View Full Version : Making the Alanger Project 971
Since there seems to be some interest in following people's modeling escapades, I thought I'd start a thread tracking how I get along with the Alanger 1:350 'Akula'.
This is one of those kits that can be hard to get hold of, as it is not supposed to be sold outside of Russia. I don't think that's because it's going to be giving secrets away, but more to do with distribution rights, even so, I eventually managed to track it down through Hannants online shop in the UK, although they did tell me a couple of times that it was going to be hard to get hold of, on one occasion phoning me to inform me that it had been discontinued and another time saying I could cancel the order if I wished, as it looked like it was going to be a no-show, nevertheless, it eventually showed up, but it did take nearly two months! Probably easier to track down a real one than that:rotfl:
There are one or two 'Akula' kits about, including several different resin ones at this scale, plus a number of smaller scale versions, as well as a very large one suitable for radio control, but the Alanger one seems to be fairly popular as it is not that expensive in comparison to many of the other choices. However, there's bad news as well as good on that score; this kit has quite a few inaccuracies and some of these are not merely minor cosmetic ones, so we'll see how I get on with sorting all that out.
First inspection reveals that it is actually quite crisply produced in greyish/black plastic, with some fairly sharp detailing, although much of that detailing is raised rather than inscibed, and there is no piercing of flood holes or grills, so that's a few things that will need sorting out straight away.
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/akulakit1.jpg
Building it straight from the box would not take long at all, since it is basically a case of sticking two hull halves together and adding the 'sticky out' bits, it's even not a bad colour without paint, so if you just wanted a reasonably close representation, it's not disastrously inaccurate. The instruction sheet reflects this simplicity, Being a folded black and white A3 paper with just six simple line drawings showing where stuff goes and resplendent with poorly translated English worthy of Babelfish, including such gems as: 'Avoid details approach into mouth and gullet, in case of - apply to medical help immediately' and 'Childern are to work with glue and paints with growths assistance only. Do not approach children younger than 3 and home animals to working place'
Building straight from the box would not result in a particularly pleasing model of course, although it would probably look reasonably okay. But to really look like the real thing is going to take a fair bit of work. Two glaring problems present themselves, these being the poor representation of the screw and the sail. Being one of the few parts on a sub that isn't black, a naff-looking screw will really stand out, so that's definitely got to change.
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/akulakit2.jpg
The problem with the sail, is that it is quite poorly done as far as profile is concerned, and the problem is compounded by the kit's optional inclusion of a smaller towed array housing of the type seen on the 'Gepard' improved variant, which would be at odds with the rest of the hull since that variant has a different sail cross section.
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/akulakit4.jpg
That said, if one is to attempt to correct the sail profile, then correcting it for either variant is a possibility, so that doesn't exclude the choice of making the 'Gepard' out of this kit as long as you don't mind a bit of 'cutting and shutting'. lastly, there seems to be an error with the hull's length behind the stern planes, so that will need extending a bit from the looks of things.
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Akulakit3.jpg
Clearly I'm going to need some decent reference. Fortunately, there is quite a bit available for the 'Akula', notably Wayne Frey's excellent book, 'Russian submarines: Guardians of the Motherland' (ISBN 0-7414-3447-4), and although the pictures in this book are perhaps not repro'd as well as they could be, it's still an invaluable source of info. On top of that, there are numerous pictures on the 'net of various 'Akula' models, as well as quite a few schematic drawings. I even found a picture of one boat being constructed; these are the sort of pictures you probably could have got a million bucks for twenty-five years ago!
To be continued...
:D Chock
Nice one Chock,
It's good to see more 'in progress' modelling going on here. I'll be following your build closely:up:
Sav.
Kapitan
11-18-07, 03:38 PM
I have one of these good kits however they are not so good falling from your shelf to the floor then having your 19 stone dad stand on it.
Nether the less it lasted a year !
