French Cruiser Chanzy - Orel 1:200

[JP64]

Hello to all the modelers here in the forum !!!

As I wrote in one of my last post on the Peresvet thread, I delayed the building of the Peresvet battleship for a couple of reason...one was about few time due job and family task...

The second reason was a secret that now I want unreveal to you..

This reason has a name : CHANZY and she was an armoured French cruiser of 1894.
The cruser Chanzy was part of the "Amiral Charner" class of four protected cruiser : Amiral Charner, Chanzy, Bruix and Latouche-Tréville.

This class of cruiser was built with the scope to attack and destroy British merchant ships, in case of war.

At the launch the ships were equipped with big military masts, but after 1905, was took the decision to change the masts with normal ones.

There are very few info on Chanzy....

She was launched on January 1895, commissioned on December 1894 and after her trials in 1895, she served in the Caribbean and in the Far East.

Chanzy ran aground in Indochina in 1907, where she proved impossible to refloat and was destroyed on 30 May of same year. (from wikipedia)

The ship had the following dimensions :
* Lenght : 106 mt.
* Beam : 14 mt.
* Draught : 6.2 mt.
* Displacement : 4.700 tons.
She was pushed at 18,2 knots by two propellers powered by 2 Creusot alternate horizontal steam engines, triple expansion, with 16 Belleville boilers and 8,800 shp.

Armament :
• 2 × 194 mm /45 guns M1887 (fore and aft)
• 6 × 138 mm /45 guns M1887 (port and starboard)
• 4 × 65 mm (2.6 in) guns
• 4 × 47 mm (3pdr) guns
• 6 × 37 mm revolver guns
• 4 × 450 mm (18 in) torpedo tubes

Protection :
• steel
• from 90 mm to 100 mm. to waterline belt;
• 105 mm for towers
• 105 mm for conning tower

Complements was 410

Ok... now some info on model kit.

The kit is produced by Orel, in 1:200 scale.

The quality of printing is really good and also the type of paper is pretty good.

Instructions must be read carefully (the instructions are in Russian) especially looking at the pictures.

Together with kit I've bought the cardboard keel and frames by Orel and I was satisfied also from those parts...the thickness is 1mm but still enough strong to give a good strength and rigidity of the hull and bridges.

I have cut the portholes by a punch&die set and by little drops of gold paint, on the tip of a toothpick, I have "empathized" the external porthole ring.

The build was straightforward and good, with very few mistakes (mine ...not from kit) and now the Chanzy is at the stage shown by following pics.

Ah...right... I have painted the lower hull in the same way like Imperator Nikolai and Peresvet... two-three layers of Tamiya grey base, three layers of Tamiya red dull and two last layers of transparent matte cover spray.

Ok... now the pics..
Have a nice modeling time

ciao

Jp

[ccoyle]

This is very nice work! I have several of the older Orel releases in my stash (Admiral Ushakov, Sevastopol, and Retvizan), but I don't think I will be tackling these anytime in the near future. Orel has been publishing models at breakneck speed, and the quality of the kits seems to have much improved over the relatively short time they have been in business.

Cheers!

[JP64]

Originally Posted by ccoyle

This is very nice work! I have several of the older Orel releases in my stash (Admiral Ushakov, Sevastopol, and Retvizan), but I don't think I will be tackling these anytime in the near future. Orel has been publishing models at breakneck speed, and the quality of the kits seems to have much improved over the relatively short time they have been in business.

Cheers!

Hi, Chris

Honestly I don't know about the "old" Orel kits..
before to approach to Orel production, I have been built some HMV models (mainly ironclads and monitors) but at a point, I want to try a full hull ship.

So I started with a Walden Model's Livadia yacht (still under building) and my "true" full hull warship was the Orel russian battleship Imperator Nikolai....
I can't hide that I like very much such "ugly ducks" and the russian and french built the most unusual and ugly warship ever seen..

Anyway... what I still miss in Orel kit is a "part reference sheet" like in HMV kits, where there was a paper indicating the piece in wich paper of the kit was located... this helps a lot.
Fot my actual Peresvet and Chanzy I made such reference paper by myself, taking note on an excel spreadsheet all the pieces numbers and the paper where are located... so it's more simple., looking to a assembly diagram, read the part number, going to the excel and identify the paper page where I have to cut the piece. :-)

I know this takes time at start...but it pays much more !!! :-)

ciao and have a nice modeling

Jp

[Michael Mash]

I really like your surprise JP.
Chanzy is a beautiful ship, with the distinctive bow and armoured battle masts.
I would like to build this one some day, and so, may I ask: So far, what has been the most difficult part?
Great work. Looking forward to the boats, davits, etc.
Thanks,
Mike

[ccoyle]

Originally Posted by JP64

Anyway... what I still miss in Orel kit is a "part reference sheet" like in HMV kits, where there was a paper indicating the piece in wich paper of the kit was located... this helps a lot.
Fot my actual Peresvet and Chanzy I made such reference paper by myself, taking note on an excel spreadsheet all the pieces numbers and the paper where are located... so it's more simple., looking to a assembly diagram, read the part number, going to the excel and identify the paper page where I have to cut the piece. :-)

Yes, it can be very frustrating when the parts are not grouped by number, but rather spread out all over the various sheets. When I built Modelik's HMCS Agassiz, which had like 2,000 parts, I cut the sheets apart and grouped the parts by number, fifty numbers at a time, into individual bags (thus numbers 1-50 were in one bag, etc.). That helped some.

[Renaud]

Why Orel designed these odd tiny balconies on each side, at stem and stern??????? You probably need to cut them off !

[JP64]

Originally Posted by Michael Mash

I really like your surprise JP.
Chanzy is a beautiful ship, with the distinctive bow and armoured battle masts.
I would like to build this one some day, and so, may I ask: So far, what has been the most difficult part?
Great work. Looking forward to the boats, davits, etc.
Thanks,
Mike

Hi, Mike

thanks for your words.
I'm glad that you like my "surprise"...

The most difficult parts were mainly two :

* the stern..that should be bore rounded in vertical shape, but there is a double curve that is not possible (by my experience) to model simply with paper cutted...also shaping the paper with fingers or rounded tools, I was not able to obtain this double curve....

* the railings... that I cut as longer as possible (length of an A4 paper) avoiding too much joints.
I had to shape such railings in a lot of changes of directions (look at bow and stern, upper the lateral casamates) before gluing, but was not so simple to position in the right place. I have glued the railings vertical supports one by one.. waiting the glue was dry before to glue the next one...

But I think that, at last, the result is quite good....

ciao and have a nice weekend !!!

Jp

[JP64]

Originally Posted by Renaud

Why Orel designed these odd tiny balconies on each side, at stem and stern??????? You probably need to cut them off !

Hi, Renaud

you are right..they're odd, but it's not a mistake of Orel design.

In the real ship (and also on other ship of same class) such balconies are in real "casamates" (just I'm not sure those were protected by steel) that host some light guns, with possibility to fire near at 180 degrees arc of fire.

The pics of original Chanzy show such casamates.

ciao

Jp

[Renaud]

Show one of them, I'm intrigated and eager to discover it.

[Lighter]

Originally Posted by Renaud

Show one of them, I'm intrigated and eager to discover it.

Here is one that I found through Google. http://bit.ly/Vvt4li
Undated. Most photos show a clean bow and stern so it would seem that the idea was short lived.