The IJN of 1905

I’ve been printing out ships on my 3D printer over the last couple of months and have even put brush to plastic!  I based them on some artist matting board and painted in the sea foam.  The masts had to be added to most of the ships.  I used a bit of Plastruct plastic rod 1mm radius.

Battleships and 2 armored cruisers by thingiverse designer “marcusmole”.

Armored cruisers by thingiverse designer “bigwig_mark”.

The ships were all 1:5000 scale but I enlarged them to 1:2400 scale (208%).  The battleships road a little high so I dropped them below the print bed by 1.5mm.  That is a common trick to shorted the height without actually knowing how to design a 3D model.  The armored cruisers were designed too wide so I ended up narrowing the model by 20% (I think).  I also shortend the model (Z-axis) because I did not know I could just lower the model below the print bed.  This left the funnels too short.  So I ended up replacing them with my own funnels with tiny bits of plastic rod.

The Fuji (2nd from the left) was also designed way too wide.  In reality it was not any wider than the Mikasa (left). I narrowed it by 25% and it looked spot on.  I am quite happy with the way these turned out.  I’ve got some cruisers, destroyers and torpedo boats to paint and then it is on to the Russian navy.  I already have 3 Russian ships for the action off Ulsan.  They need primed and painted though.

 

And now for something completely different…

A couple of figures from Dungeon Works.  One death knight and 1 lich/skeletal mage.  I found that these figures print bigger than the figures from Fat Dragon.  For 1/72 scale I’ve been scaling down to 75% size for FDG figures.  For DW figures, I found 67% is more appropriate.  I guess FDG is true 28mm while DW is more like 30mm.

Left to right: Death Knight, Lich

Figures were printed on a Creality Ender 3 Pro.

3D Printing 20mm Figures

I’ve been experimenting with some figures created by “Duchmogul” on thingiverse.  The figures are billed as 18mm but after fiddling with scaling, I have found that they match 1/72 scale figures perfectly as is.  There are some older models that he has done that are more in line with 20mm figures but that is neither here nor there.  They all do work without modification to scale.  I’ve printed them perpendicularly with mixed results.  The lines are rather pronounced and as they are fairly detailed, sanding is not really an option.  Painting these figures requires an old school mentality.  Much of the detail has to be painted in by hand not unlike painting in the belts and straps on some of the very old figures out there.  The figure I tested with is called “Hollow Soldier.”  He sort of screams “Barrow Wight” or “Ghost” so some sort of dull gray paint scheme will be in order.  here is the finished rough along side of a Viking Huscarl.  The cloak on the Huscarl shows off the print lines.  At 3 feet away, they are hardly noticeable, especially to the Grognard’s eyes.

How a 45 degree print looks fresh off the printer. The cloak of the Huscarl to show off the print lines.

Front view with all supports removed.

Rear views. It does look like a fair bit of scraping will be in order.

And there you have it.  It is rainy today so there is no chance this fine fellow will be primed.  I’ll post another WIP pic or two when the time comes.