Armored Cruiser: commissioned at last

     Between the dozen different things that occupied my time over the last weekend I managed to squeeze in a few hours of work on the cruiser. I got the bridge equipment painted and installed and finally decided on an arrangement for the smokestacks and cranes. There is a ton of little details and a bit of touch-up painting to do but she is ready for service as she stands.

that is a lot of yellow, I might still paint the upper deck black

the flying bridge is manned

one of the big things still missing is a mast of some sort

the Captain watches the crew testing one of the boats

he bids the crew return so that he may take the steam launch for a turn about the harbor

a right jolly boat it is!

with the crew all aboard they are ready to sail

     It has been a long time since I worked on something this large and I have learned a few lessons during this build. One; sub-assemblies, never put something this big together right off the bat, smaller pieces are easier to work on and less likely to end up broken during handling. Two; put the railings on last!!!! Three; do a few sketches first, I wasted a lot of time moving things around to get the "right look" because I came to this on a whim. Four; order/buy any needed parts in advance, several times I had to stop work to run out and get items or wait (admittedly a very short time) for parts ordered from an outside source, this did not help speed the assembly. All in all I have about thirty dollars in material and about twenty hours of work involved so I think things turned out well. The next project is a protected cruiser of much simpler design which should go together much quicker.