"Ironclad Armor?" Topic

A question for more practiced scratchbuilders than me:

I'm putting together a scratchbuilt 28mm ironclad model for a game being run at Historicon this summer. I picked the CSS Tennessee, which had armored 'plate' made of pounding iron railroad ties flat and layering across the superstructure of the ship.

I'm looking for some sort of plastic card or similar that will simulate this iron cladding- something about the right width, not hard to cut, etc. Has anybody worked with anything in the past that would fit the bill and look goodon this ship?

Any help or advice is very much appreciated.

TIES? Not Rails? The ties are usually baulks of wood…

The casemate of the vessel is very strongly built, It is seventy
eight (78) feet eight (8) inches long, and twenty eight (28) feet
nine (9) ins wide inside, the sides of the vessel extending ten
(10) feet from it on either side at the greatest bredth of beam
The framing consists of heavy yellow pine beams, thirteen
(13) inches thick, and placed close together vertically, outside
planking of yellow pine, five and a half (5 1/2) inches thick,
laid on horizontally, and outside of this horizontal planking,
therethere is a layer of oak timber four inches thick, bolted on
vertically, upon which the iron plating is secured.
The plating or armor of the casemate forward is six (6)
inches thick, consisting of three two (2) inch iron plates, of
about six (6) inches wide each, and abaft, and on the sides five
(5) inches thick, consisting of two (2) two (2) inch and one (1)
one (1) inch iron plates of the same width.
The yellow pine framing of the casemate is planked over
inside with two and a half (2 1/2) inch oak timber laid on
diagonally.
The whole of the armor plating is fastened with through
bolts, one and a quarter (1 1/4) inch diameter, with washers and
nuts inside
The casemate is covered on top with wrought-iron gratings,
composed of bars two (2) inches thick and six (6) inches wide,
laid flat, and supported on wooden beams twelve (12) inches
square, and about five (5) feet distant from each other. Some of
these gratings are ringed and fitted to open from the inside.
There are ten (10) gun ports in the casemate, two (2) in
the broadside, on either side, three (3) forward and three (3)
aft.
The forward and after ports, to port and starboard, are
placed so as to enable the forward and after pivot guns to be used
as broadside guns. The directly forward and after ports are on a
line with the Keel.
The ports are elongated and made just wide enough for the
entrance of the muzzle of the guns in training, and only high
enough to allow a moderate elevation and depression of the gun.
The wooden backing is cut away on each side of the ports
inside of the casemate, to allow the guns to be trained about one
point forward and aft. The gun ports are covered with wrought iron
sliding plates or shutters five (5) inches thick; those for the
four broadside guns are fitted in slides, The sliding plates or
shutters for the pivot guns are pivoted on the edge, with one bolt
that can be knocked out, detaching the shutter, if necessary, and
are worked by a combination of racks and pinions.

You'll want something with tiny grooves 6 scale inches (lets make it simple,and assume 30mm = 6 feet, so you'll need grooves every 5mm) apart, and lots of tiny bolt heads.

Here's a nice picture showing how the armor plates were laid.

link

I would suggest looking at Evergreen Scale Models plastic sheets ( evergreenscalemodels.com ) .

I use some of the siding sheets as ship deck planking. I'm sure you could find something that would work for armor plating ( maybe a the V-Groove siding sheets ) and something that would work as wooden decking.

A lot of hobby shops carry their stuff.

Dave

Thanks for the link Sergeant Paper.

Paul

Yeah- slip of the brain. I mean rails, not ties.

The heads of the bolts will be tiny even in that scale. Even the lines between rails and deck plates would be barely discernable. I would limit the modeling of bolt heads to only crucial points of the model where providing that flair is a big deal.

Maybe you just stick with plain plastic hobby sheet (like Evergreen's) scored lightly at regular intervals corresponding to the scale width with a very sharp Xacto knife.