Swash & Buckle Miniatures 3D Printed War of 1812 ships in action!

Got my Royal George class British corvette-sloops assembled and painted, along with my Niagara class.

Here's how they look on the table:

http://i830.photobucket.com/albums/z...ps471d36d8.jpg

http://i830.photobucket.com/albums/z...ps36be7403.jpg

And here's how they REALLY appear in my wargaming imagination:

http://i830.photobucket.com/albums/z...ps45908661.jpg

Get your camera down at "wavetop" level, use a single-source light and lower it so the image gets a little grainier and fuzzier, and then see how much more alive your minis can look when you play around a bit with Photoshop or Gimp and a real sky background! Suddenly when I saw this shot I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Something about the billowing smoke and the character of the light reminded me of the N.C. Wyeth storybook adventure illustrations that I loved so much as a child.

Very cool! Thanks for the photos. Are these your 1/1000 scale or the 1/1200?

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Originally Posted by Nightmoss

Very cool! Thanks for the photos. Are these your 1/1000 scale or the 1/1200?

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They are the 1:1000 scale.

I don't know if I should continue putting 1:1200 versions on my Shapeways site. I can make any scale to order, up to the limits of the printer and the customer's willingness to pay (material cost for ships larger than 1:1000 would become expensive very quickly).

Outstanding! One of these days . . .

Very cool. :thumbsup:

At first, I thought the last picture was from a video game or something.

Nice 3D printing designs.

Someone with more video skills (and a ton of free time) could do a stop-action animated SGN battle someday, using the models, and post it.
It could look pretty good zoomed in, with the cotton-puff smoke and a voiceover commentary.

I think you would enjoy this, Gina.

From one of our members on the Aerodrome: http://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/sho...highlight=film

Thanks for the link, Eric. I've thought about doing something like that with our ships. My final project for a college film course was a stop-action film using 8mm film cameras, and with that information you know how old I am.

I wonder if modern digital movie recorders can actually do stop-action filming? I'll have to look into this. :wink:

Sue and I were discussing making such a video while I was playing OTT-Final Days. Within days of that conversation, this was posted. He did a great job; something far better than we would have been able to do.

Jim, we have all year to play around with our AARs. I think we'll see some creative storytelling and scenario write-ups. It should be a good time.

They look great

Thank you, Old Salt!
My next design will be the USS Madison, a corvette that was meant to take on the HMS Wolfe.

Hi Gina

What 3D printer did you use? I have thought about getting one for this and other tasks but I have no knowledge of their qualities. I did try and read up on them but all the stuff I have seen has been using IT language that is harder for me to decipher than is Russian!

Cheers

I didn't print them myself. I prefer to upload my designs to Shapeways and let them do the printing -- that's because their industrial-quality selective laser sintering machines can print overhangs and undercuts that hobbyist 3D printers can't handle. And Shapeways uses a "Strong and Flexible White Plastic" that captures finer detail than the brittle PLA that home machines tend to use. This makes particularly strong and durable masts -- better than Ares ships, in my opinion.

Also, one thing you'll discover if/when you start trying to 3D print is that constant calibrating, adjusting, tweaking, and reprinting are a way of life. Some hobbyists enjoy this aspect, sometimes more than designing models. You'll throw away a lot of plastic, no matter how good you get at it. We're a long way from the day when printing a home-designed model is as simple as hitting "print' for the paper in your laser printer. Personally, I'd rather do my designs and let someone else produce the models, even if that costs me a bit more.

If you do get a 3D printer, I've had strong personal recommendations and read very good reviews of the Printrbot Simple Metal. Experts tell me to get it with a glass build plate for better results, too.

Many thanks for the reply.

Sounds like Shapeways may be a better option for me too. What program did you use to create the models?

Cheers

Finding the right software tool for each task, and learning it, was the longest part of the process.
I soon discovered that no single application did everything well. So I worked out a several-stage process using different software.
All the applications I use are free:

1. Delftship for creating the 3D wireframe model of the hull from the actual historical ship plans,
2. Netfabb Basic for checking the mesh for errors and repairing them (this has to be done numerous times in the course of the modeling),
3. Autodesk's Meshmixer for solidifying and thickening models, as well as some smoothing and sculpting here and there,
4. Autodesk's 123D Design for sinking the deck level down below the bulwarks, fitting masts and drilling holes for them, and testing how the assembled model parts look together.

Then the finished STL format file gets uploaded to Shapeways, where they run their standard automated tests on it for things like wall thickness and watertightness to make sure it can print. Even if it passes those tests, you never know for sure if it will print until you order it and it undergoes manual checks by their engineers.

