Roman Warship

This is first time I've send pictures on the forum. I send some photos to Big jake and he thought I should try and share them.I'm getting use to my camara so bare with me.This is the Roman warship kits thats been around for a while.Imai,Minicraft, and others have boxed it.this was Academy that I picked up last year. I changed the yards out to wood and added cloth sails.The wooldings were sanded off the mast and scale rope added.I hand painted the hull with artist oils and wood stains also the deck.The rope I use an india ink wash to age it.I finished the kit a couple of weeks ago.Thanks for taking a look.

Rod

A very nice build Rod, I remember building this one when I was still at high school. You have done the model justice and I will definately be trying the indian ink method on rigging on a future build.

cheers,

Julian

Rod,

On the anchor, I can see rope that is wraped/tied around points on it.  It does not look like it's holding it down but simply use to dress it off, why is that?  And before you answer, I know you would not have put that there had it not been correct.  I just don't know why.

Jake

falschimjager wrote:

That looks great! any idea on the kind of warship it is.

Pavlvs wrote:

The real stone was there to protect the archers from fire and flaming arrows. If a flaming arrow stuck into a wooden wall which was painted, the fire would spread due to the paint being flammable even when dry. The decks were easier to extinguish but the if the castle was framed in wood, it was cladded in stone much like the houses today built of wood and covered with brick veneer.

That's the first time that I've ever heard of that, and I have read many articles and books on Roman military history and archaeology over the past two plus decades.

Regardless, the Romans would have had several alternatives to oil paint, and several alternatives to stone for fire-resistant coverings. For example, they covered siege towers, sheds and galleries with untreated animal hides, with or without layers of wet seaweed under the hides. If that was good enough on land, it ought to have been just as good, if not better, at sea.

Besides siege equipment, another obvious ancient parallel would be elephant howdahs (towers), some of which are also depicted in contemporary art as looking stone-built. Obviously, they would not have used real stone for elephant howdahs, and the consensus is that they used wood with hide coverings. 

Jake

 The anchor idea was from different paintings and material I read.The thought being they were made from wood more than metal. Thus they would be  piece's of wood that could be lash together to form the anchor. Little bit of modelers licence I would say

The castle I have had the understanding that it was made from wood and painted to appear stone to more terrorize their foe. I tried to get this look on the model.

Julian

I use a plastic 35mm film cannister put about 12 drops of black india ink in fill the rest of the cannister with denatured alcohol. I then put my lengths of rope in for about a minute.Pull it out run it through a paper towel to wipe off excess and dry.Than I run it thru my bees wax

Thanks everone

Rod

By the way, that is a nice build, Rod! I have a Zvezda Greek trireme to build, and am going to check your pictures for ideas and inspiration.

I would also like to try waterlining and re-scaling mine from 1/72 to 1/56, to make it suitable for so-called 28mm figures in a gaming context. I think that finding (or making) suitable rowers is going to be one challenge, as will spacing the oars out to reflect the new scale, nevermind re-scaling at least deck planking and other scale-betraying details.

nice build! the paint and weathering is amazing

so the romans actually put a stone structure on the deck of a ship....

crazy romans

but it was a joke

enemeink wrote:

but it was a joke

That's what I thought, but I wasn't quite sure.