Bob Cleek

I drill small holes using a sensitive drilling attachment in my Sherline milling column.  For reasons not understood, I don’t have the touch for using the carbide drills with the larger 1/8” diameter shafts that can be chucked in a Jacobs Chuck or a collet.  I, therefore, drill with HSS wire size drills.  My drilling attachment does not accept collets so I use the provided Jacobs Chuck.
 
I have noticed that the drills bits themselves are not necessarily straight.  While the chuck runs true, there is often a slight wobble of the drill bit itself.  On the other hand, these tiny wire sized drills will “find” any slight center punched depression nearby.
 
It appears to me that the key to accurate drilling is marking out and center punching holes in the first place followed by correct lining up of the center punch mark beneath the drill bit.  While this might not be good enough for true miniature machining it will produce results good enough for our purposes.
 
Roger
 
 

"He who dies with the most tools wins!" That said, if you think you can never have too many books, just give it time! You'll get to that point soon enough.
 
Speaking of which... I'd encourage anybody who is building a reference library to buy real books instead of e-books. There's nothing like reading a real book and you'll find you will want to have a reference book at your elbow at your drawing board or workbench and a computer screen just doesn't work as well. 
 
As for Harold Underhill, buy anything he ever wrote and you won't go wrong. His two volume work Plank on Frame Models and Scale Masting and Rigging is an incredible basic text on scratch-building. I'm surprised it's going for $125 (or $75 used) these days, but that's a good example of the value of building a good reference library. I got my set fifty years ago from the old Dolphin Book Club (anybody remember them) for something like fifteen bucks if memory serves. That said, eBay has an entire section of nothing but Underhill books and you can find a copy of the Plank on Frame Models set for fifty bucks there. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=harold underhill&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-34002-13078-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=102&keyword=harold underhill&crlp=_&MT_ID=&geo_id=&rlsatarget=kwd-76965989210900:loc-190&adpos=&device=c&mktype=&loc=43893&poi=136333&abcId=&cmpgn=395402853&sitelnk=&adgroupid=1231453229593206&network=o&matchtype=e&msclkid=fac4ea45a5a5170f4c298ebcdf27ca39
 
Stick with the "classics" for openers and stay away from anything with "made simple," "simplified" or "from kits" in the title.  There are a lot of books out there that are basically compendiums of previously published works. They may be helpful, but they don't stand the test of time. I'd put Zu Mondfeld's Historic Ship Models in the same category. As many copies as are out there, they are dirt cheap, so you won't be wasting your money if you get a used copy for less than ten bucks. It does have a very broad scope of information. I think he claims to cover somewhere from 3,000 BC to the present, but, hey, putting than information between two covers can only provide a very cursory overview. 
 
If you find books with good coverage of modeling techniques, grab them. (e.g., The Techniques of Ship Modeling by Gerald Wingrove.) The same goes for books that have good ship plans in them. Any book by Howard I Chapelle will be worth having in this regard.
 
Sadly, the days of spending hours picking over the offerings in dusty used book stores to find a treasure or two are long gone. Buy used books for the best value online if you must, but don't get carried away. It's easy to end up with well over a thousand volumes. Don't ask me how I know this.  

Thanks, Ab, much appreciated !
 
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Installing the ship’s boats 2
 
It is done! All four boats are suspended from their davits and the work was achieved without major damage to other parts.
 
Good thing that there is not (yet) any brain recorder … because of the mental language that accompanied the process at certain stages.
 
Still there is a lot to be done, such as tidying up the loose ends, making and installing the coils of rope from the runners of the boat-tackles and the longitudinal chain-stays for the davits.
   

 
To be continued ....

Thanks, belatedly, gentlemen ...
 

Well, some traveling and struggles with tiny and flimsy parts caused again a long delay until this update …
 
Installing the ship’s boats
 
This detail was the most dreaded of all, due to the flimsy character of the parts. The davits had been produced a long time ago, as were the blocks for the hoisting tackle, and, of course the four boats.
 
There are no pictures, except the very first photograph of SMS WESPE that indicate the arrangements for the boats hanging outboard on the davits. While it seems to have been a quite common arrangement on smaller warships of the time, it was already noted in reports by captains of Prussian gunboats ten years earlier, boats in such a position are prone to be carried away by seas of even moderate height. So, quite early on barrings and boat skids had been installed on the WESPE-class boat and the davits lengthened to lift up the boats. For this final arrangement, various images are available.
 
Somehow, the boats must have been prevented from swinging in their hoisting gear. A typical arrangement would have been a spar lashed across the davits and the boats pulled against them with cross-wise boat ties. In the absence of other pictorial evidence, this is what I opted for. There were, however, still some detail questions open: were those ties strips of heavy canvas or braided rope-work and did the spars have bolsters around them to prevent damage to the boats? For the latter questions there are examples of both option on photographs and (contemporary) models. 
 
I recently visited again the Maritime Museum in Stockholm, which reminded me of a possible solution on a model of the same period. The boat-ties seem to have been heavy canvas and had triangular rings at their ends. They are attached to an eye at the top of the davit, run around the boat, then around the opposite davit, and are hauled taught with a tackle of blocks hooked in between them. No bolsters on the spars.
 
I decided to leave out the tackle and just use a lashing between the rings to tighten the ties. The lashing will be difficult enough to access behind the boats.
 
Boat ties arranged on a package of book-repair tape
 
The triangular rings were fashioned from 0.15 mm tinned copper-wire wound around the tang of a triangular file with 1 mm sides. The windings were cut open with a scalpel. The ties themselves are narrow strips of a special kind of material: a kind of very fine silk-paper tape with a backing of a thermos-setting acrylic glue. This material is used in book repair for instance. Brand and other details can be seen on the photograph. The 1 mm strips were cut with a new no. 11 scalpel blade and folded in two. The material is slightly tacky which is helpful when aligning the halves and inserting the rings. The glue was set with the help of my hot-air soldering gun set to 110°C as per instructions. The halves were pushed together using a tool as used in the old days to rub down transfer lettering. The ties were painted in Vallejo ‘hemp’. 
 
Boat ties in detail
 
It took some tries to work out a workable sequence for installing the davits, spar, boat-ties and boat-tackles, considering also the difficulty of access. Eventually the ties were fastened to the davits and the tackles hooked into the latter with the loose end already belayed to the clamp on the back of the davits.
 
Davits fitted out and ready for installation on board
 
The davits then were inserted into their sockets and fixed with a drop of white glue. Next the spar is lashed to the davits. Then the ties were arranged in preparation of the boats and the lashing is reeved. 

Davits ready to receive the boat.
 
The davits are now ready to receive the boat, which is slipped in and the tackles hooked into the respective rings on the boat. The ties are now pulled tight, so that boat rests against the spar.
 
Boat stowed in the davits.
 
Overall, the installation of the first boat went reasonably well. However, it is hanging a few millimetres too low. The boat’s keel should have been level with the bulwark handrail. Somehow, I didn’t manage to make the close-hauled tackled as short as it should have been. Also, the hooks on the blocks are a tad too long. Not 100% satisfactory, but I am not going back two steps to remake the blocks and tackles and all. Let’s assume the crew hasn’t done such a good job in stowing the boats and the officers haven’t noticed it yet …
 
To be continued ....

In theory, once polymerised, which takes a few seconds, there should be no fumes.
 
