Assembly finished….Now for the painting

Sealed and ready to paint. The actual ship appeared to have a rather tall and quite slim funnel although this may have been a replacement after she was captured. The flagstaff I found in a spares box and was originally going to be used to fashion gun barrels from. Note the hole drilled for the flagstaff - the funnel is glued directly to the roof of the casemate. The ruler is so you can see how big she is.

After a quick half hour session in the man cave at lunchtime the C.S.S. Tennessee is now ready to be painted. I had some deck detail, cut a suitable length for the funnel and managed to find a piece of previously painted cocktail stick to use for the flagstaff - very much a case of ‘here’s one I prepared earlier!’ 

The whole thing was coated with a sealer which is now drying prior to undercoating and then the final paint job.

According to most of the pictures and plans I have seen of the actual ship itself there should be a pair of funnels forward and two pairs aft, along with the deck mounted chains leading to the rudder aft and he anchors on the bow. As I have not depicted either of these parts on any of my previous models it seemed fairly pointless starting now despite the actual ship becoming unmanageable due to having the steering chains  severed by gunfire during the fateful battle of Mobile Bay. I have instead opted for my default deck detail of hatch covers! 

Strictly speaking the hull should also have an angle leading to the waterline which I probably could have done using my Dremel but for the fact that by the time I had thought about this the models was more or less complete - especially the casemate.

Once again then we have a ‘purely representational’ or Hollywood ‘based upon’ style of model - a fact of which I offer no apologies for! ;-)