I sat down yesterday evening to tackle the next phase of my ACW ship building program when I made the horrible discovery that I only had a single piece of 1cm square balsa wood 1 ½” long! I use this size as the ‘core’ for all of my casemate based models and the pack of assorted sizes of balsa wood I recently acquired only had a single length in the selection. A visit to Modelzone will now be needed (tomorrow I suspect as I will not have a chance today) in order to get some more in stock. I could laminate some smaller pieces but prefer not to – it is easier just to use a single piece, it makes for a more solid model.
This meant that the CSS Baltic had to wait; as did the USS Essex (although I could have started the latter). The single piece of balsa wood I have though is sufficient for the additional Cairo class gunboat I needed so I was able to build the casemate for her with a view to fitting out and finishing the model this evening. Also underway (and not a model I had envisaged building until later) is the USS Vindicator – yet another side wheel ram that looks not unlike the General Price except that the front of her superstructure is angled and her guns are carried internally so some gun ports will be needed. As built she was pretty fast and touched 12 knots. To be honest, the sole reason I am building her is because I have a ready-made superstructure in the spares box and it would be a shame to waste it!
That will bring the total of models built up to 20 and I hope to have another couple ready for the weekend – assuming I can get the correctly sized balsa wood in time. If that does not happen then I can easily work on another couple of models instead as I have a number of alternative options I can explore.
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