The Ship Model Forum

Here http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=64144&p=374920#p374920

(now 37 short(!) pages - look them to understand difficulties of revision)

I must tell, that inaccurate model is not "Zvezda" fault - they purchased model matrix from bankrupted firm "Eastern Express". People say, their own model of "Varyag" is very good.

I think, the best way is to build "as is". Only little details are wrong. You will make a good "Borodino-type ship". Good luck!

Hi Bondoman,
I think the skid beams were painted white or a light colour if they were below the level of the bulwark (hammock store), anything above the bulwark was painted black I think (apart from the funnels and the underside of the bridge decks).

I'm not sure about the inner surfaces and deck houses, I think there is a possibility they were a light colour or white during the Czar's inspection and some of the voyage. But I'm not sure.

As I inderstand, the photo of Suvorov's officers on her spardeck is said to date from the Czar's inspection of the fleet and if this is correct, then she had white or light coloured bulkheads in this period.

A "Borodino" type it will be and a little unique. I had already made up the larger diameter stacks, and figure I'll use them. The upper decks are going in fine, although the PE replacement support columns don't match the adjoining deck house heights- some are too tall and some are too short. So I've been chopping and shimming.
The Hotchkiss guns are going to be a challenge. I am sure that the PE gun shields will be a worthwhile improvement- they always are. But the plastic gun and shield are kind of a blob, so careful carving is in order.
Ships boat colors? Black would be an easy choice, in particular for the torpedo launches, but is there an Admirals cutter or launch that might be blue, or white with a blue stripe? And the steam launches could benefit from a good coat of anti-fouling I would think.

In majority of photos paddle and steam ship boats appear to have been painted (below and above waterline) in a dark color. And than there is this photo of Orel:

Boat no.1's bottom seems to be ( only "seems to be" mind you) of different color than upper sides and steam cutter in location 2 appears to have lightly colored bottom.
On the other hand, in this photo of Alexander III:

Here steam boats seems to have been painted uniformly dark except for a strange light patch on the bows of the one on the left.

_________________
"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." H. L. Mencken

I've moved up to the spar deck and the boat beams. Catwalks in place and the gun platforms painted and installed with etched columns and hammock racks.

Bondoman! Your model looks nice.
About boat beams: My post is too late, You already painted boat beams. I think better use black color. Look at Your model from side, You will see white boat beams on black side. On all photos we see fully black ship. ( Sometimes we see piles of wood, rigging and paddles on boat beams. )

The expression of the ship looks so:


Two photos of boat beams:





All as cerberusjf wrote:


About boats: Only my opinion! Look at Darius post. First photo is OREL. I think he just received his boats and now painting them in black: No2 - in the process of repainting; No1 - drying first layer of paint on underwater part.

Second photo is ALEXANDER III. For first year of service he was white, then was repainted black. Again, I think, boat in the process of repainting.

I can not find better explanation for strange forms of white spots.

All other photos I know, shows fully black boats, except one - SUVOROV steamboat. ( I hope it is early photo of ship, when color of bottom part of boats was not decided or when boat just arrived.)

Ironclad, until somebody comes up with better one, I agree that the best explanation for strange white patches seen on some boats is that they were being repainted when photo was taken.

About this photo:

As I have stated before in this thread, I am not convinced that this photo was taken on Suvorov. There are no visible details there which would help to identify just what ship it is and we do know that photos are often mislabeled. We DO know that during the time of Battle of Tsushima inside on the bulwarks and boat skids of Orel were dark painted. So, until further proof, my opinion is that, with the every available space being filled with extra coal, repainting of inside bulwarks during the trip would have been unlikely.

_________________
"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." H. L. Mencken

I could certainly still paint them black. From a modelers perspective they do kind of jump out. I'm a little confused though. In that photo of all the officers the partitions and the overhead all look pretty white to me.
I sure wish my brass barrels would show up...
Thank you for the compliments.

That is a swell model, Ironclad.

