Building a Chubby Armoured Cruiser...

ANS Amiral Charner - a small armoured cruiser 
just off the slipway...

A question arose in my last posting: how did I create the 'tumblehome' that features among my Azurian war ships? I hadn't actually considered that point, and, unsure whether I could satisfactorily answer the question even to myself, I thought to myself: 'Why not make a small warship for Azuria - a second cruiser? Take pictures of the process.' Note that my Azurian ships are based on historical French types. The Amiral Charner class seemed a fine choice.

Good idea, though I will admit right now the first picture was done very poorly, worse luck...

The overall boat shape I scribed onto a piece of 6mm thick balsa, then, before cutting out the shape, scribed an 'inner shape' about 3mm from the edge. I also scribed a line about 3mm down from the upper edge (obscured in the pic, unfortunately). Then shaved away the 'upper-outer' bit to create a bevel edge.

In the rather blurry picture, I have cut and shaved out the top edge, leaving the bottom edge as drawn. You will notice the inner line is continued until it touches the outer, before again diverging very close to the bow. The 'bevelling' is adjusted according. The front end was something of an experiment here, as I wanted to create something like the ram-like bow that the French favoured.

The above shows the hull, cut out and sanded (actually filed). Sanding or filing will round the edges and smooth out irregularities caused during the cutting/ shaving process.

The 'elevation' view. The ram-like cutwater is none too pronounced, but that is the way I wanted it. You can see the tumblehome slope doesn't go right down to the waterline. Near the bows the tumblehome is reduced to a vertical sides over a short distance before reappearing just before the point of the bows. The 'ridge' that you see along the side of the hull can be rounded off gently with a file or fine sandpaper.

Not sure what you call this shaping near the bows. Astern of those incised bits there will be sponson-mounted secondary guns. Along the lateral line will be the front of the main superstructure.

Shapes to be cut out for the secondary gun sponsons. In the above picture the sternward pair seem misaligned. Actually they aren't, and in the picture below they don't look it.

Gun sponsons cut from cardboard drinking straw favoured these days by various fast food outlets. Dry run for 'fit'.

Roofing the sponsons by gluing them to thin card, roughly cutting into separate mountings, and, when the glue dries, cutting to shape using the sponson itself as the cutting guide. Note from the pic that I have used the same drinking straw to create the single-gun turrets for the 7.6-inch main guns.

Another dry run for turret placement.

Above: something I failed to do in previous models: ink in the inner areas that will be difficult to come at when painting. I also painted the hull the characteristic Azurian blue at this point, rather than later. I ought to have done the deck as well. Too bad.

Almost finished. Bridge (mostly guesswork, this, but I'm very fussed about getting the thing exactly right), funnels and masts with fighting tops. Funnels rather taller than they should be, and I have omitted the 'fiddly' bits... The forward mast has been finished; the sternward needs its top mast (a shirt pin). The 5.4-inch gun sponsons yet to be fitted in.

... and here she is, a very small armoured cruiser (the historical equivalent was less than 5000 ton displacement), of the Amiral Charner class. Perhaps I'll add lifeboats between the midships and rear sponsons. I don't think I'll be giving her an admiral name though. ANS Bruix or Chanzy are fine names, as is Latouche-Treville even if the 'e' of 'Tre-' is lacking its acute accent. One of the benefits of building single vessels of a 'class' of several vessels, is that if it is lost in battle, there is always a replacement!

Its waterline dimensions are 9.2mm x 3.0mm (I was rather generous with the beam scale - the original class were quite slender vessels). Using Bob Cordery's Portable Colonial Wargame convention for determining Flotation Points, this comes out at 10FP. A bit light for an armoured cruiser, but not ungenerous given this ship's diminutive size.

Now it just awaits its paint finish.