The best way to avoid issues with CA is to not use it on things for which other glues/cements are available 

Say no more! Yes, that cross-section confirms the way they addressed it. My doubts that they would have sheathed the armor belt in wood and then run the coppering over it was based on deductions I made after reading https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/july/history-prevention-fouling   which seemed to indicate that applying a wooden sheathing over iron hulls which were thereafter coppered was found to be unsatisfactory and that fact spurred the development of anti-fouling paint. The timeline for those developments predated the construction of Turenne by a considerable bit and I presumed that nobody was still sheathing metal with wood to permit coppering metal hulls after effective anti-fouling paint came into widespread general use. 
 
I nevertheless found the article on anti-fouling technology in the U.S. Naval Institute's journal, Proceedings very comprehensive and quite interesting.
 
I'm thinking that the white "boot stripe" accent line had to be painted. I can't imagine they'd leave the iron bare. It would rust, or if of wrought iron, at least turn black with oxidation. 
 
I quite agree. I read that zinc was tried in an attempt to find a sheathing metal that was closer to iron on the galvanic scale but wasn't much good and quickly abandoned.
 
Absolutely. I'd expect the same, although I came across the photo and colored etching I posted above of Atalante in drydock, which was similarly stationed in French Indochina and it sure looks like she was being painted and the colored etching portrays her after the job was finished, rather than while it was in progress in the photograph, and it appears as if she was indeed painted. For Shipific's purposes, though, he can portray it either way and from a scale viewing difference in the scale it appears he's working with, it would be next to impossible to discern whether she was coppered or painted by looking at her. Interestingly, for anybody in this day and age, I expect I've seen more coppered bottoms hauled out "up close and personal" than most, having spent a number of years about four decades back selling classic yachts in a specialty yacht brokerage, and at that they probably didn't total more than about a dozen, but the funny thing is that all the small craft with coppered hulls were also painted with anti-fouling paint. This was commonly done because although the copper provided a mechanical barrier against marine borers, it really doesn't do an awful lot to prevent vegetative fouling. I would expect, however that this isn't as much of a problem in colder climes.
 
Aside from large sailing ships, the only coppered hull I knew that wasn't painted with anti-fouling paint was my late friend Hal Sommer"s pilot schooner, Wander Bird (nee: Elbe 5) (Photos below.) Hal restored her from her sorry existence as a rig-less houseboat, rebuilding her entirely and coppered her bottom in the proper traditional fashion with plates hung over Irish felt. Below is a picture of Hal (in the middle) and "the Bird's" relatively new coppering. 
 

 
Here, Wander Bird is loaded into her transport barge for her trip home to Germany from San Francisco. Her bottom was pressure washed before loading and they blasted the bottom almost back to bare copper, so she showed a greenish tinge below the waterline when she'd been out of the water for a little bit.
 
 

 
 

Say no more! Yes, that cross-section confirms the way they addressed it. My doubts that they would have sheathed the armor belt in wood and then run the coppering over it was based on deductions I made after reading https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/july/history-prevention-fouling   which seemed to indicate that applying a wooden sheathing over iron hulls which were thereafter coppered was found to be unsatisfactory and that fact spurred the development of anti-fouling paint. The timeline for those developments predated the construction of Turenne by a considerable bit and I presumed that nobody was still sheathing metal with wood to permit coppering metal hulls after effective anti-fouling paint came into widespread general use. 
 
I nevertheless found the article on anti-fouling technology in the U.S. Naval Institute's journal, Proceedings very comprehensive and quite interesting.
 
I'm thinking that the white "boot stripe" accent line had to be painted. I can't imagine they'd leave the iron bare. It would rust, or if of wrought iron, at least turn black with oxidation. 
 
I quite agree. I read that zinc was tried in an attempt to find a sheathing metal that was closer to iron on the galvanic scale but wasn't much good and quickly abandoned.
 
Absolutely. I'd expect the same, although I came across the photo and colored etching I posted above of Atalante in drydock, which was similarly stationed in French Indochina and it sure looks like she was being painted and the colored etching portrays her after the job was finished, rather than while it was in progress in the photograph, and it appears as if she was indeed painted. For Shipific's purposes, though, he can portray it either way and from a scale viewing difference in the scale it appears he's working with, it would be next to impossible to discern whether she was coppered or painted by looking at her. Interestingly, for anybody in this day and age, I expect I've seen more coppered bottoms hauled out "up close and personal" than most, having spent a number of years about four decades back selling classic yachts in a specialty yacht brokerage, and at that they probably didn't total more than about a dozen, but the funny thing is that all the small craft with coppered hulls were also painted with anti-fouling paint. This was commonly done because although the copper provided a mechanical barrier against marine borers, it really doesn't do an awful lot to prevent vegetative fouling. I would expect, however that this isn't as much of a problem in colder climes.
 
Aside from large sailing ships, the only coppered hull I knew that wasn't painted with anti-fouling paint was my late friend Hal Sommer"s pilot schooner, Wander Bird (nee: Elbe 5) (Photos below.) Hal restored her from her sorry existence as a rig-less houseboat, rebuilding her entirely and coppered her bottom in the proper traditional fashion with plates hung over Irish felt. Below is a picture of Hal (in the middle) and "the Bird's" relatively new coppering. 
 

 
Here, Wander Bird is loaded into her transport barge for her trip home to Germany from San Francisco. Her bottom was pressure washed before loading and they blasted the bottom almost back to bare copper, so she showed a greenish tinge below the waterline when she'd been out of the water for a little bit.
 
 

 
 

If they aren't painted (most are painted,) the bare wooden deck of a working fishing boat will usually be covered with old fish oil and dirt, they end up very dark, being closer to black more than anything else. In any event, most have their decks painted over, rather than unfinished. The below photos give you some idea of what a working fishing boat's wooden decks really look like.
 
You should experiment with scrap pieces of the same species of wood before attempting anything on the model itself. I'd try mixing a bit of brown and grey oil paint and apply it in varying coats until you can devise a recipe that works best for you. Check out the YouTube posts on the weathering techniques. The model railroad hobbyists do a lot of this kind of weathering.
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 

Say no more! Yes, that cross-section confirms the way they addressed it. My doubts that they would have sheathed the armor belt in wood and then run the coppering over it was based on deductions I made after reading https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/july/history-prevention-fouling   which seemed to indicate that applying a wooden sheathing over iron hulls which were thereafter coppered was found to be unsatisfactory and that fact spurred the development of anti-fouling paint. The timeline for those developments predated the construction of Turenne by a considerable bit and I presumed that nobody was still sheathing metal with wood to permit coppering metal hulls after effective anti-fouling paint came into widespread general use. 
 
I nevertheless found the article on anti-fouling technology in the U.S. Naval Institute's journal, Proceedings very comprehensive and quite interesting.
 
I'm thinking that the white "boot stripe" accent line had to be painted. I can't imagine they'd leave the iron bare. It would rust, or if of wrought iron, at least turn black with oxidation. 
 
I quite agree. I read that zinc was tried in an attempt to find a sheathing metal that was closer to iron on the galvanic scale but wasn't much good and quickly abandoned.
 
Absolutely. I'd expect the same, although I came across the photo and colored etching I posted above of Atalante in drydock, which was similarly stationed in French Indochina and it sure looks like she was being painted and the colored etching portrays her after the job was finished, rather than while it was in progress in the photograph, and it appears as if she was indeed painted. For Shipific's purposes, though, he can portray it either way and from a scale viewing difference in the scale it appears he's working with, it would be next to impossible to discern whether she was coppered or painted by looking at her. Interestingly, for anybody in this day and age, I expect I've seen more coppered bottoms hauled out "up close and personal" than most, having spent a number of years about four decades back selling classic yachts in a specialty yacht brokerage, and at that they probably didn't total more than about a dozen, but the funny thing is that all the small craft with coppered hulls were also painted with anti-fouling paint. This was commonly done because although the copper provided a mechanical barrier against marine borers, it really doesn't do an awful lot to prevent vegetative fouling. I would expect, however that this isn't as much of a problem in colder climes.
 
