I've mostly completed an alteration of The Maiden into a topsail schooner, and figured it was time to share!



Photo album at: http://s884.photobucket.com/albums/ac50/wyldhaunt/Sea%20Spider/

You'll see some fantasy elements, such as the sails (sharkskin) and masthead (green dolphin) - these are from 50 Fathoms, which is where we're using this ship, named the Sea Spider. Some photos show crew, some just props, and some the bare model, including how I'm handling swapping sails. The model isn't truly finished - I'd like to redo the masthead, cannon barrels, tighten up handrails, make a separate model for the interior, etc., but it's usable in our games, and I'm happy with it!

Welcome to the forums:)
That is a beautiful conversion of the Maiden...Very, very impressed

Very nice job, thanks for posting.

Very nice build, love those sails! Lots of sweet customizing. Great work and welcome! Keep these coming!

Awesome! Stuff like this should be in the kitbash section

Lovely piece of work - real nice. Thanks for posting.

Very nice job!

Great work!

Looking at it in detail...There is a ton more work in this than would be considered a kitbash...Most of the hull as well as the rigging has been pretty heavily modified Hard to tell tho ...isn't it?

Yeah, I saw that too - such a smooth bash. Real impressive.

Thank you for all the responses! I'm not really up on what makes a suitable kitbash (although I used LD2062's/Shatterdragon's 3D booms/yards in the model of course). The hull uses purely Maiden textures - definitely modified for size, scale, and some details. The full deck length on the model is 14", and the gunwhale is 1-3/8" high. The new textures are sails, masthead, flag and nameplate.

I don't mind sharing what I've done through WWG-approved channels if there is interest, however I'd want to tighten up some of the graphics and spell out instructions before I did so (which means it would be a while before submission).

Check out this thread: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=10012

Those are the most current guidelines on how to go about submitting kitbashes.

Wow, great bash of the Maiden!

Reading over the kitbash guidelines, I think the topsail schooner alteration is a bit too far afield to be accepted. Points:
1. It's way more than 10 pages - the hull alone is 9 pages; the sails 6; the masts/ratlines 3; decking 2; props 2. Everything except the mast tops and the crow's nest were modified, for scale if nothing else.
2. The sails (a significant portion of the ship) are new textures on (mostly) new geometry. I might be able to use a smidgen of Maiden sail texture to create new ones to resolve this point.
3. I would not include the sharkskin sails textures, the green dolphin masthead, nor the Kieran flag, as these are all from specific references in Pinnacle Entertainment's property (50 Fathoms), and I don't want WWG to have any tangential chance of running afoul of PEG's intellectual rights.
4. I don't want WorldWorksGames to feel like this is increasing their storefront load without sufficient ROI - I want WWG to make money and stay in business, so they can keep making such wonderful kits!

So, there are three options:
1. A WWG staff person invites me to submit this as a kitbash, in which case I will happily do so.
2. A WWG designer decides they want to return to the High Seas, accept my files, and create a new model based on it, in which case I'll happily share them without expectation of anything more than a line of credit.
3. This model will remain my personal modification for my own use.
Unless I hear otherwise from WWG staff, option 3 is where this model will remain.

If you want to modify the Maiden yourself into a similar model, I can post the general steps, but I can't share the actual files. In any case, thank you still for the responses and encouragement! After I complete a build of Mars Station (to mimic Mos Eisley somewhat) for my sons, I plan to create some coastal terrain and a Caribbean harbor for the Sea Spider.

A very nice slim trim ship!
Looking over your blog-site photos I did note the following (which impressed me with your ingenituity):
- using the wheel house cover for head clearance for the stern stairwell to belowdecks
- extensions for the upper masts to slide into the lower masts for stability (a necessity, no doubt, for all those spars)
- all that wonderful thread for realism
- itty-bitty windows for stern lower deck
- transparency pilot wheel ? (and here I spent all that time cutting out the little holes between the spokes!)
- it looks like you glued the ratlines to the edges. Do you use a separate deck print for the lower decks? Otherwise, how is it accessed for play?
- lowered the gunwales... this was probably the only point about The Maiden I found aesthetically troublesome: the cannons didin't seem to line-up properly with the doors they were supposed to shoot through
- you actually found a place to put the longboat! ... I had not noticed on any other builds where a longboat was stowed.

I'm sure I missed other details, but a danged fine build, sir!

Thank you! Most of the ideas came from images/plans I found online for schooners, particularly the Chaleur (http://gaspee.org/Chaleur2.jpg; http://gaspee.org/Rigging.html) and Shenendoah. Details on the Chaleur gave the overall deck/hull dimensions (including the gunwhale height), stern windows, mast placement, and more. I found a book excerpt on Google which shows all sorts of longboat/dinghy placements for older sailing ships, and picked the one which fit best. In 50 Fathoms, its important to know exactly where that dinghy is, especially when a gargantuan shark is chewing up the ship's starboard gunwhale!

The upper mast extensions were really to allow swapping sails using what I'm finding to be a more stable method than The Maiden's - you can see in the image below there are two sets of upper masts - one with sails and one without. The strings were the only way I could get the jibs to hang where they should be - I think paper would have been either too thick to look right or too thin to be strong enough. The strings do have two half-hitch knots each, so I can increase/reduce the string loop's size and slide them over the bowsprit's end.



My build of The Maiden, especially the ratlines, is a bit wobbly - my own fault, and next time I'll build it more securely. However, when we've played with The Maiden, our figures are all over the place, and never follow neatly from one section to the next, meaning its fiddly for us to remove/replace sections of the ship during play. Also, there's no bottom hold level. A schooner of the Sea Spider's size only has one belowdeck level with a sub-waterline floor. For all those reasons, I'm going to build a separate model for the interior of hold, which will include the forecastle and aftcastle interiors as well. That way we can have the abovedecks model on the map, and belowdeck model off the map. It will have covers for the three sections (possibly subdivided even further) in case a GM wants to set up and keep surprises for players. All my future ship builds will follow this plan.