New Sails for Playmobil Ships
Here is Billy Hill’s way of making and reason new sails for Playmobil Ships.
How to Make New Sails for Playmobil Ships
Playmobil is obsessed with piracy. At least it seems so. Most of the square rigged ships available from them seem to incorporate pirate motifs on the sails. The only problem with that is that pirates need both merchant shipping to prey upon and naval ships to fight or flee from. I could have simply traced Playmobil sails and cut out plain white ones, but I wanted to do more than that.
One of the sails in my Playmobil collection was undecorated, showing only the seams and edging that all sails need to have. I scanned it into my computer and added various graphics that I found online. I have produced both plain sails and decorated ones. I was encouraged by the results to add graphics to the sails on my Playmobil Viking longships as well. For the new sails, I used heavyweight rag paper that I bought in the art supply section at Michaels Craft Store.
As long as I was embellishing the ships in my fleet anyway, I decided to add more rigging [nominally correct-LOL] to make them visually more interesting.
Sweet. I’m currently in the middle of buying loose climbing ropes, etc; from old Playmobil and Lego or whatever to “finish” the Barzso Schooner my beloved other half got me for Christmas. Just bought some Ideal Pirates I hope to paint and convert for Crew – and dig out my Marx guys (just hope they’re not too big, been awhile since I got them out). I hope to make an beautiful piece even better – but IMHO it’s like trying to improve on perfection. Your idea will definitely be useful as navies expand. Thanks again for sharing your ingenuity.
Thanks Wayne!
Although I do have a small supply of the string that Playmobil provides for it’s ships, it tends to fray under reuse. I bought skeins of variously colored beading thread in different weights, again from Michaels. Having an endless supply, I can clip the rigging off if it gets snarled or if I don’t like the results.
Awesome Job Billy !
Is that the 5135 playmobil pirate ship? What is the best detailed and largest playmobil pirate ship to purchase? There’s so many variations to me a novice. I have the pirates of the Caribbean ship which is nice but wishe to get one from playmobil. Please educate me on the models and variations. Thankbyou
Do you have Zizzle pirate ship that came out around 2007? I acquired a couple of them in used condition for use by the Royal Navy. They are a great size to put lots of crew aboard. I didn’t care if they had all the parts because I plan to use them with reefed sails. The main problem with them was that shipping from ebay sellers was about as costly as the item. I amanaged to get each for about $70 to $75 in total. I really like the size of these ships at around 3 feet long. I may have to eventually do some work on these to downsize some of the elements for 54mm and 60 mm pirate/sailors. For instance, the stairs are much to tall for the figures and the wheel is a bit high, although the size is not bad.
On playmobile, I’ve acquired several of these in used form for my American navy and Smugglers. This is set for the War for Independence Period. I really like the Playmobile Ships for their looks once you take away their figures. They look great as well with the 54mm and 60mm figures. Unfotuantely, the ships I have didn’t come with the model numbers, although they were generally listed on the ebay sales. As far as finding the largest ships, without Billy’s ID’s, I could only think of going to images searches online and trying to match them to the large Spanish ship that Billy rigged.
To man the ships, I’ve added as many different brands of pirates plus the Replicants Nelson’s Navy and Smugglers figures. I also added the AIP British 19th century Navy figures and will figure out ways to backdate those figures. I will probably add in some Rev War figures of varoious makes as well.
There was a Zizzle ship remodel on a site for gaming. This is for 22mm, but a similar conversion could be done for 54/60 mm.
http://s263.photobucket (dot) com/user/Arteis/media/Pirtateship_P2240985.jpg.html
Construction upgrade by stages with photos of Zizzle Ship
https://dawnofthelead (dot) com/2015/05/07/pirate-madness/
https://dawnofthelead (dot) com/2015/05/10/ship-building/
https://dawnofthelead (dot) com/2015/05/18/more-ship-building/
https://dawnofthelead (dot) com/2015/05/31/batten-down-the-hatches/
https://dawnofthelead (dot) com/2015/06/09/paint-it-brown/
https://dawnofthelead (dot) com/2015/06/15/foredeck-work/
https://dawnofthelead (dot) com/2015/07/10/holding-it-up/
https://dawnofthelead (dot) com/2015/09/30/painting-the-ship/
replace the (dot) with a period to find these sites.
I wouldn’t do this typw thing with coffee stirrers, but the construction ideas are great and the changes to the ship are interesting.
Sorry, Paul, I tried to set these up so it wouldn’t need moderation but my idea didn’t work well enough.
Eddie,
My guess is that the largest would be the 4290 playmobil pirate ship. The 5135 model looks like what Billy has modified, as was your guess.
playmobil had done over dozen different pirate ship.
Right now only two are kept as main line produced.http://www.playmobil.us/on/demandware.store/Sites-US-Site/en_US/Search-Show?q=ship
Rest are still in some stores around or eBay.
finding in store avoid the shipping cost that is a lot because playmobil toys are bulky if in original case and a bit heavy in case of large items such ships.
on eBay you often find deal as seller sale then off cases and with some easy to replace missing parts.
when googling on eBay just use generic pirate ship and many will pup up, if search direct x playmobil brand ,prices will go up because seller know they are not cheap.
I’m not fan of pirate at all;,but that is how I got the Viking ship more cheaper than direct looking at playmobil category.
again shipping is costly, I often ask seller to ship loose out original case and take apart as much he can, protection is not much concern, these toys are hard to brake ,very well done quality plastic .
That is my suggestion.
Good ideas Erwin. I got a headache looking through ebay at “pirate ship” but it did turn up some pretty inexpensive ship deals. I looked for ships which were incomplete, and even looked at items with total cost including shipping under $40 and $50, etc depending on what is wanted. The problem with this was that a lot of pirate figures turned up in the search.
First i saw the MPC ship upgrades, then the these playmobil upgrades. this stuff is great, Billy. These are great ideas and I like the work. I like the idea of replacing the pirate sails with plain sails for my particular use. I will look also at doing reefed sails. The rigging is a nice touch. That looks beyond what I want in flexibility with manning and arming the ships I have.
Hi,
Very intersting.
I have a question, in my case some of my boats have missing sails. I was wondering what kind of paper or tissue i need to use to recreate those sails. And also where I can find patterns for sails.
Thanks in advance