Well, there's the answer for the US Navy's hunter killers then, just give your dad a call:rotfl:
Update: Further investigation reveals that the sail problems are manifest. The front faired-in angle is too steep on the sail in the kit, and the rear slope of the sail sweeps down incorrectly, starting in the wrong place and being too severe rather than emulating the graceful curve of the real thing. This can be seen on the composite comparison shot below; even though the shot angles differ, the error is still apparent, as is the wildly inaccurate and oversized door placement for the masts and the incorrect placement of the cockpit:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Panterasailcomparison.jpg
So, it was out with the scalpel and needle files to remove it all! Thus, filling it all in and re-drilling the location holes for the masts is on the cards, as is constructing the cockpit more accurately with the correct windscreens, but before that, I'll have to reprofile the sail, which should be possible with filler and some more comparisons with photographs and schematic drawings. Picture of the crappy detail having been removed:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/removeddetailing.jpg
:D Chock
HunterICX
11-19-07, 05:55 AM
:up: Good luck, chock.
thats going to be a hell of a task to do.
HunterICX
Kapitan
11-19-07, 07:25 AM
Yeah good luck with it and hope your one lasts longer than mine, my bed room at the moment looks like a russian naval shipyard i have models half finnished with bits here and there and other models worse for wear lol.
Good luck!
Another quick update:
All vent holes on the upper hull drilled out and filed square (ish), still need a little tidying but reasonably close to looking okay. I also started the correction to the forward part of sail and filled in all the incorrect placement holes, this is probably going to take two or three stages to be really satisfactory, and it's always a temptation to try and sort it all in one go, but, I restrained myself and settled for a rough profile. When that's hardened off, a little sanding should make it apparent what needs to be done to get it more like the correct profile:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/akulasailcorrectionstage1.jpg
:D Chock
nikimcbee
11-20-07, 01:03 AM
More reference stuff:
http://submarine.id.ru/thumbs/971/index.shtml
have fun:up:
Thanks for posting the link :up:
I have already got most of those shots, but there were one or two that I haven't seen, so it's appreciated. Incidentally, most of them reveal a lot more detail if your drop the darker tones with the curves palette in Photoshop, which is good for getting panel location info.
:D Chock
Two more shots in better lighting after some cleaning up of the initial reprofiling job reveal that it actually wasn't a bad first shot at things:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Akulasailreprofile1.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Akulasailreprofile2.jpg
Extending the sail slightly to form the correct profile means that the raised detail of the deck safety line attachment rails has to go, but this is not a disaster as I intended to replace that with fine wire anyway, I think that will look much more convincing than the original molded on detail. Most of the other raised details, such as the oversized square hatch detailing is going to be going too, it would be much better represented simply by masking and painting it in at this scale, so that's what I intend to do.
One advantage doing this 'nose job' on the sail will confer, is that it will be easier to add the SOKS wake detection array to the front of the sail. There is no attempt to model this in the original kit, which is not surprising as it would be fairly tricky to do in plastic at this scale. Even so, it is very noticeable on most shots of the Akula, so I'm going to add it. Currently I'm thinking that the heads of either dressmaking pins or sewing needles inserted into the putty which forms the reprofiled sail front will make a pretty good lookalike, but in case that isn't as good as it sounds, I bought some very fine steel rods from a model shop the other day as a back up solution. I took the precation of filling the inside of the sail with modeling putty too, as all this sanding might end up making the sail's original plastic rather thinner than it was to start off with, and the tip of the sail where it nears the cockpit location has had quite a lot of plastic shaved off, so it will definitely be getting on the thin side at that point.
