1/350 Monitor & Merrimac/Virginia?

1/200:

http://www.verlindenonline.com/store/index.php?cPath=102_133

courtesy of Tracy White in a past thread.

I was just looking at the Verlinden site and I got to thinking about what it must have been like inside one of those things with the cannonballs hitting the steel clading. That must have left the crew's ringing! Was there clading on the inside as well as I am wondering about spalling of the wooden interior when the cannon balls hit the steel exterior.

John Lyle

I was just looking at the Verlinden site and I got to thinking about what it must have been like inside one of those things with the cannonballs hitting the steel clading. That must have left the crew's ringing! Was there clading on the inside as well as I am wondering about spalling of the wooden interior when the cannon balls hit the steel exterior.

IIRC, the turret on the Monitor was 8 layers of rolled iron riveted together.    The seams overlapped.   That in & of itself would be protection against spalling armor.    The greatest hazard might be from sheared rivet heads.    Not too sure about a wooden lining inside of the turret

To the original question,  Iron Shipwright sells a 1:350 scale Monitor.    It has build options for full hull or waterline and for either the Hampton Roads appearance or the James River campaign/as lost.   It is my master.

I also worked on a master for the Virginia in 1:350 scale, but ran into a problem in replicating the rail bar armor in an economical, castable manner

As I remember the Virginia had something like 8" steel armor plating over 16 inches of cotton batting over 8 inches of Oak timbers. And yes, a direct hit by a 100 lb cannon ball wouldn't break through the armor but would shatter the Oak into thousands of lethal fragments. 

Bruno Schielzeth

As I remember the Virginia had something like 8" steel armor plating over 16 inches of cotton batting over 8 inches of Oak timbers. And yes, a direct hit by a 100 lb cannon ball wouldn't break through the armor but would shatter the Oak into thousands of lethal fragments. 

It was actually the Virginia I was thinking of. I was pretty sure the Monitor didn't have wood lining the turret,

After all these ships were called "ironclads" which to me meant iron, ot steel plate over wood. If I am wrong in my assumption please correct me.

Corrected info on the CSS Virginia. Quoted from the CSS Virginia Home Page:

"The hull was 275^[E2] feet long. About 160 feet of the central portion was covered by a roof of wood and iron, inclining about 36 degrees. The wood was two feet thick; it consisted of oak plank 4 inches by 12 inches, laid up and down next the iron, and two courses of pine, one longitudinal of eight inches thickness, the other twelve inches thick.

The intervening space on top was closed by permanent gratings of two-inch square iron two and one-half inches apart, leaving opening for four hatches, one near each end, and one forward and one abaft the smoke-stack. The roof did not project beyond the hull. There was no knuckle as in the Atlantic,^[E3] Tennesseeand our other ironclads of later and improved construction. The ends of the shield were rounded.

The armor was four inches thick. It was fastened to its wooden backing by one and three-eighths inch bolts, countersunk and secured by iron nuts and washers. The plates were eight inches wide. Those first made were one inch thick, which was as thick as we could then punch cold iron. We succeeded soon in punching two inches, and the remaining plates, more than two-thirds, were two inches thick. They were rolled and punched at the Tredegar Works, Richmond. The outside course was up and down, the next longitudinal. Joints were broken where there were more than two courses."

The construction I mentioned must have come from my imagination or some other ship.  Still an impressive armor setup for the time.