1/200 Sovremenny-class Destroyer (Nastoychivy 610)

[CJ Carson]

Hi everyone. So, this will be my third model ship and my first time sharing any of my work in progress. While wrapping up my 1/350 Prinz Eugen, I spent a lot of time contemplating what ship I'd like to build next. I looked at the IJN Fusō and Kongo class ships, but the price of Fujimi kits alone, even before buying PE and whatever else I would need, was a bit out of my range. Richelieu, King George V and the Russian Kirov class in particular were also options. However, I was also very interested in building something in 1/200 to see how different it was compared to 1/350. So, when I found the 1/200 Sovremenny while browsing model sites, it was a done deal. Now I get to build something Russian and also something in 1/200. I know I don't have to say this, but since the Russia-Ukraine war is still going on, I'll say it anyway. I enjoy building ships, and I liked this one in particular. I in no way support the actions of the Russian government or military. Any photos of Russian navy ships or equipment or Russian navy men within those photos are for reference only and is in no way an attempt to promote the actions of the Russian government or military. Now, with that out of the way, let's get this build started.

 

 

The kit itself seems quite detailed considering it was made in 2001 and also includes PE for masts and railings. However, since this is my 3rd scale model outside of snap-fit Gunpla and only my 2nd Trumpeter, I don't really know what to expect. I didn't take any photos of the sprues as there are a few Youtube videos of this kit being unboxed if you're interested. The WEM PE seems very nice, although very limited in overall scope and detail compared to the Flyhawk kit I used on the Prinz Eugen. That being said, I understand not everyone wants to deal with that much PE and that WEM have their own market. Plus, this is a very old set and the only other PE kit I saw was made in Russia by a company called Micro Design. It looked very detailed, but lower in quality compared to WEMs offerings. Some parts from Veteran Models to increase detail and accuracy. The AK-130 guns that come with the kit are very inaccurate, and I just couldn't resist buying the fire control radar and AK-630s once they popped up too. Other 3D printed details will be added where possible. I bought a 3D printer late last autumn with the intention of using it to level-up the detail of my models and for a bunch of other ideas which I haven't gotten around to trying yet. It'll be nice to finally put it to good use. Other than the brief craze of printing anything and everything I had when I first got it, I've hardly used it.

I've decided to focus my build on the ship Nastoychivy 610. I chose this particular ship because out of the 17 Sovremenny-class destroyers produced for the USSR/Russia, she is 1 of only 2 that are still in service. Because of this, she is also one of the most heavily photographed of the Sovremenny-class, with the exception of Bespokoyny 620, which is now a museum ship. All 14 other ships of her class have either been scrapped or are awaiting scrap, from what I can tell. On a side note, 4 of these ships have also been produced for the PLA Navy, bringing the total number of Sovremenny-class ships produced to 21.

The Wiki link if you're interested in a little more about the history and specs of these ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovremenny-class_destroyer

 

 

As you can see, she has been painted with different greys over her career. From what I understand this is based on which fleet she is deployed with. I'll be basing my build on her in the darker grey colouring for the time being. That said, when I get to a point where I can give the hull a coat of paint I might switch tracks if I feel its a bit too dark.

 

The age of the kit shows in some places. The foredeck came scratched to hell where I'm assuming they've had some problems with release. I'm guessing someone took a wire brush to the mould which then shows up on the part as it's cast. The kit was released in 2001 and mine was manufactured in 2020. Safe to say the moulds have been well used at this point. Deformation on some of the portholes along the hull. Fortunately, Nastoychivy either by design or at some point in her history had all her porthole eyebrows removed. These were sanded off and the portholes themselves drilled out, making this an easy fix. I'll be filling them with a clear UV resin at some point. Kit has her with 2 rudders, but the Sovremenny-class only has one. Another easy fix. The kit comes with multiple decals for various ships of the class, but Nastoychivy isn't included. Fortunately, there are pennant numbers for 618 and 430, so I can cut these to get the 610 I need. The main nameplate was a different story. I edited and converted a photo of the nameplate into an SVG file which I then dropped into tinkercad, where I was able to add a back plate and save it as a 3D file. It's a little out of scale, but I'll sand the lettering down a little more before painting. Looks better with than without, in my opinion.

