It took me a long time to decide on what I was going to base the 1/4800 ship on and the Internet was no help as it gave me
- Blue/Black hexagons with sea swell moulded on
- Plain hexagons and just the casting for sea
- Rectangular bases with sea swell moulded on
- Rectangular bases with the ship names stuck on
I failed to pick up any sea swell compound at the shows but finally tracked it down to EM-4 in the Vallejo section as water effects but to be honest I did not like the samples as these ships are so small the waves look out of scale. I also was unsure if I could match the colour without going over the metal bases of the actual casting.
The next problem was naming the ships – as these are fantasy ships I did not want to make up names and to be honest my labelling skills are OK but printing and cutting labels is not my favourite hobby – cutting neat lines leaves my in the cold on a good day.
So this left me with a dilemma as I wanted to have a hex base and identify each ship and then it struck me – transparent hexes with a single letter on them. Cue a quick trip to Litko Base Maker, a short wait and a pack of bases docked with no problems.
I know – daft scanning a clear hex but you get the idea…
I decided a simple temp[late was required so I could scratch the surface without it showing below the moulded base, so 30 seconds with a pen gave me a pattern to work to:
The small horizontal line was to key the letters so they are all in the same place:
Out of all the work involved, those letters gave me the most hassle – I ended up using rub down transfers from ‘The Range’ but I am not sure if they will last very long. These are mounted on the top of the hex rather than below and not covered in varnish / protector in any way. Fortunately, the sheet comes with plenty on it (to say nothing of flowers, angels, big silver letters etc etc) that I can replace as required.
Glue selection was simple – superglue mists clear plastics (been there - thrown it away) so two part epoxy was the selection and the result is:
The carrier film on the letter is visible but no way am I cutting it off!
Now all I have to do is create the rules!
3 comments:
I think they look OK and I can see the same idea being used for other ship models, different scales.
Tony
I believe Litko may custom-etch letters, words, etc onto their tokens. If you try this a second time, see if they can do this for you. I know they do the smaller tokens with custom text, but you'd have to ask about these clear transparent hexes.
theres a great magazine set by andy callan called "the byng touch" itd suit these down to the ground
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