ACW Naval update week six

Another quick photo log update documenting activity on the blog. Lots of little tasks have been completed. This means a couple of items are 'done' with many more limping on towards completion. It is starting to feel like progress is being made. So, more coal for the boiler fire and keep on steamin' for the goal!

What's done!

The 6 gun earthen battery from Bay Area Yards is a great model of a water battery or other suitable fortification for your naval games. The battery floor and interior walls have a brick surface with capstone on top of the wall. I've equipped the model with models of 32 pounders (which could double for guns up to say 8") on garrison carriages from Thoroughbred Figures.

Battery Buchanan is completed! This is a large four gun battery that was an element of Fort Fisher in North Carolina. The left hand guns looks out of position. Have to check on that...

To convey the size of this model, that's a Thoroughbred Figures USS Sassacus behind the battery model.

...and with the 6 gun battery immediately in front of it.

What's coming along...

Rigging continues on CSS Florida. Moved on to bracing the main mast. Hope to have that done this week and then finish the mizzen mast next week.

 

Closeup of the foremast. Just realized - I still need to paint the sails. So...a little moire work, but not too much. And really thinking about repainting those twin stacks a dark gray or black.

USS Varuna. The rigging is installed. Now to paint the riggning, tough up the rest of the paint job and install the guns.

Three new projects past the assembly stage  USS Lackawanna and CSS McRae and USS Kearsarge.

Another new model almost assembled - CSS/USS Calhoun from Bay Area Yards.

There are eight parts that make up the pictured model. Still need to add the walking beam and guns.

USS Lackawanna, assembled and ready for priming.

Close up of the forward end of USS Lackawanna's spar deck.

Aft end of USS Lackawanna. The rigging is minimal as would reflect a ship in combat.

USS Lackawanna after application of the primer coat. Should be able to get started on the paint job this week!

USS Kearsarge - ready for priming.

CSS McRae. This was a quick asssembly job. The most trying thing was getting the yards attached to the masts. I used JB Weld and a small clamp to affix the yards to the mast.

McRae after a coat of primer has covered most of the model.

ACW Naval Week three status report

Good progress was made this week!

The CSS Selma model from Bay Area Yards is cruising to completion awaiting a bit of touch up to the paint and the completion of the painting of the 'water' effect on the base. The - of course - the four cannon have to be glued to the deck. A protective gloss/flat coat finish is preferred, but the wintry weather make that unlikely. (Though to be honest, this winter's weather is all over the place thanks to "El Nino".)

Here's CSS Selma out for a shakedown cruise

Port bow quarter view.

Ship is painted in Vallejo paints. Basalt Gray on the hull, stack and hogging beams. Light gray on the deck and
 superstructure fore and aft faces. Moss green over the tan primer for the 'sea' effect (still a work in process).

 

What's wrong? Never seen the hand of God before? Okay, I admit it. I don't know what happened here.

CSS Patrick Henry getting closer to completion. Her sister model CSS Thomas Jefferson is in about the same state.

The USS Minnesota from Bay Area Yards. Still a lot of work to do here before it's ready for the table.

 Many years ago, I bought a Thoroughbred Models kit of USS Sassascus for the purpose of turning it to parts for other shipbuilding projects.  I'm working on finishing the ship using a variety of parts includes styrene and masts from Bay Area Yards. The kit is close to completion. Adding the guns and the standing rigging is about all that is left. I've painted the model in the late war overall gray scheme used in near shore waters while on blockade duty.

The masts are from Bay Area Yards. The other bits are Thoroughbred.

USS Powhatan in the foreground. In the early stages with this one. Lots of work to complete.

The figures lurking in the background are from the Atomic Cafe line. President for life Nixon and his Secret Service bodyguards, Got a couple of projects in mind for these figures. Arrrroooo!

ACW Naval 2016 Week 1 status report

A short update of what I've accomplished this week. It feels like slow going, but much of the challenge is tied to the holidays and the marginal weather we've had. I've been focused on assembly and priming to move some of these projects forward.  To help stay motivated, I want to do at least a weekly post this year showing the progress and process of getting the ACW ship models ready for the game table.

CSS Selma after a coat of primer.

CSS Selma acquired her first coat of primer. This is a model from Bay Area Yards. Given that I missed a spot she may require a second coat to hit those hard to reach places.

CSS Selma - the pronounced overhang of the deck made getting the spray paint onto the hull a challenge. This will likely need a second coat of primer before painting begins.

 
 The real progress was in the assembly of  the CSS Patrick Henry and her near sister CSS Thomas Jefferson (Yorktown). Both models are from Bay Area Yards.These two gunboats saw service with the Confederate James River squadron. Both participated in the Battle of Hampton Roads, and Patrick Henry served to the end of the war.

Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson. Or is that vice versa?

These two kits have been awaiting assembly for a number of years now. There are impressive number of parts. This is one reason why the models have been sitting so long. I just didn't want to tackle all the fiddly bits. But that's over. Using JB Weld, the paddlewheel houses, superstructure and masts have been attached.

Port broadside

Patrick Henry and Selma together.

I'm glad I assembled these models - they really make for a pair of pretty ships. Now to get them painted and rigged so they can be used on the tabletop!

Assembling the Bay Area Yard's CSS Selma kit

My ACW naval collection addiction knows no bounds. So when Bay Area Yards added a model of CSS Selma to their product line I quickly purchased a copy. And that's where 'quickly' died. I think the hogging means intimidated me from tackling assemble.  Selma went into the backlog queue and garnered no attention.

