Galleon Shipyard

So far my Galleys & Galleons games have used models from my Napoleonic naval collection, which is all well and good and, for some things, such as the galleys and junks, perfectly acceptable. However I felt I wanted some ships more in keeping with the period, but didn't really want to fork out much in the way of cash for them. So I decided to scratchbuild some vaguely pre-18th Century vessels at a nominal 1/1200th scale. They are inspired by and based on the designs from HERE and HERE.

I started with some lolly sticks, available at all good arts and crafts shops.

I chopped them up. At the moment I am working with hull lengths of about 25mm, 30-35mm and 40mm, to give me three different sizes of ship.

The pieces assembled and glued. In this era it doesn't matter if each vessel is individual in terms of size and layout, so accuracy isn't to essential when measuring and assembling.

This is a middle-sized ship - a galleon of some sort.

The next stage was to attack the ships with an emery board in order to shape them. They are much wider than they should be, but the are supposed to be impressionistic rather than realistic. The filing also allows me to correct any wobbly assembly.

These are a trio of the very smallest ships.

And then, masts. Made from toothpicks.

These are two middle-sized galleons, along with a larger one.

The fleet expands: two large galleons, four medium galleons and six smaller ships.

And after the sheer-hulks have been in, they all have masts.

Next stage: Painting