"Very cheap iron clads" Topic

I'm making a fleet of ironclads on the cheap. I'm using no.10 joiner biscuits and assorted balsa scrap, matchstick, toothpicks, etc. For turrets I'm using wooden screw hole plugs. They look rather cartoonish but the whole fleet should cost about $9. USD Could be a good way to get young kids interested in war games. Ill name them uss pay cut, uss pay freeze, …

That is a great idea, I've often thought about doing somehting similar to make pre-dreadnaughts. I'd probably use #20s as the largest ships and work down.

-- CSS Seaquestor?
-- HMS Shoestring?
-- HIJMS Chinsea?
-- SMS Nopaydoo?

My original idea was dreadnaught types, but the turrets were too big for the biscuit. The biscuit, too, was too flat I thought for blue water navy. I tried cutting smaller turrets out of a very small dowel but they split. Any suggestions would be welcome, but they have to involve scrap, salvage or dirt cheap.

Looking on the Net, I see that there are #20 Biscuits which are 2 1/4 inches long and wider, and also an S6 Biscuit which looks at least 3 inches long. I wonder how the pressed board thye are made from will look when painted.

A local guy did something like this. The biscuits he used had gaps in the sandwich part. You might need to use wood filler to get a smooth edge along the hull.

Glue several biscuits atop each other in layers to build-up the hull to proper dimension for blue water navy?

Cut some biscuits into three sections -- discard the middle section and then use the two end pieces to build up the foredeck (bow) and stern.

Then wood-glue thick paper to the sides of the hull to conceal the layers of biscuits?

dBerczerk, you have obviously given some serious thought to this. Any idea where I can find the S6 size? That one seems very rare.

Check local general purpose hobby shops like Michaels in the states. Lots of odd wood shapes there for sale to use for turrets, stacks, hulls, etc.

Dan

I made some Age of Steam ships out of card stock and dowels. Pretty easy to build and not too shabby on the table. The reason I did it was to have an inexpensive version of a naval battle to show new gamers they don't have to spend a lot of cash to get started in miniatures gaming. I constructed 8 fleets that have 6 monitors, 2 ironclads and a sub and 4 of the fleets have a Dreadnaught. Movement and shooting are simple and that leaves the players free to concentrate on the battle. There are some photos on this thread at TMP link Also one of my players from Spartacon did a nice write-up of the rules on his website: antonswargame.blogspot.com.ar/2014/01/spartacon-2014-part-i.html#more

The edges of the biscuits are rough and some of the "bows" are chipped, but they are so nearly flush with the water that I don't care. I thought of adding card sides to elevate the deck- I'll give it a go. Just made two side wheel gunboats. I made the ironclads grey, of course, but what of the side wheelers? I'll see if I can find some pics.

just saw your pics Kaiju- looks like you used my ships! I know a monitor would have little of the gun showing, but I like the look of a wee stub coming out of my turrets.

So I gave a biscuit a good sanding on its sides and glued card around the edge so the biscuit is the deck- it looks good. I didnt do a very good job of making the masts, but it works as well as my ironclads. Most of the work took less than an hour.