I have not had a chance for much hobby stuff over the last week, but at least my printer has been busy.
I brought a few files from Wargames Vault some of which were STL files for ACW ships, including these three pictured below.
First is the USS Indianola, this is another paddle steamer to add to my growing Union force, the model has some great details which didn’t come out too bad on my printer, there are a few lines but with most of the ships I have printed these lines look fine on the model.
The only thing I had to do was replace the funnels as they were extremely thin and one broke off while cleaning the model, I just removed the other one and replaced them both with some plastic tube.
Second is the USS Chillicothe, a strange looking paddle steamer.
This ship has some nice detail with the posts holding up the roof, I was pleased that this printed out ok, I was worried as those posts are very thin.
Third is the USS Tuscumbia, this one printed out ok in places but as you can probably see from the picture the roof was not a great success!!
It is just far too thin on the edge, even a couple more layers would have been good, but it is only just touching the supporting poles underneath.
I will need to do some repair work on this one, I will have to try and build up the very edge on both sides so that it covers the poles below, the rest of the ship turned out well.
My printer is working on another ship, this time it is the USS Monarch, I am not sure how this will print out as there is some interesting stuff going on between the funnels!
The funnels have a letter ‘M’ hung between them, so this could be a disaster as it may be just too fine for my printer to cope with.
If it all goes wrong then I will simply remove the letter totally.
I also have two versions of it, these have different layout of cotton bales and planking on the sides. These represent two different descriptions of the actual ship.
I will use one as the USS Monarch and one as her sister ship the USS Queen of the West.
I will add these five ships to the two other Unadilla class ships the USS Tahoma and the USS Huron and of course the third gunboat to go with the USS Lexington and the USS Tylor.
This will add another eight ships to my fast growing Union fleet, this does mean that I will have to add a couple of new data cards for the ships that were not in the main rules, but hopefully they will be simple to do.
So lots to do over the next few evenings, I will put up some pictures of the ships as I base and paint them.
