¹⁄35

Building the Oktabriskaya Revolutsia

I attempted various methods to surmount this problem; I made a jig and attempted to build the jibs of evergreen strip material--whilst possible I was unable to achieve two , never mind four (!) jibs that were absolutely identical- exact repeatability was the problem... I scaled down the plan and photocopied the outline to paper and styrene sheet, cutting any of these out perfectly and crisply was beyond both my dexterity and patience!

To the rescue came Peter Hall ( the designer of all WEM PE). I commissioned him to design a custom PE fret to contain those vexed cranes, bridge windows, machine guns etc , some railing ladders and as a bonus some crane jibs for the Pariziah Comuna, for my next Gangut class ship project....



This solved the repeatability problem in one fell swoop! I bent up the first set of cranes and was delighted. After viewing from all angles and re-consulting yet more photos I came to the conclusion that they now appeared to lack substance and longitudinal profile depth. I circumvented this issue by gluing another set of jibs on the inside of the assembled crane very slightly offset. They were supported apart using small strips of evergreen styrene.



This allowed me to create a visible line when brushed with a pencil, giving the impression of girder depth rather than a PE blade...