Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Ancien Navires de Guerre - Old Flats


Recently bought on French eBay.  Reasonably priced, they were worth going for.  The cream of the crop was a battleship in the style of HMS Victoria, but I dropped out when the bidding went north of $30.  As you might expect, the factory paint is hastily done. The small battleship also had a broken base.  The ships are actually quite small relative to the Spenkuchs, between 4-8cm in length.

The larger ship (armored cruiser ?) has raised lettering on the bottom of the end bases, "L.P" and "Paris" respectively. Any ideas as to the maker ?  The torpedo boat is pretty generic but the other two ships certainly have that French look.  Let's see how they look with the paint removed.



I messed up the small battleship, managed to break off the stern mounted ensign while wiping off the paint stripper.  On the plus side, I did give it a base (made of wine bottle foil folded a couple of times for added strength).

And as repainted.







I'm not completely satisfied with my tromp-l'oeil attempt to lower the decks fore and aft on the armored cruiser but it's still an improvement on the original, I suppose. Or perhaps not. With the old flat soldiers I'm pretty confident that I can always better the factory paint but in the case of these ships perhaps the repaints didn't justify removing the original antique finish.

Anyway, after this brief naval interlude we'll soon return to land warfare. I'm on the last four Prussian infantrymen now so should have the battalion finished and photographed in a week or so.

9 comments:

  1. Thanks, Peter. Good to hear from you.

    Regards,
    Steve

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  2. These are very nice indeed, and you've done an excellent job giving them a 'period' paint job. I've got a thin booklet in my library - 'French Battleships 1876-1946, by R A Burt (London, 1990, Arms & Armour) that has a number of photos that look not unlike your armoured cruiser.

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  3. As a disinterested/uniformed observer, i think they look much more attarctive after you stripped and painted them. esp the torpedo boat and the cruiser.

    -Ross

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  4. They are much improved! Lovely.

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  5. Thanks very much for the kind words, gentlemen.

    An odd thing about the two models representing capital ships: no bridge or larger superstructure forward. From the shape of the hulls and smoke direction it's pretty clear which is the bow and which is the stern but the overall effect is slightly disconcerting.

    Regards,
    Steve

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  6. Hi Steve, there were two French toy firms using the mark L.P the first was La Parisienne which was registerd in 1911 and made figures exclusively for Lucotte, the second was Le Pahun registered in 1924. They both made infantry of WW1 in 50mm and I have seen figures marked L.P. and L.P. Paris attributed to both of them so they may have been the same firm with two registered trade marks, we may never know. They were sometimes sold in boxed sets with cannon or tin vehicles made by Simon and Rivolet, your ship could have been an accesory in a larger boxed set.

    best wishes, Brian

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  7. Brian,

    Thanks for that, excellent knowledge.

    Regards,
    Steve

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  8. I can not find a reference in mailing you a message invitation so please email me back! dougwoz at charter.net

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