Okay, Model turned up yesterday and as I had been well stripped (clear signs it had been painted up before.. or more, someone had filed some of the bits but not quite enough) I've glued it together (4 parts, main body, two paddle wheels and main 'thing'). I was gonna take a photo but need new batteries in my camera (also kinda need to finish and print up a new body. That camera has a number of issues with the shell which basically means the battery compartment is held together with a elastic band ^_^, So I wanted to make a new custom shell I was gonna print for it). But..
While it was sold as a Skaven Deathburner, I knew it wasn't. It is a Skaven Doombringer, basically the screaming bell of the seas. As my main army is Skaven, It appears a good thing to add. I plan to base it BUT have it removable. Like I said before (I think), I doubt I'll ever play a game of Man O'War (though as the Skaven only had 3 unit types, I wouldn't be out of the realms of possibility to atleast get one of each model.. the Warp-Raiders and Deathburners came in packs of 3 so... I might be on the look for them at some point) I like the idea of not having it fixed as a Diorama piece. As the underside of the boat is hallow, it also saves me having to drill out spots for Magnets, but I can easily make a nice water base with a couple of magnets, which will attach to the boat.
My plan for the Masts is to make them metal. I'm gonna have a try at sculpting one, make a mould and cast them up. Much better then plastic originals of resin repro (or bootlegs in the case of some being very much 3D scans). I've kinda started with the main mast pole, I'll be sculpting the rope bits. The first issue I've got is the top of the mast. the original, probably for casting reasons, is kinda like a sealed... something I don't know the name of... (modern ships have things like that.. and can have crows nests with 3 floors) but this kinda doesn't tie up with the size of the ropes. In fact, I've no clue what kinda scale most of this boat is.. I hear that Man O'war didn't really have too much of a scale between units but.. well, the Great Bell has a ladder on the side, so I can used that to work out something if I say the rungs are a standard distance apart. But is that top meant to be some kinda covered seal observation post, or just a crows nest which wasn't hollow due to plastic casting? This kinda matters for the scaling... but then, if there wasn't much standard sizing between ships, it would explain why the masts might look out of scale with the ship itself. It does look like the 'nest' is probably 6 foot tall which is pretty damn big for a crows nest.
