{"id":89,"date":"2018-01-15T18:04:07","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T18:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/justanotherpirateblog.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/15\/anchors\/"},"modified":"2023-12-23T14:58:45","modified_gmt":"2023-12-23T14:58:45","slug":"anchors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justanotherpirateblog.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/15\/anchors\/","title":{"rendered":"Anchors"},"content":{"rendered":"

What does a painted anchor actually look like?<\/p>\n

My Blood & Plunder Sloop<\/a> comes with two anchors. (Actually, mine came with the top cross-pieces but not the lower anchor parts. Almost a year later when I’m ready to put it together I discover this. The Firelock Games customer support is excellent: soon I have the bottom parts and am ready to proceed.)<\/p>\n

But then comes the question: what should the anchors actually look like? Probably not like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This from a reported find that they think is one of Blackbeard’s ships. Beside the encrustations, note that the shape is the same as the B&P Sloop’s anchors and that the wooden crossbar has rotted away. That’s to be expected.<\/p>\n

I started by gluing the two parts together, careful to position the crossbar at 90 degrees to the anchor bottom. You’ll see lots of logos and emblems of anchors with the crossbars parallel to the bottom, but that’s just for effect on a two-dimensional surface. If they really were that way, there would be no need to cast in two pieces.<\/p>\n

Back to the color.<\/p>\n

Here’s a period anchor today:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is exactly like the sloop anchors. Seawater rusts and pits the metal anchors and weathers the wood gray. Here’s what I did to achieve the effect:<\/p>\n

1. Undercoat, of course. I used black primer. I only use black primer to undercoat things that will get a metallic color. I think it brings out the metal colors better.<\/p>\n

2. Painted the metal parts gunmetal gray. One sees anchors painted black–and it makes sense that, back in the 17th century, that was a good way to preserve the metal. But I wanted a used look. It might not be wrong to add some rust-red coloring.<\/p>\n

3. Painted the wood brown. In retrospect, that was a mistake. Should probably just have left it black. Most wood is going to have a whitish color, although there are naturally water-resistant species that may have another coloring. Under the influence\u00a0 of the un and the salt water, however, it will soon become gray, as in the photo.<\/p>\n

4. Had another go: repainted the wood parts dark gray.<\/p>\n

5. Painted the iron bands around the wooden bar gunmetal gray. A light touch here, almost like dry-brushing. It’s an interesting construction: two wooden beams each with a rabbet that, when put together, forms a hole for the anchor. The bands serve to hold the two beams together and also to keep the beams from falling apart as they age.<\/p>\n

6. Almost done! Since Firelock have put some wood grain detail on the bar, I put a wash of Devlan Mud on it. Helps bring out the detail.<\/p>\n

Here’s an (admittedly fairly poor) photo of the finished anchors:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The color in the photo isn’t very good. They look a lot like the header photo.<\/p>\n

Now, how do you attach them? Here’s a picture of an anchor on a period ship, possibly either a reconstruction or a restored ship:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Firelock site shows the anchors hooked over the gunwales in what I think is a highly unlikely configuration. There is hole in the side of the ship for an anchor chain, so I think I’ll affix the anchors to a chain that runs through those holes. Haven’t got the ship painted yet, so that will have to wait.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What does a painted anchor actually look like?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":86,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-painting-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justanotherpirateblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justanotherpirateblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justanotherpirateblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justanotherpirateblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justanotherpirateblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/justanotherpirateblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260,"href":"https:\/\/justanotherpirateblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justanotherpirateblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justanotherpirateblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justanotherpirateblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justanotherpirateblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}