 

I can in fact confirm... there is no flex in this ships deck! 🤣 Got a bit carried away with reinforcing the deck pieces, I know. Well worth it for my preference though. Hole for RC conversion also covered to increase strength. Nuts for mounting bolts fitted with some sprue and UV resin. Twinbits/bollards fitted because I knew I'd have to fill in gaps around them. Reliefs for fairleads were filled in, as they are fitted much closer to the edge of the ship in reality.

 

The start of my issues with the bow of the ship. The main opening for the anchor should be a little further forward and angled slightly. Forgive my use of terminology here, I'm learning as I go. The anchor hawse pipes?? are completely missing. I marked them as best I could and drilled them out, which obviously wasn't good enough as I had to go back even further than originally planned to get everything to line up. This was partly due to the exterior opening needing to be a bit further forward to begin with. I filled the entire forecastle with milliput and attempted to create the missing hawse pipes. Still need to go back in with some more milliput and refine the edges a little, but most of it will be covered with the 2 doors/shields that close over them.

 

Continuing with the problems of the bow. Her nose is quite distinctive in reality, as shown in photos. Unfortunately, the kit fails completely with this and it wasn't possible to get the shape I wanted without extra work. Ultimately, I just slapped a bunch of milliput on her and hoped I'd be able to carefully carve it down with various sanding sticks and sponges. This is the result so far. I still have to refine it more, but it's been such a slow process I needed to take a break from the sanding. Exact accuracy seems impossible without moving the anchor opening, which was one step too far for my comfort zone. I'm very happy with the result so far though.

 

Here are the main superstructure elements assembled and stripped of pretty much every detail. All the windows were also carved out. I still have some details to remove and a lot of cleanup. The WEM PE mostly covers the Mainmasts, radar, ladders, hatches and railings, so I'll be replacing almost everything else I've removed with scratch built and 3D printed details. I had very few issues with fitting, the exception being the bridge superstructure as shown. This was filled with milliput and turned out great.

 

 

So here we are. It's a very long road ahead. The amount of scratch built details I'm going to have to complete is a little scary, but I know it'll be satisfying if I can pull it off. From here I'll finish cleaning and prepping all the main elements to a point where I can start adding details to the kit. Thanks for looking, and I hope some of you will tag along for the ride.

 

Best,

CJ

Edited April 8, 2024 by CJ Carson
Typo

[mikegr]

Very nice work so far. 

The printer will take you to another level. I use it for my 1/700 ship and have good results although I'm not expert in design

photo upload on internet

 

[Jockster]

Nice to see you have replaced those awful kit AK130 with those beautiful Veteran numbers! ☺ 

[Micha_Pol]

This looks to be a very intresting build. Good luck. Noch openings for the anchor chains on the foredeck? Wrong number of rudders? Amateurish mistakes indeed.  

[CJ Carson]

Hi Folks. First off, sorry for the lack of updates. Turns out I'm not very good at this whole build log business. I was hoping to provide more regular updates as I completed each section of the ship. Unfortunately, this whole project has evolved into something far more extensive and painful than I originally planned for. I worked on the hull until I felt the burnout creep in, then switched to the forward superstructure for a while. Feeling frustrated, I switched to the rear superstructure and so on. Ultimately, bouncing around to different parts of the ship having fully completed nothing, but making significant progress overall. Anyway, some time ago I refocused on the hull, determined to get it detailed and painted ready for weathering. This post will detail some of those efforts.

