Refitting and Repairs

One of the things AOS gamers have to realize is that, if we take our ships out and let people play with them, they are going to get damaged.  I should emphasize at the beginning that this is not something they are doing on purpose.  (OK, that one guy joked about it one time, but it was probably a joke even if I didn't take it that way. Besides, that is a story for another time.)  Instead, it's just the nature of the beast: our 1/1200 scale models are more fragile than regular miniature soldiers.

It used to bother me more than it does now.  What changed my attitude, you might ask? The simple answer is: research.  We like to think of sailing ships as machines that could go around the world, only stopping to resupply the crew and that is partially true.  What else is true is that the real-life ships required maintenance on a pretty regular basis beyond what the crew could provide.  Without getting into too much detail, repairs could range from a "refit," which meant only working on the rigging, to a "great repair" which could go so far as taking a ship apart and lengthening it as was done with the 98-gun Prince.  Even without these, a ship could expect to visit a dockyard about once every two years just to replace copper plates along the bottom.  So, with that in mind we probably shouldn't complain about a little repair work now and again.

The two candidates for a refit after Millenniumcon were Cassard and Northumberland; not coincidentally I suspect, those two also saw the most use over the weekend.  The repair on Cassard was the simplest, with a single line on the bowsprit broken.  I didn't take any pictures of the repair because, to be honest, there wasn't any need.  Cut away the broken line, glue another one in its place and that's that.  If you've built any model sailing ships, you could do this repair.

Northumberland had a bit bigger problem, although in the same neighborhood.  Somehow, the last 3-4 millimeters of the bowsprit managed to get broken off, even though it was still glued to the rigging.

How did this happen, you ask? I have no idea, so I'm blaming the
little lead Captain for following too close.

At first I thought I could take the easy way and just glue everything back together.    Of course, I should have known better and that didn't work.  So, out came the little drill bits, and I bored the usual hole in the end of the bowsprit.  After that, I fitted a straight pin into the hole to make sure it would fit.

Have you thought about leaving it like this, you ask?
Yes, yes I have.

Then, I measured the pin and cut it to roughly the right length with some snips.  After gluing it in place, I cut it a bit closer to the correct length and cut away some of the rigging that would need to be replaced.  That happened because I couldn't hold the old rigging in place and fit the pin, and the rigging wouldn't stretch enough to go over the new piece.  Also, the old rigging would not be as taut as I like.

Not looking too great here, but...

Slap a little paint on it, and it's not too bad.

After that, it's just a case of re-running the lines I had to cut away, and she's finished.

Ready to rejoin the fleet!

If there's a moral to this post, I guess that it's don't be afraid to let your toys out into the wild.  If you had the patience to build them, you can definitely repair them.  To revamp/slaughter an old adage:

"Your miniature ships in storage are safe,
 but that's not what your miniature ships are for."