How to make a wreck.

After having built my 80 gun conversions (https://sailsofglory.org/showthread....orten)-a-ship) I was left with parts of 74s that was missing a small part in the middle. From this I have made wrecks.

Either I've used the stern or the stem or both. When using both there was a part missing in the middle that I in one instance covered by a sail or in another rebuilt using Milliput epoxy putty. Here I have built a wreck using the left over stem.

First I cut out a piece of plasticard. It's just a flat piece of plastic.
Then I put some Milliput on the bottom of the ship piece to give the angle of the stem that I wanted and let that harden.



This made it easier to extend the hull into the water. You may notice that I didn't sculpt gunports and such very well. I mostly tried to follow the lines of the hull. I also sculpted the bottom of the stem that rises up out of the water.



To make the masts I use toothpicks. I put a knife perpendicular to the toothpick and scraped it wile turning it. It's very hard taking a picture of the process, but I hope you understand what I mean. I make several differing thicknesses this way.



Those thinned out toothpicks can be used to make spars, bowsprit and topmasts depending on how thin they got.
I also used a wooden thing that is used to stirr coffey instead of plastic spoons to make fighting tops. While drilling a hole for the mast they often split but I just glue the parts together in place. I also used this to make the small part of the quarterdeck that is above water.



Here you can see several thicknesses and the bowsprit replaced. You can see the added deck with the drilled hole for the main mast. The hull has also been painted. As you can see the gunports are mostly just painted. I made a few that were sculpted but none had guns in them. I thought of adding guns and removing guns from the originals to make for damaged guns from the fight but ended up just using it as is.



Next I glue the ship to the base and drill the hole for the main mast all the way through the base to make sure it will be stable.



Next I add waves. I build them out of plaster and use either the back end of an exacto knife to make the waves or the curve of a blade for the exacto.
I know that Julián uses something like toilet paper and glue to make his waves.



When the plaster/papier-mâché has hardend I cut the edges and do some clean up on any faults that need to be corrected. If you were using plaster and you accidentally put some on the ship it may be removed by brushing it with just water, but with a slight force applied. Then I added the stump of the mizzen. It was just glued in a hole drilled through the plaster and base. The lower end was cut in an angle to be able to extend as far as possible without sticking out below the base. The top end was just broken off. The waves and masts were painted and the ship touched up. The masts except for the mizzen are still not glued at this stage. I didn't worry too much about leaving a little blue paint on the ship as by adding a little white close to the ship it looks like splashing water.



In this photo the mizzenmast can be seen independently sticking out of the sea.



At this time I added the tops and broken off topmasts/topgallantmast to the fore and main masts.

A bit of rigging makes them fit in better with my other ships.




When I made the first wreck I glued the two short pieces to the base and added the water and draped a bit of paper as a fallen sail over the middle of the ship.
I think it turned out ok, even though I'm not that happy with keeping the original sail on the mizzen. I made holes in it by warming a needle and pushing it through.



I made another wreck using both the stem and stern but joining them using Milliput. The resulting ship was also filed down to make it lay low in the water.
Modelling waves makes ships to appear to be low in the water, but this made it look like they really would have to have the pumps going all night.
On this one I added a little more debris to make it look more chaotic and really battlescared. It's also good to hide things you're not completely happy with. I will probably add some of that to the others too.