Subject:
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The Wobbegong sails forth
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.loc.au
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Date:
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Tue, 13 Mar 2001 04:51:06 GMT
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Viewed:
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1111 times
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I finally finished my pirate vessel The Wobbegong last weekend.
As regular readers will doubtless know, this pirate vessel was being
constructed from a rather pirate-free Lego collection. It was loosely based
on the Black Sea Barracuda, but it got looser and looser as the parts became
less and less matching, both in shape and in colour.
The end result is a pirate ship that no self-respecting pirate would sail
in. However, this is OK as none of the pirates on The Wobbegone have any
respect for themselves or anyone else. My pirates all come from broken
homes, and like nothing better than killing people and then boasting about
it in seedy harbour bars. They aren't the kind of gentleman buccaneers who
sit around reading "Vogue Shipping" or "Boat Beautiful".
Seriously, the biggest problems with building a pirate ship without the
right parts are:
* the hull
* the masts
* the sails
* the ratlines
The hull. Actually I had a 16-stud-wide bow and stern, but no center
sections. If I hadn't had the bow and stern, I probably wouldn't have even
considered trying to build a pirate vessel at all. However, the lack of
centre sections wasn't a big deal. Thanks to Star Wars I had a lot of black
and dark grey inverse slopes and used them to build the centre hull
sections. Since that area is naturally shaded with any overhead lighting,
the colour matching isn't terribly important.
The masts. I had two from different sources, and one was way too short. The
masts are not well designed for extending. The mast pieces themselves seem
to be designed to only fit other mast pieces. It isn't possible to extend
them by inserting 2x2 rounds or similar because they just won't join
together. Grr. Since the mast terminates with a 4x4 plate, my only way to
make the mast higher was to build up underneath it, so I have one mast
mounted on a large pedestal. I needed a third mast for the bowsprit, so that
had to be built from 2x2 rounds with a couple of 2x4 plates interspersed to
provide points for connecting the sales (using 1x1 tool clips). The problem
with using 2x2 rounds is that lying on their side (as the bow sprit), they
fall apart all the time. Fortunately 2x2 rounds have a crosshair hole
through the centre, so I was able to reinforce them by putting a couple of
long technics axles down the centre of the mast.
The sails. Having no sails, it was clear I was going to have to make them.
This caused me to enter a Spotlight store in pursuit of some striped fabric
and some black cotton for the rigging. I realise that Spotlight stores are
probably places where lots of women hang out, but for me, it was a whole new
experience. I vaguely knew they sold dress material and craft items, but the
scale of the place overwhelmed me somewhat. (As Mel tells me, I don't get
out much!)0. There appeared to be 1000s of bolts of fabric, 1000s of spools
of thread of all kinds, and it was quite arduous to search through them all
to find something suitable. When I eventually happened upon a suitable
looking cloth, I bought too much, as I wasn't prepared to risk going in
there again!
Cutting sails was fairly easy for the sails that come off the yards. I just
started with a too-large rectangle and gradually whittled them down to about
the right shape. However, the jib sail has a lot of attachment points and
the precise positioning of the holes was more important than I realised. As
a consequence, the jib does not sit completely flat when I put the rigging
under tension. I had toyed with asking someone to scan their sails to give
me a pattern, but as I was using non-standard masts, I realised that I
wouldn't have been able to use the standard-shaped sails anyway.
The ratlines. I had a couple of ratlines (those brown lattice-shaped
structures that taper from bottom to top) but I needed 4 and I needed much
bigger ones. The ratlines were definitely the biggest problem. I fiddled
around with 1xN plates for a while but nothing was working. Eventually I
decided that any Lego solution was going to be too heavyweight, so I
attached a couple of horizontal bars (off the Model Team 4x4 Big Foot) to
the toolclips intended for the ratlines and rang cotton up and down between
them several times. I toyed with trying to put horizontal threads across in
some manner, but decided that the up-and-down cotton alone gives the right
effect at that scale, and left it at that. I think any attempt to tie knots
in the cotton would have just made it very messy, and caused the ratlines to
buckle.
The figurehead. Just for the record, the figurehead features the head and
torso of Princess Leia (from the Millennium Falcon) brandishing a small
silver knife and a wine goblet, representing the pirate's love of wine,
women, and violence. She is mounted on a a rocking-hinge so that she can lie
forward below the bowsprit. Curiously (or so it seems to me) the figurehead
of the Black Sea Barracuda is bolt upright. At this late stage, I realised
that I had forgotten to put coins under the mast (to pay the ferryman). Not
wishing to undo my rigging at this stage of proceedings, I compromised by
putting Leia's torso in a yellow life preserver. I felt this would represent
the pirate's confidence in the seaworthiness of their vessel :-)
I added a skeleton in a pirate cap (which came from the Flying Ninja
Fortress) hanging by the neck in a noose from the yards. I felt it would
send a clear message from my pirates: "Nobody laughs at The Wobbegong and
lives!".
Having set sail last weekend, the Wobbegong has since terrorised a number of
Islander communities, who are themselves recent immigrants from Melbourne.
These Islanders are now cursing the name of their former governor Sue Ann
Barber, who cast them out to fend for themselves on the pirate-ridden shores
of Brisbane. Their canoes and outriggers are no match for the cannons of the
Wobbegong; they pray to their gods of large carved stone heads, but to no
avail! Their pet monkey and parrots were ruthlessly stolen by the pirates to
adorn their accursed vessel!
Kerry
--
Kerry Raymond, Lady BUG
Lugnet Member #599
Mindstorms, Technics, Star Wars
Brisbane, Australia
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: The Wobbegong sails forth
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| Any pictures? (And how can we help the ex-Melbourne islanders?) ROSCO Kerry Raymond <kerry@dstc.edu.au> wrote in message news:GA4DJK.FCI@lugnet.com... (...) (24 years ago, 13-Mar-01, to lugnet.loc.au)
| | | Re: The Wobbegong sails forth
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| (...) (URL) I particularly liked the skeleton hangng from the halyard(?). Pirates in Brisbane eh? Sounds like a job for <<pause and flourish>> Captain Sheridan of the Agamemnon ((URL) of Port Block ;-) (...) This is a cackle - what else is there to (...) (24 years ago, 14-Mar-01, to lugnet.loc.au, lugnet.pirates)
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