Scaleships Akula II

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

This is one fine looking kit! Are they still available, and if so, where do I buy?

M

[trout]

http://www.scaleships.biz/eng/akula.html

[reddevil]

The two round things are the upper part of retracted small winches. You can see them extended and working in some pictures here at the forum.

[Peter W]

Right not much to show because I am off to Italy for 2 days with work but finished up the 2 grates on the upper port side.




Peter

[Peter W]

Have now fitted the 2 vents on the other side of the hull to the ones pictured in the post above.

Now apart from the 8 bollards and the rear access hatch the brass on the upper hull is nearly there.........apart from the scopes and bridge area. the scope section is reasonably straight forward but the forward section including the bridge itself is not scribed as the plan.





The 24 marked on the plan is the brass piece in the picture, so as you can see the actual model is different to the plans. The bridge section needs to be modelled, positioned and built based on the spray shield provided as a brass piece. So I shall fill the scribed lines and re-mark starting with the bridge.

Peter

[Peter W]

Woo hoo ! postman brought me a present today.



I must just thank Andy for telling me about this stuff. Not too bad on price, quite a large tube and I can see it lasting for ages.

And I have already had a play with it....very good stuff.





Using a bit of styrene sheet to apply works pretty well but it does melt the styrene a bit after a while.

Recently Mark posted some good pics of the Akula bridge area so I can make a start on that hopefully at the weekend. Still deciding on how to do the the masts and doors, Manfred is giving me outlandish ideas over on his thread with his stunning work on his masts.

Peter

[greenman407]

I was going to say..."When in Italy...Do what the Italians do" but then I realized, your back already. Did you bring back an Italian Submarine Kit?

[Peter W]

Mark,

No, I was only there for about 30 hours so not sure what the Italians do. My job doesn't involve going abroad but it did for some reason last week and I haven't recovered yet. Took up valuable building time in my opinion.

I reckon that your pics have made the plans make sense, so I am more confident now to build from them.

Peter

[greenman407]

Trying to be faithful and create an accurate representation of something in miniature is fraught with difficulty. As you know we all have the same limitations in that our source of these drawings and pictures are beyond our control. After you get your Akula finished you may come across another picture that shows something different, a different version or modification. I guess we all have to draw the line between trying to do a reasonably accurate job and a fanatical ,fastidious "Rivet counting" that can lead to missing the whole point to doing all this, and that is to just have fun.
Your doing a great job there, thanks for adding to my entertainment as it provides me the encouragement to continue on my own projects.

[Peter W]

Not a rivet-counter, can't stand them they should be made an example of. Fanatically fastidious......definitely. I will only do what I can though and those pictures give me a reference for a damn good try. Peter

[Peter W]

So I have sanded all the filler back and apart from 7 of the 8 bollards stern hatch I have done with the brass on the main hull.

The biggest detailing job on the sub is going to be the top of the sail.

Now as previously stated the sail is scribed correctly enough on the rear half but the front half is not right, so here we go...... ( must apologize again for the indifferent quality, having trouble with the array of cameras I have)



Before... After...

As you can see the bridge area is not marked at all and the position is a best guess based on the plans and pictures posted by Mark.



Then I marked and filed the 2 other sections. This started getting hairy, at 1/96 scale the sides of the 2 smaller holes nearest the main hole are thin.

Peter

[greenman407]

GO FOR IT!!! Oh.... you already did. Good lookin out.

[SSBN659]

If David's fix does not remedy a lasting solution, you might need to consider some surgery options.
On a couple of hulls, the OTW Trafalgar, and the Oberon I did here a few years back the only fix in the end was to make a horizontal cut across the upper hull, get then then two upper hull halves sitting true on the lower hull half. Then seal (temporarily) the cut between the upper hull halves with CA and tape. You then need to invert the upper hull and glass across the cut / join demarcation. I'll try and dig out the photos for you. Not for the faint hear-ted but a lasting solution that does work. BUT by all means DO what David said first. Done that too with a couple of hulls and had success.


J

John, Did you ever find the photos of the fix you described here? I'm still having trouble with the gap on my Alfa and am considering glassing the joint between the upper and lower hull then re-establishing the horizontal cut.

SSBN659

[Peter W]

Heat gun worked a treat on the Akula.

Peter

[Peter W]

OK....all the best laid plans.....

After not getting as much done over the weekend because my wife has been a little poorly, I have now finally managed to get a little bit further.

The bridge section as I have already said is going to be mostly guesswork thus the reason that the picture shows my 3rd attempt and itself required about 4 hours of work.



Believe it or not that was a right **** to make as I have to deal with the GRP build up inside the sail so it isn't a uniform shape. The reason for the bigger than required base piece is so that I can run a few scopes through it for stability etc. The bigger job will be building one of these for the rear end of the sail.

Peter