Brief Interlude 5: A Sneak Peek at an Upcoming Project

Like the title says, here's a sneak peek at a major project I'm starting this year.  I'm pretty sure it will be a LONG time before this one is completed.  Keep in mind that in this photo, the pieces aren't even glued down yet but the layout you see below is set.

The plan is to fill in the space between the rear of the dock and the edge of the sheet metal with wood of the same thickness.  That's where the warehouses and other dockside structures will be.  Other city blocks will go behind those, but will be modular so they can be swapped in and out.  How, you ask?  Not totally sure yet.

A Brief Interlude 4: How to Win a Medal

Some of the people who visit my blog may also visit my friend Stew's blog, entitled: A Terrible Loss of Lead and Wealth. If you haven't, I suggest you drop by.  The address is: https://tllw.blogspot.com/   He has some really nice looking ships, and is a generally all around good  guy.  How do I know he's a good guy?  Well, his March 7 blog entry entitled "Shipping disaster" bears it out.

If you haven't read it (and I suggest you do) it tells the story of how his 4-year-old daughter stepped up on his box of sailing ships and sent it flying.  Furthermore, there are pictures of the carnage, so consider this a trigger warning before you go.  The part of that post that I thought was particularly wonderful was when he says:

In a calm voice,  "What did I just say..."

My wife says I'm father of the year for not loosing it.   

When I showed it to my wife and said that I don't think I would have been that calm, she laughed at me.  Then she said that our grandchildren (and probably everyone else) would have run away from me in tears.  I suspect know she's right.

A level of calm as high as Stew's deserves some recognition.  So, I bought him one of these:

Stew earned his and it was an excuse for me to buy myself one, so I'm not completely altruistic here. There's also a homemade (but very nice, IMO) certificate:

No pension though.

A Brief Interlude 3: A New(ish) Portrait of Nelson

According to Smithsonian.com, a portrait of Lord Nelson has recently been rediscovered.  What's significant is that this 1799 portrait by an Italian artist shows Nelson's wound from the Nile, instead of ignoring it.  Apparently this painting had the 19th Century equivalent of airbrushing done to the wound at one point, but during restoration that paint was removed.  While you can't tell that his arm has been amputated, the picture is a far cry from the usual Nelson portraits.  The Smithsonian.com article is here:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-portrait-lord-nelson-found-scars-and-all-180967205/

EDIT:  Originally, there was not a direct way to show the photo on here, so I provided some links.  Well, as of 12/4 the picture is apparently available online.  So, here it is:

This picture is of a man who is tired, and hurt.  It's certainly an antidote to the usual view we have of him.

A Brief Interlude 2: Signal Flags

This isn't directly related to my models, but it is a cool website:

http://www.goblinrevolution.org/widgets/popham_encoder.cgi

Type in a message, and this website will translate it into the Popham flag code in use by the Royal Navy (1806 version).  For example, the title of my blog looks like this:

163                       756                       85 

The signal is read from left to right and top to bottom.  The red/white flag is the telegraphic flag that says the code book is being used.  The diagonal blue/yellow flag shows that the signal is finished.  That graphic may turn up elsewhere on this blog later.  If you're interested in the Popham code, the 1803 book is available on Google Books.  Just search for "Popham signal code" and it should be the first result.

A Brief Interlude: Cannon smoke

Like most people, for years I have used puffs of cotton batting or stretched out cotton balls to represent ships firing their guns.  Not until I started taking pictures of my ships did I realize that this method has some side effects.  Said side effect is that quite a few of my ships have little tendrils of cotton or batting hung in the rigging.  For whatever reason, I had never noticed it before but it is VERY clear in photos.  So, I started looking around for something else to represent that ships were firing their guns.

Langton makes a set of "ship fired" markers, and they are very nice.  They come in a package with three "fall of shot" markers for about $3 US.  The fall of shot markers are also nice, but not really useful in any of my rules so I see no need to buy more of them.  The cheap side of me also has a problem paying about 1$ each for these:

Nice, but not that impressive by itself...

As I said though, they look very nice.  Maybe just not 1$ each nice.

I decided to see if I could make something that would look similar, and prevent the problem of stray hairs getting stuck to my ships.  I took a small piece of basing material, trimmed one of those chenille craft sticks (I still call them "pipe cleaners"), and glued it to the base.  I then took some little cotton tufts torn from a cotton ball, rolled each of them into a smaller ball and glued them to the base.  The result is below:

Trust me, it looks better in person.

Does it look as good as the metal one?  Oh goodness no.  However, when you put it up against a ship:

Not so bad now, huh?

Of course, that's just the unpainted prototype.  I lightly hit it with some gray spray paint, painted part of the pipe cleaner yellow and red to simulate gun flashes, and got this:

A little darker than what I wanted, but it's a prototype.

When placed alongside a painted ship, you get this:

I think that will work for me.

As a bonus, there's a sneak peek at the next ship up on the blog.

Does it look OK?  I think so.  Is it cheap? Definitely.  Is it a solution looking for a problem? Maybe.  The nice thing is, I can make a double height one for three-deckers that should really give a feel for how much throw weight they can put out.  Just add another row of cotton on top.

This doesn't mean the cotton batting is going completely away.  It will still be used for drifting gunsmoke.  This is just a way of trying something new, and a quickie project when you just don't feel like doing anything else, for whatever reason.  Cutting the base was probably the most time-consuming part of the project.