Armor on the Turret

I started adding the armor to the turret. I did not have detail plans for the top deck, but I did find a drawing on the web that showed an assumed arrangement. Using that plus some period drawings of the interior of the ship, I added hatches and gratings to the turret roof. This is mostly an educated guess. If anyone has a better reference, now is the time to make corrections, so please let me know.

Anyone know how the pilot and crew got into the pilot house? There doesn't appear to be a ladder inside.





The armor plating is a layer of 0.015 inch resin impregnated backer board with laser cut holes for the rivets. The rivets are fine dress maker pins that have heads that scale to 2.5 inches, the scale size. Once the armor plating was glued to the turret, I drilled out each hole with a 0.030 inch drill. Then I have to trim a pin and insert in every hole. That should take another fun few hours.




I decided to cover the gun ports opening I made in the wood turret wall with the armor plating as they did not line up with the gun ports that I cut in the armor. I'll drill out and file the wood for the gun ports once all the rivets are installed. The pilot house is a cap from a can of Testors Dullcote. It is almost the right size. I'll make the final one using the same technique I used for the main turret.

The awning supports for the top of the turret are davits from Bluejacket. They are almost a perfect match. The turret walls lift off the base, so if I decide to detail the interior it is possible, but without better information, it would be difficult.