Trashy Fleets - 1/1000 Royal Navy pre-dreadnought

By popular demand (that is, the Mad Padre has mentioned in the previous post that he would like to see some ships), here is the first Trashy battleship.

Now I cheated with this one a little, as the hull was completed some time ago, I just added touch-ups and the base. The model is roughly 1/1000 scale, so about 10cm/4" long, with emphasis on the proportions and general features.

This ship represents the epitome of RN pre-dreadnoughts (not counting the Lord Nelsons), with two pairs of 12" guns in hooded barbettes, and funnels abeam of each other. The ship's got no name yet, as most likely she will not be part of a historical representation of the Royal Navy.

Word on the materials used: the hull is made of layers of corrugated cardboard, which was shaped with a 100 grit sandpaper on both ends. Then I covered it in thinner paper, and finally added a cardstock armor plate on the outside. The casemate housing for the tertiary battery is also made the samee way. 

Here's how I make the funnels: I pick a length of bamboo skewer and trim it on two sides. Then I cut a piece of ordinary paper to the desired length, coat one side in PVA then start rolling it on, leaving a hollowed out part where the top of the funnel should be.

The ventillation tubes are plastic sprue, warmed up a little, bent, then drilled out at the apertures.

The masts are toothpicks and kabob sticks, the bridges are thin plasticard with a strip of paper glued around them. The cranes are bent paper clips. I chose not to model the secondary and tertiary gun barrels, just indicated their whereabouts with gun ports sticking out. The main battery was salvaged from the plastic barrels of the 1/700 Arizona I built and used turned brass barrels for. The rest is mostly balsa wood. 

The base is hard insulation foam, the waves were formed with two or three layers of thick acrylic modelling paste. I bought a new batch which dries glossy, and the wave crests are a bit more blunt compared to the sea bases I made with the matte version, which is odd, but a bit of paint fixed it up for good.

I chose a Victorian black-and-white livery for the ship (I was also thinking about adding a red stripe at the waterline, but let go of the idea in the end). The first paintjob was rather rudimentary, so I followed up with lots of highlights, a sepia wash, and then some more highlights. 

PS. Please forgive the bad quality of the photos, as I mostly rely on natural light, and there is little of that here recently.