Sunday 12 January 2020

HMS Wivern Tripod Masts



I've had this model in the painting box for nearly a year but didn't plan to complete it alongside the other Royal Navy broadside ironclads that I'm slowly working through at the moment. However, it's such a neat little model that I decided to dig it out and add the characteristic tripod masts that are obviously missing from the Tumbling Dice casting. These were cut to size from brass rod and superglued in place, before being base coated in Vallejo Matt Black. Unfortunately, my first attempt at doing this was a total screw up, so the sister ship has been binned and will eventually be replaced with a new model to represent HMS Scorpion. The angle of the tripod supporting masts is wrong but it does 'look' right, if you know what I mean, so I'm quite pleased with the end result.

6 comments:

  1. Looks great, the angle look right. Nice work Jim. Pity about the sister shop, but at this scale binning and replacing is not too bad a loss.

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  2. It does look good, and so representative of those oddities thrown up during the ironclad era.

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  3. Looks great to me,

    A interesting ship, why were they braced? Because the main masts did not travel through to the beam of the hull?

    Cheers
    Matt

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  4. I think the idea was to clear the field of fire for the turrets, removing the stays and ratlines that would be required otherwise. Quite clever really. It's a really neat little model but I don't think it will be up to much in terms of firepower!

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  5. Before you bin your failed experiment, you could try hacking the hull in half, filing them down and making a pair of sinking ship markers. Waste not want not!

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