I knew I wanted to try and do something special with this kit, but never in a million years did I expect it to evolve into what it has in terms of time and effort. Very early on I realized that so many of the details within this kit are, quite honestly, absolute garbage. Not just for their lack of detail and inaccuracies, but misaligned castings and other defects aswell. Unfortunately, these issues resonate throughout the whole kit. The entire hull is also slightly twisted, which made getting a straight waterline marked, oh so fun. Especially since she doesn't have a flat bottom either. Anyway, my first step in improving the details of the ship was, unfortunately, to drop the White Ensign Models photoetch set that I'd purchased and buy this set from Microdesign in Russia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would like to take the opportunity to say the WEM set is of exceptional quality. Far better than this set by Microdesign. The WEM set uses much thicker sheets, while the Microdesign set is incredibly thin; frequently too thin. The overall quality of the etch on the Microdesign set is also lower, and some defects were also present. Unfortunately, the WEM set just wasn't comprehensive enough for what I wanted to do with the model. The Microdesign set has replacement vent covers for around the funnel, mounts and other parts for the boat cranes, racks for the life rafts, mounts for whip antennas, less generic railings etc.

 

The other main step in improving the details of the ship has been to finally make good use of my 3D printer. I know some of the skilled CAD and modeling software users might wince a little at this, but I've been using Tinkercad to reproduce parts for the ship. What started out as replacing a few bits here and there has evolved into me replacing almost every single plastic detail except for the hull and main superstructure. It's surprising what you can do with a few measurements and slapping shapes together like digital lego. Here's just one of several files which has most of the deck details I've replaced, along with a few printed examples.

 

 

 

 

 

Working with the model itself, I finished cleaning her up and filling most of the pre-existing guide holes and other mounting points. I had to keep going back and filling more in as I decided to replace additional parts with 3D printed ones. I added a trim for the base of the railings which also weaves around the bollards and fairleads using etch. I replaced the original rails for moving torpedoes up and down the deck as I caught the pre molded ones several times when sanding, and the edges were a bit soft to begin with.

 

 

 

I don't have many photos of the painting process except for the deck, which was painful to say the least. I wanted to try some form of shading to give the deck some depth. The Nastoychivy has a bare steel weather deck that is treated to prevent rust from proliferating. I believe I read on a Russian forum that it is a mix of kerosene and some other nasties? I started with a coat of Vallejo mud brown, then drew the weld lines for the various panels using weathering pencils from AK. I pre-shaded using Vallejo hull red, then applied a heavily watered down and thin coat of Vallejo Mahogany. This was too dark and almost completely covered my weld line markings. I drew them back again atop the original ones and sealed the deck using Vallejo gloss varnish. I waited a couple of days before masking, but it didn't matter. Once I started peeling the masking away after painting the rest of the hull, it took huge chunks of the varnish with it and many of the weld lines I'd drawn. I'd never used the pencils before this and realized it probably just wasn't what they were made for. As for the varnish peeling away, I just didn't expect it to be so fragile. Live and learn, every mistake a lesson etc. Still painful, haha. I cleaned, retouched and patched eveything as best I could. This left a lot of faults in the overall finish of the deck, but I'm hoping weathering will hide some of them. I'll leave the weathering until I see what she looks like with all the superstructure finished and painted. I can't decide if I want to keep her fairly clean or go for a more dirty look. I won't know until I see her mostly finished.

 

 

Here's the progress on the hull so far. A lot of retouches and weathering to do if I choose to go dirty.

 

 

Sorry for the essay. Updates will be more frequent from now on. I have several parts of the ship close to completion including the rear superstructure and the various weapons around the ship. Thanks for looking in and if anyone has any questions please don't hesitate to ask.

Regards, CJ.

[iang]

Replacing all the mouded on plastic details with printed items has made a huge difference.

[Quimp Slattery]

12 hours ago, CJ Carson said:

First off, sorry for the lack of updates. Turns out I'm not very good at this whole build log business. I was hoping to provide more regular updates as I completed each section of the ship.

May I suggest writing much smaller updates? A couple of photos and a few short paragraphs only takes a few minutes to post and it will keep your readers interested.
 

There’s another thing that I’ve just realised today. I tend to write huge updates myself and after reading yours I see how difficult it is for me as a general reader to get through them without skipping the text and just looking at the pictures.
 

I’ll be taking my own advice in future. (I wonder how many Britmodellers have thought “TLDR” about my big posts but were to polite to say so?)

