There was an outside chance that we would have even more stuff for Salute to show you, but in the end it hasn’t happened. As I’ve mentioned to several people at shows over the last few months, I have been working on some dockyard buildings – mostly based on Chatham Naval Dockyard, not all that far from Brigade HQ here in Kent. I finished a batch about a month ago, sent them off for 3D printing and the idea was that we’d just about have time to throw them in a mould for Salute. However, when they came back it turned out that I had underestimated the size of one of them – not the dimensions of the building, that’s all correct, but the space it would need in the mould. It turns out that one in particular (the Chatham Mast House) is too big to be made in metal and will have to be a resin casting. This isn’t a problem in itself, it’s a straightforward model with no fiddly bits like chimneys so will cast nicely, but it means that the remaining models only really fill just over half a mould. So, we’ll either a) get a second set printed so we have two small sets in the mould, or b) design some more to fill it (we’ll probably go for b). Either way, it’s a post-Salute job. Hopefully I can use the lull after Salute to design some more and have them ready in time for our next show, Broadside in June.
We will have some of the slip cover buildings – like huge warehouses, they cover the slips where the ships are built. At 3-400 feet long, they were big enough to protect pre-dreadnought battleships from the elements. The moulds for these were made months ago and we have some stock, but you’ll have to ask for them as they probably won’t be on display.
But here are some of them anyway – particularly impressive is the massive Anchor Wharf warehouse, almost 700 feet long and the largest storehouses ever built for the navy. It’s so big it looks out of scale with the rest of the buildings, and could pass for a row of 6mm terraced houses.
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