Create is this week’s theme…it’s no secret that in my 2.3 seconds of spare time each week, I like to build models, especially models of unusual subjects…one of the more unusual projects on a slow burn is this build (creation) of a 1/72 model of the Soviet pre-WW2 river monitor, Udarnyj…she saw the opening days of Russia’s entry into the Great Patriotic War but was sunk by German air power in the early phases of Barbarossa…

Udarnyj is a paper model produced by a publisher in Poland, Modelik, in 1/100 scale in a A4 booklet….in 2009 they adopted a practice of including low-res images of their model parts on their website. Although the quality is less than that in the book (these models are not legally available for electronic download – i.e. they are only available in the printed book form), and not all the sheets are shown, there was enough of the Udarnyj shown to be able to construct a fairly close waterline model over her. This is what I started to build before my conscience kicked in and I ordered the book from Poland with some other similar models…

To go with other 1/72 vessels I have, I enlarged the parts from 1/100 to 1/72 using an A3 copier (increase by 139%) and printed the parts onto 110gsm paper.

This was followed by a number of nights laminating structural parts to heavier card and then carefully cutting out the pieces – care is required because the more accurate the cutting the better the fit – also because the knife is damn sharp!

Here the structure slowly develops….

I use a double-skin approach, laying down an initial skin layer…

and filling any gaps or depressions…this prevents the rib-cage effect when applying the actual hull sheets…

…so that it looks a lot smoother…

The hull sides were then added…the stripes around the foredeck are a real pain as you have to join the sheets edge to edge and there is not a lot of room for error due to the very narrow glueing surfaces.

And this is as far as I have got so far…a more detailed description of the build is here at Paper Modelers – you’ll see from the dates that this is a long term build; and since that last photo was taken, she sustained some damage in the car when I took her down to ‘show and tell’ at Scale Models Wellington in February and I haven’t had time since to repair or progress her… I have acquired some detail parts for her like plastic quad Maxims for the anti-aircraft positions and two Airfix 5.5″ guns in case I have problems rolling the main armament barrels from paper…we’ll get there eventually – our target is Scale Model Expo 2014…