Paint Table Saturday - It's Big And It's Long

My offering for Paint Table Saturday has been less about painting and more about hacking stuff up with a Stanley Knife. With the Viking game on the horizon I ask myself what does every good Viking need? Pillage? Plunder? The other one? No, they really need a long ship.

Now I could go out an buy a long ship. It's not like I want the cheap and cheerful look...but. It might have been easier that what I have done here but I wanted to have something that would be a bit more game table friendly. So the ship is essentially 3" wide by 16-18" long. I have used cuts in the wood to give approximates of the inches on the deck. It's a touch wider and longer than it needs to be so that it's easy to move figures around on it. It wouldn't match up with a game table but I guess it won't need to.

  It is a little on the clunky side but it will work well with stuff on the tabletop.

As you can't see, the main body is made from foam core board. The deck planking is made from coffee stirrers from a dozen different coffee shops. I've even got my other half picking up a handful of stirrers when she goes for a coffee now. The sides of the ship are made from some pieces of balsa wood that I got specifically for this. To give it more of the right look, I score the balsa to make it look like wooden planking.The figurehead and tail are also made from the same balsa wood with a bit of whittling to give it the right ship.
The time consuming this was cutting the planking. When I get to the next ship I do, I will probably just score the wood rather than cut it. I will look to do a smaller trading ship and maybe a few even smaller ships. If I get the urge, I would like to make another long ship. If I really get the time, I might think about doing something a little more foreign like an Arab trade ship.

Now that it's finished I think it's a bit too big. It might be fairly close to what they would have been but it's a little too big for gaming.
I have also spent the day spray varnishing some stuff that I have already finished. Some of it is the stuff you have seen, some of it is stuff that I did years ago but I thought I'd give a coat of varnish to as no paint job survives first contact with the players. I'll take some pictures and post them soon.