Carp to Gold, Ep.3., The Sand(ing)s of Time

I thought I could gain no more by keeping the deck and hull halves separate, so I assembled them. Hair bands and rubber are always useful for keeping pressure at the right places.

Painting Tally, May 2026 (or lack thereof)

May is the first time in the over one and half years of tracking my painting output when I did NOT paint anything (that is, get something at least to an assembled or primed state).

I spent some time on the Aurora model, but that is far from being assembled or primed. There is still some minor tweaking to do (and I shall make follow-up posts). Similarly, I did some painting on a 1/700 scale interwar fit IJN Nagato.

Besides the ship model and the suitable aftermarket parts, I only bought a bunch of meeples. They are in the process of being armed with toothpicks and coffee stirrer shields.

By the measure of area to be completed, the home renovation is progressing well and an A/C was just installed in our living room. 

I hope to focus more on hobby projects in June, continuing my 28mm TYW project and the 1/72 WSS figures.

Carp to Gold: Ep. 2., Hullduggery

Before any doubt arises, yes, I will add more bad puns to the title of this series.

Anyway, I made some progress on the Aurora, which at first seems a backwards step, but alas! not so!

I managed to separate the deck and the hull halves. For the 1903 fit these require major surgery, and it is actually better to have access to the edges of the deck and the inside of the hull halves.

So I sanded most of the tacky glue off the deck, and then removed the two midships sponsons and the rearmost one with a scalpel, we won't need those. Also the rearmost deck house and the 6" gun have to be switched up, so I chopped the deck house off and will rebuild it later.

Carp to Gold: Restoring an old Heller/Ogonek 1/400 Cruiser Aurora

My wife convinced me to create an account on the second hand marketplace app Vinted. It's mainly for clothes but there's also hobby stuff. 

Whilst browsing I found this 1/400 scale model of the cruiser Aurora. I made a bargain bid and the seller agreed, so for very little money I now have the model.

As it turns out (based on the info available on Scalemates) this is originally a Heller mould, made in the sixties and resold by various companies over the years, primarily a Russian brand named Ogonek, in multiple iterations. It's rather crude, and it was obviously built by an enthusiastic kid or someone alike. It has thick red paint on the underside of the hull which is still not completely dry, while the upper works are bare grey plastic. The parts were attached with lots and lots of superglue.

The first thing to do was separating and stowing away the parts that I could, which was a surprisingly large amount, the glue having dried and failing to adhere anymore. So I could just remove most things with my fingers. I'll sand the deck and hull anyway, so I did not really care about glue marks.

Now on to my plans with the model. I'm going to strip the paint off the bottom, sand it smooth, repair the glue marks where I can, and then... I'm going to convert the ship back to its original 1903 state and paint it in the white and ochre livery of the day.

This includes building back the bulwarks on the main deck with plasticard, filing away some of the center sponsons, and adding lots and lots of aftermarket parts. The reasoning behind this is because the model itself was very cheap, I can invest more in these.

I have already made the first purchase which includes a wooden deck, resin gun mounts for the 6" guns, and turned brass barrels. The guns are 1/350 scale, which is about 14% larger than the original scale of the model, but the original gun mounts did also look kind of out of place and lacked any detail, so I'm not very worried about that.

The next purchase will include 3" gun carriages, and photoetched ladders, rails and stairs. It's going to take a while to finish the model, but I'm looking forward to working on it.

Found at a second hand clothes store...

My wife and I scour second hand clothes stores (a local brand) regularly. About 90% of my clothes are from there, good value for the money.

We recently went to one of the stores and in the miscellaneous bin I found this Airfix kit. The price was weight based so I thought why not? With a pair of Disney toys I thought I could use for terrain the entire ordeal cost me about 8 euros.

As you can see the box was banged up, but I peeked inside one split corner and saw a nylon wrapper, so I had hope...

Et voilá! Everything is here and - which is the funniest part of all - in the original wrapper, undamaged. A 2010 issue Spitfire Mark Ia gift set. It even has the decals, paints and glue.

I don't do much aircraft modelling, but this very same Spitfire was one of the first models I built when I was little, so I might just complete it for nostalgia's sake. 

Painting Tally, April 2026

April has been a rather productive month. In the period leading up to the end of summer I'm going to start (and hopefully complete) a house renovation project, so the hobby will more than likely stay on the back leg.

Let's see the list then:

28mm

Completed

14x Perry Swiss

6x Italian crossbowmen

6x Italian halberdiers

2x Perry mounted MAA

2x Warbases carts

8x Warbases animals

4x Scratch-built cart contents

Primed

12x Perry Swiss arquebusiers

1x Warlord landsknecht halberdier

2x scratchbuilt city buildings

28x Bloody Miniatures ECW/TYW figs

1/700

Painted

1/700 IJN Hibiki (after long suffering)

Primed

1/700 IJN Nagato interwar fit (in subassemblies)

1/2000 

Completed

12x warships

This totals a PU of 930.

Regarding purchases, I bought the aforementioned Bloody figs on their "Not at Salute" yearly sale, some epoxy putty, extra containers and a few bottles of paint.

The Royal Zinqaguri Navy in 1/2000

I might have mentioned earlier that I switched over from 1000 to 1/2000 scale for my 'Trashy Fleets' project. The decision was based on space and time constraints, in order to get a few games played over a short period.

By this time I managed to complete my imaginary Zinqaguri navy's two battle squadrons, one for the country's east and one for the west coast. They have different paint jobs because why not? 

Also each squadron has a TBD detachment, but being deployed on separate stations and not very likely to operate together, I only completed one base of TBDs in total.

Spanish Swordsmen

These are plastic figures for the board game Anno Domini 1666. I don't really care much about the game itself, but the figures look good, so I bought some of the expansion sets. They are useful for small urban skirmishes, or I can run the four swordsmen (including a NOT Viggo Mortensen Alatriste) for The Pikeman's Lament as a four figure Aggressive Forlorn unit.

Crimea River of Tartar Sauce

Off the painting desk ride a dozen Fireforge Games Mongols. I'm going to use them as Lithuanian or Crimean Tatars, they might not be totally historically accurate, but they are OK for representing these types of bow-armed raiders. They are in three groups of four, for my reduced figure count The Pikeman's Lament units, but they can be mixed as seen fit.