Orel 1/200 Pre-dreadnought Admiral Ushakov

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Here is the Orel 1/200 Russian coastal defense battleship Admiral Ushakov. I purchased it from the Paper Model Store. Instructions are primarily in Russian, with translations to Polish, German and English. The English won't win any prizes for grammar and syntax, but is comprehensible for the most part. A 2D plan shows the ship from side and top down views, a diagram depicts the upper masts/rigging and also we have a page of 3D figures of the trickier assemblies. Orel's website also has a few useful pictures of the completed model.

There are six pages of parts, printed on rather thin cardstock or plain paper. The cover illustration of the booklet is quite beautiful and I wish the ship had been rendered in this peacetime color scheme. However, it's all warlike black save for the tan decks/boat interiors. The funnels which are supposed to be yellow, are actually printed in a sickly tan color. I'll probably have to do something about that.

The Admiral Ushakov was launched in 1894, serving in the Baltic Fleet until 1905 when she was added to Admiral Nebogatov's ramshackle 3rd Squadron for the fateful voyage to Tsushima. This was really quite a small battleship, just under 5,000 tons and 280' long. The model scales out to a modest 17" in length. Armed with a main battery of four 10" guns, she really had more the fighting power of a cruiser and no business being in the main battleline. Nevertheless, the Admiral Ushakov survived the main engagement only to wind up alone and surrounded by the Japanese battlefleet the next day. Summoned to surrender, the Russians answered by opening fire and the Admiral Ushakov sank soon after under hail of Japanese shellfire.

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This is a full hull model, but my preference is for waterline models. My main concern was being able to pull off this conversion successfully, as well as avoiding the "starved dog" look which is how I ruined my last attempt at a 1/200 Pre-dreadnought, Modelik's Petropavlovsk. Let's see how it goes. First, I cut down the hull formers and used the main horizontal brace as the waterline base of the model. The three main decks are glued on next. All these parts I mounted on 1mm thick illustration board.

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Before the hull sides are glued on, it's first necessary to assemble and mount the anchor pockets. I then mounted the hull sections on 65 lb.cardstock. This worked out well, providing enough stiffness to dodge the "starved dog" bullet as well as retaining a workable degree of pliability. However, the black hull parts ended 2-3mm shy of covering the frame entirely from deck to waterline. I knew this was going to be a problem, but there was no getting around it short of making major modifications to the underlying frame. The only solution was to glue on a skirt of copper sheating and depict the ship riding high in the water. Not ideal, but I can live with the result.

The hull fit nicely. The only design issue is the anchor pockets turned out to be angled a bit too steeply to meet the hull cutouts flush. I'd advise anyone building this kit to first tack the pockets in place lightly, test fit against the hull cutouts, and trim as needed. Too late to tear out the pockets for a do over or fiddle with trimming the hull, I let it ride as is. One advantage of building a black ship appears to be that black seems to do a pretty good job of tricking the eye into overlooking the warts. ;-)

[cpl_trim]

No further problems and the next phase is to create and mount the assemblies which support the bridge deck and then glue that on.

[birder]

That looks like it will work just fine. (my opinion may not be valuable on this, though) My grandfather was attending Katherine the Great University in 1914 and was to be entered into the navy to serve in the Baltic fleet. (Thankfully his family left the country the following year or I would not be typing this.) He lived to be in his 90's so I have many fond memories of him. Oddly enough in his working years he designed machine tools and built a mobile milling machine for the US Navy to mill true the turret base for US battleships. He worked with Igor Sikorsky on some projects, but was a bit younger than Igor, and even saw Sikorsky prang an early aircraft prior to leaving Russia. Sikorsky had taken up a local professor who afterwards said "it is not wise for a creature born to crawl to attempt to fly"

[dansls1]

She's looking good so far.

[Barry]

Real fine looking ship and build there.

[milenio3]

Beautiful and clean!

[cpl_trim]

Thanks, guys. I'm not a fast worker but I'll keep posting now and then.

[ccoyle]

I'm watching this one with interest, as I have this kit along with Sevastopol and Retvizan from the same publisher. I find all of these kits to be decent, but each has its own coloring quirks. Retvizan is the nicest of the three, but my copy has a pretty distinct color difference between the fore and aft main deck pieces. BTW, GPM makes a barrel set for the Pro Model version of Ushakov. Best of luck on your build.