Had an email from Flagship Models yesterday too, letting me know that the replacement screw set I ordered has been posted, so that's good news. Since I will be displaying the completed model in a rather unusual way (watch this space!) which calls for the creeper motors to be in their retracted position, this gets around the problem of their two tiny screws having to be either corrected or replaced. Even with the close up photographs of these in Wayne Frey's book, I suspect they would be more guesswork that a true depiction of the real things as the casings and support stanchions don't look too accurate in the kit compared to the (few) pics you can get which show them for real, besides which, the screws for the creeper motors appear to be behind some sort of protective grille on the real deal, which I daresay would be impossible to emulate at this scale in any really convincing fashion, so I'm glad this is not going to be an issue. Shame you can't get those creeper motors on the 'Akula' in Dangerous Waters, that would be really cool!
:D Chock
Bill Nichols
11-20-07, 11:50 AM
Quesiton: Did you simply putty-up the leading edge of the sail to get the profile, or was there chopping involved? Also, from the pics you posted it looks like the trailing edge also needs some work, agreed?
Basically, most of the work is going to be achieved with the putty, so it initially just had a piece of that added, however, as you point out, it does appear to me that the very top of the front of the sail just in front of the cockpit requires a bit of minor shaving of the plastic original bit too. This is why I filled the inside of the sail with putty, so that if this proves to be the case, there'll be plenty of spare material underneath the plastic to allow that to happen.
Just before typing this, I added another very thin layer of putty over the thing to smooth out the reprofiled bit and allow it to blend smoothly into the deck, the more I can get this blending into the deck to work without having to sand and file it, the easier it will be, so that took a bit of deft work with the old fingers! Basically that was done in a manner not dissimilar to placing a pastry 'lid' over a pie in its dish, then smoothed into the deck and sail with fingertips. Messy on your fingers, but it looks pretty good so far, I'll post a picture of that when it has dried and hardened a bit so I can wash all the crap off it and make it easier to photograph. I also corrected a couple of molding sink marks in the plastic toward the back of the sail whilst I was at it.
I agree, the trailing edge of the sail does indeed need some work, as it it does not portray the attractive sweep downwards that the real thing displays, this is even more apparent upon removing the oversized antenna/mast doors that were on the original kit, but to correct this is going to be simpler than correcting the front, as it is not a compound reversing curve like it is at the front, which is quite good news!
In addition to these inaccuracies, when viewed from the front and rear, the cross section of the sail is in fact more akin to the Gepard than earlier versions of the Akula (i.e. not so blended into the decking, although still incorrect) so that's going to need sorting out too, as it is rather different from the pictures I have where the safety rail meets the termination of the sail about halfway along its length.
I did phone Vladimir Putin and ask him to sail one of his Akulas up the Mersey so I could get a good look at it, but for some reason he hasn't returned my call, so I'm stuck with Wayne's book and pictures off the 'net!
Guess I've opened something of a can of worms in attempting to make it more realistic, but then again, if it was easy, it wouldn't be a challenge, and I think it will be worth the effort. Of course one of the nice things about doing all of this is that the Akula (like many modern subs) actually does look rather lumpy and bumpy with its anechoic covering, so any very minor imperfections in all this tweeking will be okay, but at the scale it is depicted here, I can't rely on that too much to cover any sins. There is one big plus point to this kit over the more expensive resin kits though; It's a hell of a lot easier to open up the vents in the hull on a plastic kit than it would be on a resin one!
Thanks again for posting the link to that source for the replacement props by the way Bill, it seems they are on the ball when it comes to completing orders, as they are apparently on the way.
:D Chock
Chock,
Get some Ever Coat Metal Gaze from the auto paint store. You will not find a better filler. Mixes like bondo, sets and 15 minutes and is ready to sand unlike Bondo. It also sands very easily. I was lost until I David Merriman turned me onto this product. You can fix anything with it. Build up anything in minutes with the material.
I only use spot putty or Squadron to fill deep scratches now.
