While laying in bed around 1 am this morning (been having trouble falling asleep this past week), a solution about the Le Requin deck presented itself. The deck is bowed up in the middle of the ship, like a turtle shell in a way. The guns actually rested on a raised platform on the main deck. Insead of modeling the main deck at the actual deck height on the plans, I'll construct it at the height of the gun platform without trying to put in that silly bowed shape. That lifts the deck 3/8" higher in the hull, which incendently will give more space belowdecks to pack stuff in. Clark: Was thinking seriously about a removable drop keel with bulb weight on the bottom of the ship to help prevent excessive heeling. Still working on a solution to gun leveling. Clark's suggestion for penetrable area sounds good. I'm willing to build the Requin that way to test it. The deck will be 3/8" thick, with any part of the hull upto 3" above the waterline penetrable. Perhaps though we may want to discount any part of the ship above the top of the rail, such as additional stern superstructure and such. Feeling better about the ship. I did not want to build a "hobby killer" ship. Guess I'm officially hooked now ... bought sail material yesterday evening. Also hit a frustrating snag with a tank project which prompts me to shelve it for a while ... which opens up the building board for the Le Requin.
Sorry about the tank... but I'm glad you found a solution to Le Requin. Some flavour added by unusual ships is most welcome. I will also be building Minerva to the standard you suggest, for testing. I plan to paint the sternlights vice make them from penetrable clear material. Although it'd be cool to have a scale captain's cabin to get shot up
In my sleep. Could also prevail on the worthies of Grey Wolf Squadron to pick up production after I make some for us. I just ordered a few AotS books for inspiration (Victory, Constitution, and Belladona), so I should have some good references for cannon soon. You make an 8-pounder, and I'll make a heavier one, that'll give us a good spread.
Whoa! Tugboat has casting capability?? Sign me up! Will they be cast for a sleeze barrel to go down the center, or bored and the casting itself is the barrel as well? Those will look cool. To answer an earlier question, I'm hinging my decks and linking them to a pendulum weight(the batteries) to tilt the guns and keep them on the horizon. Shouldn't be very hard at all. I can't wait for my plans to get here!!!!!! Sorry you had to move my earlier post, I was cut and pasting on my blackberry and thought I was on that thread, but I didn't have my glasses on.
Heh. Casting guns for decoration, not really to actually shoot a BB. They would be made out of a casting resin.
Let me worry about casting decorative ones, then worry about ones that can fit a cannon barrel thru them.
So do sailing galleys have a place in AOS? I present the La Reale, one of the last and largest sailing galleys built. Personally owned by [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]King Louis XIV[/FONT] and launched in 1660. She had five chasers up in the bow. More pics: http://www.modelships.de/RealeFranc...aleere.htm
The rules address galleys. I'm not totally up on them as I'm building a 4th-rate frigate. But they're in there. I think that you will be able to mount a small chase armament (galleys only allowed chase armament), equal to 3 guns (5/2, cut in half because the ship has no square sails, but rounded up), 2 on one end and 1 on the other (no more than 2 guns in either chase position bow/stern). A galley can run a motor, with a speed limit, but must have oars mounted. Or it can run on oar power with (i think) no speed limit. The oars must be breakable though, which would make it maintenance hog, I would think!
I'd build it just for the wow factor. If a TV crew ever showed up guess which ship would make the 6 oclock news?
As the rules penalize non-square rigged galleys I thought I'd see what was available in a square rigged galley. I present the US Confederacy, a Galley Frigate! One lean-mean 36 gun fighting machine with a twenty six oar rowing deck.... And her plans: passaro.stage.thomasnet-navigator.c...NE5-13.pdf
My God, it's full of oars... Steve, if you don't build that ship, I will hate you forever. Did it actually have a sail? or just manpower?
She had plenty of sails... After my Mogador, I was thinking a big gun Empress Maria dreadnought but know I'm thinking a Confederacy... Steve
Interesting. I wasn't aware of galley-frigates when I wrote the rules. I was thinking more along the lines of the traditional Mediterranean galley like La Reale. So I said that oars must be breakable using the same drop test we use for hulls, and assigned a point value for broken oars just like we've got point values for holes. I figured that would compensate for their lack of other target area. Does this still seem fair?
