Like most of you I use to spend a lot of time masking and painting the upper hull, remasking and painting the lower hull . Then remasking and painting the boot. A lot of work and time spent or wasted. Here's a way I use now that saves me time and agrevasion. I paint the boot area black. When the paint s dry I lay down a strip of tape to cover the boot, shoot it with another coat of black paint and let that dry. I then paint the upper hull without worrying about masking because I'm going to paint over any overspray anyway. Whats left is the lower hull which will be upside down and easy to paint. I mask the upper hull over the boot tape, paint the lower hull and when I'm through I just remove the boot tape, the upper hull mask comes up with it. Done.

I kinda do it like that only I do red, mask it, then black, mask it, then upper hull. LAst two builds were those giant 350 scale Trumpeter kits of the Arizonz and ESSEX, so that made it evern easier. Spray blck on upper piece and mask it, then work on rest of hull. The lower piece is already red and separated but I pop it again with red......no mask required

I've got the Arizona to build. Have done a lot of dry fitting only. Seems to me that the lower hull dosen't quite fit right so I think I'm going to have to glue then fill then sand. You have this problem? The port holes on the superstructure don't align properly and like the revell kit the seam is quite prominant. Think I might just fill the port holes, sand smooth and redrill them. All the boats seem to have really thick sides so they don't look right. Don't know yet how I'm going to fix that though. Any hints on doing the scout plane? Don't think they were aboard on the 7th were they? Do you or dose anyone know if the mounts for the AA guns were installed or not? I know that the splinter shields were there but not the guns.