1/350 Varyag (Zvezda)
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by George Georgopoulos |
1/350 Varyag (Zvezda)
Surprisingly, despite the number of Varyag’s in the gallery, there was no “Calling all ship fans” chapter on this ship. This project started one and quite a few people have contributed. So now there is good starting point with links to lots of photos and commentary on the various PE sets for it.My rendition is based on a bunch of photos that depict the Varyag, pre-1905. For such an old ship, the coverage is pretty good, even for the needs of the rigging.
Highlights
The seascape
The ship is moored to a buoy, (a leftover barbette from a Tamiya Fletcher) right after a long journey; the crew did not get a chance to clean her up yet. Devoid of coal and ammunition, she is riding high in the water. Of course the truth is that I goofed up and miscalculated the waterline level. The sea is made up of toilet paper and white glue. A gentle breeze is blowing.
Torpedo net booms
The booms on the final model are pieces of stretched sprue of thinner diameter than the booms supplied with the kit. I had originally fitted the booms supplied till Anthony P. of this forum took a look and suggested I get rid of them. Many thanks to Anthony for this suggestion. These thinner booms do not overwhelm the model as the original items do.
Torpedo net rack.
For lack of a better term. There is no photographic evidence that there ever was a net carried on the ship. Even though a single rail seems impractical for storing a torpedo net I cannot imagine what other purpose it might have served. In any case the rail is quite evident in the pictures. But on the model it was a raised plastic line molded on.
So I took the challenge. The line was scraped off and lots of holes were drilled and fitted with pieces of stretched sprue to represent the rail supports. The rail was also plastic sprue glued to the ends of the rail supports sticking out from the hull. One of the pictures illustrates the process. I thought the shadow effects of the rail supports would add a nice touch to the model.
The afterdeck tarp
The tarp on the afterdeck was an afterthought really, one of those things you have in mind to try on a next build. The frame is from stretched sprue, thick in the middle sections and very thin (simulating ropes) along the edges. Once the frame was ready, a toothpick was plunged in white glue and then drawn along the top of the frame leaving a white glue bubble on the frame. It took a couple of tries. The nice thing was that as the glue solidified it shrank, bending the thin edges of the frame, giving them a rather nice curvature you would expect in a tarp. The way the tarp bends at the stern to leave room for the backstay to go through can be seen in the photographs of the actual ship.
Painting of the tarp was done with a few passes of the airbrush leaving almost dry paint on the dried up glue bubble. Even then it sagged immediately, but went taught again as it dried. After a few passes with the airbrush I thought it was safe enough to used a brush. But it had to be one stroke a time, let it dry and then another, let it dry etc. With each brush stroke it sagged but would always tighten up as the paint dried. (I paint with water-soluble acrylics. Using non-water based paints avoids these woes.)
Kind of a tedious process but I liked the effect, even though it hides a rather nice afterdeck.
Rigging
Stretched sprue was used here as well. It went on piecemeal and straightened with smoke from an incense stick.
Overall, a very satisfying build. Thanks to Zvezda for a nice little model. They struck the right balance of price vs. quality, for me anyway. I used the GMM PE set which I found excellent.