This all sounds very involved -- and in a way it is, but once I did it for the first ship, I knew the workflow and the whole thing became easier each time.

One important lesson I learned is not to overdo the fine details. At 1:1000 scale they are likely not to show up in the final print. So I just use raised rectangular shapes in the deck for cannons, instead of modeling the actual shapes. It takes only a decent paint job to make even a fairly simple printed model come alive.

Again Gina, many thanks.

I guess I might have some work to do!

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Originally Posted by Iron Outlaw

Again Gina, many thanks.

I guess I might have some work to do!

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Definitely. But the learning can be fun, you can apply the skills learned to any 3D project, and best of all...
You can then make *any* ship miniature you could possibly want, without waiting for a commercial company to release one.

Just snagged a pair of these, plus a Detroit. Your Niagara hull looks more like she did before her 1987-88 refit, with topsides flaring all the way to the gunwales. Post-refit, there's a pronounced chine above the waterline, with vertical bulwarks around the gun ports. I like the old appearance better, and suspect that that was her 1813 configuration, or close to it.

Niagara is the ship that got me interested in fighting sail in the first place -- I grew up in Erie, PA, and had access to her whenever I felt like going downtown. (I wrote a set of miniatures rules for a history class project in high school, and did a lot of the writing on board.) If she had been refitted one year earlier, I would have had a chance to sail aboard her, but the first year that she was in the water again was the first year that I got a summer job in my professional field.

By any chance, might you be doing a Queen Charlotte, Lady Provost, and/or little schooners (Caledonia/Little Belt) and gunboats any time soon? I'm totally in for the rest of both Lake Erie fleets if you do. Also, if you ever do a main staysail for Lawrence/Niagara, put me down for two: I've never seen Niagara under sail without her main staysail set, even when she doesn't bother setting her spanker, and she looks wrong with the big gap between her masts unfilled. Topsails, main staysail, and a headsail or two, and no spanker, is fairly typical for her, and that staysail is the first sail that she sets, and the last one that she strikes.

(Leaving the spanker down (to save some crew work) seems to be common practice among modern tall ships that have engines. It gives the ship a noticeable lee helm (I got to stand a couple of watches at the wheel on a windjammer cruise on my honeymoon from my first marriage), and makes maneuvering a little harder, which is less of a problem when you have a diesel engine and propellers.)

Thank you for such a thoughtful post, Susan, and for getting these models!

Re: Sails -- I agree that the Niagara might have looked prettier with the main staysail set. Since these minis are for battle, I figured the battle sail configuration would be less. But maybe the Niagara and Lawrence used their staysails in battle, too? Ordinarily I'd think not, just because they present so much sail to the enemy broadside and risk being very easily damaged.

The Niagara and my visit to Erie last summer inspired my entire modeling project. And I didn't even see the Niagara herself, because she was out on a sail that day! The museum alone was a must-see. Next fall, I'm hoping to visit the major Lake Ontario War of 182 ports of Sacket's Harbor and Kingston, which are only about 35 miles apart on either side of the US-Canadian border.

Back to the models: My plan is to bring out models for the rest of the US and British fleets that were on Lake Ontario in the summer of 1813. But in many cases, the ships for that campaign can stand in for many of the ships that served on Lake Erie. Eventually, I may even do some Lake Erie-specific ones too.

The reason for my choosing the Ontario models is because I'm also designing (and now developing/playtesting) a solitaire campaign game for Ontario 1813 called A Glorious Chance. The cool thing about it will be that it's modular and mulit-layered -- in other words, it has a strategic layer, and then different options when there's a battle to resolve. Either a player can use a simple wargame mechanic within the base game, or use a Maneuver Layer to move the forces on nautical chart sections, and when ships get to 1km or 2km range, you can take the situation to whatever tabletop miniatures or tactical age of sail boardgame system you like.

My minis won't be necessary at all to play the game, but of course I hope having a good game to play might lure more people into wanting to own the actual ships.

If that game sounds interesting to you, let me know and I'll include you in playtesting once I have a prototype I feel is ready for others to try.

The paintings seem to be split on the subject, when it's possible to tell at all, but I just found a photo from the 200th Anniversary... and she has just her topsails and one jib set, and no staysail: http://www.norwalkreflector.com/article/3391316.

Do let me know when you're coming out this way; I get to Kingston, or past it on my way to Montreal, with some frequency; the little green schooner in my user icon is stored there at the moment. I know a nice little pub down by Portsmouth Harbour that makes some very nice Greek wings.

