JerryTodd

Do you just want it done so you can move on? Is there a deadline? Cutting corners may get you somewhere faster, but it tends to magnify errors, not just in looks, but in frequency. I glued all 500ish piece of scale-length decking (cut from 4 foot lengths) on my 5 foot long hull when I easily could have scribed some plywood. There were a couple of places I had to pull a piece off and put in another, reusing the removed piece somewhere else. That would have been a bigger pain using full 4 foot lengths. When it was done, none of the left-over scrap was longer than an inch, so doing it this way was a more efficient use of materials. I recommend all planking/plating be done in scale pieces on anything 1:64 scale and up, because you get more from it that way. The decision,of course, is only yours to make.

USS only applies to COMMISSIONED Naval Vessels of the United States and wasn't officially used until Executive Order 549 in 1907

I was going to make a Marsilly type carriage for the 110# Armstrong rifle, but found this drawing on the NMM site, which is basically the Warrior's pivots, so went with that. So far this is what I have In the mean-time, the XI inch Dahlgren on the iron pivot carriage is looking like this... As mentioned, Constellation, as a training ship in the 1870's, was armed with the XI Dahlgren, and a 100# Parrott rifle on a wooden carriage on her gun-deck, with the corresponding gunports widened to 10 feet. here's something to compare the two...

I think we all go through a "name plate phase" as we grow in our modeling I have to say, you're making the best use of what I consider to be a criminally awful kit, that I've seen yet. I wonder if it would have been cheaper for you to buy materials and build from scratch.

The X inch Dahlgren's and the deck tracks for them are practically done, but that's in my Constellation log. The next WIP is the XI inch on an iron pivot. I've found many images of iron carriages, but all of them are from the 1880's and 1890's when some new technology had been applied, and I'm doing an 1870's version that's basically a war-time wood carriage done in iron. The drawing posted earlier is what I'm working from, but the person that drew it did it as an illustration for a sci-fi story, so I can't be sure of it's authenticity. At any rate, I'm picking a way at it.... Next up I think I'll do Dalhgren's rifle from this image

April 8th: The new pivot gun tracks were primed, painted, glued down (had to order a bottle of CA), painted some more. The guns barrels are painted, detailed, and clear-coated (no pic of that yet). The carriages are primed, but not painted yet. They'll be painted olive like the previous set of gun carriages. The new field carriage for the boat-howitzer also got painted, and after some clear-coat, will go to it's home in the stern-sheets of the launch. (sorry for the poor images)

Since I'm replacing the Constellation's pivot guns with this X inch Dahlgren, need to print three of them; 2 for the model, and one for the sampler of Constellation's guns. Here's the second gun fresh off the printer. The first one lost a roller, but that can be fixed. The slide on these gun are shorter than the previous gun's slides, so new deck tracks had to be made to fit. The third gun hasn't been printed yet. The pair sitting on the model's main hatch. The old tracks removed, the access hatches sanded, and refinished with the primed guns and tracks sitting in place.

Why do the lower dead-eye strops and chains look like rope or cable? They should be iron

It's all just sitting there, nothing's glued down yet, until it's actually painted. A pic with, and without flash. I need to watch those white-balance videos someone posted here at MSW.

The slides for the new guns are shorter than what was on the model, so new tracks had to be modeled, printed, and reprinted a little. The old tracks had to be removed and the scars sanded off the deck. Then the finish reapplied. Meantime the guns and tracks were primed.

I finished the 10 inch Dahlgren. I didn't model the gun's breech as it was in Dahlgrens drawing. It looked like he left the breech of the Columbiad from the Traverse Carriage drawing and made the rest of it look like his 10" gun. I know Rodman guns were made with that sort of breech, but I can't find drawings of a Dahlgren like that. Dahlgren's patent drawings don't show that sort of breech either. The slide, while just like the one in the Mississippi plan, is shorter and wider; this will mean reworking the deck tracks on Constellation; but It also means it'll fits the space better, with more room for moving the gun about, as well as fitting on my hatches better. The print came out great except for one wheel on the back-left of the slide. I can replace that, and fix the pallet around it easily enough, so it's not a "failed print." The second gun printed better, it didn't lose any wheels

I started a "build log" just for this Naval Gun project, here as well as on my website, mainly to not clutter Constellation's log with all this non-pertinent gun stuff. But one gun I'm working on brings me back here, as it may mean a change to the Constellation model. I'm modeling a 10 inch Dahlgren on a pivot carriage and it got me thinking about Constellation's "10 inch guns on pivot carriages." The Mississippi plan, dated June 23 1855 shows a 10" gun of 86cwt (8600 pounds). The ship's restoration folks presume that Constellation got the same thing because they looked for a 10" pivot gun at the Archives, and that's the plan they found. Constellation was launched on August 26 1854, and commissioned on July 28 1855. Dahlgren's drawing, on-the-other-hand, is from July 31 1850, 5 years prior, and refers to the pivot gun simply as a "10 inch gun on pivot carriage." Without any documentation stating exactly which 10 inch pivot gun the ship was issued, how do I know? Furthermore, a 10 inch Dahlgren tube weighed 12,000 pounds, 3,400 pounds more than the Mississippi gun. When the ship was leaving for the African Station on July 15 1859, her captain felt the pivot guns were too heavy, too high, and made the ship "crank," so had them taken off. I can't help but think that would be a concern regarding a pair of 12,000 pound guns compared to a pair of 8,600 pound guns. I'm trying to find out where any records regarding what guns were issued to what ships would be, and if I can access them, but at the moment, I'm personally leaning toward replacing Constellation's pivot guns with 10 inch Dahlgren pivots. Here's the 3D models of the 10 inch Dahlgren (still a WIP), the Mississippi gun, and both together.

