The colour for the Russian ships is Revell 57. It's really dark in the beginning, but it fades pretty rapidly! With my slow construction progress I sometimes have to repaint the hull, because the detailing took so much time that the hull colour already faded and any patches with the same colour are VERY visible...
Here is another minor update.
Maybe you can put this one in the scratchbuilding forum too. I'll take a few pics with the main deck off too. It's generally the same construction as Maxim's Luyang classes.
So here is what I did now:
Yeah, Jim B. I know the windows are out of proportion
I should have cut them from some left over PE framing... I cut them now from 0.5mm styrene and after gluing I sanded the whole bunch off to get them thinner. PE would't have been nice though... I wanted to fit some spare PE watertight doors in the lowest floor of the accomodation (as that is the only place where there are watertight doors, all upper decks are just weathertight ones).
I also simplified the deck lay-out a bit. I just mounted these supports at equal intervals. In real they are at more unequal intervals and very hard to count, even from onboard pictures! The shape isn't really exact either, but at this scale it is hard to get it better. (these supports are just 1mm high).
I have mounted the crane stands, but not the jibs themselves, because just in front of them, there is a lot of transverse piping to the loading manifold on the sides. So the cranes will have to wait untill the end.
Now she's more or less ready for the first big pipework on deck, although I'll first paint the sloop deck before I start it.
The dark spot of paint was just a test to see if the Revell 57 was light enough. In a month or two it might be, but I'm not going to wait for that.
I'll just pick a more realistic colour.
The transverse pieces lines you see are pieces of stretched sprue, they represent the heating system for the cofferdams. These are spaces between the tanks that have to prevent one tank from leaking into another one. They are free of gas and due to the cold cargo on both sides very cold. Before you enter these spaces (happens very rarely), they are heated via these transverse pipes.
Not too far from each vapor dome you can see the small round plates more to the centreline. These are where the pumps are below. Those are the places where the pipelines enter the tank to the pump. So that is where I will put the pipelines (once again simplified) in on my model. In reality the place is much smaller, but I'm not Jim Baumann am I?
Regards
Roel
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