The Lake Ontario game sounds fantastic, and Chauncey vs. Yeo is an underexamined "what if?" I'd love to try it out at some point. My thing is a set of rules for smaller actions; a frigate duel or Lake Erie or Plattsburgh is about as far as it scales. I'm going to spend some time playing SoG and other rule sets before I pick it back up again, now that I actually have some miniatures to play with.

Come to think of it, Detroit in 1:1200 scale would work just fine for the Queen Charlotte (400 tons vs. 500). If you make a 250-ton schooner for Ontario, and some one- and two-gun gunboats and a 4-6 gun schooner, that would cover the rest of Lake Erie just fine, and probably Plattsburgh (and Valcour Island, come to think of it) as well.

USS Growler/HMS Hamilton would work perfectly for USS Caledonia, and USS Julia/HMS Confiance would work for USS Ariel and USS Scorpion. USS Lady of the Lake is perfect for one of the smaller Lake Erie gunboats, and HMS Chippeway. HMS Little Belt could be either the Hamilton or the Confiance.

So if you do the smaller ships from early in the Lake Ontario campaign, you'll have Lake Erie covered. You might even get away with one sculpt being the slightly larger size schooner at 1:1000, and the smaller one when printed at 1:1200 or smaller.

Susan, does that mean that technically Growler, Hamilton, Caledonia, Julia, Confiance, Ariel, Scorpion and Little Belt could all share a sculpt?

I notice that statistically the late Lakers USS Jefferson and USS Jones are almost perfect dimensional matches for the Peacock/Wasp/Frolic and Erie/Ontario groups other than being brig-rigged...

Just tried ordering from Shapeways. What a painful website! I kept getting "Oops, the page you are after cannot be displayed," and when I clicked on HMS Detroit, I got to a page full of jewellery!

Maybe I will try again later! Then again, maybe I won't bother spending half an hour trolling through the site! The "Search" facility was pretty useless too!

Cheers

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Amara

The Lake Ontario game sounds fantastic, and Chauncey vs. Yeo is an underexamined "what if?" I'd love to try it out at some point. My thing is a set of rules for smaller actions; a frigate duel or Lake Erie or Plattsburgh is about as far as it scales. I'm going to spend some time playing SoG and other rule sets before I pick it back up again, now that I actually have some miniatures to play with.

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I was born on the shores of Lake Erie myself (Dunkirk, NY), so I've always been fascinated by that battle. It wasn't until I read Robert Malcomson's Lords of the Lake, and his other books, that I came to realize how much more important Lake Ontario was to the war, and how much was at stake there. So Lake Erie and Perry get all the glory and gaming attention, because that battle actually happened. Ontario, because it's one of history's great might-have-beens, tends to get overlooked. But might-have-beens make some of the best topics for wargames, IMHO. The big battle really almost happened several times in the summer of 1813, when the two squadrons were most closely balanced. Sudden weather changes and other twists of fate just seemed to intervene in ways that cut the actions short. But in a game, you can see how things very well might have played out.
I find the Lake Ontario situation very similar to Jutland in 1916 -- either naval commander could have "lost the war in an afternoon." And, for that reason, the Ontario squadrons circled like two boxers, looking for just the right opportunity to strike first with the best advantage.

It gets even more interesting to me, as a gamer, when I look as the great variety in the vessels and their armaments. If you're Chauncey, especially, you've got all the usual tactical issues that go with AoS combat, but also a lot of new ones -- usually involving those long-gun-armed schooners and how best to use them. In anything more than flat water and light breeze, the schooners were so top-heavy they were virtually useless unless they were towed into battle. But in calm conditions they were a deadly weapon, so it was too costly to leave them behind. Then you have all the combinations of carronades and long guns on the various ships. And the situation keeps changing as new ships like the USS Pike and the HMS Melville get launched. Add to that the fact that the two sides' homeports/shipyards were only 35 miles apart, and that the entire campaign was constantly influenced by -- and influenced -- the land war that happened all around the lake. The whole package seems just so much more rich and varied to me than two huge fleets of SoLs meeting on the open sea and blasting away at each other for hours in lines of battle. And squadrons of 6 to 12 ships per side seem so much more doable on a tabletop than Trafalgar, etc.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Iron Outlaw

Just tried ordering from Shapeways. What a painful website! I kept getting "Oops, the page you are after cannot be displayed," and when I clicked on HMS Detroit, I got to a page full of jewellery!

