Modelik Monitor Udarnyj upsized to 1/72

[SJPONeill]

I didn't mean to start another model, really, I didn't...but I was away from home for a few nights the other week. I dutifully packed up my cutting board and made sure my knife and spare blades were safely packed (have had them come loose before with unpleasant side effects) with the best intentions of doing some more work on the Murometz engines. When to follow through on the aforementioned best intentions only to find that I hadn't applied the same care to actually packing the engine parts sheets which were still resting on the table in the lounge....uh-oh...

What I did have though, on my memory stick was the sample sheets of the new Modelik 1/100 Udarnyj river monitor...small hull, big guns!!!...from the Modelik site. I'd only put these on the stick at work so I could view them at my leisure at home (where downloading them over a dial-up connection would have been like sticking needles in my eyes but not as much fun). I'm not sure what Modelik are doing with these samples sheets as the downloadable ones for this and 10/09 (which is another of those obscure but way cool armoured trains) are pretty well 80% of the whole model. The Udarnyj ones are virtually complete less for formers for the hull and some detail parts - I did email Modelik and ask them if this might not be a mistake i.e. that they might have uploaded the sheets without watermarks or any other sort of spoilers by accident but received no reply and last time I looked, the sheets were still there on their site. I've since ordered the model anyway since at the price it is just too big and ugly to pass by and I didn't feel right about building a commercial model from the downloadable sample sheets.

But anyway, being stuck in the big city for a couple of nights and NOT wanting to go out that much and having acccess to a comprehensive art supply shop near the conference I was at, I thought I might as well have a play with building Udarnyj as a waterline kit. I've been toying with the idea of a waterline model since seeing the Golden Bear Lavoisier at GremirModels: my first response that what's the point of a waterline model unless you are going to build a base/diorama for it but then I figured I might want to pull my head in first and actually try one (any ship I have built has always been full hull) in case I was missing something...

So there I was...have knifes...have foam board....have can of 3M 77...have Udarnyj sample sheets enlarged to 1/72 (I thought this might make it easier to find crew figures, details parts etc)...get into it....which I did quite happily. It wa sonly as I got more into it that a little voice started asking if anyone had noticed just how well the enlarged parts fit on the A3 sheets when the enlargement ration was only meant to be 138% not 150%...as the little voice grew louder, I realised that there are some funny things happening when you convert images to PDF files in that the image is always expanded to fit the page size regardless of whether 'fit to page' setting are off or on. It took me three hours on Friday night (What does your significant other think when you get in hours late from work on a Friday night?!) to finally get a print out that was actually 1/72 and not something like the 1/66 that my original attempts were. This pic shows the difference between the first and correct versions.

[dansls1]

Good start - I agree with the 'big and ugly' making this cool.
My opinion of ship models is you only see the hull if the ship is in drydock - meaning not complete or sick / damaged. Therefore a waterline model is the natural state you would see a ship and looks better. But that's just me

[ct ertz]

I like monitor style ships. The gins always seem so out of proportion with the ship. Good start on yours.

[SJPONeill]

Wanted to get a little progress done tonight as I am away working the next couple of nights and won't have much of a chance to do any modelling while I am away. A lot of the detail in this model is just printed in 2D on the card and I want to make it a little more 3D especially in this larger scale.

Since mounting the enlarged printed sheets on the double layer of foam board, I have sanded the board to the shape of the hull. The rough edge around the bottom of the board is actually the paper surface from my first over-enlarged attempt (see the pic above) which I have yet to trim off post-sanding. How did the chunk get carved out of the stern? Honest answer is I don't know and can only assume I must have damaged the foam board at some stage during attempt #1 when that was the base. The scuffing on the cut-outs around on the forward section of the main deck is down to my wife's new kitten who obviously likes big and ugly as well.

The rings that surround each turret are just printed onto the main deck so in a fit of circle cutting, I trimmed out the rings for the two main turrets, 4 AA turrets and 2 2x45mm turrets, and mounted them in place for the deck turrets. The other three turrets are mounted in various positions on the superstructure.

It's hard to see in this pics but I've also gently scribed the deck panels. The plan is that once all the main structure is in place with new 3D detailing I will go over the whole thing with a nice exciting shade of grey to blend it all in and look to weathering and detailing the model a la the other P modelling....

[SJPONeill]

PS. It's been years since I really hand some hands-on with this foam board - I think around 1989 when I had a lot of leave to burn off and converted an Apache to the Sea Apache shown in the Squadron book - but while it is great stuff for modelling:

Don't grip too hard unless you really do want your finger impressions preserved for posterity in your masterpiece.

Sand it outside - not just in the interests of health and general tidiness but because the has a high degree of static electricity and is a real cow to clean up. Ditto for any clothes you may have been wearing while sanding.

Test all glues and paints on scrap pieces before applying to the actual project. My first Sea Apache disappeared into a gooey mess when I undercoated it.

Don't leave parts on the outside table unless weighted down unless you want to race the dogs for the main hull.

[mabrown]

An interesting vessel and technique with the foam board. Looking forward to more.

[SJPONeill]

Non-pic update this morning...have cut and fitted the last of the deck framings around the superstructure and started on the formers for the superstructure 'buildings'...all going well so far and this kit (so far) deserves it's 'easy' rating...plan for today as it is raining so no outside work, is to do some maintenance around the hull to fill a couple of gougles and also seal it up before I forget and let some solvent-based glue or paint get on the foam board with gooey results.

This may be my first model that is aromatically-challenging...some some grocery shopping yesterday and stocked up on teas - got a very nice organic chai tea - the boxes that it comes in are also very nice thin card (less than a mill) but have an irresistible aroma from the tea...might be a scratch'n'sniff model!!

[SJPONeill]

I said above that I had bought the kit to supplement the downloadable parts from the Modelik site...well, I thought I had but it hadn't gone through, possibly because I hadn't fully grasped the Polish instructions...I have now ordered it through the Model Hobby site (takes Paypal and also cheaper than ordering direct from Modelik!)...they have an interesting twist in the ordering process in that when you opt to check-out they send a confirmatory email to your registered address which is a nice way of ensuring that someone else isn't ordering on your behalf...took a while to find the email in the spam folder...but very smooth process...ordered a couple of other models at the same time to maximise the postal costs for down under...

[dansls1]

Since you mentioned it, it seems that Comcast blocks the model hobby emails as spam which is not able to be retrieved - I had to use a different email address. Just a note for others who try and order

[SJPONeill]

Quick update shot:

This shows the assembled formers for the superstructure, sprayed with primer to make them more sandable to fit into the decking frames I added.

The lumpiness around the side of the hull is where I have used Gib filler to seal the foam board and fill a couple of gaps. This will be sanded smooth in a couple of days when the filler has fully cured.