First of the Russo Turkish Warships

So far, so good. The masts, bowsprit, turrets and funnel are not yet fixed in place as I prefer to paint them ‘off piste’ so to speak. 

 Depicted above is the first of the two sea going monitors - the Luft-u Celil class - the Turks employed along the Danube during the war of 1877. The second of the class is at the same stage of construction. I opted for the reduced rig as these were used primarily inshore (where one of the two was sunk by Russian shore based heavy mortars) and I have made a conscious decision to reserve the full sailing rig for ocean going vessels. In due course this will mean that the half dozen or so Turkish ironclads will have the full sailing rig. The models are loosely based on the picture from the Illustrated London News but as usual, the emphasis is on the ‘based on’ rather than being strictly accurate representations.

As featured in the Illustrated London News

These will be sealed and undercoated today with the plan to have them painted and varnished in the next few days. I then have a further six gunboats to build - two for the Russians and four for the Turks - before tackling the spar torpedo boats. At this point I may add a couple of Russian armed steamers but for the most part that will be it until I can get the pieces I need from Warbases in the new year. Even the two circular Russian gunboats will need to wait as well....

All in all then it has been a positive start to this ‘side hustle’ and to add to the fun I have settled on a source of some quite superb data for my rules plan. No details on this as yet but it will save me a huge amount of time - time that can used to build even more models!