Until now.

I pulled the kit out this week with the goal of assembling the model. The first step was a quick wash in hot, soapy water to remove any lingering mold release agent. After a year spent 'aging' on the shelf, the model appears to have cleaned up nicely after it's bath.

Second was trimming and sanding. The bottom of the hull had a little bit of flash. Nothing unusual when working with resin kits. The hobby knife and a file made short work of the flash. More troublesome were some bubbles of resin under the deck overhang. Using a # 58 drill bit on my Dremel (tm) tool, I was able to remove the resin bubble residue. This was being really picky as once the model is based, no one will see the work I put in under the decking.

Okay - let's get this party started! The hull in a nice single piece that contains the superstructure and wheelhouses. There is an identation for the hole that accepts the pin in the stack, but you need to bore it out. Again using the #58 drill bit in the  Dremel, I bored out the hole. The mast pin slid in easily. Using a little CA glue, I glued the stack in position, carefully lining up the secondary exhaust stack in line with the long axis of the ship.


The pilot house is a little rectangle. This is glued atop the superstructure on the forward edge facing the bow.

There is a skylight that is added to t he superstructure aft of the smokestack. A little CA glue will hold this part in place.

Overhead view showing the instaslled pilot house, stack and skylight over the cabin.

Next up is the hard part - the hog frames. These timber beams served as 'hog chains' designed to prevent the bow and stern from sagging or rising. The frames give Selma a distinctive look. Each frame needed light sanding to clean up the pieces and sharpen some edges. This was a delicate task and the hog frames are delicate pieces of resin.

The hog frames. You can see some rough spots in this close up that required a little sanding and filing.

Installation was done by applying a CA to the back of the frame facing the wheelhouse and the to the bottom of the four contacts with the deck. There is a little bit of guesstimation in where ti align the frames. I tried to center them best I could without blocking the view from the pilot house. Once one frame is installed, repeat the process on the other side.

The assembled model sans ordnance.

Overhead view of the bow end...

...and the stern end

At this point assembly is done. Next up will be painting the model and the guns.

Rekindling the fire for 1/600 ACW Naval games

Ten years ago I was obsessed with naval actions of the American Civil War. I'd written rules for campaign games (Anaconda) and tabletop games (Iron Thunder) and collected a ridorkulously large collection of 1/600 scale ship models. But for the past eight years, ACW naval got pushed to the back burner while other interests took priority.

But in the past few weeks, I've rediscovered my interest in ACW naval. I've had some great conversations with people like Stephen Taylor at Bay Area Yards and the boys in my local gaming group. So, I pulled out some boxes and started dusting off the ships. I mean literally dusting off the ships. They had like 8 years of dust accumulated on them.

One of the big changes since I'd put there away is the ease of sharing stuff on the web...like through this blog!  So as I'm pulling them out, I thought it would be fun to post pictures of some of the models so you get a feel for my skill level (or lack thereof) in modeling and painting 1/600 scales ships. And without further delay...on to some of the ships!

USS Galena. This was the first or second attempt I made at scratchbuilding a ship model.

USS Galena  was a steamship converted into an ironclad. Not a stunning success, but the ship appears in a handful of important naval engagements and at the time, you could not find a model anywhere in 1/600. Forunately, this is a relatively easy ship to model. Which is good as I managed to produce a decent gaming piece that no one will mistake for a contest quality model. I captured the important features that identify the ship. In hindsight, I wish I'd worked on the stern a bit more.

The ship has a balsa wood core which is covered is sheets of Evergreen styrene. The bowsprit is styrene as are the railings, stack, mast and the flying bridge. The standing rigging is fine steel wire. The base is my standard - styrene with Woodland Scenics flexpaste applied and painted in layers of brown tan and light green. 

Pulled back to show the whole model

And a view of the port side.

USS Rhode Island. This is a Bay Area Yards model.

Another shot of Rhode Island. She was the towing ship when USS Monitor sank.

Another Bay Area Yards model - USS Ossipee. This uses one of thet mast kits from BAY.

USS Ossipee is a great kit of one of the smaller blue water steamers in the Union Navy. 

I rigged the kit using thin steel wire. This actually serves as functional standing rigging and provides additional strength and rigidity to all the masts.The masts don't have a stiff core and need the rigging to keep them straight.

Another BAY kit. USS Minnesota. An early effort of mine. I recycled the masts from a very old TCS blockade runner kit and added a minimal amount of rigging. She's srtipped down for combat with the upper masts and sails struck below.

Here's a Peter Pig USS Monitor next to the Minnesota for comparison.

What's the Monitor without USS Congress?

USS Congress again. I scratchbuilt all the masts on this and USS Cumberland out of styrene. Even the standing rigging is styrene. The ratlines are from a window screen material.  They are not perfect, but for a gaming model they get the point across.

Monitor, Minnesota, Congress (on the left) and Cumberland (rear)

A side by side shot. The Peter Pig monitor is a nice easy kit and true to its prototype.

Another Peter Pig model - the mortar schooner. 

Again, the ratlines are from window screen material. If I remember correctly I scratch built the masts and the shaft of the bowsprit. The base is styrene with Flexpaste applied and painted in suitable 'riverine' colors. 

A Thoroughbred armed ferryboat steams past a mortar schooner.

I'll print the name on paper that matches the table top and tape the name to the ship.