As a huge fan of the „age of uncertaincy“ I for long wanted to build a model of the „Popovka“ Novgorod, the first circular ship built by vice-admiral Popov in 1872-1874 for the Imperial Russian Navy. The plan of the ship is from Dirk Nottelmann (
https://www.shopssl.de/epages/es119126. ... ucts/WI-30) and shows the ship as well in her first appearance as in her last days.
A modelling-comrade of mine, Lothar Wischmeyer, did the Novgorod a few years before and lend me his great silicone forms. The master was turned from beech-wood, the form was of quite thick silicone-rubber on a clay bed to avoid warping of the form.
The form was first coated with a release agent, than a layer of gelcoat was plastered on the form. After the gelcoat did set for about two houres I slathered a paste of 50 percent resin and 50 percent glass fibre pieces on the sharp-edged or generally difficult parts. Than three layers of 160 g fibreglass-mats were laminated with a good amount of resin in each of the forms. After complete drying the hull and the deck were taken out of the form.
I was very pleased with how it came out. Post-treatment of bubbles was quite limited.
As all my models the Novgorod should be radio-controlled. I decided to motorize only the two outer of the six propellers. For these I bought ([url]http://www.mz-modellbaushop.de/]/url]) brass-propellers. The four inner propellers are only dummies cast in resin with a galvanic copper plating. The ship is steered only with these outer propellers, the rudder ist fixed in a middle-position (according to reports of the original ship the rudder there was almost useless). Both propellers are propelled by 6 V motors. These were powerd by a 6 V 7,5 Ah accumulator.
The Opening for maintaining the electronic is placed under the forward superstructure and the barbette.
The forward superstructure was made mainly from 0,5 and 1 mm sheet-styrene. The outer hull of the barbette has a diameter of 90 mm and I had the problem that I couldn’t get some 90 mm tubes of any sort, so I made the walls of the barbette from resin soaked paper wrapped around a circle from sheet styrene. The ring that remained when I cut out the circle was placed at the upper part of the paper ring while laminating the paper strips. It was later removed. The inner hull of the barbette was made from a tube with an inner diameter of 70 mm. Both were connected with a ring of 1 mm sheet styrene.
The holes for the bulleyes were drilled and the two funnels were installed. The lower part of the funnel was a resin casting of a master turned by Lothar Wischmeyer. The long straight upper part is again made from resin soaked paper over a styrene sceleton.
The big vents were also casted from a master by Lothar Wischmeyer that I altered a bit until it fitted the vents in the plan.
The guns are turned parts from Lothar Wischmeyer, for the sides of the carriage I made a master from styrene and again resin soaked paper. The rails are cut with a circular-cutter from 0,5 mm sheet styrene, two slightly wider rings for the base of the rails and two narrower rings to be placed on the wider rings.
The levers, wheels as well as the top of the ammunition-duct are foto-etched. The grid at the sides of the carriage are from a foto-etched-grid I bought at MZ-Modellbau. The frictional compressors were made from 0,3 mm sheet styrene.
The rudder with it slightly complicated shape I made also from four foto-etched parts which I soldered.together. Same are the mountings for the lifeboats and the skylight on the afterdeck (the lower part of the skylight is again made of sheet-styrene).
At the first time on a rc-controlled model I wanted to add some depth through the painting of the model. Usually rc.controllrd ships get – due to the Naviga-reglement a plain, new looking finish, but this time the segmented deck secuced me to try something different. First I engraved the segments, preshaded the grooves between the segments black. Than a thin layer of gmedium grey was airbruhed o the whole thing followed by a lighted up layer on the middle of segments. I really like who it looks. The effect is decent but gives still a lot of depth to the otherwise somewhat boring deck. The only disadvantage is, that you have to use this technique on all parts of the ship to make it look right, thus giving lot more work on the painting front.
For the under-water hull I used a tapping technique with a very short brush. The original hull was copper plated but with very small plates. As I was not keen on glueing thousands of 2 X 2 mm brass-bits to the hull, this gets very close to the original look.
Also for the first time I used wire-end sleeves for the bulleyes. As I had only tinned sleeves I got them a galvanic copper plating (today I found gilded wire-end sleeves in the car-hifi-corner of a electronic shop, so the galvanic plating won’t be necessary any more). For the glazing I punched out little bits of a clear rubber like plastic with a pair of punch-pliers. These fit perfect in the sleeves.
The lifeboats were resin castings by Lothar Wischmeyer. They were fitted with a grating and benches from 0,3 mm vermeer.
Some pictures of the finished model:
The seagoing qualities of the model are quite authentic, which means not sooo good. The ship is very good at turning. Unfortunatly it requires quite a lot of training to go in a straight line (and even than it looks like the helm had more than a healthy quantity of his vodka ration). But because of this it is very funny to steer it.
And last but not least a video of the ship on the water:
http://www.smc-wuppertal.de/Schiffe/Novgorod/Bild%20028.avi
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I like this. The resin castings look like they came out really nice as you mentioned.
Great job on something realy different . 
