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A fuzzy shot of Ships tied up at the quayside, embarking vehicles and munitions.

Building Ships for 15mm Games

The two large freighters in the 15mm game shown above are not true 15mm ships. They are about 6mm scale and cartoonish at that. However, they look pretty good in games, are easy to build, and offer a generic maritime troop lift capability suited to any cardboard harbour or fabric ocean. For your edification and amusment, we offer a quick how-to entitled:

Constructing the Steam-Ship "Pavlov"

Begin by clicking HERE to view the full size plans. Print out a copy of this. The ship should be 11" to 12" long, but if your copy comes out a different size, that is OK also. You can enlarge or reduce the plans on most copy machines or save the image in your paint program and resize it.

The thicker pieces are cut out of foam-core, a wonderful model-making material that comes in 1/4" and 1/2" thicknesses (possibly others too) Superstructure decks and hull sides are cut from thinner cardboard (also known as poster-board or railroad board). Look at the plan side view to determine which material to use.

The hull is made of two thicknesses of 1/4" thick foam core board (the standard, easy-to-find thickness) with spacers equal to two more thicknesses of foam core board glued between the hull bottom and deck. If you do not mind a ship riding quite low in the water, the spacers may be omitted. There is a thicker (1/2") but harder-to-find and more expensive foam board of which one or two thicknesses with no spacers would work just fine.

The hull bottom piece and deck piece are identical. This results in a ship with no sheer (bow and stern are the same height above the water) which is unusual, but easy to build. Later, when we build the armored cruiser "Emperor Constantine" (in another article) we will construct a ship with a higher bow.

Note that I added a small semi-triangular piece of foam core board to increase the height of the deck at the front. This is really the "focsle" where the crew stayed in older days, now often just storage at the bow of the ship. There is a similar extra height at the stern, but both these could be omitted for a different look.

Glue the top and bottom together with spacer blocks in between to increase the height of the hull.

If you are confused, just cut out two pieces of foamcore the size of the deck. Cut another two or four smaller rectangular pieces and glue them in between the deck and hull bottom pieces making a ship-shaped sandwich. Let the glue dry very well, because everything else glues to this hull assembly. If the smaller spacer pieces stick out from between the top and bottom sandwich parts, trim them off flush with the top and bottom using a sharp craft knife.

After the glue is quite dry measure along the base of the hull from bow to stern, curving the tape measure or ruler around the hull. Measure also from bottom to top. We will use these measurements to cut out a "wrapper" of light cardboard which will completely cover one side of the ship. Make two identical wrappers, one for each side. It will save much time if you can get the light cardboard in a grey, black or rusty red-brown color. The wrapper forms the hull and if you do not have to paint it, much work is saved.

Glue the wrapper to the hull aligning the front and back evenly with the bow and stern of the ship. If there is any overlap, you can cut it off with a craft knife after the glue is dry. Let this dry very well. I used pins to hold the wrappers in place while the glue set up.

Once the wrapper is dry, the everything else is glued to the hull. The deck house assembly (all the superstructure) can be pre-assembled then glued as a single structure to the hull, or built up from the deck a layer at a time. I made two ships, and I tried a different technique on each. I found that building the deck house as a separate assembly then using a giant crane to mount it to the hull was more fun. (I really just picked it up with my hand).

The portholes are drawn on with a black fine-pointed marker. You can get as plain or fancy as you want. Small lifeboats would look good, one on each side of the first deck above the main deck, but I did not have any. I left room in case I ran across some small boats about 1.5" long.

Both levels of superstructure are just small empty boxes built of foamcore. Small wooden blocks about 3/4" inches thick would work as well, and you could make a wrapper to go around them to hide the wood-grain. On one of my ships, I left off the top level of superstructure and built an open "bridge" with railings of light cardboard about 1/2" high. This looks pretty cute when you have 15mm soldiers and sailors battling on the decks and bridge.

The cargo hatches are rectangles of light cardboard, and the masts are lengths of bamboo skewers glued into holes punched into the decks with a craft knife. Any small dowell stock about 1/8" in diameter would work. My masts are about 3" tall, but whatever looks good would work. The funnels (smoke stacks for you land-lubbers) can be any kind of tubing about 3/8" in diameter. I used black plastic straws given to me by my daughter, remnants of some long-forgotten soda. You could add the cargo booms that would load and unload the ships, but they would get in the way of deck cargo.

There are many small ship parts that can be purchased and added on, such as anchors, ventilators, searchlights and railings. I feel that since these ships are just accessories to the main game, they should be kept simple, but they can become as complex as you let them.

I hope this has given you some ideas that you can use in your games.


A freighter crewed by bolsheviks makes it's escape.

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