Aside from large sailing ships, the only coppered hull I knew that wasn't painted with anti-fouling paint was my late friend Hal Sommer"s pilot schooner, Wander Bird (nee: Elbe 5) (Photos below.) Hal restored her from her sorry existence as a rig-less houseboat, rebuilding her entirely and coppered her bottom in the proper traditional fashion with plates hung over Irish felt. Below is a picture of Hal (in the middle) and "the Bird's" relatively new coppering. 
 

 
Here, Wander Bird is loaded into her transport barge for her trip home to Germany from San Francisco. Her bottom was pressure washed before loading and they blasted the bottom almost back to bare copper, so she showed a greenish tinge below the waterline when she'd been out of the water for a little bit.
 
 

 
 

Fascinating post! I think you've really hit on an interesting thing here with the perception of lions in various cultures. I wonder why, as well. You've got the makings of a great "coffee table" picture book or a TV travel documentary. The similarities between various cultures are really surprising and yet they don't really look like lions at all.
 
Just to drive you really, really, crazy if you haven't been there before, have you checked out Chinese lions? Particularly the "lion dancers" in the Chinese New Years parades.
 

Some of the Chinese lions look a lot like your "wide" Russian lions. I wonder if the Russians got their stylized lions from the Chinese, or did the Chinese get theirs from the Russians or the Byzantines. The interesting thing is that there are no native lions in China. See: Lunar New Year: Lions aren’t native to China, so where did the traditional lion dance come from? | South China Morning Post (scmp.com)
 
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And the Chinese also use lions in their architecture. There is a Chinese custom, as it seems there is the world over, of placing "guardian lion" statues at the entrances of buildings. Here again, the Chinese "guardian lions" have the same sort of look as the Russian lions you've been studying.
 

 

 
Perhaps it's some primal impression in the human DNA that goes back to when we all were lion food. A Jungian anthropologist would have a lot of fun musing about this subject. Somebody could probably write a doctoral dissertation on it.
 
 

Yes, see the builders model of Trident above I posted exactly demonstrating wood on metal construction, like an onion with its layers. I dont think we need to debate with regards to Turenne specifically more. She had copper sheathing of some kind on top of her iron belt, and it is about determining how to paint it correctly. 
 
Of course, then comes the point of what other evidence can be used to determine that, which is difficult of course!
 
EDIT: This is Turenne from Atlas du Genie Maritime , and you can see a layer of wood on top of iron belt armor. Pretty self evident then, thats what was plated with copper later.

The weather continues to be unseasonably mild with the workshop hovering around 13c.
 
Unfortunately progress has been somewhat disturbed by family commitments.
 
In the following 2 images I have balanced felt tip pens on the floors which are installed at the correct level. The ones without pens are just bracings for the frames.

The boiler room floor is just above the keel and hence does little to brace the frames in this area. Additional balsa wood blocks are installed to brace the frames in this area. These will be removed once the planking is suitably advanced.

Now for something you will all recognise - a short lived technology no longer with us!

I saved these because I thought they would come in handy at some time. 

I wanted some very thin but stiff shims to insert in the cut lines for the deck. This supported deck edge pieces while the glue dried.

I also cut out all the up-stands that were originally used in combination with the alignment rods.


I also glued in the prop shaft tube.
 

Most impressive! Please keep posting. Marine live steam is a sideline interest of mine. 

Most impressive! Please keep posting. Marine live steam is a sideline interest of mine. 

There's really no substitute for careful research, and I must admit with chagrin that there's no substitute for carefully double-checking somebody else's research before posting an answer to any question posed, especially when I'm not readily familiar with the vessel in question!  
 
The repeated reference to these two French naval vessels, Turenne and Bayard, as "ironclads" kept niggling at me because it appeared to me that they were built later than the so called "ironclad" period and were of a style similarly advanced beyond the "ironclad" period. So I finally spent a moment to see if I could find anything on line about either of them and, sure enough, there were Wikipedia pages for both vessels and their named "Bayard class." (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard- class_ironclad ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ironclad_Turenne ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ironclad_Bayard )
 
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From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard- class_ironclad
 
Unlike several of their French predecessors, the Bayard-class ships disposed with iron hulls and reverted to wooden hulls, which were sheathed in copper to reduce fouling on extended voyages overseas, where shipyard facilities were less available. This may have been the result of British reports of hull corrosion with their iron-hulled vessels.
…
The ships were protected with wrought iron armor; their belt was 250 mm (9.8 in) thick amidships, where it protected the ships' propulsion machinery spaces and ammunition magazines. The belt extended for the entire length of the hull, but toward the bow it reduced in thickness to 180 mm (7.1 in), and at the stern, it was reduced to 150 mm (5.9 in). The belt extended from 0.91 m (3 ft) above the waterline to 1.99 m (6 ft 6 in) below.
 
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Note for openers that these wooden-hulled ships "...were sheathed with copper to reduce fouling on extended voyages overseas, where shipyard facilities were less available." We should recognize from the outset then that the converse is also true: they weren't sheathed with copper when not on an extended voyage overseas where shipyard facilities were available. The fact that these French wooden ironclads weren't always copper-sheathed is confirmed by what we know of Atalante, discussed hereafter. Apparently, sometimes they were and sometimes they weren't. If one is modeling a particular such vessel at a particular time in its service life, at least a serious attempt to ascertain whether or not she was copper-sheathed at that time is required. Is there a log, diary, or maintenance report or receipt in a dusty file somewhere? If not, what's the "best estimate" one can make? If depicted when the vessel was on station in French Indochina, there's at least evidence to support your assuming she was not being coppered at that place in time in the absence of contrary evidence. (Just sayin'.  )
 
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These vessels carried a ten inch thick wrought iron armor belt which extended 3 feet above the waterline and 6.5 feet below the waterline. Considering the mechanical and galvanic issues attendant to sheathing wrought iron with copper plate, we can conclude that these vessels were only metal-sheathed to protect the wooden hull exposed below the waterline, i.e., from six and a half feet below the waterline on down. There isn't ever going to be any verdigris color at the waterline of any of these wooden vessels with nine and a half foot wide belts of wrought iron around their waterlines.
 
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From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muntz_metal:
 
(Muntz metal's) original application was as a replacement for copper sheathing on the bottom of boats, as it maintained the anti-fouling abilities of the pure copper at around two thirds of the price. It became the material of choice for this application and Muntz made his fortune. It was found that copper would gradually leach from the alloy in sea water, poisoning any organism that attempted to attach itself to a hull sheathed in the metal.
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Muntz metal, was patented in 1832 in England, and England and France were allies at the time of the Bayard class' service. Pending certain confirmation which should be easily accomplished by further research, it is reasonable to presume that the "copper sheathing" on these vessels was actually Muntz metal, rather than pure copper. This would result in a "yellow metal" that would be somewhat "yellower" than pure copper.
 