Steve
Quick update just before I need to dive on a choo choo train to London to train someone in Photoshop (don't you just love it when work gets in the way of fun?). Here is the sanded and cleaned up nose job, it looks like one more minor correction will see that bit completed, god bless Milliput and steel wool; Number One, rig for silent sandpapering:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Akulanosejobstage2.jpg
:D Chock
HunterICX
11-21-07, 03:59 PM
:up: thats a fine correction
HunterICX
Back from the grim windswept wilds of London and the joys of staying in a Travel Lodge hotel watching England get hammered by Croatia and consequently knocked out of the footie competition, so I can get back to working on the model again.
No recommendation for Cross Country Trains by the way, the train back from London to Manchester was absolutely freezing cold (one of those crash-o-matic Pendolino jobs), I even hauled my suitcase down from the rack, opened it up and put a fleece top on, it was that bad, and the food in the buffet car was crap too, as was the tea, which tasted of plastic. This train was 20 minutes late too, pretty poor service for a ticket that cost 70 quid. Avoid this train company at all costs.
My replacement etched brass 1:350 submarine screws from Flagship Models arrived today, they are very nice indeed. Not bad sevice either, they made it from Edmund, OK, USA, to the even more grim and windswept wilds of Stockport in dear old Blighty in less than a week, so, in sharp contrast to Cross Country Trains, I definitely recommend Flagship Models for speedy, quality service.
More pics shortly.
:D Chock
Kapitan
11-23-07, 07:24 PM
Blimey i could have got you home faster, i can do london to manchester in around 2 hours 35 minuets driving !
Update: Examination of yet more photographs reveals the rear decking where it fairs into the sail and middle of the hull, is from the W.A.G. school of modeling (wild-assed guess), not surprising since the kit was probably put together originally when less data on the Akula was available. So, more corrections are needed; I was aware that some work would need to be done in that area of the model, but I thought it would be a lot less than what it turned out to be! Here are some (slightly blurred) pics of the remodeling in progress and the main picture of a real Akula upon which this remodeling work is based:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Deckcorrection.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Deckcorrection2.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Akulareardeckview.jpg
:D Chock
Two shots of the reprofiled deck nearing completion of the sanding, some minor filling is still needed, but the profile of the deck where it blends with the sail is now correct, all the raised detailing is also now gone and the rear deck profile is much more like the real deal instead of being a wierd (read: innaccurate) hybrid of the Gepard and earlier ones such as the Pantera and Tigr:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Akuladeckcorrection2.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Akuladeckcorrection1.jpg
That's the back end of my computer mouse in the shots, which gives and idea of the model size.
In case anyone else is modeling this boat, here is a great shot I found on the 'net of an Akula being built, which is very handy to see the sail profiling ribs and stanchions. The missing bit in the middle of the sail is where the crew escape module goes, the big hole at the front, near the top of the sail is the location for the panel containing the SOKS wake detection array:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Akulanaked.jpg
:D Chock
XabbaRus
11-25-07, 07:26 PM
That's a cool pic. Where did you find it, there are some touchy people on the web about photos of Russian subs and I don't mean the KGB.
That's a cool pic. Where did you find it, there are some touchy people on the web about photos of Russian subs and I don't mean the KGB.
So you've been to Subpirates? LOL!! Wayne Frey owns the rights to many of the Russian pictures out there but not all. I've never seen this one in his collection.
His book is very helpful for this kind of build. If you don' have it, get it.
Steve
Yup, I have his book, and very good it is too, but often the repro of pictures in the book is not quite as good as the same ones you find on the web, since all the pics are B&W. Even so, there's a lot of pics in it you don't find anywhere else, and some good explanatory notes too about what all the stuff on the subs is.
I'd still recommend getting Wayne Frey's book (Russian Submarines: Guardians of the Motherland) to anyone - even if you aren't building this model - because it's one of the few books out there on the subject matter you can find with English text, it's also got some great pics of Alphas and Typhoons (i.e. the real Akula).
If, like me, you grew up during the Cold War, when you simply never saw pictures like that at all, it's always a thrill to get a good proper look at them (pictures like that when I was a kid would either have got you shot, or rich). I remember having to settle for grainy pics taken from overflying US reconnaissance planes if you wanted to know what a Russian sub looked like. In addition to which, if you buy a copy of Wayne's book, it will encourage him to do another one! And I certainly hope he does.
