littered with the decaying remains of fishing schooners which met just such a fate; left to sink and rot in a muddy oblivion. There was still only one ship by a given name under license yet it looked and sailed like new. *wink-wink* You could always, build up and tear back down, use the same license so to speak. Whether you choose to press on or not, my advice on scaling is still the same. Figure out the smallest element (s) you plan to recreate. Run your experiments, click some bricks and when your satisfied, base your scale on that piece. What element should that be? I don't know. That's entirely up to the artist/builder. What's your level of detail going to be like? How are you going to approach certain elements which may affect the look of others? These are the things you figure out on a sloop. One of the greatest challenges of Lego shipbuilding is that you can't just follow the plans and there are no instructions. Again, compared to wood where you cut and shape your material till it's just right, you can't whittle down a Lego. It's more important to figure out technique before scale, but you need to figure out function before technique. Will it be interactive or a static display? Complete or functional rig? Full hull or water line? Make those decisions and start shopping around builds that have impressed upon you for a starting point. You probably won't adopt any one builder's technique outright, but you will make your life a lot easier of you don't try to reinvent the wheel, or brick, as it were. A final note on a personal level; if your building it for the "glory", don't. You won't find any. Put your time and money elsewhere. This truly is a labor of love or it's a waste of time.

I don't know how to take that... Do I come off as that petty? Personally I see some significant stylistic differences.

IMHO these are, by a wide margin, the best row boat add-ons I've seen. i more fond of the first one, but they are both great. Thank for sharing!

My first/best advice is to start smaller, much smaller. I don't scale by the numbers so much, I take a more "artistic" approach. My theory is to take the smallest elements I plan to model, and figure out how I'm going to recreate that in lego. For the most part your smallest dimension can only be 1 X 1 studs, with a few exceptions like plate thickness, technic axles and bars. Here you wind up thinking of things like pin rails, gun barrels, masts and spars. Reckless wound up being about 51 studs for a ratio of 1:15 (if we did the math right, assuming a 20 foot water line) and she is still very cramped on deck. Your estimate of 100 X 27 studs may be about right, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it jump up either. It's very difficult to anticipate every hang-up you're going to encounter along the way. It will be a lot harder to make adjustments, let alone tear down and start again, when you get half way through such a massive project and figure out something isn't right. I do not think of myself as "the premier builder" but I can only offer advice from my own perspective. I have been at this for a decade, learning, re-learning, refining and developing and still the largest ship in my fleet in an armed cutter. The advice I'm giving is not all my own either. It's the same you'd get in a wooden model forum. Start small, learn the subject AND the medium, then move on to bigger things. As for crews, I found no need for any more than the watch on deck. Minifigs take up more space that real world humans on account of their infantile proportions. I found it hard to find space for everyone on Reckless's deck as it is. If I made any more custom crew they'd just be left on the beach. What are your intentions for rigging? No matter which way you go, you're going to have to take all that into consideration when designing you hull, lest you wind up having to go back, tear things up and work it out again.

Found these featured on The Brother's Brick actually, but we'll link em via Flickr for our purposes. Here we have a couple of nice sloops put together by Felipe Avelar. Though they are not specifically "pirate" themed, I found them to be rather well executed and worthy of notice. Though the ketch, with her Bermuda type sails and enclosed wheel house seems a bit more 20th century or so, the cutter is fairly generic in historic terms. Both are impressive for their complete rigs, detail inclusion and smooth and realistic hull curvature. Talk em up, share them around or just plane enjoy taking them all in. More Images here

A prison cell or even a oubliette would be cool, and ghosts. Forts need ghosts, don't know why, but all the ones around here seem to have em

It's ok, I'm an American; I have no excuse and mine can boggle the mind at times. Yes, you've got it. They should lay atop one another too. I arrange mine fore to aft from the bottom up, so if it creates any rake to the mast it leans afterward.

@bed007 No worries mate. If you wanna do it right, you need cross trees and trestle trees (90 degrees perpendicular to the cross trees). With those in place the shroud just loops over and around the mast head. I make a loop on mine the same way I do on the chains; see My incomplete Rigging Tutorial. Oh, by this you mean the channels, That plate through which the chains pass to connect to the shrouds. Took me a minute. Yeah that method works for me as i use really thin thread and can smash it. I did use technic plate on Ramcat but hated the look of it. You could try exploiting the gap the bottom on a 4073 creates or perhaps a 4070 or something else of the like.

@Phred Aw he's just my go to ship steward. I don't do any superhero stuff so he's never engaged. He just sits on the docks waiting for something to do. Well although carronades are handy because they pack a punch at lightweight, they might still be a bit much for such a small vessel. The single long gun mounted amid ship, might weigh about the same but the center of gravity would be better. The smallest carronades were 12 lbs, even if Blanid's long gun was a 12 pounder instead of a 9, Gherkin has double her broadside or more. Such swivel mounted guns were used famously by the American Revenue Service during the 19th century. Check out USS Dallas as an example of just how small of a vessel they would have armed this same way. I'm starting to think, that neither Gherkin nor Blanid should afford this much space to carronades, but both should have swivels. Those hinge bricks are just placeholders, yes. I want to break this deck up as much as possible as to save on tan plates/bricks. Where the planks would be visible I plan to use the same SNOT technique I've become accustomed to. I hope to build conservatively enough on Gherkin here as to afford a similar deck on 26 without having to acquire more.

You don't have to tell me. I always say "modeling is a series of compromises." The timer says you only have 113 days to get ready. Better get cracking!

@Legostone Well you, sir, clearly make stable rigging, no doubt to that. Let me ask you this though mate. If it's possible to emulate the real thing at scale, then why bother executing any other method on your model? In our case in particular, the beauty of Lego as a medium over, just about, any other is it intractability. If an ability to change your creation's state, even play with it, isn't part of your intentions, why not work in another more exacting medium? For me, the working rig I can make with lego, versus the static rig common to say wood, is only the second largest factor as to why this is my chosen medium. To that effect I found the best way to achieve my goal, of a working rig, is to emulate the real thing as completely as possible. Look all the way back to Snake and see how I struggled with a "just make it look right" attitude. Every problem I was having with that rig, which falls apart from the very wind (ironic when you think about it) was solved by just doing things how they are done at full scale. You all will continue to do as you do, but it's a curiosity to me, and perhaps an interesting conversation point to anyone else. What are you all thinking, out there. Do I not make sense?

@bed007 Welcome aboard mate! While I've done masts with out internal support, Bumblebee, and successfully relied on the tension of the rigging to stiffen them, I usually use 1/8" dowel from the hobby store in lieu of Lego bars. I'd use Lego bars, wands, umbrella stands, flex tub, etc. if they were more affordable and available in my collection, but they can break the bank when you're on a $0 budget. For only a few cents I can get 3' of dowel and cut it to exactly the length I need, not to mention that I've had them sitting around for years anyway. The only trouble with going with bare 3062b is that they don't hold up very well under sheer force. They'll hold up a sail and stay in place but can be a bother if you have to move your model around often. @Bregir That's cause you're not using a block and tackle, like dead or bull's eyes, to increase tension mate; been trying to sell you on the idea. I know no one really likes my 4624 dead eyes but 4265c makes a handy bull's eye. Of course if you're gonna pull on the shrouds like that, you'll need chains to anchor them to something more than the channels.

You make your own!

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I said it before, there’s just not enough Black Sails stuff around here. Great job! It was such a senseless scene, I much prefer your version.