A Lazy Man's Half

 

let the rigging begin!

a bit of stretched sprue and some superglue

       Fighting a bad cold and having shoveled my sidewalk I determined that I had seen enough of the outside world for a day. I decided to get a cup of coffee and get back to work on the ironclads. The models were all based, the bases painted and wakes touched in so all that remained was glossing the bases and rigging the ships.
        Looking for the biggest bang for my buck I decided that I would gloss the monitors first then get on with rigging and glossing the sailing vessels. I grabbed my trusty (and almost empty) bottle of Future floor wax (I understand that it is now marketed under the name Pledge floor gloss) and set about adding a shine to my monitor's bases. This went by very quickly which left me with no options aside from settling in and starting the rigging process.
       Being a coward I started with the New Ironsides, she had started life as a full-rigged ship but went to war with nothing but truncated masts used for signalling. This was easy and quick and I was getting back into the groove. Next I did a couple of schooner-rigged paddle-wheel ships. Feeling that I had gotten a handle on thing I started on the Alabama. And suddenly I remembered why I had sworn never to do another square-rigged ship ever again! Even with the vastly reduced rig that I put on the model it took forever and I had bits of stretched sprue glued to all of my fingers before I was done. The model does seem to have turned out fairly well but I'm not looking forward to the second half as they are all in need of extensive rigging. I should have stuck with monitors and Confederate battery ironclads.........

 

the first batch, I really don't mind rigging a monitor

 

the Alabama was a fair piece of work

 

Future provides a brilliant gloss,

I need to pick up some of the new stuff soon, 

I hope it works as well as my ancient supply