Incidentally, as Steve says, subpirates.com is another great place to find sub pics and advice if you are into modeling them, in fact, there are some really great ones on there of the funky little 'Lada' Russian diesel sub, where you can get a really good look at its anechoic tiles, it's well worth a visit to the site just for that alone!
:D Chock
nikimcbee
11-26-07, 02:07 PM
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Akulanaked.jpg
:D Chock
Wow, that's quite a complicated model building system you have. You really take your building serious! I just use the kitchen table:roll:
Black and white pic of the rear deck correction and the corrected blending of the sail into hull, after some more careful sanding.
I gave the part a coat of flat grey to highlight any blemishes and there are very few. Cutting the primer back with rubbing compound should remove any final blemishes and the heavy pigment of the flat primer will sink into any surface scratches and fill them, leaving the surface smooth. Quite pleased with how it has turned out.
Just need to square off the vent holes a bit and this bit will be done (apart from the cockpit and antenna hatches of course). All crappy molded raised detailing I removed will have to be redone with scratch-built bits, but it should look a lot more convincing when all that is added.
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/PrimerAkula.jpg
:D Chock
Looks great Chock! And thanks for the plug about subpirates.
U812
Its great to see You cought the model making bug now Chock.
Looks good so far. I love the improoved models - theres never two identical projects , and i will be checking the progress closely.
Good luck. :up:
More work on the sail. I was not happy with the rear profile of the sail and so that got some more attention:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Akularearslopecorrection.jpg
That seems to be more in line with the photographs I studied. Now the work of adding the cockpit and antenna fairings begins... I'm going to leave the SOKS array and the retractable cockpit windscreen till last as these are likely to be somewhat fragile, so, disregarding these for the moment, the first thing to tackle is the cockpit itself. This is kind of odd, as it is not symmetrical and has several compartments and a crew access hatch. Fortunately there are a couple of good picturses of this in Wayne Frey's book, and I found a really good one taken from a helicopter hovering in front of an Akula while it is at sea, on the 'world wide interweb', which confirmed that the rearmost starboard cockpit door cover extends further down the side of the sail than the one on the port side. I had to have a couple of attempts at carving out the cockpit, as I was not happy with my first try, and so, refilled it and did it again. Rather tedious, but I'd prefer it to be accurate. From this shot, you can see I have added the crew access hatch tube and the 'T' shape of the cockpit:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/AkulaCockpitandhatchadded.jpg
It's my intention to place three crew members in the cockpit and so the cockpit detailing can be somewhat spurious, as they will obscure most of it, it's going to be fun trying to create a few crew members in 1:350 scale, but I think it would look odd without them there. The cockpit doors will also obscure things a bit too, these will have to be made from very thin plastic card as at this scale they should look almost paper-thin.
Oh, and I managed to stab myself good style with the scalpel whilst doing this bit, so I presume I now qualify for the Purple Heart since I was wounded while taking on a Russian sub, maybe I deserve to be made a Hero of the Soviet Union too, since I was also trying to create an improved Akula:rotfl:
:D Chock
XabbaRus
11-30-07, 05:03 PM
Very good cHOCK
Hi U812 I remember the spat with the pictures but it seems many of Wayne's photos have found their way onto the net.
True. Isn't it always the way? Wayne is a great guy and a good friend. I wish he would come over here and join this well mannered and adult group of guys. I'll give him a nudge.
U812
More details added, not very good pics here as they are under poor lighting, but you can make out that the cockpit divisions have been added, these are made from sections of metal litho printing plate. Also, barely visible in these shots, the escape capsule lines have been scribed and the forward periscope tunnel has been carved out, I added the cockpit instrument pedestals in brass wire, although they are certainly too small to see well on these pictures, but you can just about make them out glinting at the front of the cockpit area:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Cockpit2.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Cockpit1.jpg
:D Chock
Stop press! Al actually manages to tidy his desk without assistance from his wife :rotfl:
Now I can actually see what I am doing! and yes, that actually is tidy compared to how it was before.