I altered the carriage for the 30# Parrott to fit the 20# gun since I have no data at all what a pivot carriage for the 20# would look like. So, that's that one done. Moving on, I poked at the XI inch Dahlgren on the iron carriage based mostly on a drawing for a sci-fi story on the Deviant Art site. I don't know their source, as most photos I can find are late 1880s, 1890s and the technology had changed some from the 1870s. The carriage looks the same, but there's springs and things the 1870 guns didn't have. It's not done, but it's getting there... This gun's for my list of Constellation's guns, and was mounted on the gun-deck opposite a 100# Parrott on a wooden pivot carriage - each with a their gun-port widened to 10 feet. Making the 60# Parrott pivot got me thinking about the gun at Cumberland's other end, a 10 inch shell-gun. I found a drawing by Dahlgren himself, dated July 1850, with a proposed armament for frigates to mount 6 10 inch shell guns on pivot on the spar deck (the 11 inch hadn't come out yet) and 26 9 inch shell-guns on the gun-deck. The Navy went with two pivots, one fore and one aft, and a mix of 8 inch shell-guns and 32# shot guns on the gun-deck. The 10 inch gun in Dahlgren's drawing is on a Traversing Pivot Gun Carriage and Slide as shown in a diagram in a Navy manual. I then used the Traversing carriage diagram to make the carriage, and took the slide from my 10" shell-gun pivot, and adjusted it to Dahlgrens drawing which was shorter, but it's the same in all other details. Spencer Tucker in his Arming the Fleet says the carriage was the same as that for for the Columbiads (the Traversing Carriage shown), but widened to accommodate the larger Dahlgren gun body. The compressor was different, and a bit fiddly, there's a lever that works it instead of the screw these carriages had later. There's a pin that hold that level connected to the carriage by a chain, and whether it was a good idea or not, I gave it a chain - we'll see how that prints. Now go to my Constellation build log to see the can of worms this opened up...

Oops, I skipped over some other Parrotts... I needed a pair of 150# Parrotts on pivots for someone modeling the Susquehanna in 1:72 scale, and I modeled it based on these images: 150# Parrott on the Wabash 150# on the Nipsic, post-war. and the 3D model... The fellow modeling the Susquehanna sent me some helpful data, I printed the 150's he'd need, but they didn't come out very well, though you'd have to know where to look. For my own list of Constellation's guns, I need a 100# Parrott for when she was a training ship in the 1870's. I based that on images of the Mendota's 100# Parrott, which if you look close, is on an identical carriage as the 150# on Wabash. and the 3D model... Unless something else pops out the blue, the only Naval Parrott left to do is the 20 pounder that Constellation had as an aft pivot gun during the war.

Over on Facebook's Civil War Navies group, a series of photos came up for discussion, one well-known image in this series is the "Powder Monkey," a colorized version shown here... The other images of the series have various sailors posing next to this same gun, and one sailor with a telescope that's more around the rear of the piece, showing some added details. And another with a Black sailor leaning on a IX inch Dahlgren, with this Parrott in the background. Notice in the last image there's a difference in height evident between the Parrott's and Dahlgren's carriages showing the Parrott's Marsilly carriage was fitted to it. (click the pics to see larger versions) Until now, I always figured the gun was a 30# Parrott, but when I put my model of the 30# Parrott on my Marsilly carriage, it didn't match the pictures. I thought I could easily knock out another gun for this project, but it wasn't gonna be that easy. So I put the 100# tube on and that was too big. Knowing the images were taken on board the New Hampshire, I looked into her. I learned she was armed, in addition to her broadside battery, with 4 100# Parrotts. More digging showed she received 60# Parrotts in addition to, or to replace the 100 pounders. So I went looking for data on the 60# gun. I didn't get as lucky as I did with the 20# and 30# guns, but I found a photo of a piece of a similar document from the same original source, and despite the distortion, I could read the measurements. The also had a profile view of a Marsilly type carriage with it, but the drawing of the carriage didn't match the photos, and I don't know the original source of that drawing. So, I added the 60# Parrott to my collection, and modeled my 60# Parrott on a Marsilly carriage. There was another 60# to model. When the Civil War broke out the Navy Yard at Gosport Virginia was abandoned and everything that could leave, was burned, including ships like the 120 gun Pennsylvania, the frigate Merrimack, and others. The sloop of war Cumberland was towed out by a pair of tugs, and escaped. Sent to Boston for repairs, her aft 10 inch Dahlgren was replaced with a 60# Parrott on a pivot carriage. Some reading suggests Buchanan, commanding the former Merrimack, now Virginia, targeted the Cumberland, specifically because she was known to be armed with a rifled gun. I found a reference to that gun in this commemorative item on an auction site. That item aside, I have no clue precisely what her pivot carriage looked like. So I used the carriage from my model of the IX Dahlgren pivot, altered a little to fit the very skinny Parrott rifle, so here's my take on the Cumberland's famous aft pivot. The STLs for both these models have been posted at Thingiverse for those interested.