USS Cole – pt.3

Work continues at slow pace. As you can see on the bottom photos, the plastic bits and pieces are starting to get the shape of the ship now. The more I look at this model, the more mistakes, or better yet omissions I see, that were made by Cyberhobby when designing this kit. One of them is the missing bow anchor – luckily there’s a couple on Flyhawk’s PE fret, so I just drilled the hole in the bow and installed one. Installing miniature PE pieces is troublesome but not as much as handling the kit – a few have been lost to carpet monster already – luckily none are too noticeable. I am no expert on ship building so I’ve picked up the paints according to the photos. While I am quite satisfied with the hull colour of choice, the deck one proved more tricky. On photos, it changes from very pale grey to quite a dark one, depending on lightning situation. I’ve gone for a lighter shade and then darkening it a bit with oil colours and at the same time also adding some shades to the raised objects and I quite like the end result. Next step will be decals, followed by more of the shading, detail painting and a bit of weathering.