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Desk.jpg
:D Chock
A shot through the magnifier, the highlighted circle shows the position of more fun with alloy litho plate, this time, inserted into the sail to allow more accurate scribing of the hatches on top of the escape module:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Alloypanelinsert.jpg
:D Chock
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Akulafins.jpg
Pic of what's going on next. The vertical fin is added to the lower half of the hull (this is a good fit and only minimal filling will be needed). The doors for the creeper motors (circled) are fixed in the closed position, the creeper motor doors are not a fantastic fit, so a bit of sanding and filling will be needed, but I want the door shut lines to be visible, so not too much will be required despite the less than great fit.
The stern where the screw is to be added is incorrect in profile (circled), the real 971 has a much longer 'tail' extension, presumably to better clear the towed array, so that needs to be extended and reprofiled. Also visible in this pic is the towed array pod and vertical fin, this being the larger one of the type fitted to Akulas prior to the Gepard, since the sail has been restyled to suit the earlier type of Akula. The pod itself also needs a tweek to be correct and show where the antenna wire exits the pod, and some detailing needs adding to the top of the pod, but this is a minimal fix and will be easy to do.
The sail is in fact incorrect for both variants as the kit comes, but is more like the slimmer Gepard type, which was why the sail needed so much work! I think the larger array housing is more visually pleasing however (the smaller Gepard type is also in the kit as an option), so all that faffing around to get the sail to look like an earlier variant was worth it in my opinion, even though making the Gepard would have been easier!
Also visible in this shot is the interior bracing, with putty, which I added to prevent the top half of the hull flexing and cracking the filler used on correcting the way the sail fairs into the deck, with additions at the bow and stern to facilitate reprofiling these areas too. The bow is actually slightly incorrect in shape, although this will in fact be masked by the way I am choosing to display the model, so I can actually ignore that part if I like, but the stern ccertainly is going to get tweeked.
With the sail largely sorted and the hull coming together, things should move along a bit quicker now!
:D Chock
Chock. After this you are more than ready for a nice scale RC conversion build. Anyone that puts this kind of work in a static model is more than Worthy of it. Good job!
U812
Yeah, I'll probably get around to doing an RC one at some point. I've made some scale RC aeroplanes in the past - last one I did was a quarter scale Fokker DVII with a four stroke engine - I'm still having nightmares about how long it took to hand paint the lozenge pattern fabric I covered that thing with. And I damn near turned myself into a eunuch once starting it up! But it did look very cool and the bigger ones always fly better.
I guess that's true with subs, I imagine the bigger RC subs look better as far as scale against the waves go, so if I ever did an RC one, I think it would have to be a big mother and not some tiny one, although I bet they are fun too, I have a small RC tiger tank actually, and thats certainly good fun.
:D Chock
Stern propshaft housing extension added and waiting to be sanded and neatened up, and yes, the hull halves have been joined up too, at last:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Sternextension.jpg
I flattened the kit's original stern and butt-joined an extension made from a scrap section of the sprue from the kit, and then sculpted filler over it, it might take a few goes with filler to get this to blend correctly, but it's reasonably close already with this first covering, so that's a bonus.
This is based on the best guess from several (conflicting) blueprint drawings kicking about on the 'net and some photographs probably taken by a dockyard worker with a camera up his jumper, needless to say, there aren't exactly tons of pictures of top secret Soviet/Russian submarine scews, although once again, Wayne Frey's book comes up trumps with one or two. Also visible on this shot (just) is the join where the bottom fin is added, although the fin is edge-on in this picture, this needs sorting out too. The trailing edge of the fins will need thinning out a bit to come to a sharper edge.
