Building a Ship for A&A: War at Sea pt 4
The Fiddly Bits
So far we have acheived something that floats. She’s ready to leave the dry dock and move on to fitting out. This is also the bit where your ship develops it’s distinctive character and identifiability.
Some recommended prep work. If you still have the deck plan view glued on to your hull you save your self some problems by marking out where your turrets will be centered and also your superstructure. This will help you greatly later on. You can use a scalpel to punch through the paper and then you simply clean off the paper and glue residue before you start mounting turrets and other bits.
Above you can see the marks that will help guide in the barbettes and superstructure drawn in red.
Superstructure
The superstructure is the base on which you’ll fit stacks, masts, the bridge and pretty much everything else. Below is the piece for this ship which I cut out of the deck plan and filed to shape. Most ships have something similar to this.
After I’ve cleaned the piece up and polished off the glue I simply glue it to the ship using the alignment markers. Below you can see that I’ve also started on the rear of the superstructure. You can pretty much just cobble the whole basic superstructure together using small bits of styrene sheet and tubing. The gun platforms below are just cut up bits of tubing. You can also see the stacks and their bases.
I build up my superstructure from bits of styrene added on top of one another. It’s really that simple. Just add more until it looks right. Keep looking at the plans and reduce everything to simpler shapes and combine them together to form more complex shapes.
Stacks
The stacks are also simply tubing chosen by which ever diameter most closely matches the scaled blueprint. Cut to the prescribed length and glue to the superstructure. In this case I added a pair of this bases as per the drawing.
After the glue has had time to set you can sand the stacks down so that they are even and plane.
Above you can also see that I have added a bit of green stuff to make a funnel cap for the front funnel. There’s more on green stuff under the section on turrets. I also thinned the wall of the tubing using a scalpel which I rotated inside the tube, kind of like a lathe.
Turrets
Let’s face it, this is where it gets interesting 
Guns, big freakin’ guns!
There are many ways of building turrets, almost every modeller I’ve talked to has a different approach. Some even go as far as to make their turrets poseable, I.E. they rotate. This is a bit of a master class thing and I haven’t got around to trying it yet, though I am really dying to try.
A gun turret consists of the turret it self and the barbette into which it fits. It’s basically a deep hole into the ship’s hull thet holds the turret and allows it to rotate. So the first thing to do on the main guns is to make barbettes and placing them on the hull. I use simple plasticard tubing for this, just cut a very thin section for each barbette. Check your plans so that they’re not too high for the ship. If they are, you can fix that after you’ve glued them on just by sanding them down. This also makes sure that they’re nice and plane.
Above is a picture of the barbettes being dry fitted to the hull. You can’t see the marks I’ve used for alignment because they’re to faint.
The turrets them selves I make from three components. A styrene base, brass barrells and green stuff to complete the shape. Below you can see the first steps of the turrets. I assembled the base from a very thin sheet of styrene and a halved section of styrene tubing. Just glue together and file off the excess plastic at the front where the curve is. The barrells are just snipped of to the right length and filed smooth at the business end. I cut a pair of grooves into the front of the turret to fit the barrells and then glued them in place with plastic glue. A practical tip is to use tape to hold the barrells parallel while the glue sets.
While the glue is setting you can prepare some green stuff to finish the turrets off. You may want to wait half an hour before preparing the putty while the glue sets. Just mix equal parts of the yellow and blue putty and knead until it’s uniformly green. Grab a small glob and push it into the turret so that it covers the whole structure and then gently shape it into what ever shape you need. You probably will end up with fingerprints in the putty. You can smooth these out with a smooth piece of metal or sculpting tool which you dip in water.
Leave the turrets to harden over night and then you can sand or file them down until you get the right shape and smoothness. Now they are ready to fit to the hull, you may want to wait a bit with adding the turrets and get going on the superstructure without having the turrets getting in your way. The styrene base will also make them bond well with the barbettes.
Masts
For masts I use the same brass rods that I use for cannon barrells. Plastic masts won’t last long on the gaming table so it’s better to use more durable materials. It’s a basic metod, find the spot where the mast goes, drill a hole of slightly larger diameter using a pin vice and glue a section of rod into place. When the glue has set you can snip the rod off at the proper height and file the top smooth.
For this ship we’re going to make what’s called a tripod mast which is basically a mast with a pair of diagonal braces.
Start by finding out where the braces meet the superstructure and use the pin vice or scalpel to make a pair of pits. Measure out a pair of braces from plastic rod based on the blueprints and glue them to the pits and gently lean them into the mast so that they look symmetrical. Let the glue set and fashion a bit of styrene tubing to fit over the mast that we will use to anchor the braces to the mast. See below.
That’s it! Easy as pie.
Secondary armaments and AA-guns
Smaller calibre guns are easy to make, in this case the secondary batteries are just bits of tubing (again) set into the recesses of the superstructure. For barrells I simply used plastic rods and glued them on, it’s OK to let them sit flat on the deck.
For AA-guns I use yet more tubing, just thin slices that simulate the platforms or tubs in which the guns would sit. The guns them selves are usually too small anyway. In this case there are heavy AA-batteries on either side amidships. For those I chose a thicker slice of tubing and diagonally hacked a bit of the side facing the water. Then I added a very thin bit of rod to simulate barrells.
More Details
You can always add lifeboats or dingies for that busy look. They’re easy to make, just get another piece of plastic rod, cut to length, round off the ends and sand one side flat. Hey presto! Dingies you can make out of chain links that are roughly 3 mm long.
Yet More Details
A warship has lots of little details and they look busy. There’s always more details to add, wings on the bridge, fire directors, details on the masts. Just keep adding until you feel it’s right.
My final touch is usually anchor chains and anchors which are fishing line and a small bit of styrene rod respectively. You can just make them out below.
Here she is, pretty much finished. The last thing to do before painting is going over the whole miniature and scrape off excess glue and polish off toolmarks and such.
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