ART35005 Pripyat City Sign
Solid resin Pripyat city signThe long-awaited re-release of Artefakt's 1:35th scale rendition of the famous Pripyat city sign, consisting of nine solid, cast resin parts: sign, letters and baseplate.
Master (handmade, not 3D-printed) by Alex Friedrich, cast for us by Paul Wade from Red Zebra Models.
L x B x H: 25,8 x 9,5 x 1,5 cms, total weight: 130 g.
Includes history/instruction-sheet, plus a strip of 1,5 mm plasticard to help you attach the letters at their correct depth.
1:35
resin
Artefakt Diorama Accessories
Description
The city of Pripyat was founded in the year 1970 as the ninth Soviet nuclear city, to serve the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, under construction at the same time.
After the accident at the ChNPP on April 26, 1986, 50.000 people- the whole population- had to be evacuated from Pripyat, which will not be inhabited by human beings for the next 20.000 years.
The city sign stands at a junction of roads a few miles from town, and proudly points towards the left, towards Pripyat, the city of the "Peaceful Atom", as a grim reminder of a time when blind technological progress and human domination of the planet was still a goal to strive for.
The 1/35 scale sign by ARTEFAKT diorama accessories consists of nine resin parts that have been cast in open molds, thus the back side can have some bubbles and imperfections, which need filling and sanding in case you want to show the back, or can be left as are, if the sign serves as a backdrop in a diorama or vignette, which is what we did with the boxart piece. The advantage of this form of casting is that you will not have to deal with the usual chunks of resin that need to be sawn off.
Carefully remove resin flash from the back edge by sanding and then clean the pieces as you would do with any resin parts, with some mild soap and water, rinsing well and leaving to dry.
The letters of the real sign have apparently been made from metal and have only in recent years been painted white, thus the masters were made bare of any texture. The real base is cast in concrete and the resin pieces have a bit of texture, which can of course be enhanced by scribing, chipping or weathering.
We primed all pieces white before gluing them together, to make sure the paint would reach the sides of the letters.
When gluing the letters onto the base, make sure you can see the faint marks on the thin distancing strip (cast on top of the base) that will hold the letters to the base, and which will later (or before!) be painted red. “X” marks the glue spots for each letter.
As the letters have more depth than the base, we included a piece of 1.5mm styrene sheet as a spacer.
Lay this on your cutting mat or other assembly surface and lay the large base of the sign on top.
Now align the letters so that they lay flat on your assembly surface and glue them on one by one with superglue.
They will then protrude forward/backward correctly in relation to the base.
The small concrete base will obviously not hold the weight of the large base and letters, and must be glued to a larger diorama base.
We welcome you to post your diorama work featuring your Pripyat city sign on our “Yenmodels” Facebook-page!
Enjoy the Zone, and happy modelling!
Design and master: Alex Friedrich
Casting: Paul Wade, Red Zebra Models
Distribution: Yenmodels
Copyright ARTEFAKT DIORAMA ACCESSORIES 2021:
do not recast. Recasting is copyright theft and a crime. Support the original artists.