Bandoman, as I have stated in my last post, I don't belive (at least for now) that this photo was taken on board of Suvorov.

Let me restate my arguments again:
EDITED DUE TO NEW INFORMATIONS KINDLY PROVIDED BY IRONCLAD :
1- before I have only seen photo in a cropped form, but in a thread here: http://kortic.borda.ru/?1-10-30-00000129-000-0-0 uncropped version is captioned as "Commanders and officers who died in battle of battleship Suvorov". So this photo could have been taken at any time in ship's career;
2- at least 2 (and I believe all) Borodinos were painted white (with buff funnels) during fitting out and trials;
3- by the time of tsar's fleet review on 26th of September 1904 all ships where already painted in overall black with yellow funnels;
4- during the voyage, all the available spaces of the ships of 2nd Pacific Squadron were used to store extra coal;
5- we do know that Orel's boat supports and inner walls of bulwarks (hummock storage) were painted dark during the Battle of Tsushima;


Taking all this into consideration, I personally don't believe that any repainting on the internal spaces from white to black would have been very likely.

_________________
"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." H. L. Mencken

Bondoman! It is not my model , it is Combrig Imperator Aleksandr III by Tom L. I took this photo from page 28 of this topic to show "The expression of black ship". You can find some more photos of beautiful models on this topic pages.

Model booms are simplified - only main black skid beams above the bulwark, without auxiliary white beams and walks below the level of the bulwark. If You do not want to build authentic booms, just paint skid beams black - it will be enough.

Darius! I agree with You in all, but disagree in one point. Give me few days to prepare and post normal message. Now I am leaving internet.

Waiting with baited breath Ironclad

_________________
"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." H. L. Mencken

My brass 6" barrels came today, along with an Arizona PE set for another day. Pity, my 12" are backordered. But, those can be added later, John?

The pictures of the officers made me think of this one. USMA Class of 1903. The white arrow is Douglas MacArthur, I put a red dot over my great grandfather Samuel Morrison.

That's a great piece of family history Bondoman!

_________________
"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." H. L. Mencken

Bondoman! Yes, ensigns. Only 1 year difference ... Interesting photo.

Darius! Little correction: Commander and officers of fallen in battle squadron battleship " KNYAZ SUVOROV ".
( On photo commander of ship and part of staff and crew officers. And some of them survived battle, while KLADO was not in battle. )

" ALEXANDER III paints his outer side and walls of officers cabins after each coaling." Kostenko. (Guard ship and crew - "guard style" .)


WE CANNOT TRUST COLORS OF TSUSHIMA PHOTOS!

On different forums KRONMA already posted messages , that we absolutely cannot trust colors of tsushima photos. And few people were agree with Him.

YELLOW. When shell explodes, it disperses part of its explosive content into air. Ship was all covered with yellow shimosa dust.

BLACK. After first hits of shells, coal dust and soot from fires filled air on the whole ship, covering everything.

GREY. High temperature explosions burned out paint, leaving grey color of burned metal.

On photos of OREL after battle it seems like ship is covered with thick lay of dust, even porthole glass.

On photos of OREL we seing mostly grey burned metal, covered with yellow-black dust. Because of it, We can trust colors only with care.

In books of witnesses: Semenov, Kostenko, Novikov-Priboy, Tumanov and others You can find many details, proving it.

I am not familiar with Semenov, Kostenko, Novikov-Priboy or Tumanov. I have many Russian language sources but by no means all. I would LOVE if somebody could provide relevant quotes from those sources


Correct me if I am wrong but weren't officers cabins aft under the upper deck? If so, their walls were most likely painted white but they would not be visible from outside?

