Advice for painting the decks on 1/700 WWII battleships

[100SQN]

Hi,

 

I have a number of WWII battleships and was wondering what is the best method for painting the deck.

Is it easier to glue everything together, spray it all gray and then hand paint the deck or am I best masking/spraying the different areas prior to gluing the pieces together ?

Would the approach be different for larger ships such as 1/350 ?

 

Any advice would be much appreciated

 

Cheers,

Simon

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday Simon, I usually model ships in 1/600 scale (Airfix mainly, although I'm diverging) and paint on enamels with brushes, so I don't know how much help I can be. Gluing first or painting first is rather a broad question that I think depends very much on the model. For very clean uncluttered decks then possibly glue first then paint around the bits.

     I paint as I build, and with decks it is very early in the build, usually before the deck gets attached to the hull. I hand paint the deck first then paint all the attached bits and pieces molded on, such as barbettes, bulkheads, blobs of plastic representing lockers etc. As glue doesn't take to painted surfaces too well I have to leave un-painted those areas that will receive a large piece to be attached, or for small pieces I often drill a hole into both the piece and deck then attach using a bit of styrene rod as a joining pin (if one is not already fitted). HTH. Regards, Jeff.

[Andreas.R]

Hi Simon,

 

if you are using spray it would be easier to spray the hull, then the deck before attaching to the hull.

The planking details of the deck becomes more visible. Same happens with the superstructure parts (side view).

If there is no planking you could use a brush. You will get a clear separation between deck and vertical superstructure.

Scrape off the paint on the glued connections. I use nitro thinner as an adhesive, it dissolves the color as well as the styrene-plastic.

I hope you get good results!

 

  

 

Regards

Andreas

 

 

 

Edited May 9, 2020 by Andreas.R