SMS WESPE 1876 by wefalck – 1/160 scale - Armored Gunboat of the Imperial German Navy - as first commissioned
S.M.S. WESPE (HENK, 1895)
History and context
The WESPE-Class armoured gun-boats of the then young Imperial German Navy were born out of a tactical concept that dated well back into the Napoleonic era. The idea was to mount a heavy long-range gun onto a highly mobile small craft that would be able to retire into shallow coastal waters, beyond the range of even the heavy artillery of an attacking fleet. The addition of a steam engine and the increase in calibre followed the devel
Block-Making 1
The 1/160 scale from certain perspectives is rather inconvenient actually: too big to fake things and too small to do them properly due to practical limitations of tool sizes and materials dimensions.
Blocks at this scale would probably come in the range between 0.8 mm and 2 mm length. The latter would be a hefty 32 cm (or 13”) in real size, at least for smaller ships.
When I started dabbling with photo-etching in around 2007, I had the idea to fashion block
