Just a little nerdy space for amateur miniatyres

I have a vision. I have an idea. I have a dream. I would like to make a viking diorama. Not really sure at this moment how the environment will be, but at least I want a ship there. Or part of a ship. And as I have bought some really nice tin figures in scale 1:35 I also want a ship in that scale. That's easier said than done. Well, there is ships to be found in that scale, but they are all super expensive! And when I look into those boxes, it also seem those models are for experienced model builders.  Therefore, I came up with a geeky solution to build an own ship from scratch. All I needed was a blueprint of a viking longship. That part was the part that was easier said than done. The best one I found was in pieces and can be downloaded from shipmodel.com  but as they were all in pieces I have copy paste them together in two A3 pictures, and when you print them out in A3 the scale is actually almost 1:100 (!) I realized that it would help...

In the album " Asterix in Britain " Julius Caesar has invaded Britain and the the British defense is lead by Chief Cassivellaunus, Ceaser is wining mainly because the Britons stop fighting every day to drink hot water (with a drop of milk) and they refuse to fight over the weekend. But there is also some truth behind the Asterix comics: Cassivellaunus was actually a historical British tribal chief who led the defence against Julius Caesar's second expedition to Britain in 54 BC. He led an alliance of tribes against Roman forces, but eventually surrendered after his location was revealed to Julius Caesar by defeated Britons. As there is some truth behind this story and just because I actually found a bigger figure in Tallinn that could work as a real human Cassivellaunus I came up with the brilliant idea to do some geeky painting, match the small one with the bigger one...

One of my great finds in a flea market this summer were old Asterix mini figurines. I realized they would be a great exercise to do some geeky paintwork too.

So I have this fix idea to make a viking diorama. It's still an idea though and it's still in my head. And I got the idea after found several very nice tin figures at ebay in scale 1/32. The great thing with that scale is that the figurines are big enough to be able to paint for an amateur. The bad thing it's scale 1:32 because of course I need a ship in that scale. Viking model ships in scale 1:32 is very rare. Luckily I stumbled into Flo-Mo, Flowing Motion, who is a model maker and amateur boat designer living south of Vienna, Austria. He has done a boat design study of Gokstad Faering . And best of all, he also had add a scale on the drawings. So I tried to use his sketch on balsa. It didn't work at all. Also, a ship five meters long is a bit too short, so I had to make it a bit longer. After discussions with our family's master miniature builder (wifey) I realized I have to make my parts thicker and in carbon. I aim for a ship 10 meter long, so I borrowed ...