While there are many photos of Borodinos from the outside, I know of only very few showing any inside details but (based on this limited information) let me repeat my arguments, about the color of hummock storage, boat supports and vents:
1- according to the caption, photo of Suvorov's officers can't be dated to Nicholas II visit to this ship and could have been very well taken when ship was commisioned;
2- but on this photo of Nicholas II visit to Suvorov (and if it's not Suvorov, than it certainly is one of the other Borodinos) area marked with ellipse certainly doesn't look like it was painted white to me. Just look at the contrast made by white gloves of officers!

3- I am very well aware of dangers of "after battle" photos but, while this photo show Orel after the battle and very damaged, the question I ask myself is: if the whole area was discolored due to the damage, why is the wall of the entrance in the side of the ship so very light in color? If the whole area was discolored, shouldn't this part be discolored too? Even just a little?


Now, if anybody can provide any informations to the contrary, I would be happy to admit that I was mistaken!

_________________
"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." H. L. Mencken

All very interesting! I have that problem too Darius- it's very hard to navigate in the Russian language websites. most only have English at the front page.
I do intend to learn Cyrillic one day, as I do occasionally paint (write) icons and I usually just copy the script.
I revised my boat beams to black, and the model looks much better. I'm leaving the inside bulwarks white, and the deck houses between the stacks wood, only because it looks really nice.

Here's my new question. I have installed the railings all around on the flying bridge level with two bar. At this point I am going to go up the levels, but I will need quite a bit for the main deck later. In fact, I barely have enough two bar left for that. So I'm kind of forced to use the 3 bar for the upper bridges and platforms. Why did the set not include only 2 bar? I have seen pictures with 3 bar above, but the Slava model and Ironclads new picture show NO two bar to be seen! I could probably find more two bar in my supplies, but I hate to break into a new set.

What to do?

I can read Cyrillic Bandoman, it's just that some Russian sources are out of print, some are known only to our Russian friends and some are impossible to obtain in the West.

As far as the railings are concerned, you are in luck! Upper platforms on both bridges were 3 bar

Borodino main bridge:


and aft bridge:


BTW after MA, have your grandfather joined military for any length of time or decided that civilian life suits him better?

_________________
"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." H. L. Mencken

Thank you Darius. Good news about the three bar. I'll be installing a lot of it.

Your picture of the 6" turret points up another detail. The kit would have you glue the barrel pair to the underside of the turret roof, and there are a pair of really shallow u shaped slots on the face of the turret. Using this pic as a scale I filed the slots down lower. I used the kit trunnion bar to mount my new brass barrels, in order to maintain the spacing. I've installed spacer blocks on the floor of each turret and I'll glue the gun assemblies to those.
I'll post pictures later.
Thanks again for the help.

In regards to my Great Grandfather. He graduated West Point in 1903 and was posted to the Philippines, in the cavalry, where the US was engaged in guerrilla warfare in a really ignoble war.

He was later posted to Hawaii to Schofield barracks and eventually to Colorado, where he commanded a fort in the latter part of the "wild west". He died in a veterans hospital in the late 1920's, in his 50's from "infirmities as a result of his service". He was a Captain (ret.) at the time. I would understand that life in the service in that time was very hard, and he probably succumbed to a mixture of horse riding injuries, tropical diseases and bad medical care. I appreciate your interest.

I was thinking a little, and if he were in the Philippines in 1905, which I think he was, he would have been very close at hand to the battle, as the ships Aurora, Zhemchug, and Oleg were interned at Manila. I don't think I can find out more about that as he was divorced from my Great Grandmother soon after that, and fell out of contact with the family, but I'll try.

Hi Bondoman
Borodino and Orel had 3 bar on the fore, middle and aft bridges and catwalk.
Slava, Suvorov and Alexander III had 2 bar railings on the fore, aft middle bridges and catwalk.
The railins around the foredeck and quarterdeck were 2 bar on all the ships.

I am not sure whether it is white or not, but it doesn't look black to me. Compare it to the black of the deck edge, which is in full sunlight which looks much darker to me.. The hammock store appears to be the same shade as the canvas cover to me. What colours or shades equate to this shade I am not sure. But I can't see it being black imho.