Viking Ship WIP

After seeing Herrodadog's excellent job on the Revell 1/50 scale ship, I decided to get one for myself. I checked some local shops but was not able to find one so I got mine from ebay. The first thing I did was to remove 24 of the shield mounts in order to reduce the crew size and free up some shields and decals. I started removing the main body of the ship from the sprues and they matched up well so I used some rubber bands and close pins to hold them together.

I primed the ship black as usual and used a medium brown for the base color and just added a couple of coats of brown ink which came out pretty well.

I liked Hil's idea of keeping the ship simple. I was not planning on doing any rigging other than a bit on the ships mast. I was not impressed with the plastic sail provided in the kit so I decided to pick up some fabric from Joanne's. I used the plastic sail to estimate the size for my fabric one and cut to fit. I then made ruled lines with a pencil and hand painted the red stripes.

I put the mast together and added some cooking string to simulate rope and hold the cross beam in place. I attached my new sail with the provided string. I also left the mast removable so I could show the difference between at sea and ashore. I will finish the ship by adding about 20 shields total to the ship that I will hand paint so I can save the shield decals for my BTD Vikings. I also have a used hair net that I will convert to a fishing net and I have finished the provided anchor and have added more cooking string/rope. I will also add a bundle of oars just for looks. To finish the projecct I will add a nice wooden base and spackled waves.