Admiral Nakhimov 1885 by Captain Slog – Dom Bumagi - 1:200 - CARD

[Captain 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

[ccoyle]

Outstanding! Card + pre-Dreadnought + Captain Slog = win.

[Captain Slog]

Hi all,

 

Thanks for the likes and Chris’s nice comment.

 

I have made a small start with the lower hull forms.  Here they are cut out ready to go.

 

 

 

The bulkheads glued to the deck.

 

 

 

When I dry fitted the centre spine to the bulks there was a fair bit of play, with the slits in the bulkheads appearing to be oversize.  After translating the notes it turned out I needed to skin the centre spine with the gold coloured paper. These were printed on thin paper but when attached to both sides of the spine it was perfect fit in the bulkhead slits.

 

 

 

The gold coloured skins were needed as the keel extends down past the hull and is visible, but only this small section a few millimetres tall is seen.

Lower hull glued up.

 

 

 

Associated YouTube video.

 

 

 

 

I had hoped to do the upper hull at the same time/posting but there are some irregularities that need to be addressed. A bit disappointing but nothing major and will do that for the next part.

 

Cheers

Slog

[Captain Slog]

Hi all,

 

Working on the upper hull now.

 

All the parts cut out and cleaned up.

 

 

 

The bulk of the upper hull glued up.  A few issues were found, which included incorrect deck numbering on the diagrams but the biggest issue was a number of slots for the locating tabs were in the wrong position.

I double checked the laser cut forms against the templates to see if they were different but as guessed they matched the templates so the issue has been copied through.

 

Using the paper (linoleum coloured) gun deck, I determined where the slots should be and after incorrectly making 3 new slots in the vertical spine I cut correct new ones in the horizontal base deck.

The upper gun deck halves needed some of the slots widened as they were slightly off position also.

I stopped at this point as there are a considerable number of smaller components to attach along the sides and for the stern admirals walk but the diagrams don’t show them but should become clear the time hull skins go on.

 

 

 

The upper hull temporary placed on the lower hull for an idea of shape and size of the hull.

 

 

 

A side-by-side size comparison of Admiral Nakhimov and Borodino.  The Admiral Nakhimov is a bit shorter and only slightly narrower than Borodino. It does have a relatively deep hull though where both main decks are pretty much same height.

 

 

 

The associated video.

 

 

 

 

Moving forward, I will concentrate on other deck structures and components whilst working on the hull filling and skinning in the background.

 

Cheers

Slog

[Captain Slog]

Hi all,

 

Small bit of progress. I made one of the deck houses.  Only the one picture as it was more for the YouTube video.

 

 

 

 

 

Cheers

Slog

[Captain Slog]

Hi All,

 

I have been working on the hull for the past few weeks and have a couple of parts to cover.

 

Part 5

I decided to fill in the hull spaces with XPS foam after finding a local distributer and got a 'handy size' sheet (800mm x 600mm) of 50mm.  I also picked up a cheapish generic free-hand, hot wire cutter at the same place as per the picture.

 

 

 

Being free-hand, it wasn’t ideal for making straight accurate cuts but by using bits and pieces in the hobby room (like a little storage cupboard door) I was able to utilise, by modifying, parts of the free hand cutter to make a cutting table. I had to buy the 6mm aluminium rod for the arm and the aluminium angle for the fence.

 

 

 

I could then cut the foam to size to fit between the laser cut bulkheads.  Photo shows 15 pieces per side and marked up to go into position.

 

 

The associated video.

 

 

 

Part 6

This is a continuation from above and the first step was to use the hot wire table to remove the bulk of the waste foam.  The blocks are not glued at this stage. 

 

 

 

 

Each block was then rough sanded individually leaving the line in place for final sanding and overall fairing. 

 

 

 

The hull halves where then glued together, the foam blocks glued in place then the final sanding and fairing followed.

 

Photos of the finished (for now) hull.

 

 

 

 

 

I am hoping that with the gaps filled in, hull skinning should be easier for me as I have struggled with this in the past.

 

The associated video

 

 

 

For a break from working on the hull I will tackle the 6” guns next. These fit on the lower deck behind the hull skins so will need to do sooner rather than later anyway and a good diversion from the hull.

 

Cheers

Slog  

[Captain Slog]

Hi,

 

I started working on the 6” guns next as these will be required prior to skinning the hull as they live on the lower deck.  Due to the number of parts involved, their construction is spread out over several videos.

