How to elongate (or shorten) a ship

I wanted a few Tonnant-class ships before Ares completed their model. There are a few other conversions that would be possible using this method to elongate (or shorten) a ship. This is how I do it.

First step is to get the ships.



Next I planned my cuts by making the wanted ship in photoshop and paste the ship plan onto it, see-through, to see how well it would fit. I reasoned it was good enough. This also helped me decide where to place the cuts. I used the edge of gun ports to make difference in length fit the spaces between guns. It would disturb the look too much if the distance between the guns weren't even.


The red part is what the missing part that was added.

Using a small hobby saw (shown top) you cut the the two ships in two. Make sure to leave a little bit of a margin to be able to file it some to keep the ship straight after the operation. Make sure that you remember which parts you want to use and that you place the cut on the right side.


Note that I cut at different places on each of the ships and have put the two short ones at top and the long ones at the bottom.

Filed the ends flat and check the angle by putting the parts together and looking down the ship. When content, glue them together. I used superglue. Very little Milliput epoxy putty added at the joint made it smoother.



Some covering paint and the conversion is finished.



Some rigging and flags added and compared to an ordinary Téméraire-class ship in front.
I also cut away the cabin on the poop deck and moved the mizzen mast a little aft to better reflect the correct positioning of the masts.



This left me with two short parts of the ship which I used to make a surrendered ship by covering the missing part with a sail.



Other things that can be made using this method is making a smaller frigate by cutting away a part of a French Courageuse frigate. I removed two gunports from the middle of that and used the resulting ship to represent HMS Surprise. (I did then add an extra gunport aft.)