Aeronef - The Knights of St John

My latest Aeronef project, a group of six scratch-built Aeronefs. The models portray part of the huge fleet of Aeronefs sent by the Holy League to defend the Mediterranean against the Nefs of the Ottoman Empire at the Third Battle of Lepanto in 1898. In particular The Knights of St John contingent.

Photo One - The full fleet, prior to ship name plates being added to their bases.

Photo Two - The construction process. From left to right; The hull master carved and modelled from layers of plastic card, the first three hulls, cast in car-repair resin (bought from Halfords) and the mould, which as you can see is badly damaged. The damage happened when the mould was made - I added too little mould material, not enough to fully cover the hull. In the end I managed to get six OK castings.

Photo Three - The first three hulls, in this case the three Galleas Models with the tails added.

Photo Four - The six cast hulls, three are as above, two have sections cut from the middle to make them smaller (Galley's) and the final model is two hulls cut and glued together to make the Galleon or Flagship. You can also see where I have used filler to re-model the section of the hull that was mis-cast due to the mould being damaged.

Photo Five - Work-in-progess shot, the tails and the out-riggers for the hull turrets have been added, these are made from sections of knitting needle, sawn in to thin discs, then cut in half and super glued to the hull sides, easy to do, just time consuming.

The larger hull has an additional layer of 1mm plastic card added to the deck to build up the size of the hull, while the white circle and small dots are more filler added to bubbles in the resin casting.

For scale purposes, each of the small squares is 1cm x 1cm.

Photo Six - As above, but now with the main deck structures in place made from 3mm thick plastic card. Most of the construction is done with medium super glue and accelerator.

Photo Seven - A group photo showing most of the construction completed.

Photo Eight - The main Galleon or Flagship Real or Reale.

Photos Nine and Ten - The Three Galleases, first a single Aeronef shot, then as a group of three.

Photos Eleven and Twelve - The smaller Galley's, less well armed, but faster and more maneuverable. As you can see I have tried to keep a 'family resemblance' to all six aeronefs, while adding some variety.

Materials used include more plastic card, plastic rod, more knitting needles, sections of sprue, cocktail sticks and sticky labels.

Photo Thirteen - the models undercoated in grey primer.

Photos Fourteen and Fifteen - The finished Galleon or Flagship Real, please note that the flagship is flying the standard of the Holy League or Estandarte Liga Santa and not the more usual cross of Malta.

Photo Sixteen to Nineteen - The three Galleases.

Photos Twenty,Twenty One and Twenty Two - Show the finished Galleys.

Photo Twenty Three - Another group photo of the completed fleet of Aeronefs, The grand fleet of the order of St John, Malta.

The models have been great fun to build and paint, they have taken about three weeks work (on and off) from start to finish, however the idea has been 'brewing' for some years. I am pleased that I have finally realised this idea and now look forward to a break, or maybe building a sister fleet of Aeronefs from The Papal States to support them. But then I will just have to build an Ottoman fleet to game against!

The mishap with the initial mould was a bit negative, but the project still went ahead and the damage to the hulls, through the hole in the mould, had very little effect on the models. The colour scheme is not an original idea, but is in fact copied from a similar Knights of St John Aeronef model by Vanvlak and seen over on the Wessex Games Victorian Science Fiction Yahoo Group. The hull colour is a mix of Games Workshop Scab Red and Blood Red, the first time I have used Scab Red and I am very pleased with the result - sort of Plum Red.

Future plans include checking-out clear plastic, hexagonal bases, rather than the round ones.

Tony