Below: Newly ("virgin") Muntz metal sheathed hull of Cutty Sark following her recent restoration and isolation from the elements in her new partially covered dry dock display building: 
 

By Cmglee - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19898346
 
While metal sheathing provides an effective mechanical barrier to marine borers, it is not as effective at preventing the growth of vegetative fouling which attaches itself to submerged surfaces. Additionally, with the advent of iron-hulled ships which could not be sheathed with copper-based metals due to difficulties with attaching such sheathing and, more significantly, the galvanic dissimilarities between iron and copper which caused severe electrolytic corrosion, a large number of anti-fouling paints and other coatings were developed in the late 19th century and were widely in use by the time of the Bayard class' service. The most successful, and therefore most widely used, of these anti-fouling paints had the now-familiar "bottom paint red" color owing to the copper they contained. Again pending certain confirmation which should be easily accomplished by further research, it is reasonable to presume that at least the nine and a half foot wide wrought iron armor plate armor belt at the waterline of the two Bayard class vessels was painted with anti-fouling paint of a color common at the time. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fouling_paint and https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/july/history-prevention-fouling )
 
A review of related contemporary black and white photographs, colored paintings, colored contemporary postcards, and color photographs of contemporary museum models available online appears to confirm that French iron and wooden warships of the Bayard-class' time, at least to the bottoms of their iron armor belts, were apparently painted with anti-fouling paint and that if they were wooden, were, in some cases when at sea for long periods and away from dry-docking facilities, sheathed in Muntz metal (or possibly zinc plate) which may, or may not have been also painted with anti-fouling coating of a "bottom paint red" (or possibly a light grey color. A copper sulfate anti-fouling coating called "Italian Moravian" was also highly regarded at the time of the Bayard-class. It was reputed to be expensive and difficult to apply. I do not know its color. Here again, more research is required.  Some brief experimentation was also conducted with sheet zinc plating instead of copper or Muntz metal over iron, owing to zinc's greater compatibility with iron on the galvanic scale. Zinc sheet metal would appear as a flat silver-grey ("galvanized") color. Some colored contemporary postcards do clearly show a bottoms of such color. See: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/july/history-prevention-fouling  
 
For visual data, search Google images: "French Bayard Class ironclads." Some excerpts below. Englarge the photographs to see greater detail:
 
Two photos below: Contemporary hand colored photographs of French ironclads:
 

 

 
Below: Watercolor painting of contemporary iron French naval vessels:

 
Below: From a presumably well-researched modern Eastern European modeling source:
 

 
Below:  Model of Alma-class Jeanne d'Arc on display at the Musee de la Marine in Paris. She was a contemporary of the Bayard-class ships and of identical French ironclad wooden construction as Turenne with a wrought iron armor belt at the waterline. Note armor belt above and below white painted waterline which from other contemporary pictorial documentation appears to be a common feature of French naval livery at that time. Note "Muntz metal" brass-colored metal sheathing below the armor plate and similar "bronze" colored ram edge at the bow. (These bronze rams were not merely a metal covering, but actually an integral structural member of the hull.) Bright sheathing color results from model's "new as built" depiction style. (Alternately identified by other sources as sistership Alma-class ironclad Armide.) (Blue color of possibly dark grey topsides is apparently a photographic lighting artifact.)
 
 
 
Below: Black and white contemporary photograph of similar French ironclad naval vessel showing slightly visible top line of armor belt.
 

 
Below: It appears the white waterline accent line  (AKA: "boot stripe") appears again suggesting it was a regulation livery detail.
 

 
Below: Additional French ironclads of the Bayard-class era from a modern Eastern European modeling source indicating standard French navy livery:
 

 
 
Below: 1860's Alma-class wooden ironclad Atalante, sister to Jeanne d'Arc, a contemporary "as built" model of which is pictured above.  This class' service period overlapped the wooden Bayard-class', particularly given that the latter was an intentional nearly identical "throwback" to the Alma-class' wooden ironclad construction details.
 
Atalante is here photographed in the Fitzroy Dock, Sidney Harbor in 1873. She spent a large portion of her service life on the French Indo-China Station. She bombarded Vietnamese forts during the Battle of Thuan in 1884 and participated in the Sino-French Indo-China War of 1884–1885. She was reduced to reserve in Saigon, French Indochina, in 1885 and sank there two years later after having been condemned. 
 
Note top of her armor belt at the level of the heads of the workmen standing on the staging platform with approximately the two top feet of the armor belt painted black as are the topsides (i.e., down to the workers' waists) with anti-fouling bottom paint being applied below that line, resulting in bottom paint beginning approximately a foot or two above the waterline and continuing down to cover the the lower part of the armor belt and the rest of the underwater hull below the staging platform. (Enlarge photo for greater detail.) 
 

 
Below: Contemporary colored drawing of Alma-class wooden ironclad Atalante from the glass plate negative above, but depicting the appearance of the hull after the bottom painting was done and she was ready for launching! (Quite a lot to discover from these two views on account of that difference!) Note the "bottom paint red" anti-fouling paint being applied from approximately a couple of feet below the top of the armor belt on downwards to cover the submerged part of the armor belt and on down to include the wooden bottom. Note also the white "bootstripe" accent line at the top of the armor belt and the (subtle) lining above and below the armor belt depicting the wooden planking of the topsides and unsheathed bottom of the wooden hull, contrasted with the smooth wrought plates of the armor belt. As this picture confirms, it appears that the not-inconsiderable expense of metal sheathing of her wooden bottom was deemed unnecessary as she had adequate dry-docking facilities available in her station area. 
 

 
 
 
I didn't reach the same conclusion as you when examining the photos you posted. You'll find a clearer version of your photo of Turenne at her Wikipedia entry: See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard-class_ironclad#/media/File:French_ironclad_Turenne_NH_66099.jpg  This photo will enlarge a lot without losing definition. ("Left mouse click once." Love these old glass plate negatives!) For some reason, the French Navy of the period seems to have frequently photographed their ships while they were getting painted. I have no idea why, but it's uncanny when you look at so many of them that have painting details at work. If you enlarge this photo from the Wiki page, and examine the stern quarter, you'll see painters on staging painting the topsides white. If you then examine  the bow area, you'll see that they've just painted the bow area, (including the anchors and chain rodes!) and what you apparently took to be "...what looks like verdigris on copper plating on bows..." and "...a clear patina there on a ship that's made a voyage from Toulon to somewhere in China station." Look again. What you're seeing there is the aftermath of a rather sloppy recent paint job. If you had spent time around shipyards, you'd probably have recognized it for what it was as soon as you saw it. Sailors are notoriously sloppy painters. They're painting to protect the metal first and foremost. They really don't care a whole lot what the job looks like from 100 yards, which is as much as most people will ever see. 
 
As for the second picture, we know that's not "shiny copper" because that's where the wrought iron armor belt is and there's no way they're going to copper-sheath wrought iron armor plate. It certainly was tried unsuccessfully at the time iron ships first came into use, trying to separate the dissimilar metals with felt or wooden furring strips, but that was long before the time of the vessel pictured. I believe what we see in that photo is simply an over-exposure "flash" that could sometimes occur with reflected light off the water and onto the white surfaces given the limitations of the photographic technology of those times. 
 
 

By Unknown, Farenholt collection - history.navy.mil, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=142143958
 
I don't think today's younger modelers who began building ship models in the "Internet Age" can begin to appreciate the value of digital research to the hobby. Before the internet, I doubt there was anything more than possibly a book or three, long out of print and near impossible to obtain, written in French, that would have any information whatsoever about these ships. Obtaining the information posted here would have likely required a trip to France and days of searching museum archives, if they'd allow you to do so and, in the days before digital photography, copying a photograph would be a major undertaking and copying a construction drawing would require days of tedious tracing at a drafting table by a skilled draftsman, again if they'd allow you to touch the original. Now, modeling research is often only "a few clicks away!" On the other hand, such a resource has made it all the more important to conduct meticulous research because errors nobody would ever notice before are so much more easily noticed with the so much more accurate information available today. 
 

