Custom carriers from OOB's and painted pieces

[DMcLaren]

Back on June 9, FJO and I drove from the Detroit area down to Dayton, Ohio for some gaming with Check Your 6! Gaming, where we met some great people and painters, and played “Check Your 6!” with Dave Winfree, owner of I-94 Enterprises (my rookie Me-109 pilot shot down two of his RAF Defiants  :-D).  Dave also brought a lot of merchandise for sale, and FJO picked up some more tiny aircraft from GHQ, and a cool transport sculpt called the Aden Maru. It’s 1/2400 scale, same as the transports and subs in this game.  One neat thing about GHQ stuff like ships is that if they have separate pieces that need to be glued in, they come with extras of those pieces.  So of course FJO had to use them, and the Karishima Maru was the perfect fit.  It has extensive mods just about everywhere- smokestack with funnel vents (whatever those are called) on a built up stern, French transport guns on the bow, deck guns fore and aft of the boathouse, depth charges on the stern, and if I recall, a Liberty ship boathouse modded up in the middle.  The extra GHQ large and small cranes in the rear and FJO’s built crane in front finish up the mods.

[DMcLaren]

The transports are all done and I was able to get some pictures together, so here they are.  This one is labeled Heian Maru, but I’m not sure the name is right.  It’s a sister ship to the Hokoku Maru shown earlier, and a merchant raider as well.  It started as a '41 sculpt, with cranes from a first edition transport, German tank barrel for a smoke stack, and some vents made of putty to round out the putty built pilot house.

[DMcLaren]

This one is loosely based on the Yasukuni Maru and is sort of a kit bash piece.  It’s got the top of a Baltic timber Ship (French transport) sculpt for the pilot house and deck guns taken from the same French sculpt.  Taller smoke stack and the 2 pillar crane are also added.  Pretty close to the base ship.

[DMcLaren]

I don’t recall what the name of this first ship is, but I do know it’s another merchant raider.  Edit to add: the top of the center house is from a German cruiser.  If I get the right name I’ll edit the post later.  The second group is a set of transports to go with the Fleet of Fog camo set.

[DMcLaren]

Since the transports are done, I wanted shots of them separated into two groups based on which sculpt they started as to see the mods easier.  Here they are- the group based on the Pacific sculpts with an un-modded, primed red sculpt, and the group based on the 1941 sculpts with a black plastic piece I got on sale from HBG for a dime or 15 cents.  Edit to add:  I almost forgot to mention- one painted sculpt in each picture is not modded.

[DMcLaren]

Finished the last 2 Mosquitoes to make 10 for the UK.  We rarely build more than that with the UK, so I’m hoping 10 will be enough.  With 2 exceptions, they’re all painted to resemble aircraft that really flew.  The desert camo isn’t historically accurate and carries my initials.

[djensen]

Amazing work!!

I’m working on fixing the images. They are on the server and they are technically in the post but the forum+browser is doing something weird.

[DMcLaren]

@djensen THANK YOU so much! For both the compliment and getting the pictures to show. I saw your post about adding something to a line of code, and I’m not ashamed to admit I had no idea what you were talking about. I like the way this new forum displays the photos, too. Much larger and easier to see.

[djensen]

@DMcLaren And the autoloading will get better in a future version of the forum software!

[DMcLaren]

Ok, this is odd. Today at work, not signed in, I could see everything. Here at home I’m signed in on my desktop PC and can’t see the pictures…

[djensen]

I’ll fix it.

Fixed.

[cyanight]

Wow, excellent work. Incredible detail.

[DMcLaren]

@cyanight - Thank you very much! Seeing some of your work here several years ago inspired us, so your compliment means a lot.

[cyanight]

@DMcLaren This is fantastic work. I love the micro detail you put into these pieces and still keeping a theme for each power. This is top notch.

[Tjoek]

I’m blown away by the level of detail. You almost forget how tiny these miniatures are when you look at your pictures. Keep up the good work!

[vodot]

These are astounding. Well done.

[DMcLaren]

Thank you, gentlemen. We’ve enjoyed seeing your work as well.

FJO and I are collaborating on the Japanese subs- he’s painting and I’m adding decals. He’s on the forums here now as “folewnik”, so I’ll just call him FO. (no snickering.) The first batch pictured here we’re using as super subs- the “I” class. I couldn’t find Japanese flags small enough to fit on the conning tower, so FO tried painting white squares on some, and I used slices of the white stripes from the l-94 Italian aircraft markings sheet for white squares and added the red dots from the l-94 US roundels sheet to all of them to make the flags. The numbers aren’t where they should be, but we wanted them to stand out on the super subs a little more than the standard subs (which are almost done) and went with the larger numbers on the hull rather than the smaller numbers on the conning tower. These are the mid size numbers from the l-94 white letters and numbers sheet. FO did the deck detail in brown pen and the hull details in black pen from a schematic we found online.

[DMcLaren]

I found a good set of pictures of a desert Stuka to go with the German Desert Luftwaffe shown earlier in the post, so now that’s done. I couldn’t find a yellow “C” small enough, so I had to use the smallest letters on the l-94 yellow letter and number sheet.

[DMcLaren]

FJO finished the Japanese light carriers off with 4 from HBG. Since he’d already made a Ryujo light carrier, he painted 4 of the 5 HBG Ryujo light carriers- 2 Chitose class and 2 escort carriers (the 5th sculpt of the set was ruined in an attempt at a merchant freighter to carrier conversion. Heck, the Japanese did it successfully so we thought it could be done with plastic). We didn’t have the greatest light so I had to brighten up the pictures a bit, but starting with the top picture, The IJN Chuyo escort carrier, The IJN Chiyoda and IJN Chitose of the Chitose converted seaplane class light carrier, and the IJN Taiyo escort carrier. No deck decals used- these are all hand painted. You might even be able to print the top view (shrunk down of course) and cut it out for a deck decal, if you’re so inclined. You have to post a picture if you do.

[sjelso]

Wow…speechless…