Maybe I will try again later! Then again, maybe I won't bother spending half an hour trolling through the site! The "Search" facility was pretty useless too!

Cheers

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Sorry, but that's because there is no model labeled HMS Detroit. It's labeled HMS Royal George, which is the original ship of that class.
You'd go here: https://www.shapeways.com/product/3C...ionId=42282408
And then click on the button that says "Want to get a set?"
That will automatically place all the necessary parts of that kit into your shopping cart (be sure to check it, though, before checking out and purchasing).

You're right about Shapeways being an awful site to browse or search in. Terribly organized.
I've tried to help by using whatever tools Shapeways makes available -- for example, the "get a kit" button, and with tags that group models into areas like US Ships, British Ships, corvettes, brigs, etc.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Diamondback

Susan, does that mean that technically Growler, Hamilton, Caledonia, Julia, Confiance, Ariel, Scorpion and Little Belt could all share a sculpt?.

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Given how many Lakers were "acquired" from the other side before being used....

I think yes, probably. They could be a representative topsail schooner/converted laker model, without bulwarks, and differ mainly in size. But those ships had some variety in the number of "circles" (swivel mounted long guns on the centerline) they had. So it depends how much a stickler someone is for seeing the actual proper guns on deck.

Wasn't one of the Lake Erie ships a sloop rig? Little Belt maybe? For the Hamilton and Scourge you can look up photos of them at the bottom of the lake in surprisingly good condition!

http://dpwilkens.blogspot.com/2012/0...urge-lost.html

I went to college in Erie back when the Niagara was basically a street side attraction on land! While I have been onboard at tall ship events I have not yet made it to the museum - on the "to do" list.

Gina! Just received your Shapeways model and you have a great model indeed! I was wondering if you have some construction drawings to build it by, particularly the spacing of the masts above the deck and overall length to set the front spar to the proper length . . . I can guess it from the photos but like to have the correct measures. Thanks for your effort and I hope to do it justice this weekend. Cheers! Dave

http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/...psusjogtk9.jpg

Thank you, David!
Check your personal messages for something that might help.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Broadsword56

I was born on the shores of Lake Erie myself (Dunkirk, NY), so I've always been fascinated by that battle. It wasn't until I read Robert Malcomson's Lords of the Lake, and his other books, that I came to realize how much more important Lake Ontario was to the war, and how much was at stake there. So Lake Erie and Perry get all the glory and gaming attention, because that battle actually happened. Ontario, because it's one of history's great might-have-beens, tends to get overlooked. But might-have-beens make some of the best topics for wargames, IMHO. The big battle really almost happened several times in the summer of 1813, when the two squadrons were most closely balanced. Sudden weather changes and other twists of fate just seemed to intervene in ways that cut the actions short. But in a game, you can see how things very well might have played out.
I find the Lake Ontario situation very similar to Jutland in 1916 -- either naval commander could have "lost the war in an afternoon." And, for that reason, the Ontario squadrons circled like two boxers, looking for just the right opportunity to strike first with the best advantage.

It gets even more interesting to me, as a gamer, when I look as the great variety in the vessels and their armaments. If you're Chauncey, especially, you've got all the usual tactical issues that go with AoS combat, but also a lot of new ones -- usually involving those long-gun-armed schooners and how best to use them. In anything more than flat water and light breeze, the schooners were so top-heavy they were virtually useless unless they were towed into battle. But in calm conditions they were a deadly weapon, so it was too costly to leave them behind. Then you have all the combinations of carronades and long guns on the various ships. And the situation keeps changing as new ships like the USS Pike and the HMS Melville get launched. Add to that the fact that the two sides' homeports/shipyards were only 35 miles apart, and that the entire campaign was constantly influenced by -- and influenced -- the land war that happened all around the lake. The whole package seems just so much more rich and varied to me than two huge fleets of SoLs meeting on the open sea and blasting away at each other for hours in lines of battle. And squadrons of 6 to 12 ships per side seem so much more doable on a tabletop than Trafalgar, etc.

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Very nice indeed! I myself was born upon the Huron shores, just across the way, the history of our lakes are just unbelievable! I know of 4 shipwrecks between Tawas Bay and Alpena's shorelines, not but 50-60 miles apart. One cordened off to this day by USCG in 50 ft waters because it's full of munitions in a sailing main! Also, according to the History Channels "Search for the Holy Grail" the exiled Knights Templar past through here with it aboard their ship, burying treasures of the old world along our shorelines as they went!