The moral of the story with acrylic coatings is "Ya gotta dance with the girl ya brought ." All acrylic coatings are capable of producing a good scale finish with an airbrush. Some claim to be useable in an airbrush right out of the bottle. Depending on many variables, including the size of the airbrush needle, "your mileage may vary." I'd risk saying that at some point or another, any brand of acrylic coating is going to need some conditioning, even something as simple as thinning it a bit if it's thickened in the bottle over time. As explained, some thin with water, some with alcohol, and some with both. There are a lot of YouTube videos addressing conditioning various brands of acrylic modeling coatings and they are a good place to start researching the brand(s) of paint you intend to use. When you find a brand that you prefer, for whatever reason, stick with it and your experience working with that brand of acrylic coating will grow as you become accustomed to it. There comes a point where you just have to experiment and develop the experience to use the brand you choose. 

There's no shortcut. Any airbrush must be cleaned immediately after each use and it is much easier to clean if cleaned before the spraying medium hardens. This may be as simple as running some water and then cleaning solvent (e.g. Goof Off) through the brush until there is no color visible in the solvent, indicating the airbrush is completely free of paint. This can usually be accomplished in about a minute. 
 
If your paint is properly conditioned to dry quickly, you should be able to airbrush a hull with a good amount of paint going "round and round." When you thin water-based paint with water, you must expect it will take longer to dry (cure) because water doesn't evaporate all that quickly. Thinning acrylics which can be thinned with alcohol or, if not, then with a proprietary thinner, will result in thinner paint that dries quickly because the alcohol or proprietary thinner evaporates much faster than water.
 
This is excellent advice. You can ask a million questions in internet forums, but the internet isn't always the best place to source information. (This forum is remarkably accurate in most instances, however.) Experience begins when you start doing it. Get an airbrush and play with it until you feel comfortable. If you run into a problem doing that, you will be able to ask a specific question instead of repeatedly asking hypothetical questions about problems you'll never encounter in real life. There are tons of airbrushing tutorial videos on YouTube. Look for those posted by the airbrush and paint manufacturers as these are the best produced and most accurate. As Nike says, "Just do it!"  
 
See: vallejocolors - YouTube
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

For serious cleaning of acrylics on airbrushes, I've always found Goof Off  paint splatter remover and Goof Off adhesive remover to be excellent cleaning solvents. It is designed for cleaning up paint splatters on full scale water-based painting jobs.  It removes dried acrylic very effectively.
 

 

 
 
 

 
Get the strong stuff. It works well. Just dampen a folded up paper towel with some Goof Off and wipe off the paint splatters. It's specially formulated to remove dried water-based paint. It is really effective on air brush innards.
 
 
 
 

Well, it's difficult to give here a crash-course in turning ... most of the time one would cut towards the chuck, as the main spindle-bearing is designed to take up the cutting forces. However, there are many situations, when one needs to cut away from the chuck, but one would do this for as little material as possible.
 
For the smal pieces in modelling and working with easily turned materials, such as brass or aluminium, a life centre is not really needed, a hard fixed centre is the more precise option. Always lubricate well.
 
When turning wood, the situation is different, as one cannot lubricate and the friction between wood and steel is considerable. So a life centre is needed for longer parts. You probably will find an aftermarket life centre with an arbor of the same diametre as you already have.
 
To my knowledge, the Taig lathe is not bored for any Morse-taper tooling, neither in the spindle nor the tail-stock. Except for MT0 all the MTs would be too large for this small lathe.
 
There are various degrees of freedom, when aligning a lathe: the height and angle (vertical and horizontal) of the spindle relative to the bed ways, the height and angle (vertical and horizontal) of the tailstock axis, the straightness of the bed etc. Most of them are set by the manufacturing tolerances of the lathe and it is not so easy to correct these. So having a test-bar may not be terribly useful, as any corrections (if needed at all) would involve an extensive scraping or shimming action.
 
However, the Taig tailstocks can be 'set-over' for taper-turning, i.e. moved perpendicular to the axis of the lathe. This means that every time you have loosened the locking screw, you would need to re-align the tailstock. An old-time machinists' approach is to use two fixed centres, in the spindle and in the tailstock, and hold a razor-blade between them. If the centres are aligned correctly, the blade should be perfectly vertical and at 90° to the bed.
 
Otherwise, I would not get worked up too much about such alignment issues, as they are likely to be well within the tolerances we are working in. On my watchmaker-lathes I can easily work to within a 1/20 or even 1/50 of a millimetre. That should be more than good enough for shipmodelling purposes, unless perhaps you are building a steam-engine. I would guess, that on the Taig you can also work to 1/20 of a millimetre (assuming that the handwheels are graduated at 1/10 or even 1/20. 
 
 

Mr. Color works with alcohol, based acrylics, like Tamiya, and Mr Color, not water based, like Vallejo.

Just to add, there is a product called Mr. Color leveling thinner. It retards the drying time of acrylics so they can flow better which reduces brush strokes. There is a way to DIY the product which is quite cost effective, a simple YT search shows how.

There's really no substitute for careful research, and I must admit with chagrin that there's no substitute for carefully double-checking somebody else's research before posting an answer to any question posed, especially when I'm not readily familiar with the vessel in question!  
 
The repeated reference to these two French naval vessels, Turenne and Bayard, as "ironclads" kept niggling at me because it appeared to me that they were built later than the so called "ironclad" period and were of a style similarly advanced beyond the "ironclad" period. So I finally spent a moment to see if I could find anything on line about either of them and, sure enough, there were Wikipedia pages for both vessels and their named "Bayard class." (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard- class_ironclad ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ironclad_Turenne ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ironclad_Bayard )
 
****************************************************************************************************************************************
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard- class_ironclad
 
Unlike several of their French predecessors, the Bayard-class ships disposed with iron hulls and reverted to wooden hulls, which were sheathed in copper to reduce fouling on extended voyages overseas, where shipyard facilities were less available. This may have been the result of British reports of hull corrosion with their iron-hulled vessels.
…
The ships were protected with wrought iron armor; their belt was 250 mm (9.8 in) thick amidships, where it protected the ships' propulsion machinery spaces and ammunition magazines. The belt extended for the entire length of the hull, but toward the bow it reduced in thickness to 180 mm (7.1 in), and at the stern, it was reduced to 150 mm (5.9 in). The belt extended from 0.91 m (3 ft) above the waterline to 1.99 m (6 ft 6 in) below.
 
***************************************************************************************************************************************
Note for openers that these wooden-hulled ships "...were sheathed with copper to reduce fouling on extended voyages overseas, where shipyard facilities were less available." We should recognize from the outset then that the converse is also true: they weren't sheathed with copper when not on an extended voyage overseas where shipyard facilities were available. The fact that these French wooden ironclads weren't always copper-sheathed is confirmed by what we know of Atalante, discussed hereafter. Apparently, sometimes they were and sometimes they weren't. If one is modeling a particular such vessel at a particular time in its service life, at least a serious attempt to ascertain whether or not she was copper-sheathed at that time is required. Is there a log, diary, or maintenance report or receipt in a dusty file somewhere? If not, what's the "best estimate" one can make? If depicted when the vessel was on station in French Indochina, there's at least evidence to support your assuming she was not being coppered at that place in time in the absence of contrary evidence. (Just sayin'.  )
 
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These vessels carried a ten inch thick wrought iron armor belt which extended 3 feet above the waterline and 6.5 feet below the waterline. Considering the mechanical and galvanic issues attendant to sheathing wrought iron with copper plate, we can conclude that these vessels were only metal-sheathed to protect the wooden hull exposed below the waterline, i.e., from six and a half feet below the waterline on down. There isn't ever going to be any verdigris color at the waterline of any of these wooden vessels with nine and a half foot wide belts of wrought iron around their waterlines.
 