 

(Ironically, I didn’t read your final words until I was about to post this 🤣)

[CJ Carson]

On 10/4/2024 at 12:04 PM, Quimp Slattery said:

May I suggest writing much smaller updates? A couple of photos and a few short paragraphs only takes a few minutes to post and it will keep your readers interested.

 

I think you're probably right, thanks buddy.

 

So, Taking Quimps advice, here's an update on the rear superstructure which i finally got to a point where I'm happy to start painting this week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's a fair few hours in this lump, with paint and weathering still to go. I did what I could with the 3D printed parts. Its been a learning curve to figure out how far I can push my printer in terms of how fine I can make certain details before they fail. I'm pleased with most of the results though.

 

See you all again soon

Best regards, CJ

 

 

[Quimp Slattery]

Wow. That mast is just 99.9% air! 🤩
 

 

[NOVA73]

Hello,

Russian ships really have a magnificent line. In this assembly, there is everything I like, PE, parts modeled and printed in D3 and a great assembly.

Good luck for the rest.

Kind regards.
Alain.

[Alan P]

Superb work, jaw-droppingly good. What a transformation. How are you finding the 3D design? It's something I'd love to be able to do but the thought scares me

[CJ Carson]

On 10/10/2024 at 9:58 AM, Quimp Slattery said:

Wow. That mast is just 99.9% air! 🤩
 

 

Haha, absolutely. Makes me think the Russian designers went to a pylon factory and said, "DA! Will fit good on ship!"

 

On 10/10/2024 at 2:08 PM, NOVA73 said:

Hello,

Russian ships really have a magnificent line. In this assembly, there is everything I like, PE, parts modeled and printed in D3 and a great assembly.

Good luck for the rest.

Kind regards.
Alain.

 

Thank you very much.

 

On 10/14/2024 at 9:41 PM, Alan P said:

Superb work, jaw-droppingly good. What a transformation. How are you finding the 3D design? It's something I'd love to be able to do but the thought scares me

 

Hey Alan, thanks for the comments. I can't speak too much in regards to the 3D design. I'm using a web based app called Tinkercad. I'm pretty sure there's significant differences between this and a professional CAD suite, which scares me aswell. To me its almost like digital Lego using this app. A few good measurements and I just start slapping shapes together until I get the result I'm looking for. That being said, the whole process has been very rewarding. Its great to be able to replace some of the awful kit parts with something even marginally better. With that in mind, here's the completed weapons for the ship. Some I redesigned myself in Tinkercad, while the AK-130s and AK-630 CWIS are from Veteran Models.

 

The Sovremenny class has two, four cell, Moskit missile launchers. Younger ships of the class have a slightly different version of this than what is provided in the kit. Different mountings and a few other details are noticeable when comparing them. I really wanted to reproduce this in my model for a little more accuracy. Here's some reference photos and a rough assembly of the kit version compared to the 3D printed version.

 

 

And the mostly finished result. I'm using AK Black Panel liner but I'm also using it as a wash, to give all the paintwork a mottled dirty look.

 

 

Here's the torpedo launchers with the kit part for comparison.

 

The RBU-1000 Rocket launchers

 

 

The Uragan/Gadfly missile launchers I kept the base and mid section. I redesigned the sides to include some extra details that weren't on the original kit parts and to make them a little sharper overall. (Please ignore my heavy handed glue work on some of the railings)😇 I also designed and printed some new missiles as the kit parts were so chunky. The etch kit I'm using comes with replacement fins for the missiles, but I couldn't get them to not look like garbage, so they had to go.

 

 

The AK-630 CWIS from Veteran Models

 

And last but certainly not least, the AK-130s from Veteran Models. These things are Godly compared to the kit parts, which are known to be highly inaccurate to begin with.

 

 

I'm really chuffed with how most of these came out. The AK-130s and Moskit launchers especially. Can't wait to bring them all together on the model. That's all for now. Working on painting and weathering the rear superstructure for now, results to follow soon. Any questions please ask.

 

Best regards, CJ

[robgizlu]

Hugely impressive work 

The 3D moulded pieces are excellent as is your PE work

Rob