:D Chock
Ass end cleaned up a bit and fin with pod added:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Assendcleanedup.jpg
:D Chock
Rotary Crewman
12-05-07, 07:35 AM
Looking forward to seeing this finished with comparison to what it used to look like in the first pictures.
Alot of time and effort gone into it! Wish I had the same amount of time and dedication to something like that.
More tweeking of the ass end, here you can see how overscale the thickness of the fin trailing edges is:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Akulaasstweek2.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Akulaasstweek3.jpg
:D Chock
Bit of a naff picture, but you can see that the filler has been sanded to the correct shape and blended into the original rear of the hull, I gave this bit a quick coat of grey primer to highlight any blemishes or bits that neded sorting. You might also notice that my nice filler job on the pod will have to be redone because dumbass Al accidentally knocked it off while sanding the filler and had to re-attach it - Doh!, so that bit will need to be smoothed and filled again, although it was kind of a blessing in disguise, as it was a lot easier to sand with the fin off (once I had stopped swearing in a Homer Simpson stylee).
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Sternprimer.jpg
:D Chock
Shot through the desktop magnifier and with the colour tweeked a bit in Photoshop so you can see the detail as my camera takes crappy shots in anything but daylight, here is the stern now it has been sorted out and had the gaps in the joins for the fins filled in:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Sternsorted.jpg
:D Chock
Wasn't totally happy with the towed array pod, and so I tried to refine the shape, but the plastic is not good enough to hold the level of detail I wanted, so I inserted a 1.5 millimeter alloy tube into the end and faired filler into it, this will need sanding again to be nice and smooth but you can see it at the 'pre-sanding' stage here:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Akulapodimprovement.jpg
you can also see that the thinning of the fins trailing edges has been started, they need squaring off, but they are now very much more like the correct scale thickness of the ones compared to the real thing.
Still on topic, I'd just like to say a quick thank you to Wayne Frey, author of the book 'Russian Submarines, Guardians of the Motherland' - following me asking some questions about some detailing on the 'akula' in the subpirates forum, Wayne very kindly contacted me and offered to answer a few questions I had, and he has been very helpful indeed. A real nice guy, look out for his subcommittee review of the 2008 submarine Almanac by the way.
:D Chock
Time for an update, here is an overall picture of the revised and tweeked hull at the moment:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Tweeksshot.jpg
That's a fair few changes to get it to a more correct shape!
Here's the smoothed out towed array pod now with an alloy insert to make the array wire exit hole the correct size and allow it to be filed to a more corect profile without running out of plastic, that's a 1/72nd scale Spitfire you can see in the shot, which gives you a good idea of the size of the akula model:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Podwithalloyinsert.jpg
And if you don't know how big a 1/72nd scale Spitfire is, here's the same model with a 2 pence piece to compare it against:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/spit3-2.jpg
The hull halves are not the best fit in the world, not disastrously bad, but quite a bit of sanding and filling is required to get rid of the join line, you can see some of the more extreme filling on the middle here:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Filleronthehulljoin.jpg
And so, detailing of the hull comences, since I removed the raised detail from all but a few places, there's quite a bit of this to do, here you can see I have begun to scribe in the communications pod doors, the fairleads and centreline door break have yet to be added:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Rescribedcommspoddoors.jpg
:D Chock
This was fun, the seawater intakes in the kit are the wrong shape and they are not very accurate size-wise either. This is where Wayne Frey's knowledge came in handy, he kindly answered a few of my dumb questions about them and from that and inspection of some pics and diagrams, I made new ones. They were cut from thin polycarbonate and laminated three deep and then clamped together so they could be filed to the correct profile all in one go:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Clampedintakes.jpg
This is where the world wide interweb comes in handy, along with Photoshop. In this (tweaked for clarity) shot you can see me holding the six clamped and laminated pieces in front of a fairly accurate schematic drawing which I found on the 'net, although it was drawn at 1/400 scale and of course does not display at that size owing to a different monitor resolution, it was a relatively simple matter to resize the image to the correct scale and 'Bob's yer uncle', a decent placement guide for the new intakes, which, coupled with the pics of the Gepard backing out of the construction hall in Wayne's book made life a lot easier.