****************************************************************************************************************************************
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muntz_metal:
 
(Muntz metal's) original application was as a replacement for copper sheathing on the bottom of boats, as it maintained the anti-fouling abilities of the pure copper at around two thirds of the price. It became the material of choice for this application and Muntz made his fortune. It was found that copper would gradually leach from the alloy in sea water, poisoning any organism that attempted to attach itself to a hull sheathed in the metal.
***************************************************************************************************************************************
 
Muntz metal, was patented in 1832 in England, and England and France were allies at the time of the Bayard class' service. Pending certain confirmation which should be easily accomplished by further research, it is reasonable to presume that the "copper sheathing" on these vessels was actually Muntz metal, rather than pure copper. This would result in a "yellow metal" that would be somewhat "yellower" than pure copper.
 
Below: Newly ("virgin") Muntz metal sheathed hull of Cutty Sark following her recent restoration and isolation from the elements in her new partially covered dry dock display building: 
 

By Cmglee - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19898346
 
While metal sheathing provides an effective mechanical barrier to marine borers, it is not as effective at preventing the growth of vegetative fouling which attaches itself to submerged surfaces. Additionally, with the advent of iron-hulled ships which could not be sheathed with copper-based metals due to difficulties with attaching such sheathing and, more significantly, the galvanic dissimilarities between iron and copper which caused severe electrolytic corrosion, a large number of anti-fouling paints and other coatings were developed in the late 19th century and were widely in use by the time of the Bayard class' service. The most successful, and therefore most widely used, of these anti-fouling paints had the now-familiar "bottom paint red" color owing to the copper they contained. Again pending certain confirmation which should be easily accomplished by further research, it is reasonable to presume that at least the nine and a half foot wide wrought iron armor plate armor belt at the waterline of the two Bayard class vessels was painted with anti-fouling paint of a color common at the time. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fouling_paint and https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/july/history-prevention-fouling )
 
A review of related contemporary black and white photographs, colored paintings, colored contemporary postcards, and color photographs of contemporary museum models available online appears to confirm that French iron and wooden warships of the Bayard-class' time, at least to the bottoms of their iron armor belts, were apparently painted with anti-fouling paint and that if they were wooden, were, in some cases when at sea for long periods and away from dry-docking facilities, sheathed in Muntz metal (or possibly zinc plate) which may, or may not have been also painted with anti-fouling coating of a "bottom paint red" (or possibly a light grey color. A copper sulfate anti-fouling coating called "Italian Moravian" was also highly regarded at the time of the Bayard-class. It was reputed to be expensive and difficult to apply. I do not know its color. Here again, more research is required.  Some brief experimentation was also conducted with sheet zinc plating instead of copper or Muntz metal over iron, owing to zinc's greater compatibility with iron on the galvanic scale. Zinc sheet metal would appear as a flat silver-grey ("galvanized") color. Some colored contemporary postcards do clearly show a bottoms of such color. See: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/july/history-prevention-fouling  
 
For visual data, search Google images: "French Bayard Class ironclads." Some excerpts below. Englarge the photographs to see greater detail:
 
Two photos below: Contemporary hand colored photographs of French ironclads:
 

 

 
Below: Watercolor painting of contemporary iron French naval vessels:

 
Below: From a presumably well-researched modern Eastern European modeling source:
 

 
Below:  Model of Alma-class Jeanne d'Arc on display at the Musee de la Marine in Paris. She was a contemporary of the Bayard-class ships and of identical French ironclad wooden construction as Turenne with a wrought iron armor belt at the waterline. Note armor belt above and below white painted waterline which from other contemporary pictorial documentation appears to be a common feature of French naval livery at that time. Note "Muntz metal" brass-colored metal sheathing below the armor plate and similar "bronze" colored ram edge at the bow. (These bronze rams were not merely a metal covering, but actually an integral structural member of the hull.) Bright sheathing color results from model's "new as built" depiction style. (Alternately identified by other sources as sistership Alma-class ironclad Armide.) (Blue color of possibly dark grey topsides is apparently a photographic lighting artifact.)
 
 
 
Below: Black and white contemporary photograph of similar French ironclad naval vessel showing slightly visible top line of armor belt.
 

 
Below: It appears the white waterline accent line  (AKA: "boot stripe") appears again suggesting it was a regulation livery detail.
 

 
Below: Additional French ironclads of the Bayard-class era from a modern Eastern European modeling source indicating standard French navy livery:
 

 
 
Below: 1860's Alma-class wooden ironclad Atalante, sister to Jeanne d'Arc, a contemporary "as built" model of which is pictured above.  This class' service period overlapped the wooden Bayard-class', particularly given that the latter was an intentional nearly identical "throwback" to the Alma-class' wooden ironclad construction details.
 
Atalante is here photographed in the Fitzroy Dock, Sidney Harbor in 1873. She spent a large portion of her service life on the French Indo-China Station. She bombarded Vietnamese forts during the Battle of Thuan in 1884 and participated in the Sino-French Indo-China War of 1884–1885. She was reduced to reserve in Saigon, French Indochina, in 1885 and sank there two years later after having been condemned. 
 
Note top of her armor belt at the level of the heads of the workmen standing on the staging platform with approximately the two top feet of the armor belt painted black as are the topsides (i.e., down to the workers' waists) with anti-fouling bottom paint being applied below that line, resulting in bottom paint beginning approximately a foot or two above the waterline and continuing down to cover the the lower part of the armor belt and the rest of the underwater hull below the staging platform. (Enlarge photo for greater detail.) 
 

 
Below: Contemporary colored drawing of Alma-class wooden ironclad Atalante from the glass plate negative above, but depicting the appearance of the hull after the bottom painting was done and she was ready for launching! (Quite a lot to discover from these two views on account of that difference!) Note the "bottom paint red" anti-fouling paint being applied from approximately a couple of feet below the top of the armor belt on downwards to cover the submerged part of the armor belt and on down to include the wooden bottom. Note also the white "bootstripe" accent line at the top of the armor belt and the (subtle) lining above and below the armor belt depicting the wooden planking of the topsides and unsheathed bottom of the wooden hull, contrasted with the smooth wrought plates of the armor belt. As this picture confirms, it appears that the not-inconsiderable expense of metal sheathing of her wooden bottom was deemed unnecessary as she had adequate dry-docking facilities available in her station area. 
 

 
 
 
I didn't reach the same conclusion as you when examining the photos you posted. You'll find a clearer version of your photo of Turenne at her Wikipedia entry: See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard-class_ironclad#/media/File:French_ironclad_Turenne_NH_66099.jpg  This photo will enlarge a lot without losing definition. ("Left mouse click once." Love these old glass plate negatives!) For some reason, the French Navy of the period seems to have frequently photographed their ships while they were getting painted. I have no idea why, but it's uncanny when you look at so many of them that have painting details at work. If you enlarge this photo from the Wiki page, and examine the stern quarter, you'll see painters on staging painting the topsides white. If you then examine  the bow area, you'll see that they've just painted the bow area, (including the anchors and chain rodes!) and what you apparently took to be "...what looks like verdigris on copper plating on bows..." and "...a clear patina there on a ship that's made a voyage from Toulon to somewhere in China station." Look again. What you're seeing there is the aftermath of a rather sloppy recent paint job. If you had spent time around shipyards, you'd probably have recognized it for what it was as soon as you saw it. Sailors are notoriously sloppy painters. They're painting to protect the metal first and foremost. They really don't care a whole lot what the job looks like from 100 yards, which is as much as most people will ever see. 
 
