Captain Slog

Hi all,
 
Part 9
Well, the 6” guns are finally finished…kind of!
 
The first 2 photos show all the details assembled on and in the carriages from previously posted Part 8.  5x 0.3mm wire parts, 3 with ‘worm’ gears. A couple of spur gears with 0.5mm shaft for gun training and a small paper gear.  The main recoil cylinders and a drum for gun elevation.
 

 

 
 
Next photos are of a finished gun.  The breech was installed as well as the elevation gear on to the barrel.  I ended up cutting out and using the paper handwheel as decided soldering ones from brass wire just wasn’t worth the effort.  I used 0.5mm wire for the handwheel shaft.  Additionally I wrapped the handwheel shaft with some thin paper to better represent the diagram and to give a better paper to paper bond.
 

 

 

 

 
 
Last photo shows the finished gun and the remaining 9 completed gun carriages (minus handwheel and shaft) I still need to attach the 4 carriage wheels per carriage but will wait until in a position to permanently install them to prevent damage.
 
The gun barrels for eight guns  still need to be done but struggling with this.  I had done 2 so far (the one in the photos and another not quite as good) but destroyed the next 2 so will need to cut out new ones using the kit ones as a template.  I just can’t get a reliable method to roll these but will persevere.
 

 
 
And of course the video which shows the construction of the guns.
 
 
 
The next part will be the start of the hull skinning and gun installation.
 
Cheers
Slog

Hi,
 
Welcome to the start of my build log of Admiral Nakhimov.  This is an armoured cruiser which took part in and was sunk at the Battle of Tsushima. For those of you interested in her here is a link to the Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_armoured_cruiser_Admiral_Nakhimov
 
Admiral Nakhimov was another of those kits which I hadn’t noticed before but I came across a review of it many years ago and found her to be such an interesting shape and construction and after discovering her participation at the Battle of Tsushima was added to the stash.
 
I believe this is one of Dom Bumagi’s newer kits as the front cover has changed design to show a smaller picture (in this case a real photo) surrounded by a large border. This is more conventionally presented as an A3 book, bound along the top long edge. 
 

 
 
There are 7 pages of parts and again some sheets have full reverse colour and others have selective reverse colouring.  The lower hull has a shiny metallic finish.  There are a lot of nice parts and colours on this ship like the raised decks and different coloured cabins.
 

 

 
 

 
 
 
There are 5 thin pages of templates for the underlying skeleton and also includes the gun deck which appears to depict linoleum.
 
There is a single thin sheet for all the ‘ironwork’ details as well as the rollable gun barrels etc.
 
There are 7 double sided sheets of assembly diagrams and these are line drawings as opposed to renders and I must admit I think these will be clearer to read than renders which I was excited about for Borodino.
 

 

 
 
The last page shows a plan and profile view of the ship.
 

 
 
I obtained the laser cut forms but these supply only 5 sheets of the thicker underlying forms with no thin sheets for detail parts.
  

 
 
I have also done a YouTube video of the kit review
 
 
 
Cheers
Slog

Thanks for bringing his work to our attention.
 
Here is the YouTube video for the hummingbird above. Very impressive.
 

 
Cheers
Slog

I use 'easy' grade silver solder paste from a syringe but applied with a needle for tiny components and succesfully use it on 0.2mm brass wire.
The paste is sticky and once in place doesn't blow off with the torch.
Obtained from a jewellers supply shop.
 
Slog

Rudder and elevators dry-fitted. I will permanently attach these at a later date so they don't get knocked off during construction.
 

Horizontal stabilizers skinned.
 

 
Working on the elevators now. Same as for the rudder, there is no internal framing -- but there is a lot of fiddly folding, rolling, and gluing. Pics later.
 
Cheers!

Update: Fillets are done. These are always a tricky part of any airplane build, and these were even trickier than usual because there is a cutout for the wheel wells that leaves a strip only about 1 mm wide at that point for attachment.
 