 

Note: I haven’t been taking stills photos of the progress, so these are all screen grabs from the videos, hence my hands and fingers in the photos.

 

Part 7

Part 7 only covers cutting out and prepping the parts ready for assembly as there are 48 parts per gun and 10 guns for a total of 480 individual parts.  There were 90 parts to be folded and 30 parts to be laminated and 70 parts to be rolled, excluding the 10 gun barrels.

 

This photo shows the gun construction diagram. There are more views not shown.

 

 

 

 

The regular thickness paper parts for one gun.

 

 

 

The thin paper parts which are to be rolled into tubes.

 

 

 

The thin paper barrels (21d). These will be my 1^st time rolling paper barrels as always had replacement brass barrels up until now. I did search but couldn’t find brass equivalents. They are very distinctive hooped barrels.

 

 

 

All the parts, folded, laminated and rough cut out ready for final trimming. Used cupcake cases to keep them in order.

 

 

 

Some of the more straight forward parts cut out, which wasn’t filmed.  The smaller, more difficult or curved parts were covered in the video.

 

 

 

All parts for one gun cut out ready for assembly. Also showing my 2^nd attempt at gun barrel rolling. The 1^st attempt was passible but will need the end of the barrel painted as the printing was damaged with some white showing.  I didn't cut out the hand wheels as I hope to solder these up out of brass wire.

 

 

 

Associated Part 7 Video

 

 

 

 

Part 8

Part 8 covers the assembly of the gun carriages only.

 

1^st up was making the centre saddle from 3 parts.

 

 

 

The saddle was then used to join the carriage sides together which had 2 parts each.

 

 

 

Different sized left and right top rails and the front plate fitted.

 

 

 

A rear brace was also fitted and all 10 gun carriages ready for the next step.

 

 

 

Associated Part 8 Video

 

 

 

Hopefully I will be able to attach all the tubes and wire parts in the next video finishing the guns.

 

Cheers

Slog

[AJohnson]

Slog, you clearly have the patience of a Saint 😇!

 

(And btw. with 490 small parts like that how do you stop bits pinging off your tweezers into the domain of the carpet monster!?)

[ccoyle]

Outstanding workmanship, especially at this scale. I like the muffin tin liners for sorting parts -- I might have to borrow that idea.

[Captain Slog]

18 hours ago, AJohnson said:

Slog, you clearly have the patience of a Saint 😇!

 

(And btw. with 490 small parts like that how do you stop bits pinging off your tweezers into the domain of the carpet monster!?)

 

Thanks, not sure about that though.  To make things worse, other than the gun barrel sticking out of the gun port very little of them will be seen. 

 

Also contemplating punching out 140, 1mm discs to cover the open ends of the tubes as don’t look right not being closed in. 40 of them will need another 0.5mm hole punched in middle and 60 of them require a 0.3mm hole pierced in them…will do some samples to see if worth it before jumping in.

 

This could just be me but I think the reason I don’t lose parts often is due to my favourite tweezers needing very little pressure to close them so imparting very little pressure to the parts. 

 

I found that tweezers requiring more pressure to close are harder to fine control and find myself doing mental juggling trying to regulate the pressure to hold the parts due to fingers applying pressure just to keep the tweezers closed.   I find this more fatiguing and distracting from the task at hand.  That's my theory anyway!

 

18 hours ago, ccoyle said:

Outstanding workmanship, especially at this scale. I like the muffin tin liners for sorting parts -- I might have to borrow that idea.

 

Thanks Chris, you can also stack them taking up very little space and just grab the particular one that you want to work on at the time…just don’t knock them over lol

[AJohnson]

Thanks Slog for the tip about tweezers, my tweezers do feel a bit "wiry/twangy", so seems the old adage about quality tools even extends to wee things like tweezers! 👍 

 

And thanks for the inspiration, if you can do more than twice the part count on guns that are mostly hidden, then I can try a 250 part no. Puffer!  🤓

[mtaylor]

Very well done for parts microscopically small.   The muffin cups are a good idea.   I went a slightly different route and found plastic "snack cups" that come with lids.  Leave the lid off and they too can be staked.  I tend to use the lids as every so often, one gets "bumped" and parts scatter on the work bench.

[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

[AJohnson]

Meticulous work Slog, I really admire the patience and perseverance to do the detail that probably won’t be seen, but WE know you did it! 👏