For Gods sake, don't drop anything!

I recently found a very nice print service located here in Germany who was willing to print out a few test ships for me. The print quality wasn't good at first but he had absolutely no experience in printing out Henry Turner ships before (Neither had I). We had nice chats and he printed out loads of ships for me which all have a little flaw here and there but what the hell. He turned out to be a wonderful guy with whom I'm absolutely working again! We're getting there! I'll definitely order more from him in the future and I'm sure he'll going to be the German 1/700th scale professional #1 ;). I think together we'll get the prints to perfection. I'd much rather have a reliable partner like him for future projects than ordering stuff from a print shop in the UK for three times the prize due to taxes and shipping costs. 

So we printed the HMS Endymion, the HMS Surprise and a US topsail Schooner, which I'll be modeling as a British ship, I suppose. I liked how fast and small it looked. I started work on the Endymion and was pleased with the result of the paint job. Thinking about using warlordgames sprues of frigates to use only the masts but here I went on and constructed my own out of brass wire! That was certainly an experiment. I know now what I'm going to improve with my next builds... 

I put some photo putty under the ship so I could fixate it to something to hold it while painting 

Not an easy task. I mostly eyeballed the length of the sections here.
Used the warlordgames cord for additional fixation 

Masts painted and mounted

I don't find painting a 1/700th scale sailing ship to be too much of an undertaking. It's actually quite easy and quick. You could do better, but I think it works. After glueing on the masts I find you can definitely see the major difference between those and the commercial plastic masts. Of course, the plastic masts are extremely easy to work with and those brass ones are really the opposite, but the thickness is so much more realistic looking!

For Gods sake, don't drop any.....%&°?!!

Parts of the bowsprit came off when about 90 % of all the planned rigging was done... So now I had most of the ropes just miserably dangling off. I needed a break but got back on track. I managed to glue it back on and replace some of the ropes. They're not as stiff as before but I think it looks OK. Now I've got to decide if I want full sails (HMS Endymion was the fastest frigate in the Royal Navy, so that might fit?) or battle sails, which I'd also like...

I really like my serving tray style ocean section for presentation.

More to come. 

So long and take care.

The Laughing Helmet