Ok... The pilgrims need to have a good vessel so I decided to use not only paper and carton. Still I hope to use other materials as less as possible.
Material:
The main material I will use here is c.a. 1mm carton from frozen pizza boxes (I got a lot of it
), 2mm carton from my wife's puzzle box, balsa wood (1mm, 1.5mm, 2mm, 4mm), and I still need to buy some card (maybe something like 200g/cm2 or more) and of course the self adhesive foil which resembles wood.
Actually, seeing this wonderful creations one can make with this foil encouraged me to try it out by myself. The glue I use is PA and some kind of water based Finnish universal glue "ERi K E E P E R". But I think I can throw the latter one away...
First steps:
At first I made a quick tryout with the 1mm carton to get an overview about the hull, board planks, position of decks and cannons (see first picture).
Then I decided to make the center part of the frame out of balsa wood because the keel is 3mm thick (two 1.5mm plates glued together). Here I used this 'Eri keeper' and after my wife told me it is water based it was already too late and the plates banded into a slight curve. However, the other parts were made of the 2mm thick carton and keep the whole frame more or less in good shape. The gun deck was made out of 1mm carton.
Now, was it the beer or my inexperience with "scratch builds", I don't know, but somehow I decided to make three of the frames exactly there where the cannons are supposed to be. But actually, afterwards I was quite happy, because carton is not wood, and therefore not so stable and the frames keep the gunports in place...
I also experimented a little bit with the wood resembling foil and made a little 'test deck'. The last picture show the result before and after 'altering treatment'. I used brown oil paint for this purpose.
Here are some pictures so far.
That's it for now, at the moment I work on the gunports (decided to make them in wooden appearance since this was originally a trading vessel and not a war ship) and think about the next steps...
Regards,
Radek