As for the second picture, we know that's not "shiny copper" because that's where the wrought iron armor belt is and there's no way they're going to copper-sheath wrought iron armor plate. It certainly was tried unsuccessfully at the time iron ships first came into use, trying to separate the dissimilar metals with felt or wooden furring strips, but that was long before the time of the vessel pictured. I believe what we see in that photo is simply an over-exposure "flash" that could sometimes occur with reflected light off the water and onto the white surfaces given the limitations of the photographic technology of those times. 
 
 

By Unknown, Farenholt collection - history.navy.mil, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=142143958
 
I don't think today's younger modelers who began building ship models in the "Internet Age" can begin to appreciate the value of digital research to the hobby. Before the internet, I doubt there was anything more than possibly a book or three, long out of print and near impossible to obtain, written in French, that would have any information whatsoever about these ships. Obtaining the information posted here would have likely required a trip to France and days of searching museum archives, if they'd allow you to do so and, in the days before digital photography, copying a photograph would be a major undertaking and copying a construction drawing would require days of tedious tracing at a drafting table by a skilled draftsman, again if they'd allow you to touch the original. Now, modeling research is often only "a few clicks away!" On the other hand, such a resource has made it all the more important to conduct meticulous research because errors nobody would ever notice before are so much more easily noticed with the so much more accurate information available today. 
 

There's really no substitute for careful research, and I must admit with chagrin that there's no substitute for carefully double-checking somebody else's research before posting an answer to any question posed, especially when I'm not readily familiar with the vessel in question!  
 
The repeated reference to these two French naval vessels, Turenne and Bayard, as "ironclads" kept niggling at me because it appeared to me that they were built later than the so called "ironclad" period and were of a style similarly advanced beyond the "ironclad" period. So I finally spent a moment to see if I could find anything on line about either of them and, sure enough, there were Wikipedia pages for both vessels and their named "Bayard class." (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard- class_ironclad ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ironclad_Turenne ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ironclad_Bayard )
 
****************************************************************************************************************************************
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard- class_ironclad
 
Unlike several of their French predecessors, the Bayard-class ships disposed with iron hulls and reverted to wooden hulls, which were sheathed in copper to reduce fouling on extended voyages overseas, where shipyard facilities were less available. This may have been the result of British reports of hull corrosion with their iron-hulled vessels.
…
The ships were protected with wrought iron armor; their belt was 250 mm (9.8 in) thick amidships, where it protected the ships' propulsion machinery spaces and ammunition magazines. The belt extended for the entire length of the hull, but toward the bow it reduced in thickness to 180 mm (7.1 in), and at the stern, it was reduced to 150 mm (5.9 in). The belt extended from 0.91 m (3 ft) above the waterline to 1.99 m (6 ft 6 in) below.
 
***************************************************************************************************************************************
Note for openers that these wooden-hulled ships "...were sheathed with copper to reduce fouling on extended voyages overseas, where shipyard facilities were less available." We should recognize from the outset then that the converse is also true: they weren't sheathed with copper when not on an extended voyage overseas where shipyard facilities were available. The fact that these French wooden ironclads weren't always copper-sheathed is confirmed by what we know of Atalante, discussed hereafter. Apparently, sometimes they were and sometimes they weren't. If one is modeling a particular such vessel at a particular time in its service life, at least a serious attempt to ascertain whether or not she was copper-sheathed at that time is required. Is there a log, diary, or maintenance report or receipt in a dusty file somewhere? If not, what's the "best estimate" one can make? If depicted when the vessel was on station in French Indochina, there's at least evidence to support your assuming she was not being coppered at that place in time in the absence of contrary evidence. (Just sayin'.  )
 
****************************************************************************************************************************************
These vessels carried a ten inch thick wrought iron armor belt which extended 3 feet above the waterline and 6.5 feet below the waterline. Considering the mechanical and galvanic issues attendant to sheathing wrought iron with copper plate, we can conclude that these vessels were only metal-sheathed to protect the wooden hull exposed below the waterline, i.e., from six and a half feet below the waterline on down. There isn't ever going to be any verdigris color at the waterline of any of these wooden vessels with nine and a half foot wide belts of wrought iron around their waterlines.
 
****************************************************************************************************************************************
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muntz_metal:
 
(Muntz metal's) original application was as a replacement for copper sheathing on the bottom of boats, as it maintained the anti-fouling abilities of the pure copper at around two thirds of the price. It became the material of choice for this application and Muntz made his fortune. It was found that copper would gradually leach from the alloy in sea water, poisoning any organism that attempted to attach itself to a hull sheathed in the metal.
***************************************************************************************************************************************
 
Muntz metal, was patented in 1832 in England, and England and France were allies at the time of the Bayard class' service. Pending certain confirmation which should be easily accomplished by further research, it is reasonable to presume that the "copper sheathing" on these vessels was actually Muntz metal, rather than pure copper. This would result in a "yellow metal" that would be somewhat "yellower" than pure copper.
 
Below: Newly ("virgin") Muntz metal sheathed hull of Cutty Sark following her recent restoration and isolation from the elements in her new partially covered dry dock display building: 
 

By Cmglee - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19898346
 
While metal sheathing provides an effective mechanical barrier to marine borers, it is not as effective at preventing the growth of vegetative fouling which attaches itself to submerged surfaces. Additionally, with the advent of iron-hulled ships which could not be sheathed with copper-based metals due to difficulties with attaching such sheathing and, more significantly, the galvanic dissimilarities between iron and copper which caused severe electrolytic corrosion, a large number of anti-fouling paints and other coatings were developed in the late 19th century and were widely in use by the time of the Bayard class' service. The most successful, and therefore most widely used, of these anti-fouling paints had the now-familiar "bottom paint red" color owing to the copper they contained. Again pending certain confirmation which should be easily accomplished by further research, it is reasonable to presume that at least the nine and a half foot wide wrought iron armor plate armor belt at the waterline of the two Bayard class vessels was painted with anti-fouling paint of a color common at the time. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fouling_paint and https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/july/history-prevention-fouling )
 
A review of related contemporary black and white photographs, colored paintings, colored contemporary postcards, and color photographs of contemporary museum models available online appears to confirm that French iron and wooden warships of the Bayard-class' time, at least to the bottoms of their iron armor belts, were apparently painted with anti-fouling paint and that if they were wooden, were, in some cases when at sea for long periods and away from dry-docking facilities, sheathed in Muntz metal (or possibly zinc plate) which may, or may not have been also painted with anti-fouling coating of a "bottom paint red" (or possibly a light grey color. A copper sulfate anti-fouling coating called "Italian Moravian" was also highly regarded at the time of the Bayard-class. It was reputed to be expensive and difficult to apply. I do not know its color. Here again, more research is required.  Some brief experimentation was also conducted with sheet zinc plating instead of copper or Muntz metal over iron, owing to zinc's greater compatibility with iron on the galvanic scale. Zinc sheet metal would appear as a flat silver-grey ("galvanized") color. Some colored contemporary postcards do clearly show a bottoms of such color. See: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/july/history-prevention-fouling  
 
For visual data, search Google images: "French Bayard Class ironclads." Some excerpts below. Englarge the photographs to see greater detail:
 
Two photos below: Contemporary hand colored photographs of French ironclads:
 

 

 
Below: Watercolor painting of contemporary iron French naval vessels:

 
Below: From a presumably well-researched modern Eastern European modeling source:
 

 
Below:  Model of Alma-class Jeanne d'Arc on display at the Musee de la Marine in Paris. She was a contemporary of the Bayard-class ships and of identical French ironclad wooden construction as Turenne with a wrought iron armor belt at the waterline. Note armor belt above and below white painted waterline which from other contemporary pictorial documentation appears to be a common feature of French naval livery at that time. Note "Muntz metal" brass-colored metal sheathing below the armor plate and similar "bronze" colored ram edge at the bow. (These bronze rams were not merely a metal covering, but actually an integral structural member of the hull.) Bright sheathing color results from model's "new as built" depiction style. (Alternately identified by other sources as sistership Alma-class ironclad Armide.) (Blue color of possibly dark grey topsides is apparently a photographic lighting artifact.)
 
