From NoelW: A Gift from the Orient - For the Challenge of Snow Lord's Peak (69 points)

Take a week, the Snowlord says. He doesn’t say anything about where to take it, or what to do with it. Typical. I always say “Never trust a man in a czapka, especially when it was clearly pre-owned by a badger.”

So we’re off to the seaside. After all, we’ve not seen any sand for – it must be – what? Perhaps as much as three days (as long as I don’t count what’s accumulated irretrievably in my socks and jockey shorts). As we’ve nothing better to do, we can paddle for a bit, construct a sandcastle and then – er – paddle for a bit. Maybe build a sandcastle.

Hey! look at that driftwood. Well, yes, I suppose it does look a bit like a hut. I’m sure it’s abandoned. At least, it definitely ought to be. It looks so rickety the next storm may well blow it down, which makes it a health and safety hazard. Duty of care obviously demands we must make it safe, if you would get my drift.  We’ll be doing the ex-inhabitants a favour.

Besides, it’d make a great boat. Just what we need. Once we’ve the Snowlord’s treasure in our pockets we can sail away from the misconcatenated mix of miscellaneous mise-en-scenes that make up this mesmerising map of mischances as fast as a greased eel from a buttered hosepipe. Better build a really big ship, though – there’s no telling how many piles of treasure the Snowlord will want to heap on us when he's properly reviewed our valiant exploration of the island.

Yeah – make it massive. We don’t want to have leave any of that treasure behind, do we? Brilliant. Come on, put your backs into it.

Doesn’t time fly when you’re watching people sweat?

Who's this, now? Looks like a miniature lizard carrying a miniature lizard on its shoulders.

What do you mean the Snowlord wants to see our tribute? What tribute? He said “take a week, then come back and have some treasure.” I heard nothing tributary even hinted at, and I was listening at least nearly half the time.

Oh he has a big club, does he? Is that right? Does "big" mean it’s a club with lots of members? No? Rather the opposite?

What’s the opposite of “members”?

Oh.

Dismembers.

Luckily, I’ve spent the whole week working on our tribute. That’s it over there. No, not behind the inverted hut – that is the tribute. It’s a ship. A treasure ship. Almost done – just need to add a rudder, a few sails, maybe a prow or two, and she’ll be as clinker as a sagging baggywrinkle.* Leave it to me.

Just got to figure out how to get it up that mountain…

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*Actual nautical terminology, apparently.

So, I spent a whole week without lifting a single paintbrush in anger, other than to work on Warlord’s Black Seas, the French 118 gun L’Orient. (I even had to forgo the many pleasures of painting the bathroom ceiling. My wife will be writing an official complaint to Snowlord’s Peak). This is the biggest of these ships I’ve yet worked on, and I found I needed pretty much the whole week to get it right, because it’s been a project filled with hazards and mistakes: a spilled paintpot splashing the model, a dropped ship, bent masts, and a horrible whiteout from overuse of matt varnish – all of which demanded major remedial work.

L’Orient, you’ll probably know, was Vice-Admiral Brueys’ flagship in the 1798 Battle of the Nile, which exploded spectacularly in the middle of the French line, pretty much sealing the fate of the fleet there and then, and, ultimately, the fate of the army in Egypt, too. The loss of the fleet left Napoleon’s forces unsupported, and ultimately unable to fulfil his Middle Eastern ambitions, so he abandoned them. 

I rather enjoy the precision and attention needed for building, painting and rigging a model as detailed as this. It starts like this:

and, if you’re lucky, ends up something like this:

Here's a terrible photo of the sternplate:

I’ve learned some approaches to the rigging on smaller Black Seas models  which make the task a tad easier (for example, thread the rearmost thread before gluing on the spanker boom [excuse my language!]) and I quite enjoy doing it. However, I'm no longer the young sprightly person I appear to be, and that often makes the enterprise frustrating: I’m increasingly clumsy, always impatient, and my eyesight seems to be failing more rapidly than might be expected.

So finishing the model feels particularly good even though I'm aware of several issues which I hope my photographs don’t expose too clearly! I can see at least four areas of the model that I’m disappointed with, but I reached the point where every time I corrected something I made something else worse, so this is the final model.

I did take the opportunity of this build to try a few things. Firstly, the “ratlines” are not those provided by Warlord, but are woven from cotton using a jig. I’ve used Warlord’s acetate ratlines on other ships, but found them difficult to put in place and I'm not too keen on the opaqueness of the acetate, so wanted to see whether actual lines looked better.

I think the extra work of making my own is justified, though it’s still a fiddly business and I've not perfected the approach yet. The spacing is uneven and the horizontals (the actual ratlines, which sailors used as a ladder) should all be trimmed flush with the verticals (the shrouds, which hold up the masts are so are much thicker ropes than the ratlines). Getting the look of these right is pretty much a personal thing, as a better representation in this scale would make the horizontals almost invisible.

Secondly, I’ve fixed the ship to a transparent base. I’ve been experimenting with magnets set in such bases for the smaller ships – not very successfully – but this ship is so big it’s easily knocked about, so it has to be fastened to a permanent base.

However, I overdid the glue, so that squidged out messily at the sides. So, thirdly, I copied Warlord’s photographic technique of using “snow” powder to simulate sea-foam, to hide those glue-marks. This is only a temporary effect for the photos, but it works surprisingly well – even though the foam is on the base and so “floating” above the sea-cloth which shows through. So I might decide to glue snow permanently to the base.

Pointswise, it’s difficult to score. I think it’s the biggest 1/700^th ship yet posted in the challenge. As that's roughly 2.5mm “scale”, I thought about suggesting that I’ve painted 118 guns, four boats, 1 ship and three flags, which at 6mm would be 129 points, so half that = 65 points. However, I suspect the Snowlord might raise an eyebrow or perhaps a spiky club at that suggestion!

So far in Challenge X, brigs have been awarded 10 points, frigates 18pts, a 3rd rate 24 pts and a 1^st rate (74 guns) 28 points. As L’Orient is 118 guns but as a model only about 10% bigger than a 1^st rate, maybe 32 points is about right? 

Here are a couple of photos for scaling judgement. L'Orient is a tad over six inches from stern to tip of the bowsprit.

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Haha! This is most excellent Noel. It's been 7 days right to the hour and I'm positive I could hear your teeth gnashing from half way around the world. :)

Assorted mishaps aside you've done a beautiful job on 'L'Orient'. I particularly like the fine detail work on her stern gallery and the clean brushwork on the yellow stripes and red gunports. But for me the real triumph is the woven ratlines you've devised. Wow, what a great effect! I think it really adds that extra dimension of realism to the model. Brilliant work.

As to points, I'm going to follow your recommendation of 32 with another 7 for the detail work and each day of painting purgatory. This added to the 30 for the location gives us 69 points total. 

Finally, as your prize, we give you Ray's excellent 'Warg Rider'. I thought this pair might make a lovely addition to your existing LotR collection.

Thanks Noel for being such a great sport! You can now carry on pulverising the points roster with reckless abandon. :)