 

 
And now we go back to the empennage. So far, I have only finished off the internal frames for the horizontal stabilizers.
 

 
That's all for now!

Hi all,
 
I have been a bit slack in updating this log as progress is now up to Part 13 on YouTube but thought I would show what I have been working on for a future episode.
 
I recently purchased a decent soldering station specifically for photo etch and have been using it successfully for items such as PE hatches but really wanted to push my abilities by using it on smaller multi-part assemblies.
 
These are the Pontos 3” guns, which there are a total of 16 with 15 parts per gun and I completed 2 guns as a proof of concept to see if I can fully solder them which I managed to do.  A few lessons learned in the order of assembly should make the subsequent ones quicker, easier and neater.
 
The beauty for me over gluing, is that with small multi-part PE assemblies I usually end up knocking off previously glued parts when attaching new parts or sometimes just in handling.  The soldering makes them very sturdy knowing they aren’t going to fall/break apart if dropped etc. 
 

 

 

 
 
Cheers
Slog
 
 
 

First step in making the wings was adding the remaining internal frames.
 

 
Each skin is a single piece, shaped, folded, and glued with the help of a joiner strip.
 

 
Each wing structure is then slipped into its finished sheath. No fillets have been added yet.
 

 
That's it for now.

A bit more progress. I needed to take a slight detour and make the rudder so that I could confirm the positioning of the vertical stabilizer skin. Unlike many kits, the rudder has no internal framing.
 

 
And then the vertical stabilizer was skinned.
 

 
And that's it for the moment. Next up will be the wings' internal framing, but first I need to take a break and watch the Champions League final (I'm strictly a neutral for this match).

Here's the patched-up seam. I first filled it without about three passes of canopy glue, then applied a thin wash of appropriate edge color, followed by a shot of matte clear spray to take the shine off the filler. It doesn't look too bad -- certainly not the Polish Touch, but better than the untreated gap looked. Naturally, bright lighting and closeup photography makes it look worse than it does at normal viewing distances and lighting.
 

 
And here's the rest of the spine.
 

Yep, they are all card. They are part of the laser-cut frames set, cut from what the Poles call "beer mat" stock -- it is the same stuff used commercially to make disposable coasters.
 
On to skinning the spine. The kit includes joiner strips, which is nice -- I would have made them myself but the kit spared me the effort.
 

 
I glued the first four pieces together using their joiner strips, then glued the entire piece first along one side . . .
 

 
. . . and then along the other. The color registration is good.
 

 
I got a bit of a seam gap on the other side, which I'm going to try to remediate. We'll see how that goes.

Well here we are the end of this build.  Thank you all for following along on the two part adventure! 😁
 
Some final pictures of the S2C in its place on the shelf, next to the dusty old S2B (Airfix 1990's mould.)  

Framing for dorsal hump and vertical stabilizer has been added -- calling it a night. Not all of the transverse bulkheads come up to the height of the dorsal profile piece; I'm not sure what the deal is there, but I'll find out once I start adding the skins.
 

Not uncommon for card planes, the fuselage consists of a number of conic sections.
 

 

With the cockpit closed up, it's time to start skinning the forward fuselage, beginning with the wheel wells. I'm now committed to eventually building the Wildcat's nightmarish landing gear. 😬  To this point, I've been following the sequence of diagrams pretty closely, but for anyone who decides to build this kit later, it's a good idea to add the flat skins of the wheel wells before gluing the frames together. You can still do it afterwards, but it's a little trickier, because that central girder is part of one of the frames, and it clearly gets in the way.
 

 
Then we have the first two fuselage skins added. Fit and registration has been good, although there seems to have been a deliberate omission of certain joiner strips. I added homemade ones -- no biggie.
 

 
There's a very slight color mismatch between the second and third skins, but strangely enough it's only on one side. The parts came from the same sheet, too, so it's kind of weird. But the difference is not as noticeable as it was for the GPM Hellcat kit, so I won't complain. Once again, the fit for this part was very good.
 

