Building an A/B Waterbase for Your Ship Models

Assembling the Parts

The order in which the parts are cut to shape and then glued is irrelevant. Sometimes I complete the base and then glue the model into it. I have also built the base on the model, gluing the top to it and then marking, cutting and gluing the sides.

At this point of the description comes one the most important concepts of this type of display base; the top is not necessarily flat, unlike other bases commonly used by modelers to display their ships, such as (a piece of wood board). The striking difference in relation to the traditional base is that the top and the sides of the supporting A/B waterline base is shaped according to the kind of water surface you want to create. The shaping can range anywhere from a flat-top; like the water in a peaceful lake, to the very undulating appearance of a typhoon-raged sea. Accordingly, the sides are not simply long rectangular strips of acrylic plastic; the top does not sit on the sides as a flat and horizontal plane but as an undulating or slopping surface.

A second important element of such a base is that it is not solid, but hollow. The significance of this characteristic comes to mind when asking how to place a full-hull model on that base. Since this base is hollow it is not necessary to carve out room into a solid base to insert the ship hull in the base. It only needs to cut off the ship's hull contours on the top; that is, to make an opening on the thin plastic sheet that constitutes the top of the base (the acrylic diffuser) in which you wish to insert your model.

How deep do you insert you model into the A/B base depends on what you are trying to represent. You will have the chance to fully control which parts will be displayed above or below the waterline and how the model sits on its base. Model water-making, PE-ing, weathering, rigging and any other building process other than the initial assembling, gluing and painting can be made before, after or at any stage of the base building process. The use of fully transparent materials to make the base as well as those used to recreate water, such as silicone, gel, paints, make possible to achieve some attractive looking-through and depth effects.

Accordingly, the end product displays your model just as if it is floating in a fish tank filled with water. How deep your below-waterline part of the base is is all up to you. From a few cm, as in the majority of my bases, that just to have a little more room than necessary according to the model's draft, to several dozen cm like in the depth charging diorama shown above. You can achieve a realistic depth effect on your simulated water whilst not having to sacrifice any below waterline details of your ship diorama.

It may all sound a little tricky, but it is not. It is simple, easy and inexpensive. One project after another had imposed new challenges and also given me the chance to use my creativity to achieve my goals to make these procedures easy and adaptable to readily and cheaply available materials. I have experimented with a number of different ways to build such a base. I have constructed it before building the model, on partially built ships and also on fully finished models that have PE and rigging included!

I have made the sides first, and also have begun working on the top part. Sometimes I have found it easier to cut room for the model after the base is finished, while other times I have realized the advantages to cut the opening in the top of the base before gluing the base parts. Sometimes I have cut the top of the base into several pieces to simplify the process of adjusting each one of them to the contours of the ship. Later each part is glued to the model independently, like pieces of a puzzle. The end product will not show how many or how they are assembled together, since the base top is only a support on which the modeler is going to simulate water. I would like to emphasize that there is not a rigorous order of the steps that follow. One has many degrees of freedom to make the procedure a simpler, cheaper and enjoyable one!

As one picture tells more than a thousand words I will continue this presentation as a step-by-step sequence of illustrated examples to show you the techniques, tools and approaches that I’ve used.

The following pictures illustrate the procedure I follow while building a Russian Navy diorama. I usually start by drawing and transferring the ships hull’s profiles to a piece of the acrylic diffuser. In this step you will always have to get the ship lateral profiles close or at the waterline level (sometimes you will deviate purposely from the waterline to represent an undulating sea level). For models that come with hulls in two parts you can use the bottom one (or the top!) as a template to draw the contour of the ship at the waterline level on the top part of the base (acrylic diffuser). Keep in mind, however that the ship’s vertical profile at levels other that the waterline can be significantly different from those at the waterline (especially at the bow or the stern). So, if your display will be a ship down by the bow, or by the stern, or a heavily listed, plan ahead and don’t cut anything before making the necessary measurements and adding or subtracting a few mms (1/16”-1/8”) to the contour. A contour-transfer tool and cardboard template would be of great assistance to transfer the best fit to the acrylic diffuser. The next step is to cut the hulls’ profiles out,

I use blocks of wood, plastic, cardboard, etc., to raise the plastic diffuser at the points I want to be above the waterline level when bonding the model to the diffuser. Alternatively, I use different weights to lower it at the points I want to have it below the waterline level. To introduce some listing or rolling on the model position I use the same tricks.

I usually use silicone as bonding agent. This step is a little time consuming. First, you must be patient. I do not recommend gluing the entire hull in a single step. Start gluing several attaching points first (like those where the hull is closer to the diffuser). Second, you should wait until the glue has dried (these gluing materials have the advantage that they are elastic, so you can stretch or compress the juncture a little bit later, if necessary). If there's any large gap between the ship's hull and the contour of the opening made to insert it, I carefully measure and cut to shape pieces of a thin film (like polyacetate films used for overhead projector transparencies) and then glue them, first to the diffuser and then to the model. The following pictures illustrate these steps.

Next, I started painting the “water surface”. I use of transparent colors for that depth appearance effect.

Finally for this diorama the base sides came only at this point. Once the diffuser has been firmly attached to the hulls you can easily transfer any desired waving profile of the diffuser contours to a piece of cardboard and subsequently onto a 1/8’ acrylic plastic.

This procedure is better illustrated here with some photos of my Russian Sovremeny DD conversion from full hull to A/B waterline:

The following step is to cut the sides of the base and then glue them together and to the diffuser as shown in the following pictures: