¹⁄700

Build Up of the Tamiya 1:700 IJN Yamato

Painting the Wood Deck

Once the major work on the hull is complete, I like to paint the wood deck before finishing the hull details. Painting the deck at this stage ensures you will get all areas of it with little masking and worry about fragile photoetch railing and details. We will then mask the deck with a liquid mask film to protect it while we add details and paint the hull. I decided to paint part B15 before gluing it.

The Yamato’s deck was a wood called teak. It looks a lot like pine but has more of a yellow-gold look to it. I masked off some areas with blue painters tape and washed the deck with water and a paper towel to remove oil and fingerprints. I don’t like to use primer on smaller models as it sometimes ruins photoetch detail if applied to thick. I first applied a generic ColorPlace brand of Almond color from a spray can. After checking that the coat was even and all nooks were covered, I let the coat dry several hours.




I next took watercolor pencils of various shades of browns and white and drew lines at random across the deck. In the open areas I chose a length of about 1/2 inch for a uniform look. I made sure all areas between objects had some planking drawn on them as well. When satisfied I mixed the water-based acrylic paints as shown in the photo until I got a pleasing gold color. This was then thinned and brushed across the deck with a stiff flat brush. The watercolor pencil lines and thinned acrylic paint were slowly blended together until I was satisfied with the result.






Once the acrylic paint has dried (which only took a few minutes), I lightly sprayed over the deck with a couple quick swipes of the almond color spray again to finish the blending. Once dry, the deck was coated with ModelMaster lusterless flat spray to seal and protect the acrylic paint. This was allowed to dry for several hours.






After the flat spray had dried for several hours, the tape was removed and the edges cleaned up. The hull will be spray painted with a can of Tamiya’s IJN Kure Grey, The brush bottle of this color does not go on unprimed parts well, so I mixed an empty bottle of the color with various ModelMaster enamels and color matched it on a piece of photo paper for printers. I painted the reels, deck hatches and other small details with this color now. I then carefully brushed on the liquid mask being careful to leave the gun mount edges exposed so they would be painted.

After several hours the film was dry and I cleaned the straight edges around objects with a sharp hobby knife blade. Part B15 had tape put on its deck in front of the breakwater barrier and between it and the reels, Testors clear Dullcote in a bottle was brushed on the seam to seal the taped edge. The front of the breakwater was then painted. After dry the tape was removed, B15 was attached to the hull piece and the wood deck was masked off. The gap between the breakwater barrier on B15 and the hull was filled in from the other side with clear parts cement.