 
I then decided to skip ahead a bit and add some of the wing skeleton parts, just to stiffen up the spindly spars a bit. They were beginning to get uncomfortably wobbly from being jostled around. Interestingly, there are multiple errors in the numbering of these parts between the diagrams and the laser-cut frets. This hasn't been an issue so far because it's pretty obvious which parts are which and where they're supposed to go.
 

 
That's all for now!

Slog, I have a similar Hakko and really like it. I may need to acquire that particular tip, tho. I really like this solder station; the temp settings are spot on.

Hi Ken, it’s a Hakko FX-888D soldering station. I did swap out the standard conical tip to a 2C tip (2mm angled) which is good for heat transfer and access. A 1C would be helpful in some spots and will get one at some stage but 2C is a good all-rounder.
 
It gets up to my soldering temp (380 C for my chosen solder)  from cold in about 40 seconds and can maintain heat transfer during soldering and takes only a few seconds to get from my set standby 250C to 380C when ready to go again. 

All the cockpit components ready to add to frame.
 

 
All closed up now.
 

Hi Ken, it’s a Hakko FX-888D soldering station. I did swap out the standard conical tip to a 2C tip (2mm angled) which is good for heat transfer and access. A 1C would be helpful in some spots and will get one at some stage but 2C is a good all-rounder.
 
It gets up to my soldering temp (380 C for my chosen solder)  from cold in about 40 seconds and can maintain heat transfer during soldering and takes only a few seconds to get from my set standby 250C to 380C when ready to go again. 

Hi Ken, it’s a Hakko FX-888D soldering station. I did swap out the standard conical tip to a 2C tip (2mm angled) which is good for heat transfer and access. A 1C would be helpful in some spots and will get one at some stage but 2C is a good all-rounder.
 
It gets up to my soldering temp (380 C for my chosen solder)  from cold in about 40 seconds and can maintain heat transfer during soldering and takes only a few seconds to get from my set standby 250C to 380C when ready to go again. 

What's your rig for doing this fine soldering? Those guns turned very nice.

Starboard side instruments completed.
 

Hi all,
 
I have been a bit slack in updating this log as progress is now up to Part 13 on YouTube but thought I would show what I have been working on for a future episode.
 
I recently purchased a decent soldering station specifically for photo etch and have been using it successfully for items such as PE hatches but really wanted to push my abilities by using it on smaller multi-part assemblies.
 
These are the Pontos 3” guns, which there are a total of 16 with 15 parts per gun and I completed 2 guns as a proof of concept to see if I can fully solder them which I managed to do.  A few lessons learned in the order of assembly should make the subsequent ones quicker, easier and neater.
 
The beauty for me over gluing, is that with small multi-part PE assemblies I usually end up knocking off previously glued parts when attaching new parts or sometimes just in handling.  The soldering makes them very sturdy knowing they aren’t going to fall/break apart if dropped etc. 
 

 

 

 
 
Cheers
Slog
 
 
 

Hi all,
 
I have been a bit slack in updating this log as progress is now up to Part 13 on YouTube but thought I would show what I have been working on for a future episode.
 
I recently purchased a decent soldering station specifically for photo etch and have been using it successfully for items such as PE hatches but really wanted to push my abilities by using it on smaller multi-part assemblies.
 
These are the Pontos 3” guns, which there are a total of 16 with 15 parts per gun and I completed 2 guns as a proof of concept to see if I can fully solder them which I managed to do.  A few lessons learned in the order of assembly should make the subsequent ones quicker, easier and neater.
 
The beauty for me over gluing, is that with small multi-part PE assemblies I usually end up knocking off previously glued parts when attaching new parts or sometimes just in handling.  The soldering makes them very sturdy knowing they aren’t going to fall/break apart if dropped etc. 
 

 

 

 
 
Cheers
Slog