11″ Dahlgren Naval Gun 1/16 Scale
The Dahlgren Cannon was chosen by ship designer John Ericsson to arm his breakthrough design of the ironclad USS MONITOR. The MONITOR's 29' revolving turret carried two of these huge rifled guns that were capable of firing a variety of shot. Despite the weight of shell exchanged during the four and one half naval battle, niether the MONITOR nor the VIRGINIA (Merrimac) could claim victory. One thing was realized by the Union and Confederacy, all the world's wooden navies were rendered obsolete. The age of the steam powered metal warship had arrived.
The Model
A customer that had ordered this Verlinden kit returned it to the hobby shop where I was employed. The kit was missing a number of key parts so the shop's owner refunded the customer's money. Attempts to get replacement parts from the manufacturer proved fruitless so I purchased the model "as is" with the idea of scratch building the missing items-there were no directions in the box! After exploring the internet I was able to locate a set of online pictures of the models parts and a set of line drawings. I used my best judgement in building the gun, the drawings left a lot of unanswered questions. 1/4 inch aircraft plywood was used for the carriage and 1/8 inch ply was used for the wheel assembly. I cut wood dowels for the wheels and covered them with brass tubing. Model railroad plastic rivets were applied with "odds and ends" from the junk box to round out the model. Evergreen plastic was utilized for the rest of the missing items. With assembly complete, the model was airbrushed with Testors Military colors. The planked "deck" was dusted with chalk after painting and sealed with dullcote. Not being an "artillery modeler", I was surprised with how well it turned out.
Your images did not come through for me. Suspect there might be some bugs on the site related to the new slideshow feature. That did not come up on the post prior to yours.
I'm sure your images will eventually come up.
Affirmative. Several users have exprienced problems with image uploads today and the recently introduced slideshow feature may be causing this. I have disabled the slideshow for now pending further investigation.
Apologies for any inconvenience.
Mike,
They came through for me and let me just say... "WOW". What a beautifully done model. This is a masterful and very skillful piece of art.
Worth the wait for the images Mike. The finish appears very realistic, especially the barrel.
Lovely job done there Mike.
A very well done.
I see it all. Beautiful work.
super cool subject and great job...funny I've been looking at Napoleons lately but too expensive
OK Mile, you have my heart now. As a retired gunner I think this is a fine piece. A lot of people do not realize the importance of the Dahlgren in history let alone Naval history.
Mike, fantastic job on this most interesting subject. And, what a story to go with it. Talk about perserverance! I'm impressed. Thanks for posting.
Looks great, Mike. Nice detective work to find the missing information and beautiful job making use of the information. It all paid off. Great use of modelling skills not to mention carpentry skills as well!
Brilliant work, Mike.
Yep, like George said!
Nice job. I found one of these for real sitting out in a park in Michigan. It's a little SW and below Traverse City. I believe it came off the USS Hartford, Adm Farragetts ship. I just love getting "As Is" deals, they're great.
Mike:
I'm writing a story about a model guy, and your name came up. I'm a columnist for the B I Times, and do some free lancing. Hit my blog site on my website, for some old ferry pix. Great work you're doing!
Joe