¹⁄700

Building the Admiral Nahkimov, 1889

Next, 3.4 in main deck guns had the races constructed of flattened wire, and the guns were made of thick brass wire barrels, PE and styrene for the carriages.
photo 1

At this stage, the 2 x mast base plates were fitted, which were made of painted paper, and the belaying pin rails made of old stainless steel handrail, and turning block sheave posts using styrene strip.
photo 2

The holes for the masts were drilled all the way through the hull...the masts would be required to carry significant rigging loads later; even in stretched sprue there is considerable tension build-up.
The lower masts were then furnished with paper platforms infused with CA glue, and had ratlines rigged on using the excellent PE brass ratlines from Atlantic Models, available from WEM.
photo(s) 3 & 4

Small searchlights on the bridge wings were scratch built on tapered ends of CA infused toothpicks...they were so tiny that nothing I had came even close in my scrap-box.
The davits supplied in the kit did not resemble any on the ship, so I made all new davits using fine fuse wire, with the exception of the large swinging types for the large steamboats; these were cut down and thinned in all dimensions from the existing resin supplied items, had styrene fine ends grafted on and finally fitted with brass aircraft wheels as pulleys. The forward beam type davits were made of brass handrail, with stretched sprue for the curved supports.
photo(s) 5 & 6
Not a single boat from the kit was used; the boats came from a variety of scrap-box sources, WSW, Kombrig, WEM, and even some Modelkrak. The small steam launches were hollowed out and a small boiler, engine and funnel fitted with styrene rod. Some of the boats were the right beam and outline; They were shortened by cutting off the stern and adding a fresh transom made of paper.
photo 7

Small metal anchor chain was then fitted coming out of the drilled hawse pipes, and the anchors were a combination of PE flukes, and styrene made stock, in which unusually, these anchors had a recess in the hull sides, for the inboard flukes. The hawse-pipe covers were filed to shape from scrap brass PE fret surround.
photo 8