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Clampedbitandmonitor.jpg
Fixed in place and awaiting some tidying, here's a quick shot of one of them through the magnifier:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Intakecloseup.jpg
:D Chock
Episode IV: Stop Using Sex as a Weapon.
The other day my wife walked past me as I was working on this sub model and said 'How's your phallic symbol coming along?' Now, you have to admit she has a point, quite apart from the shape of nuclear subs, there's the fact that they are indeed long, hard and full of seamen. So it was quite funny when I pointed out something to her tonight whilst again working on the sub model. I opened Wayne Frey's book on page 40, which shows two pictures of the rear deck communication buoy housing doors and fairleads. 'Is it me, or do those look like a woman's sexual organs?' I asked her (in slightly more crude language I admit). 'Well, I thought you were more of a breast man myself' replies my wife, 'But no, it's not you, it does indeed look like that'
Anyway, in reshaping the model a lot and losing the raised detail, the molded detail for this bit was lost, which was not a big deal as it wasn't too accurate anyway, so here it is in the process of being remodeled:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Communicationbuoyfairleads.jpg
I know what you're thinking, that looks like a...
:D Chock
LoL - woman with sense of humor - priceless.:rock:
If you've been reading this thread, you'll know that the screw (or propeller if you prefer) is not that great in the original kit. It's not disastrously bad, but it could certainly be better, and so I ordered some 1/350 sub props from Flagship Models in the US. These are nice etched brass items, but they are only the prop blades in etched brass, so more work needs to be done. This is where a problem occurs, because Russian subs, including the 971, have a complex propeller boss and hub which has quite a few fancy bits on it, notably, sacrificial anodes and a cruciform wake attenuator on the hub. Now, I had a go at making a wake attenuator from litho plate and inserting it into a hub I had made from putty and sanded to the correct shape. This is okay-ish looking, but I thought I might be able to do better, and so I had a think about things I might have which were close to that shape, and it hit me. Anyone who has made a few model kits usually ends up with a spares 'rummage box' and I'm no exception, and what do I find in there, but a bomb from an aircraft kit which I chose not to use on the aircraft model:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Bomb.jpg
What happen? Somebody set us up the bomb: The back part with the stabilising fins is a good basis for the prop hub, having the fins to form the basis of the wake attenuator, and a fairly close conical form. So I reckon with a bit of careful work, this can be made into a passable prop hub for the 971. Anyway, we shall see..
:D Chock
Unfortunately, the idea to use the bomb fins as the basis for the cruciform attenuator didn't work, the plastic became too fragile when filed to size to hold sufficient detail, so then I tried this..
I cut a cross-shaped notch in the end of an old artist's paintbrush handle, similar to how you would make a 'dum dum' bullet, and then inserted four pieces of very small litho plate, and then did a lot of very careful filing, almost blinding myself in the process, but, the results are pretty good so far, here you can see my attempt fixed to the etched brass screw:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Propbosscompleted.jpg
You can also see how tiny the cruciform bit at the tip of the propeller boss had to be in order to be the right scale!
:D Chock
Quick update: Wasn't happy with the communication buoy doors, so scrapped them and decided to remake them from metal, as a result I've also decided to hinge them and add a bit more detail in having them partially open to reveal the communication buoy, which will obviously have to be scrath built. Made a start on this by cutting open the rear deck and adding the well for the communication buoy:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Communicationbuoywell.jpg (http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Communicationbuoywell.jpg)
Also replaced the forward dive planes from the kit, which were incorrectly located and looked crap, so I made some new ones from laminated polycarbonate and put them in the correct location:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/Forwarddiveplanes.jpg
:D Chock
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