 
 
Below: Black and white contemporary photograph of similar French ironclad naval vessel showing slightly visible top line of armor belt.
 

 
Below: It appears the white waterline accent line  (AKA: "boot stripe") appears again suggesting it was a regulation livery detail.
 

 
Below: Additional French ironclads of the Bayard-class era from a modern Eastern European modeling source indicating standard French navy livery:
 

 
 
Below: 1860's Alma-class wooden ironclad Atalante, sister to Jeanne d'Arc, a contemporary "as built" model of which is pictured above.  This class' service period overlapped the wooden Bayard-class', particularly given that the latter was an intentional nearly identical "throwback" to the Alma-class' wooden ironclad construction details.
 
Atalante is here photographed in the Fitzroy Dock, Sidney Harbor in 1873. She spent a large portion of her service life on the French Indo-China Station. She bombarded Vietnamese forts during the Battle of Thuan in 1884 and participated in the Sino-French Indo-China War of 1884–1885. She was reduced to reserve in Saigon, French Indochina, in 1885 and sank there two years later after having been condemned. 
 
Note top of her armor belt at the level of the heads of the workmen standing on the staging platform with approximately the two top feet of the armor belt painted black as are the topsides (i.e., down to the workers' waists) with anti-fouling bottom paint being applied below that line, resulting in bottom paint beginning approximately a foot or two above the waterline and continuing down to cover the the lower part of the armor belt and the rest of the underwater hull below the staging platform. (Enlarge photo for greater detail.) 
 

 
Below: Contemporary colored drawing of Alma-class wooden ironclad Atalante from the glass plate negative above, but depicting the appearance of the hull after the bottom painting was done and she was ready for launching! (Quite a lot to discover from these two views on account of that difference!) Note the "bottom paint red" anti-fouling paint being applied from approximately a couple of feet below the top of the armor belt on downwards to cover the submerged part of the armor belt and on down to include the wooden bottom. Note also the white "bootstripe" accent line at the top of the armor belt and the (subtle) lining above and below the armor belt depicting the wooden planking of the topsides and unsheathed bottom of the wooden hull, contrasted with the smooth wrought plates of the armor belt. As this picture confirms, it appears that the not-inconsiderable expense of metal sheathing of her wooden bottom was deemed unnecessary as she had adequate dry-docking facilities available in her station area. 
 

 
 
 
I didn't reach the same conclusion as you when examining the photos you posted. You'll find a clearer version of your photo of Turenne at her Wikipedia entry: See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard-class_ironclad#/media/File:French_ironclad_Turenne_NH_66099.jpg  This photo will enlarge a lot without losing definition. ("Left mouse click once." Love these old glass plate negatives!) For some reason, the French Navy of the period seems to have frequently photographed their ships while they were getting painted. I have no idea why, but it's uncanny when you look at so many of them that have painting details at work. If you enlarge this photo from the Wiki page, and examine the stern quarter, you'll see painters on staging painting the topsides white. If you then examine  the bow area, you'll see that they've just painted the bow area, (including the anchors and chain rodes!) and what you apparently took to be "...what looks like verdigris on copper plating on bows..." and "...a clear patina there on a ship that's made a voyage from Toulon to somewhere in China station." Look again. What you're seeing there is the aftermath of a rather sloppy recent paint job. If you had spent time around shipyards, you'd probably have recognized it for what it was as soon as you saw it. Sailors are notoriously sloppy painters. They're painting to protect the metal first and foremost. They really don't care a whole lot what the job looks like from 100 yards, which is as much as most people will ever see. 
 
As for the second picture, we know that's not "shiny copper" because that's where the wrought iron armor belt is and there's no way they're going to copper-sheath wrought iron armor plate. It certainly was tried unsuccessfully at the time iron ships first came into use, trying to separate the dissimilar metals with felt or wooden furring strips, but that was long before the time of the vessel pictured. I believe what we see in that photo is simply an over-exposure "flash" that could sometimes occur with reflected light off the water and onto the white surfaces given the limitations of the photographic technology of those times. 
 
 

By Unknown, Farenholt collection - history.navy.mil, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=142143958
 
I don't think today's younger modelers who began building ship models in the "Internet Age" can begin to appreciate the value of digital research to the hobby. Before the internet, I doubt there was anything more than possibly a book or three, long out of print and near impossible to obtain, written in French, that would have any information whatsoever about these ships. Obtaining the information posted here would have likely required a trip to France and days of searching museum archives, if they'd allow you to do so and, in the days before digital photography, copying a photograph would be a major undertaking and copying a construction drawing would require days of tedious tracing at a drafting table by a skilled draftsman, again if they'd allow you to touch the original. Now, modeling research is often only "a few clicks away!" On the other hand, such a resource has made it all the more important to conduct meticulous research because errors nobody would ever notice before are so much more easily noticed with the so much more accurate information available today. 
 

"Thread drift" is an inherent danger is any forum discussion.  It's just as well to head it off at the pass. Back to the subject of hull construction:
 
You are certainly free to build your hull however you wish and, regardless of the construction method you choose, you will have to do some drawing to generate additional transverse body sections, as Wefalck has described so well. That said, I would urge you to carefully study the shape of the classic steam launch hull in which "form follows function." The shape has been developed with speed  and the high-torque low-RPM steam engine's power in mind. (One determining factor being the necessity of the larger diameter higher pitched steam propeller.) Framing and planking the elegant shape of the steam launch's elliptical fan tail counter stern is, in my experience, the most complex and difficult framing and planking job of all stern shapes. Contrasted with the ordinary transom stern where the planks run fairly flat to a relatively vertical sternpost and are "sawed off" at the transom, the fantail launch stern with its long shallow run aft, requires that the planks take a significant twist between the point of maximum beam and the sternpost rabbet, which transitions from relatively vertical at the keel to relatively horizontal at the deck. Therefore, I strongly urge you to seriously consider employing the "lift" or "bread and butter" construction method for such a model hull. The relative difficulties between the alternative construction methods in this instance are at opposite ends of the difficulty spectrum.
 
See: https://www.gartsideboats.com/custom-boatbuilding/22-foot-steam-launch-design-123.html for a sequential photographic demonstration of the construction of a plank on frame steam launch hull. (Plan and photos below from Paul Gartside's website.)
 
 

 

https://www.gartsideboats.com/custom-boatbuilding/22-foot-steam-launch-design-123.html
 

 
 
 
 

It's your model and you are certainly entitled to color it to your own taste, but if it's realism that you are about, there's no "copper sheen" or "shiny brass" look whatsoever to a coppered hull bottom. In real life, it all turns flat "penny brown" in short order as soon as it's exposed to the elements.'