Soluyanov Sergey

At last, I am finishing work on my project. Of course, I had to work at a very fast pace, but the final weeks of the competition coincided with my vacation, so nothing prevented me from doing what I love. I finished some small details and gave the model a coat of varnish.

I started work on the aft superstructure. The poop deck, the superstructure deck and the wheelhouse base were all made from wood veneer. I built the davits and rigged them. The lifeboats themselves came from the kit; I only scratch-built the canopies for them.

The aft superstructure and wheelhouse were fully assembled, primed, glazed and painted white. I made the aft ventilator cowls, hatch covers, electric winch, flagstaff, bollards and navigation lights. The navigation equipment for the bridge was also scratch-built.

The mast was fabricated — primed and painted, the aft mast spars were assembled, and I made the searchlight and deck lamps. After that, I final-assembled the wheelhouse and aft superstructure into a single unit and glued it in place. Decals were applied to the hull and superstructures in their correct positions, and the ladders and railings were attached.

This week I built the windlass, forecastle ventilator cowls and bollards. The mast and cargo derrick were made from brass tubing, with the rigging replicated from photographs of the actual vessel. The completed windlass, mast, cowls and bollards were then painted.

The midship section was assembled together with the fuel pipeline and valves. The forecastle was also fully assembled and painted. All of these subassemblies are now being fitted onto the hull — final assembly is underway.

Pipelines were made from Evergreen plastic rods of various diameters. The railings, ladders and ship’s doors were produced using photo-etched parts from Atlantic Models. I also scratch-built the lifebuoys and fire extinguishers.

This week I started making parts for the midship deck. First, the hull received its final paintwork and a coat of semi-gloss clear varnish, which protects the surface and gives it a neat, restrained sheen.

I then moved on to the cargo winch, building it from scratch based on drawings and photos of the prototype. Next, the distribution pipeline was fully fabricated, with all joints and bends carefully fitted. After that, I made the hand winches / warping drums. The upper section of the funnel was also replaced: the original kit part was removed and a new, scratch-built one was installed in its place.

In addition, I fabricated a set of pipelines that will be installed on the deck later. They are made from Evergreen plastic rods — the material holds its shape well, bends easily, and provides a smooth, clean surface ready for painting.

Once the Tamiya primer had fully dried and its even matt tone allowed me to properly assess the hull for the first time, I turned my attention to one of the most prominent features of any vessel — the portholes. On the kit they were moulded directly into the plastic hull, but their quality caused only frustration: asymmetrical shapes, blurred edges, varying depth and sink marks in several places. Leaving them untouched on a model aspiring to museum accuracy was out of the question.

So every single factory porthole was ruthlessly filled. I carefully packed each recess with Tamiya Basic Putty, let it dry completely and sanded it flush with the hull side. Then, armed with drawings and photographs of the prototype, I laid out a new, precise marking: the position of each porthole was checked for height and centre‑to‑centre spacing to achieve a perfectly even row. I drilled in stages — starting with a fine bit at the centre of each mark, then opening up to the required diameter while checking the shape and cleanliness of the edge. After drilling, each porthole was lightly chamfered by hand with a countersink bit to suggest the thickness of the shell plating. The result — neat, symmetrical openings aligned along a single axis, something that would have been impossible to achieve using the original mouldings.

The second major task of this stage was making the rubbing strakes — a characteristic feature of a tanker’s hull that protects the side during berthing and, at the same time, gives the vessel its recognisable working silhouette. The kit provided no parts for them, so I scratch‑built the strakes entirely. The material was polystyrene strip of a suitable cross‑section. I pre‑bent each strip to follow the hull contours at the correct position by heating the plastic over hot water and holding the shape until it cooled. The strakes were then glued to the sides strictly parallel to the waterline, carefully checking symmetry between port and starboard. Joints and ends were filled, sanded and re‑primed so that the rubbing strakes visually became an integral part of the hull rather than looking like glued‑on patches.

By the end of this stage the hull had begun to acquire its true character: an even chain of neat portholes and the crisp lines of the rubbing strakes immediately gave the sides depth, relief and a realistic sense of scale.

Once the decision was made to keep only the plastic hull, work moved into a practical phase. The two hull halves were carefully cleaned up, dry-fitted and glued with maximum precision. I reinforced the internal seam with polystyrene strips to prevent future deformation. After the adhesive cured, the external seam was repeatedly filled, sanded and polished to a perfectly smooth, invisible finish.

At the same time, I began making the decks. Rather than using the unsatisfactory kit parts, the forecastle, main and poop decks were cut anew from sheet polystyrene. Each piece was test-fitted, trimmed and adjusted until it sat snugly. I also marked out the future openings for manifolds, ventilator cowls and other fittings at this stage.

Next came the bulwark. Both forward and aft sections were scratch-built from thin polystyrene sheet and brass wire for the capping rail. The bulwark was carefully bent to the hull contours, securely glued and reinforced from inside. The top edge received a neat rail of uniform height, its lines flowing harmoniously with the vessel’s silhouette.

With all major structure in place, I moved to filling and priming—the stage that turns separate parts into a monolith. I used Tamiya products throughout. Basic Putty was applied in thin layers to all joints and imperfections. After each drying period, sanding followed with progressively finer abrasives. The fill-and-sand cycle was repeated until the surface was flawless.

I completed this stage with Tamiya Surface Primer from a spray can. It revealed the slightest remaining imperfections (which were immediately spot-filled) and created a durable, uniform base for painting. Once dry, the hull took on an even matt tone, and for the first time the future tanker Shell Welder could be clearly read—still without details, but already possessing character.

When the long-awaited Ark-Models kit finally landed on my workbench, the contents brought disappointment rather than joy. It took only a few minutes of inspection to realise that the quality of the castings and soldering was not just poor — it was fundamentally incompatible with the goal of building a museum-quality replica. Flash, sink marks, soft contours and crudely assembled parts made the contents look more like rough blanks than a proper scale-modelling kit.

After a sober assessment, I made the only possible decision: to keep just the two halves of the plastic hull and discard, heavily rework or completely rebuild everything else. What was supposed to be the start of assembly became a clean break — a moment when a standard kit turned into a blank canvas for a fully individual build, grounded in historical photographs, original shipyard drawings and hundreds of hours of manual work.