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Stan Traas
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Anybody watching Vikings on history Channel?

March 10, 2013 · in Uncategorized · · 15 · 2.3K

This is the (Germany, I think) kit in somewhere around scale (imagine that 😉 ).
It's a pretty good kit, based on the Gokstad ship. The mast, yard & spars were replaced with wood dowels turned in my hyper sophisticated DeWalt screw gun lathe with 120 grit sandpaper ( whoo boy, high tech I tell ya). Just wish I'd been turned on to artist's oils when I built it... could have done some much better wood effects on the hull.

Reader reactions:
4  Awesome

7 additional images. Click to enlarge.


15 responses

  1. Apologies for a few redundant pics... select all not always your friend...

  2. Hey Stan, looks like real wood to me. Actually very nice and something a little different, but where is Hagar the Horrible 😉

  3. Nice looking model. "Vikings" is about as hysterical as anything else on the Hysterical Channel. (And any relationship between the show and, you know, actual history is as coincidental as any other "history" on that channel since they got bought up by Viacom and populated the Executive Offices with the spawn-of-Satan MTV Channel grads - I say that as someone who has had dealings with them)

    • Couldn't agree more, Tom. In my curmudgeonly view, a great deal of whats wrong with society is that corporations have allowed ill mannered, poorly educated tasteless brats to make decisions with nothing more than the bottom line in mind. Oh dear... I need to stop now...

  4. Wow! I love the wooden ships!

  5. Nice job. I work with wood all day (when I have a commission) and have no talent when it comes to imitating it. Problem is, natural wood grain impossible to scale down. Wood,at any scale, is still 1:1. You have managed to get it right-a real talent.

    • Thanks much for the compliment. Though it's not visible in these photos, the hull is molded with some very well done grain patterns. Naturally the texture is a bit out of scale, but with layering different colors and careful creative sanding, some very nice effects can be achieved.

  6. You mean it's NOT wood..? Coulda fooled me..! A "10" (even without Snert) - 

  7. Excellent wood grain effect, oils are how I do 'wood', but however you did it, it's very very convincing, and way better than my usual efforts. Great work.

  8. Just found your build, your shields are most realistic as is the weathering.

  9. Stan, outstanding rigging, build, and painting.
    How did you do the wood? It's impressive!

  10. Great job , I just purchased the kit and would love to know how you painted the hull.

    • If I recall correctly (and that's a fair sized IF), I sprayed the hull flat black, then primer gray then Tamiya Deck Tan, lightly sanded here and there to let the gray & black show through due to the kit's nicely molded grain pattern, then sort of washed on a couple of shades of brown water based (Polly Scale maybe?) paints suggesting individual planks. Today I would add an oil wash as a final step.

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