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Tsarist Battleship Andrei Pervozvanny

The most distinctive features of this ship are of course the cage masts. The PE supplied by Kombrig is not stainless steel--it is too soft for that-it is more akin to pewter or perhaps a nickel silver derivative. As such it is quite soft and easily damaged. The cage masts required careful handling to prevent twisting or buckling. I started rolling the flat etch pieces on a pad of paper using a needle-pointed file so as to achieve a tapered roll. Once the edges started curling I found some paintbrush handles of suitable diameter and taper and using my fingers persuaded the two edges to meet!




I then re-rolled using the needle file on a hard surface to ensure the two edges met square. The starfish platform came from the PE supplied, and the open braces were stretched sprue, while the tops were made of copper tubing furnished with the roof supplied on the PE fret, having first glued in the pole masts! --The entire procedure was quite fraught!




The masts when first painted looked heavy and over scale. I attempted to create the shadows of the side-members of the original mast construction by first running a pointed pencil along all the vertical edges of the cage-then dusting the entire mast in fine ground pencil lead brushed on and off with a stiff paintbrush. Thereafter it was dry-brushed using the ships base color. This resulted in more 3-D effect and the individual components of the mast seemed less obtrusive so that once finished off with yards and nav lights (styrene rod) etc the overall effect was pleasing.
The aft compass platform was made using some PE fret for the base structure and a PE WEM radar served admirably for the perforated floor




The cranes supplied in resin were dimensionally fine but lacked the delicacy I sought; the PE supplied items were a step in the right directio, but still nowhere near fine enough for my liking! So I constructed some custom items using GMM IJN PE, nickel-silver wire and stretched sprue